She'd probably get a Rover, ha! ha! ha!

There are many things in life I don't do.

I don't use the phrase "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."*

I don't cheer and break into applause when somebody drops a plate in a restaurant.

I don't work out people's zodiac signs from their birthdays, partly because I don't know what the relevant dates are, but mainly because I think astrology is as big a load of crap** as the Republican canard*** that bloody rich people get into a snit and refuse to create jobs in the US because they don't get to keep proportionally more of their income than the rest of us.

Leila. photographed by Secundus

And I don't automatically recalculate dog's ages in human years. In fact, I don't even know the formula.

However, as should be abundantly obvious from this blog, I have no influence whatsoever on my children, and when I mentioned that the divine Leila (the Overbeast) is coming up to her fourth birthday, Tertius immediately did the mental arithmetic.

"In human years," he announces, "she's old enough to drive."

Now there's a disturbing concept.

*It's not merely the fact that it's a cliche. It's the fact that people who do still use it always do so with this smug, knowing smirk on their face, as if they'd just made it up themselves and as if it bestows them with some superiority. Ah, don't get me started.

**Kindly ignore the fact that I wrote a mystery that used the signs of the zodiac as the murderer's code. I am large, I contain multitudes.

***Not French for dog, as in canine. French for duck.