The World According to Bob

remained deeply interested in the rubbish bin in the kitchen. Whenever I put something into the bin he would get up on his hind legs and stick his nose in. If I ever challenged him he would throw me a look as if to say ‘hey, what are you throwing in there? I haven’t decided if I want to play with that or not.’ For a while, I started jokingly calling him the garbage inspector. It wasn’t always a laughing matter, however.

    I was just emerging from the bath one morning when I heard weird noises coming from the kitchen. I could make out a thin, metallic, scraping sound, as if something was being dragged around. It was accompanied by a kind of low moaning sound.
    ‘Bob, what are you up to now?’ I said, grabbing a towel to dry my hair as I went to investigate.
    I couldn’t help giggling at the sight that greeted me.
    Bob was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with an empty tin of cat food wedged on the top of his head. The tin was sitting at a jaunty angle on his head right over his eyeline. He looked like a cross between the Black Knight from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail and a Welsh guard outside Buckingham Palace with his bearskin hat hanging over his eyes.
    It was obvious that he couldn’t see much because he was walking backwards across the kitchen floor, dragging the tin with him in an attempt to reverse himself out of it. He was being very deliberate, padding backwards one careful step at a time, occasionally wiggling the tin or raising it a little before giving it a tap against the floor in the hope the impact would dislodge it. His plan wasn’t working. It was comical to watch.
    It didn’t take Hercule Poirot or Columbo to work out what had happened. In the corner of the room I could see the black bin liner containing the rubbish I was going to put in the wheelie bins downstairs this morning. I normally emptied the bin and put the sack out at night, specifically to stop Bob playing with it. But for some reason today I’d forgotten and left it on the kitchen floor. Big mistake.
    Bob had clearly taken advantage of my absence and ripped and chewed at the bottom of the bag so that he could try his luck rummaging in the waste. He’d drawn a blank on the cardboard front, but he had found the old tin. Unfortunately for him, in his enthusiasm to explore its contents, he’d got his head stuck in there. It was the kind of thing you saw on YouTube or video clip programmes like You’ve Been Framed all the time. He’d got himself in a terrible mess and was letting out this rather sad and pathetic little moaning sound. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. One day I’d been sitting in the living room when I heard another odd sound coming from the kitchen, a kind of tapping sound. Pat . . . pat . . . pat followed by a faster pat, pat, pat, pat .
    I’d found Bob walking around with a miniature container of butter attached to one of his paws. He loved butter so had obviously found this and been dipping his paw in so that he could lick it clean. He’d somehow wedged the paw inside the container and was now walking around with it attached. Every now and again, he’d raise his paw and tap it against a cupboard door in an effort to dislodge it. Eventually I’d had to help him remove it. I could see I would have to do the same thing here.
    He was clearly feeling a little bit sorry for himself and knew he’d done something stupid.
    ‘Bob, you silly boy. What have you done to yourself?’ I said, leaning down to help him. Thank goodness he hadn’t shoved his head all the way inside the tin, I thought. It had a serrated edge where it had been opened so I was careful in removing it from his head. I smelled inside the tin. It wasn’t the most pleasant odour I’d ever encountered, that was for sure.
    The instant I extricated the top of his head from the tin, Bob scooted off into the corner. There were bits of food stuck to his ear and the back of his head so he began licking and washing himself frantically. As he did so he kept shooting me rather sheepish looks, as if to say: ‘yes, I know it was a dumb thing to do. Don’t tell me you’ve never done anything stupid yourself.’
    As we headed off into work an hour or so later, he was still wearing the same, rather embarrassed expression and I was still smiling to myself about it.
    The first sign that something was amiss came a few days later when he began eating more than usual. Bob’s daily diet had been a