Everybody knows dogs are unable to be prudent. They can’t – and maybe if they could they wouldn’t in any case – be bothered with notions like “abundance” and “shortage”. They take what they have for granted, if they are used to be pampered a bit.
Kátur the dog would require a whole narration of his own, but this is not the right moment and place for it. Like most dogs though, Kátur the dog can be highly destructive in his playtime antics and it’s sure as heck if you give him something he won’t treasure it for ages to come. He will wear it down and devastate it in the shortest time possible to his fangs and claws. Since his true passion – or I should say obsessive fixation bordering to insane addiction – is playing ball, we have to supply him with this kind of item constantly. We tried any kind of ball on the market especially thought and designed for dogs, but those balls must have been thought and designed by people who have never actually come near a dog. They have not been designed by dogs, that’s for sure. I mean, come on.. those balls are so easily breakable that it’s outrageous to think a dog could use them for more than a few minutes.
But why being so decadent at all costs as to go for pet merchandise? Wouldn’t it be better, we thought, to be very old-fashioned and buy a simple, average, ordinary tennis ball for the dog, like in the good old days when pets were not just another branch of consumers with products of their own that don’t work, are crazy expensive, aren’t easy to find at all times, or simply aren’t at all good quality?
The last ball wild Kátur disintegrated looked like a tennis ball on the outside but was in fact a fake in leopard camouflage. It exhaled its last breath as soon as the beast wanted to chew it. We should have suspected something was horribly wrong when we saw the leopard print on the fleecy surface the doggone ball. After this unfortunate incident, we wanted an actual tennis ball, something Björn Borg could have used in his better days, before he became a moron and started designing underwear – maybe, thinking about it, he could have something to do with the fake leopard ball… hmm. Anyway, with this goal in mind, we happily departed for our simple quest to obtain a tennis ball for the dog to play with.
Now listen to what I say, but very calmly, because this is Iceland after all, and Iceland I discovered is full of inexplicable mysteries, like the absence in common supermarkets or houseware stores of a plunger in case your sink gets clogged or the sudden vanishing from almost all stores at the same time of spray body deodorants in favor of the roll-on variety.
Tennis balls were not hard to be seen sitting around on shelves about two weeks ago. There were quite a few at Europris and we saw them also in other leisure stores. We couldn’t find a single tennis ball anywhere today, but of course we’ll keep on looking for them tomorrow. The Bonus has tees to play golf though. Like incredible amounts of them. They come in many colors, to fit your mood or your golfing outfit. You could play golf forever with that amount of tees for your golf balls. Not that there were golf balls anywhere anyway, in case you’re wondering. At some point we were tempted to get a stuffed armadillo in order to make the dog forget for at least a few hours about his passion for ball playing, but the armadillo in question had a sort of whistling device inside that would have made maddening for us to live in the same apartment with Kátur, especially at night. In fact, it was so fascinating to press the armadillo’s belly to make him utter his bwaaaah that I got addicted to it myself for a good three minutes. Imagine what would have happened with a bored dog.
This also brings to mind an article I read on The Iceland Weather Report a few weeks back, about lemons’ and lime pickles’ pursuit. As I said, tennis balls were fairly popular a week or two ago. I’m not sure about deodorants and plungers and sofa covers and Narayan’s books, but tennis balls were. And tennis rackets are still fairly popular, but I assume if I start looking for them they’ll disappear for some reason as well, so then we’ll be able to play tennis as in the ending of Blow-up. But you can’t explain these things to a dog with big teary eyes, can you?
Maybe we’ll be able to get a three-pack of those bloody balls somewhere for a ridiculously expensive price. Or maybe we’ll get that armadillo.
Get the golf tees and barter them for tennis balls. I’m sure next week there will be plenty of tennis ball owners in need of tees of any kind. Just in case the golf tees are out already buy the lime pickles and barter them for the golf tees.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, as the saying goes. Leaving aside the shortage of lemons.. but that’s not the point. You know, yours is an excellent idea. I think you’d do great as a businessman here.
Thank you, but 13 years of training in good old DDR sort of make me an expert in economy of makeshift 😉
My mother is still much more practical into this. She collects everything that COULD become sparse one day (which is quite a lot) in case that she or someone else MIGHT need it, like knitting needles, toilet spray, yoghurt … I’ll tell her about Island, so watch the horizon: she might buy a big boat and bring her treasures one day 😉
Your mother and her abilities will be welcome, even if she’ll be coming by some less romantic means of transportation! You know, my mother, and grandmother before her, also kept anything instead of throwing stuff away, but they didn’t really made use of it, or seriously planned to use it. My grandmother had a drawer full of buttons, another full of scraps of paper and ribbons taken from the weirdest sources. She had cupboards filled with empty jars and others for figurines found inside Easter eggs. She collected anything, really. But keeping junk in your house with no purpose is maddening after some time, hehe.
Yes, only keeping the stuff is unhealthy. Also because it starts growing by itself after a while. I am moving each two or so years and these are great opportunities to get rid of things. It’s a shame and it hurts to throw away “useful” things, though.
My grandfather was the same like your grandmother. Once he found somewhere some kilos of long and thick but bent nails, which were supposed to be from Sweden. I don’t know why he thought they were from Sweden, because there is no space on nails to print “Made in Sweden” or so. And besides I think nails are the same, wheather from Borneo or from Zurich, there is no need for a swedish styled nail, is there?
But as things from capitalist countries were rare in DDR and hence very attractive, he rectified each single nail with a hammer so that they were straight and usable again. First my father thought “oh, this man is driving me crazy” but than he did use them for building a green house.
In my flat there are empty jars en masse too, but it’s just because I’m too lazy to bring them to the recycle container.
Well, I wish you the best for your dog. Ehh… wait. What was that? – You have a DOG? I thought there were no dogs allowed to keep in Iceland, except on farms. Did they change the law or is this your personal little integration problem 😉 ?
Swedish nails, wow! And they looked like average nails, I assume from your words. But he actually used them, so you probably witnessed the costruction of one of the few – or maybe the only one – greehouses in the DDR built with Swedish nails! Your grandfather must have been a very interesting character!
Yes, you can keep a dog now as a pet, even in the city. I’m not sure when the law was approved, a few years ago I think. Still, dogs are not that common, not as cats anyway, and many people, from children to old fellows, look at them in amazement when they see them in the streets. They must look kind of exotic, but I’m sure with the time this will change. Many areas are still out of limits to dogs though, and they have to be on the leash all the time.