I have new curtains as part of my long-forgotten reorganisation drive. Dull gold with blue-green vines. I think they go with my walls. I like them. Panda likes them too. He comes barrelling through them several times a day, pointy nose first. I keep them parted for as long as I can though, in order to catch stray rays of sunshine. 

It's getting a little bit colder each day. This morning when Panda woke me up, he had to wait impatiently as I rooted in my cupboard for a sweater. It's his fault really. Sensible dogs wait for the sun to come out before they demand walks.

I miss the sun. It slipped away from right under our noses, and now it's gone all the way to the Southern Hemisphere. The rays it sends from the Indian Ocean really aren't the same thing. 

Panda was sitting in a stray ray of light from the window yesterday. It illuminated his chin and his white whiskers, turning them golden, like he'd guiltily swallowed sunshine.

He ate it up

Sometimes, reader, I worry if I'm spoiling my dog. He hasn't been eating, this past week. The vet says this often happens to dogs during mating season and that we aren't to worry. It's hard not to worry though, if your dog is visibly losing weight, doesn't drink milk, refuses all his treats and isn't tempted by even his favourite illicit cream-filled biscuits. Besides, I missed having him sitting at the kitchen door sniffing eagerly while I baked.

We tried everything. Liver stimulant tonics, exercise, the silent treatment, several attempts of me sticking my face into his bowl and pretending to eat its contents with audible relish. What finally worked was rice flour balls. On the day before yesterday, Patti was teaching me how to make kuzhakattais (which will show up in a blog post on Poppadom shortly) and we had a little leftover rice flour, which we rolled into balls to steam and season later. Panda sat up and took notice when I walked past holding a bowlful of kuzhakattais, so on an impulse I took out a ball and rolled it across the floor. Panda chased after it and ate it up. Overjoyed, we rolled ball after ball at him and he ate them all up.

Since then, egged on by Patti, I've been cooking freshly ground rice flour daily, kneading the resultant dough, rolling it into balls and steaming them. Then, once they cool sufficiently, I lob one at Panda's head, he runs after it, and then crawls under the bed to eat it. We this over and over again, till he loses interest. Luckily, his memory is very short, so we repeat performances several times a day. It has to be the most roundabout way of feeding a dog.