Michael

I was wandering through the Garden District of New Orleans a few years ago. It's a long story how I got there, involving the SuperDome, an all-woman barbershop choir from Surrey and some marital infidelity by my sister. Anyway, there I was, fresh off the streetcar, taking a constitutional through Anne Rice's Vampire Grand Central. It's an area full of grand plantation owner's mansions in private grounds, a lot of which are now consulates.

There a was a lot of woofing going on in one of the gardens. I peered through the cast iron railing into the garden the woofing was coming from, and what I saw has now been reproduced in the cartoon above, except not quite as grand and steamy. A tethered German Shepherd was being driven mad trying to reach a large black cat who was insolently sitting on his haunches, staring at him and looking completely unpeterbed. After a few minutes, the cat decided it had tormented the dog enough and calmly stood up and stalked off back to the road. He allowed me to greet him and accepted a few scratches behind the ear and strokes, and then walked off to the other side of the road, where he greeted someone else. That was when I learned he was called Michael, and he was a well known character around those parts. No-one knew who owned him, but this was his neighbourhood and as one of his friends I was welcome here.

One day Michael's going to get a book written about him.