‘Because I’m not. Your ranting is not getting us anywhere, especially because we don’t even know whether Caroline is also into blue eyes. What if she likes brown eyes better? Or green ones? And besides, a human eye isn’t exactly huge. From our perspective we can hardly tell from a few feet away what colour a man’s eyes are. And then the thing with the kissing – we’re not even close to that. If we can get a guy near enough to Caroline for them to shake hands, that’ll be pretty good.’

‘All right, then, if I’m such a dumb little dog, I suggest that you take over here and I’ll just tag along behind you.’ Yeah, that stupid cat can kiss my ass.

‘Don’t get all offended again! Our plan is good. We’ll go back to the park and stage the same routine we did with Willi. Eventually, the right guy will show up. The scattergun approach at work.’

‘That’s funny – Nina was just talking about that too.’

‘You see? And she knows quite a bit about this subject. Since I’ve been living in this house, I’ve seen Nina show up here with at least five or six different men. We’ll do it exactly the same way – have as many men as possible in tow. Like Nina. Believe me, she’s an expert.’

I look at him doubtfully. ‘Is that so? Then why doesn’t she have a man yet? Her selection process doesn’t seem to be working so well. Now she’s even winding up with that horrible vet.’

‘Who knows? Maybe she doesn’t even want to hold onto these men for the long haul. Maybe they’re just sort of…used up after a certain amount of time. Then a new one has to take the place of the one before.’

‘That’d be the first time I’ve heard anything like that about human couples. I thought the idea was to swear undying love. You said it yourself. Otherwise, Caroline wouldn’t have got so upset about that thing with the knickers, right?’

Mr Beck cocks his head. ‘Hmm, you’re right on that score too. Yeah, what do I know? I’m just an old cat trying my best to understand humans. It’s not always going to work. So, what do we do now? Shall we go to the park?’

‘All right.’

Operation Scattergun can now begin.

•

The weather is nice today, so more people than we can comfortably check out are enjoying a day in the park. We decide to focus our efforts on the park benches near our house, which will spare us the effort of having to lure the men over half the grass if they wind up following us. Unfortunately, there are only women on the first two benches – and Willi, with his plastic bags, who gives us a friendly wave. So those benches won’t get us anywhere.