My barista is a cavoodle

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Whether it’s a haiku about Carlton Gardens or a drawing of one of Royal Park’s native birds, send your work to [email protected] and you could be featured as the Inner City Creative in our next edition.    

This month, we’re featuring a piece by local playwright and author Angela Buckingham …

Words by Angela Buckingham

We can’t say that we didn’t know what we were doing. We might have stopped the tide of irresistibleness that inundated our locked-down lives. 

I blame the later adopters, the ones who saw that everyone had a cavoodle, who said as much in wry tones to friends who’d just bought one. But they succumbed nevertheless, rang Mephisto (the Daylesford breeder), shelling out sums that had risen from thousands of dollars at the start of this madness, to just whatever it takes. These are the people who finally surrendered the natural order that existed only under a rational ratio of human to good boy. 

First, they claimed our homes, winkling past our defences with tiny wet noses, bright button eyes and soft scruffy paws. We surrendered our favourite socks, our expensive shoes, the unspoiled pile of our living-room rugs, and all the others. Our sleep, they stole. We learnt to sniff the air and tread carefully.
Then they took the parks … which actually was fine. I mean, who doesn’t like getting tonnes of attention for owning the cutest moppet that ever sniffed butt?

But then they took the streets. Eating anything that obeyed the laws of gravity and happened within their reach. We were distracted, our eyes sweeping the ground for morsels that could conceivably end up in their intestines, forcing us to the brink of financial ruin in search of a puppy stomach pump at midnight. 

It was inevitable that the cafes would fall. Yesterday I spotted Biscuits slinging lattes in Brunetti’s (henceforth to be known as The Gagging Labrador, according to the poorly-typed note with the pawprint on the door). They’re terrible, of course, a dog’s breakfast.

Who knows where it will end, but already we have paid the ultimate price •