As it turned out, Mrs Wotherspoon kept us busy with extra homework and practices for the Christmas play (which, thank the high heavens, was NOT Romeo and Juliet, or anything else Shakespearical or romantic-ish) and so the first month went more quickly than I had thought it would.

Also I was distractivated by Honey, whose behaviour was not entirely what I would describe as ‘normal’ in an everyday kind of fashion.

she said, ‘I’ve been a mum twice you know –’ Er, yes, I did know that actually, thanks Mum for treating me like a complete Fruit Loop. ‘– so I understand how Honey’s feeling, that’s all’

Hmmm. I was not one bit sure that I liked the way Mum was Bonding with Honey over this Mummy Thing.

Still, it was important to keep Mum On Side, especially as Honey’s behaviour weirded me out at times.

For example, one morning I put her bowl of dog food down and said, ‘Sit,’ and, ‘Wait,’ which is what I always do before I allow Honey to dive in and scoff the lot in her usual three seconds flat. (This is a ROUTINE that Honey and I had got into ever since she was a puppy.) Anyway, when I was ready for her to eat, I said, ‘Go on!’ as normal.

Nothing happened.

‘Go on, Honey!’ I said in a reassuringly kind manner. ‘It’s your breakfast.’

Honey just flopped down in a droopy sad way and sighed heavily.

‘Oh, Honey – you’ve gone off your food!’ I said. This had never happened before. I supposed it was because of being pregnant, but nevertheless a tiny bit of me was feeling really quite worried that there might in fact be something disastrously wrong with her.

I tried tempting Honey with a bit of food in my hand. ‘Come on, Honey-Bun. Come and taste the lovely yummy food.’

Nothing. She just sat and stared at me.

After about half an hour of trying to get Honey to eat (I even tried to feed her by hand) I gave up and went to make myself some toast.

Just as it was beginning to smell particularly yummy, Honey heaved herself up from her floppy position on the floor and came and nudged me with her nose.

‘Do you want some?’ I asked.

I took the toast from the toaster and broke off a corner to let it cool while I spread some peanut butter on the rest of the slice for me.

Then I picked up the corner of toast and bent down to give it to Honey. She gobbled it up and licked her lips and then nudged me again. Oh well, dogs eat anything usually, I thought. Maybe Honey would like peanut butter. I held out the rest of the slice and told Honey to sit just like before. She sat immediately and looked at the peanut-buttery toast in a particularly BEADY-EYED fashion. And then she started drooling!

‘Funny pooch!’ I said and gave her the toast. She swallowed it in one mouthful, so I quickly made another slice for her.

After we had both finished off a few more slices, I went to have a look in my very own personal copg of Perfect Puppies to see if there was any thing to explain this bizarreness.

Often a dog will go off her usual diet in the early stages of pregnancy. This is perfectly normal. She may also develop particular cravings. For example, some dogs will only eat chicken and rice, some scrambled eggs.

‘What’s this?’ Mum said that evening, coming into the kitchen to find me cooking. ‘Are you in trouble at school or something?’

‘No. Why?’ I asked. Mum does often put two and two together and get one hundred and fifty-six. Why would me cooking some eggs mean that I was in trouble at school?

‘It’s just, I’ve never seen you cook anything that doesn’t have chocolate in it,’ Mum said, laughing, ‘and you’ve definitely never cooked your own tea before, so I wondered if you were trying to prepare me for some bad news.’

Ah. Mum thought I was cooking my tea. Whoops.

‘Er, the thing is, Mum. I’m not actually cooking these eggs for me. I would happily cook my own tea, but I’ve just used all the eggs I could find,’ I added hastily, seeing her frown.

‘Who exactly are you cooking them for then? Oh . . .’

Honey was sitting at my feet and looking up at me in a distinctly expectifying way.

‘Don’t get cross!’ I cried as Mum’s frown went darker and more dangerous-looking. ‘Honey hasn’t eaten any of her own food and I was starting to get worried, so I checked in Perfect Puppies and Monica Sitstill says it’s very important to realize that dogs sometimes get a bit fussy when they are expecting—’

‘A BIT fussy?’ Mum exclaimed in a quite over-the-top fashion. ‘Since when do dogs eat butter and CREAM in their scrambled eggs?

I’ve heard of cravings, but this is ridiculous. Even I wasn’t this expensive to feed when I was expecting!’

‘Mum,’ I pleaded, ‘will you stop going on about you being pregnant? It’s kind of embarrassing.’

Mum crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. ‘Humph,’ she said. ‘I think after this little Mastercook episode I’m entitled to say what I like!’ But her mouth twitched into a bit of a smile as she was saying this. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, rolling her eyes a bit. ‘I know that Madam here needs special treatment. Just make sure you ask me before you go using all the nice food. And for goodness sake, use milk next time instead of cream!’

Honey’s eating habits were not the only weird-doolally thing that happened to her in the early weeks. She also started paying a lot more attention to our cats, Cheese and Toast, than she had ever paid before – even in the early days when she had tried to get them to play puppy games with her. She kept moping over to them when they were sleeping, and nuzzling them.

She tried washing them, and once she even tried to pick Toast up in her mouth by the scruff of his neck!

Needless to say, Cheese and Toast were not having any of it.

It actually was quite hilariously amusing to watch, even if poor Honey ended up getting her nose scratched a few too many times.

In the end I thought it was kinder to encourage her to have one of my old cuddly toys to ‘look after’. I chose a toy monkey, which was more ‘manky’ than ‘monkey’, as it had been sucked and chewed by me when I was a baby, but Honey loved it and looked after it tenderly as if it was her own little one.

She had always been quite a loop-the-loop-crazy bonkers dog, but thinking a chewed old monkey toy was her own real puppy . . . that was taking her doolaliness to a whole new level.