Junior

This is our Junior when he first came to live with us in April 2001 when we were in Toa Payoh in my aunt's third floor 3-roomed apartment. We found him in a pet shop and decided that he was too cute to live in there and rescued him to live with us and FatBoy and Bandit. In those days, I worked from home so Junior had my full attention.

Junior had this THING about stairs - he wasn't keen on them. In the mornings when he went out for his walk, we would turn right towards the stairs. When he got to the stairs, he would look down them and walk the other way towards the lift. So we take the lift downstairs for pee and poo. After the walk around the garden, we would try to walk up the stairs. We managed to trick him into walking up one flight, then he realised that he was tricked big time. He would just stop on the second floor, look up the stairs and refuse to budge another step. We thought walking along the corridor to the other staircase could trick him into walking up to the third floor. NO WAY! He would get to the bottom of the staircase, look up and head towards the lift.

No amount of cajoling or shoving or treats would get him to move up the stairs. He would head to the lift. So I would hit the UP button and get a lift ride up one level.

In the lift, I would look sheepishly at the other residents and declare - HE REFUSED TO WALK UP ONE FLIGHT OF STAIRS, SO WE HAVE TO TAKE THE LIFT.

The same thing would happen everytime he went for a walk, so we wised up and just took the lift!!

It was a good thing he looked cute and was cuddly - he was excused indulgently by the other residents who chuckled at his clever ways.

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