Miso runs the house, with help from the cats

We live in an old wooden house in Chiang Mai's Old City, and the household runs on one rule: Miso decides everything. Miso is our Maltese, nine years old, white as a cloud and about as heavy as a bag of rice. He sits on the stairs like a guard and barks at the gecko every night. The gecko does not care.

My wife has two cats, and the cats and Miso have a sort of truce. The cats get the sofa in the afternoon, Miso gets it at night, and nobody gets the top shelf because the cats knocked everything off it years ago.

Feeding time is the real chaos. Three bowls, three different foods, and somehow Miso always finishes the cats' breakfast too. We bought a bowl with a lid, and he learned to lift it with his nose within a week.

Still, when it rains and the whole house goes quiet, the three of them end up in one pile on the rug, and I stop complaining for a while.