Carol Gulley reports that Shivers is a Hellion – “full of the Dickens”, she says – recovering rapidly from freezing and starvation – he was abandoned in a storage barn, his sibling died next to him trying to stay warm. Today, he pulled a roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom and dragged it into the kitchen. He started swatting Carol’s cactus plants and knocked them and the watering can off the windowsill and onto the floor. He rushes from one part of the house to the other, tormenting the Aussies and trying to poke them in the nose and get them to play. They growl at him.

After all this, she says, he was exhausted and climbed up on the windowsill in the laundry room to sleep. At night, he likes to curl up in Ed’s long beard.