Suede and I should know by now. When something goes missing from the kitchen, it hasn’t sprouted legs and walked away.

There has always been a prime suspect in disappearance cases in our household, and his name is Yoshi. He looks innocent enough, and most of the time he is on his best behaviour, but every once in a while he gets bored and goes counter surfing.

One day he ate most of a baguette that we were drying so we could make bread crumbs (I found piles of crumbs all over the house). One day he decided that our cutting board would be a good chew toy. Another day the wooden salad servers were a wonderfull play thing. A weird one was a drain plug that he chewed the rubber off of. Even weirder, he made the next drain plug disappear completely,and we still haven’t found it to this day.

One day while Yoshi was left outside he grabbed an ice cream pail that we used to store clothes pegs in. By the time we got home it had been shredded into teeny tiny pieces no bigger than a dime.

This all brings me to the latest. While making some pasta last week, I went to assmble our cheese grater. It is one of those hand held Star Frit vareity where you turn a crank,abd the grater wheel shreds the cheese. Problem was we couldn’t find the wheel.

Our housecleaner was in today and when we got home we found the grater wheel on the shelf near the microwave. What makes me think Yoshi took it? The dents and teeth marks in the plastic.

I don’t want to make Yoshi out to be a bad dog. Most of the things he has destroyed came about because we didn’t leave enough play things out for him during the day. It just amazes me that when I couldn’t find the grater I didn’t automatically suspect him. In the past he has mainly goneafter wood and plastic, not metal designed for shredding cheese! (makes me wonder how that felt on his tongue)