Yesterday morning, I sat up in bed and looked through one of the windows in my bedroom which until recently had a heavy drape over it. A little sunlight had broken through the clouds. Rejoice!
A couple weeks ago I removed the heavy drapes and laundered them and then did not put them back up. There were thick cobwebs around the room that I had not noticed in the dull natural light. I swept those away.
The window is bare to let in light, much needed light after weeks of cloud cover, rain, and dreary weather. Through that window, up in the tree that got pruned last fall, I saw a white and black cat, a fluffy cat that appears to be healthy unlike the orange cat that seems to be stalking the neighborhood and is loosing weight from unsuccessful hunts. It was on a limb in a down hunting posture, no doubt awaiting the vision of a mouse scooting across the stones. However, just as I saw it, it saw me. We stared at each other through the window for a moment.
Then I realized that the cat might actually be attempting to come down out of the tree on an unstable limb. The tree is not robust. Since the "True Fall" and "True Winter" it has lost its leaves and the limbs are exposed. They give. If he was stuck twelve feed up, I might find a ladder.
I rushed out in my socks, onto the cold pavement stones, and gently tapped the tree, telling the cat to come down. It had only one way forward and it seemed to obey. To come towards me or to get away from me, it moved fast. He lost his balanced on a shaky limb and fell out of the tree from about four feet. He crashed into a watering can. Then he ran as fast as a panther through the side yard and towards the walls and gates to get away.
I'm not enjoying the "True Fall" and "True W" even though the drought has concerned us and - to a point - the rain was needed. We'd cut back on our water use significantly. We showered far less frequently, washing hair in sinks, taking sink baths like our ancestors who lived without bathrooms that had tubs and showers. Not using the gas heat either. It became an ordeal to shower in the cold tile bathroom.
I dislike cloud cover and dreary weather, dank, moldy, and cold. I would rather be dodging the sun by finding shade to walk in.
This morning I checked the "accurate weather" and see that there will be no rain here until tomorrow. Then I looked out the window and damn, it was raining.
Weeds have grown tall in the garden.
I miss my dog.
She was hot and cold about cats. Off the property almost always cold. But once in a while she would be friendly to a cat for no good reason. On the property, exhibiting tolerance. We were not here first.
One skinny black cat would pass by her in the mornings. It seemed as if they both had their noses in the air and had given each other extra room. My dog let her feelings be known. She could show she did not like a particular creature, that she was put out by my giving one too much attention, and that she did not want any other dogs in bed with me.
The skinny black cat was an old cat and the new cats on the property wanted to claim all his turf. The black cat gave itself a nest in leaves in the front yard near the bushes. This small stake was all it had left. One day this black cat appeared with a cut on its head at the base of its ear, deep to the skull it seemed. Eyes dazed. Moving very slow. It left the property, as it had every day, to go see what was happening across the street and next door.
"I think that cat has gone off to die," the owner said. Would we ever see it again?
Three days later the black cat was back. The head wound appeared to have mended and was just a hairless white line at the base of its ear. Its eyes were no longer dazed. It was still moving slow though, as if the fight was still causing pain. A new cat had beaten this old one up. No doubt about it.
To keep its food away from the dogs, its owner had always fed this cat on the top of her dinner table. It knew how to jump up on a chair, even knew how to climb the back rails of her chairs in order to get to the table top. Now it struggled to get up there.
I went to the dollar store and saw they had packets of what was supposed to be "The Worlds Strongest Catnip." If the cat was on its way to death, it might as well have some nip.
I pinched a tiny amount between my fingers and put a dusting of nip on a dish for the old cat. He took to it immediately. From that day forward I had nip for that cat on a daily basis. Just a little. The high and mellow low, which, according to research, lasted about fifteen minutes, was something to live for.
Within a few days the cat had gotten its strength back to climb the rails and get back up on the table.
Which reminds me of a line that appeared in an article by true crime writer Dominick Dunne in a Vanity Fair magazine years ago. The article was about a scion of the Dupont Family and a murder. It appeared in the September 1999 issue and was entitled In Cold Blood, Blue Blood. The murder victim was found stuffed in a cheap Vegas motel room wall, behind a vent. Three people were paid to murder her, possibly to end the romance between her and the Dupont's n'er-do-well.
.... Pati loved Dean, but Pati was just a drug addict, scam artist, and hooker, while Dean was the drug-addicted, ne’er-do-well son of a glamorous du Pont heiress. ....
Then, this is the line: ... As rotten as Pati’s life was, she still wanted it, and she fought hard to save it. ...
The black cat took to spending time near me and my dog, as if it needed protection from the new cats. I found him in my basket of yarn sleeping. I found him in a box of my fabrics. He went in and out through the doggie door and took refuge in my bedroom. He knew who his friends were. My dog seemed OK with this, so long as the cat was not sharing our bed.
Then one day he sat on his nest of leaves in the front yard and did not seem to want to get up. I went towards him and he shied away from me. Three days later, a vet diagnosed him with a tumor in his stomach and his owner put him to death. They thought he was twelve.
It is unknown to me what, if anything, my dog thought, if at all, about the missing black cat. I could imagine her thinking "Cats, they're all alike, independent without loyalty, not like us dogs, not like me."
My dog was meant for me.
So goes the saga of how I got my dog:
A friend asked me to look in on the unofficial widow of a long time friend of his. His friend had died of cancer after being in a relationship with this woman for many years. They had never lived in together.
I knew she had an ex-husband who had appeared for a weekend and stayed years. The ex-husband was the father of children with her but had been a rascal and had done her wrong. I supposed he had nowhere to go. I had gone by there one time when he was out in the front yard, smoking cigarettes. He seemed to be a nice man. For some reason he handed me five dollars. I didn't need it but accepted it, figuring that it was a matter of passing it along, or perhaps passing it back to him at some time in the future. So my first impression of this man was positive, but I have since learned that, unless it is a very dramatic and impactful first meeting, YOU NEVER CAN TELL.
The next time I was up that way, I went to see the woman, who I will call Tilly. The ex-husband was not there that time. I sat with her in her living room thinking I would spend an hour. An afternoon into the conversation it was clear to me that this woman was having some form of memory loss or brain malfunction, for her stories were repetitive. In the repeats she told me that this ex-husband was abusive to her. She even said that he monopolized the bathroom due to an illness he had, so that she had taken to using a bucket in her bedroom to do her business.
Upset, I called my friend and told him that from what she was telling me I thought Adult Protective Services might need to be called in.
"Don't do that," he advised. "They might take her from the only home she has ever had."
That is probably not how that goes, but at the time I said to him, "You know her better than I do, so I won't call them."
"Just check on her from time to time."
During my several visits with Tilly, her repetitions of stories continued, yet she also had passages of clarity. I wondered if the level of stress she was feeling at any particular time was tied into it.
Because her ex-husband was a veteran, I started making phone calls to find out if there was a way to get him medical help and housing through the veterans. Then, because I felt that she might not remember what I was telling her, I wrote all the information down and sent it to her by snail mail. There was some potential help for him.
When I called her she said she did not get the letter.
It seems he had gotten the letter, addressed to her, and opened it. That's mail theft. So, by reading the letter, with the various possible opportunities for veterans, the man basically realized that she was seeking some way to get him out of that house.
Strangely, not long after that she called to say that he'd had some medical crisis and had actually been taken to the veteran's hospital and was now in a nursing home. She took to visiting him there a couple times a week, bringing him cigarettes and cola. So you see, she was not completely through with him yet.
I also called there to ask about him and found there was supposed to be some problem with the phone, which I found suspicious. Employees at these places, I have found, are often full of shit. They will say someone is sleeping or unable to come to the phone because they are just too lazy to connect a patient with his or her people. (If you have someone in a nursing home or assisted living, take to showing up whenever without alerting the staff first. Keep them off guard and on their toes.)
Her ex-husband was supposedly verbally abusive to staff. Quite Possible. She got a call that he was well enough to go into an assisted living and the veterans would pay a good portion of the fees. She and I took off in two different directions to find an assisted living for him as the nursing home wanted him out ASAP. We both found places along bus routes she could take to visit him. Then days before we were going to move him, also strangely enough, he was sent back to a hospital, where he died.
Although this was possibly the best conclusion for her personally, she was now without any men in her life, good or bad. She felt more lonely and alone.
She and a couple of her neighbors, all older women, had taken to feeding stray cats in the neighborhood. Now these were not cats that got caught and taken in for spaying. These were cats that went from one porch to the next, eating food and drinking water that the three widows put out for them, reproduced when they could, and died. These women were thrilled with the cat visits.
Then one day, when I was visiting with Tilly, she said, "I haven't seen that male cat in a while. Last time I saw him, his tail was rotting off!"
"Tilly, where do you think these cats go to die?"
"I don't know. Don't they crawl up into the bushes somewhere?"
"It's a good thing this house isn't closer to the mountains because you'd have coyotes eating them in your yard."
The mystery of where the stray cats were going to die was solved when one of her children came in from out of state, which he did twice a year for a week at a time. This man kept a car in the garage, which, if the story is true, had been in there for years awaiting his visits. During those two weeks a year he would do some running around, repairing and buying things, checking in on his mother. The car was like the car in the Woody Allen film Sleeper, like a car that was in an ancient cave but always started right up. Apparently it did not leek fluids or need the battery to be recharged. The son opened the garage door to get to the car and there found a number of cat - and raccoon - carcasses in various stages of decay.
So, on another visit to Tilly I said, "You have to stop feeding the strays. These are diseased animals. What if I got you a nice fat healthy tabby cat that could live indoors with you and sleep with you? You'd have to make sure that the strays aren't coming around. With what you're spending on strays, you can afford to keep a cat in the house. I'll buy you the cat and a start up kit."
Tilly agreed with one condition. She said she could not go to the city shelter because she could not bear to see all the dogs and cats that would not make it, that would be put to death. So I agreed to go there by myself, about three miles from where she lived, and seek the perfect cat.
I went to that shelter a number of times over a few weeks, calling Tilly, telling her about this one or that one. She didn't have a cell phone so I couldn't send photos. And she just kept demuring, saying she preferred a different color eye or fur.
In the meantime I'd seen some dogs. One, a small white dog in a kennel with a troop of combative chihuahaus, was hiding beneath what looked to be a water fountain, unwilling to be part of the war. A peacenik.
I went to the kennel and the white dog came to the front bars and licked me through them.
However, I had determined that I would not be ready to adopt a dog for another three months and I wanted a Pomeranian. I thought they were cute and witty and light weight enough. I'd been taking books out of the library about dog breeds and dog training. As for dog training there was a variety of attitudes from the discipline mistress woman who trained big dogs to some monks who did dog training to make their living. Slowly I came to the realization that I wanted an "older" dog. One I could outlive. I purchased dog bowls and a dog bed. I made a list of names, male and female names that I could name my dog.
One day at that city shelter a volunteer asked if I wanted to see a couple dogs and I did. One was a very old, very sleepy, female. I knew this dog had to be on death row, but I knew she was not a dog that would want to go on walks with me. Then there was a long haired chihuahua that was as active and as jumpy as a kangaroo; I could only imagining it scratching up the rental, pulling down blinds. I did not ask to see the little white dog.
One day as I walked through the big lobby doors into the kennel area my side vision picked up on the little white dog running to the front of the kennel, as if she were expecting someone. Waiting for me?
This brings me to the memory of a friend who was adopted at the age of three telling me that when people came to the orphanage that was run by nuns, he would try to get attention because he knew he really wanted to be adopted.
A picture of the little white dog was posted on the kennel wall. There was a birth date below her photo and to me that indicated an owner surrender. I knew that when a mystery dog got dumped at a kennel, the vet would guess at an age, which they would post. I also assumed that the name on the picture was the name she came in with. I knew shelter personnel made up names for dogs that were dumped otherwise. Her name on the kennel was one of the names on my list.
I did not know at the time that the policy was to put to death any animal that was not adopted in five days due to overcrowding and underfunding.
I felt that Tilly was not sincere about wanting a cat about this time. I decided to go to the shelter one more time and then, if she didn't say yes to a cat, give it up. With cat box in hand I appeared at the shelter fifteen minutes after they opened in the morning. I headed out the big lobby doors and noticed that the little white dog was no longer in the kennel. Her photo was down. I found myself going back into the lobby and got in line at the desk.
"I was just curious. Did that little white dog that was in the kennel to the right get adopted? Did her owner come and get her?"
"She's just been pulled," the clerk said.
My heart fell into my stomach. I heard myself croak, "Well, I want her." By some miracle I had a hundred bucks cash on me. Usually I had a twenty.
"Let's see if she's still available," the clerk said.
She went through the doors into the room where dogs were waiting in cages. I believe this is where the dogs who had been pulled were waiting for death.
My dog had not been chosen by any of the so called Rescue Groups, which I had seen around, photographing dogs, making choices on which dogs they thought could be adopted - which dogs they could make money on.
Fifteen minutes later the same clerk came out and said, "You can have her."
When my dog was brought out on a temporary leash, she seemed to know I was the person taking her home. She ran right towards me, looking straight into my eyes. Behind her were some people in white lab coats watching her run. One of them shouted, "It's about time!"
She also knew where the door out was and raced towards it. "Watch her!" one of the men yelled.
My dog was cute, affectionate (licking everyone in tounge range), healthy, and smart.
Recently, when telling someone about her, I said, "Sometimes I wonder if some spirit wasn't there urging her to run forwards when I came through those big doors. If I had not seen that, I might have forgotten about her." The truth was that the thought of adopting her had come to me strongly that day I headed out with the cat box, yet I was not determined. This was a case of the body knowledge, body intelligence, knowing better than the analytical brain.
I gave up on a cat for Tilly. She didn't bring it up to me.
I also felt that her children needed to look in on her more frequently and that she might need someone to live in with her as a carer. That she sat in the summer in one chair with a fan blowing on her all day because the house had no insulation and no air conditioning was telling. That she had run up charge cards and let one of them pay it off more than once; clearly she did not have enough income. Were they letting her live there like that because they wanted the value of the home to rise until she was dead, for purposes of their own inheritance? There are so many children like that. I get it that a parent does not want to leave the house that is home but still there comes a time...
A year after I adopted my dog, I needed to get her re-vaccinated in order to keep her legal. I got her shots very close to the deadline before a penalty fee could be charged and decided to take the paperwork in to the shelter in person and pay there as well as take in some items for donation. (They always need newspaper, blankets, towels...) The cashier clerk was a bit surly but I went on about how adopting my dog was the best thing I'd done. She saw that I had vaccinated the dog with yearly shots, not just rabies, and made a big deal about that. She imputed the information into a computer and gave me a fold of papers. I assumed these were flyers as well as my receipt.
When I got home I opened the papers and saw the name of my dog, who was going on six, and the words "one and a half year old white female." Without reading further, I called the shelter to speak to the cashier clerk.
"I think you might have put my money on the wrong dog..."
"Turn the page," she said.
She had printed out my dogs entire shelter record, which was surprising to me because by now I knew that no one in their right mind would've given up such a dog unless they had died.
My dog had a rap sheet.
There was a "before" picture of her upon entry into the shelter with a head of rasta-type knots, which had to have taken months to develop. It said "dog surrendered by someone who would not give name, address, or pay $20 fee - probable owner." She had been full of worms. Further it showed that she had first been dumped at one and half and had been taken out by the next owner without spaying. Next she had been picked up by the animal catcher: "Released to owner without medical intervention due to advanced stage of pregnancy," it said. (So she had run away from that second household pregnant.) Finally a note from the vet "A Sweet Animal." How many litters had she had in some backyard breeding program? How many of her puppies had been sold? For how much each?
It turned out that the shelter had kept my dog twice as long as they were supposed to - ten days instead of five - because of her sweetness and all else. So when I adopted her it was not just a jail break but a jail break from DEATH ROW.
That my dog had such a hard life before me made me more determined that I would provide her a forever home. That said, I would have not given her up even if the both of us had gone to the street.
I do not understand WHY it is considered HEROIC to adopt or rescue a pre-owned dog. It is simply NOT TRUE that the stay in a shelter kennel turns the animal's personality sour or mean. It is true that some people give an animal up because it has a bad personality. I do think some dogs are traumatized by being dumped. My dog, the first time, due to horrible Friday traffic, I was hours late getting home, chewed a half dollar sized wound into her hide by her tail, a spot she went to when she felt anxious. I'd thought I'd be home in time for her usual dinner and the place was dark when I got there. Clearly, she was afraid I was not coming home and she'd been abandoned again.
But I tell you, she was a blessing upon me.
The truth is that a city shelter is the first place anyone who wants to adopt a dog should go, BEFORE A RESCUE GROUP. Small dogs who are dumped by long time owners such as old people who have to go into nursing homes or assisted living or who loose their housing, need the most medical care and are the most traumatized and can often be seen and heard crying aloud. Some shelters are now offering "pre-arranged" adoptions in which owners who have to give up pets can do so without the animal ever being in a shelter.
Shelter kennels are also hard on dogs who have been taken from the people and places they are used to and feel attached to because as pack animals they are confronted with a confusion over their place in a pack. Being evicted from a pack means death or the disadvantage of being the "loan wolf" for a dog in the wild, and the other dogs in the kennel present a problem about who is going to be the leader. A dog will adapt to a new person as leader of the pack and in general will also fit into the new pack in a household with other animals, so long as you feed them in order.***
I do believe that dogs - perhaps particular dogs - are able to love and are not just opportunists who play-act in order to get their needs met. I know that my dog loved me.
Proof of this is, among reasons, is an incident that occurred a few years ago. My dog and me had gone to visit with an old friend in our old neighborhood and were sitting up high on a porch above the street. My friend, who also has dogs, had taken them for a walk around the neighborhood to do their business before twilight set in. He planned to drive us back home after that. I had my dog to my side and we were just looking out at the ocean from between the houses, relaxed. Then we saw some women walking down below. For the first and only time in my decade of being the "owner" of this person in a dog, she pitched forward in complete attention. At this point she had cataracs forming - yet she knew. One of the women - could it be? - if she she had lost a hundred pounds of morbid obesity - right height - right hairstyle - was a woman who had been co-dependent in some horrendous meanness towards me by her mother months earlier. My dog pointed her body and head towards the woman down below and she let out a long and sustained growl of pure hatred. My dog had never been a guard dog but she was showing contempt for someone who had done me wrong. (The woman did not react so perhaps she did not hear her or see us up above.)
My dog. My girl...
When she died I told myself that perhaps that first owner, who had dumped her at age one and a half, had loved her. She had not been spayed. But perhaps my dog was till then an only dog, a dog that stayed in a house and yard, or a dog that rode around on the lap of someone in a wheel chair. Perhaps she - now dead to this world - in her little energy body, had met this first owner on the Other Side. Perhaps some of her many puppy descendants were also there. I cannot be selfish. There may be others who were in her life who also loved her. I want to be the special one. The one she will meet again. But she has her own spiritual path.
I made up songs for her, songs of love, that I would sing to her. She would take a breath in, smile, squint her eyes, and know to take that love in.
He doggie frenemy, who I sometimes sit and often give treats to, who liked to raid my dog's bowl, showed signs of understanding that my dog had died, of showing respect for her. I showed her a framed photo of my dog's face and said "Who is that?" She looked at the photo and hung her head.
So now, temporarily, I live in a world in which other people's cats and dogs concern me. Will I travel unencumbered with dog duty? Perhaps.
C 2023 Christine Trzyna
Notes: The above mentioned Vanity Fair article appears in the magazine's archive. A link is not posted because only a limited number of articles are free per month. But you can find it. I often think of first reading that article and how that line hit me. So often we humans think about how bad our lives are but yet, most of us want our lives and are not through with life yet, even, for an example, when dealing with horrific medical treatments. (This is not an advert for positive thinking by the way.)
The shelters are again overfull so if you can, adopt that soul in a doggie body.
*** March 25th... Slightly edited for clarity... *** In households with more than one pet, it's advisable to feed them one by one in the same order each day, so the new addition to the household is the last fed. This communicates to to dogs that you acknowledge their place in the pack and they are less likely to fight.
My dog cost less than a hundred dollars. They had bathed and groomed her, deworned her, given her shots, cleaned her teeth, and the money included her registration as well.
A couple years ago someone I knew who adopted a found dog that turned out to be pregnant and had five pups gave three of them to a rescue group. They posted them on their web site at $700 each warning the price would go up with medical care.
