Chicken Soup for the Cat & Dog Lover's Soul (25 page)

But I didn’t. And he didn’t. And Boots didn’t.

Instead, she sat near his bed, watching him protectively, as the months rolled by. She was always there, a loving presence as his strength ebbed away, till he could no longer walk or even sit up without help. Once in a while, he got very sick, and went to the hospital, and she awaited his return anxiously, jumping up expectantly every time a car pulled up to the house.

I decided that if I could give my dad nothing else, I was going to give him a few minutes with his beloved dog. So I went back to the hospital and asked a nurse about it. She told me that if I were to bring his dog in, she would not “see anything.” I took that as a yes.

Later that day, I came back for another visit, bringing Boots. I told my dad I had a surprise for him in my car. I went to get her, and the strangest thing happened.

Boots, the perfect dog, who was as impeccably leash-trained as she was obedient, practically flew out of the car, yanked me across that snowy parking lot to the front door and dragged me through the hospital lobby. She somehow knew to stop directly in front of the appropriate elevator (I could never find the right one myself). And even though she had never been anywhere near that hospital before, when the elevator doors opened at the fourth floor, she nearly pulled my arm out of its socket as she ran down the hall, around two corners, down another hall and into his room. Then, without a moment of hesitation, she jumped straight up onto his bed! Ever so gently, she crawled into my father’s open arms, not touching his pain-filled sides or stomach, and laid her face next to his.

For the first time, Boots was on my dad’s bed, just where she belonged. And for the first time in a long time, I saw my father’s broad smile. I knew we were both grateful Boots had broken the rules and finally obeyed her own heart.

Lori Jo Oswald, Ph.D.

A Cat Named Turtle

Y
ou will be lucky if you know how to make
friends with strange cats.

Colonial American Proverb

I didn’t grow up with cats. Or with dogs. We once harbored the dalmatian of a vacationing aunt and uncle. If all had gone well, we’d have gotten our own dog.

But all did not go well. My brother refused to clean up after the dog, and soon we were permanently critter-free. Not that my mother minded. Having been scratched by a cat when she was little, she feared anything that moved too quickly on too many legs. My father, a city boy, had no experience with animals and less interest in them.

But I married a cat-lover. In his meager walk-up flat in New York City, Roy had enjoyed the company of several marvelous felines, one of them a waif from the subway. I listened to his fond recollections in the same way I heard his tales of some other experiences: They were interesting, even compelling, but nothing I thought I’d ever experience myself.

And then we moved to Vermont and found the cats on our land. Or they found us—and it was really
their
land. They were feral, having lived in the wild for who-knows-how-long. We extended a hand literally and figuratively to newly named Mama Cat, Honey Puss, Herbert and Sylvester, giving them food on the deck, shelter in the carport and veterinary care for the occasional ailment. Now we realized we should have neutered them, too.

We first saw Turtle trotting along behind her mother, in a parade that included several chubby kittens making their way from the blackberry thicket, across the driveway and into the pine trees. She reappeared briefly a year later, unmistakably the same tortoiseshell. The year afterward, she visited often. I named her when I didn’t quite like her; she was nervous, pushy, eating Honey Puss’s food. Turtle seemed a good name for a tortoiseshell, especially one who didn’t yet have my affection.

I was already reading about feral cats. The universal opinion was that unless a feral cat becomes used to people very early in life, taming the cat is virtually impossible. But nobody told Turtle, who grew ever more comfortable with us. She’d fall onto her back with a thud, inviting us to pet her lovely white belly. She’d linger on the deck with our guests, on summer evenings, sampling one lap after another. Then, as soon as everyone had gone, she’d trot off into the darkness.

Could we bring her inside? Roy’s on-again-off-again allergy to cats suddenly returned. But she wouldn’t want to come inside anyway, I proclaimed.

Or would she? My office, on the second floor, looks out upon our hillside. Many times I’d put down my work to gaze out the window, and I’d see Turtle staring at me, her wide golden eyes and her dear, crooked little face—haphazardly splotched in black and tan—not twenty inches from my own face. Often I heard her talking to me before I saw her.

We were having a new wing constructed, and she found another route to my office one day, staring at me through the side window. Her muddy paw prints on the roofing paper led from my window to the builder’s ladder at roof’s edge. I was impressed.

She built a nest for herself in the developing new wing, settling into an open carton where the carpenter had tossed his sweaty T-shirt. She was so comfortable here that she barely lifted her head to greet us when we came looking for her. Roy started getting allergy shots.

With the new wing enclosed, Turtle was again outside. But the next time she looked in at my desk, Roy opened the window screen, waited for her to climb in and carried her downstairs. She was purring loudly. She walked through the living room, poking into all the little places: a cupboard, the bottom of a small bookshelf. She seemed oblivious to us, and indeed we were as dumb as chairs. After a few moments, Roy took her outside.

Later that day, she was sitting near him on the deck, when he got up and moved toward the kitchen. She reached the door ahead of him and scrambled inside. She didn’t mind being taken out again. I didn’t mind either. She might want to be inside (I now conceded the possibility), but did I want her? Wouldn’t a feral cat, even a friendly one, shred everything to tatters? Wouldn’t she scratch us at the slightest provocation? Wouldn’t she yowl all night?

The deciding moment arrived after I’d been away for a few days. Turtle had stayed at the bend in the driveway for most of my absence. But barely fifteen minutes after my return, she was at the kitchen door! When Roy opened the door to bring her some food, she pushed past him into the kitchen and headed straight for me. No curiosity about the house this time. No interest in the food. She jumped into my lap, readjusted her weight and purred— the kind of purring you could hear from twenty feet away. She
missed
me! She missed
me!
That was it. I was ready to share my house with her.

Very soon it was also Turtle’s house as she figured out the best spot on our bed (between us, lengthwise) and the sunniest corner of our living room. She had a lot to learn. How to sprawl across my in-basket. How to awaken us for her breakfast. How to keep the house free of the tiny mice that sneak inside every autumn, when the cold air ruffles their rodential dispositions. How to launch a steady stream of complaint at the snow. How to stand guard at the bathtub until I could be meowed safely from the water. How to settle her weight on precisely the document I might be reading from, or typing from, or writing on. The litter box? A snap. She managed that in half a day.

I had a lot to learn, too. And to unlearn, from my mother’s prejudices. But with Turtle’s help, this cat was soon my dear companion, gentle and wise, considerate and affectionate. Roy was delighted to see how I loved her and how she loved us back. She became the subject of several chapters in the book I wrote on feral cats, and I wish she could have understood the gifts and letters she got from adoring readers. Roy however was convinced she understood everything we said, or even thought; he was sure she could read our minds. Once, he was only thinking of her, and was startled to hear her sudden purring from a nearby chair.

She knew plenty, our Turtle. In parts of the British Isles it is considered a good omen when a tortoiseshell cat comes into the house. The tortoiseshell is considered special. But Turtle was special beyond all other specialness. The sweetest pussycat we’ve ever known. And the smartest. Never a pest. Never seeking attention when we were heavily preoccupied with work or chores. But there in a flash whenever a lap became available, whenever a head hit a pillow. She was very special. I knew it, Roy knew it, and Turtle knew that we knew it.

She lived with us for ten sweet years, until kidney disease claimed her, and she is buried just up from the bend in the driveway, under a stone that has her coloring. We see the stone from our kitchen.

I bless the day that she decided to chance it with us. She knew so much more than I did, about the important things. She knew enough to make that running leap that day into my house, my lap, my heart.

Ellen Perry Berkeley

Woman’s Best Friend

Q
ui me amat, amat et canem meum
. (Love me,
love my dog.)

St. Bernard De Clairvaux,
“Sermo Primus,” 1150

At age thirty-two, I had just about given up on ever getting married. Over the years, I’d had numerous relationships. Some were wonderful—and some were real disasters. About the only thing they had in common was that they all ended.

The entire relationship and dating scene was wearing me down. I was tired of relationships with no potential. I was weary of putting my heart out there and getting it smashed. Getting married was starting to look like it wasn’t in the stars for me.

Giving up on marriage was one thing. But I wouldn’t, and couldn’t, give up on my heart. I wanted to love and be loved. I needed to nourish my heart in a way that even my best-intentioned friends and family members hadn’t done for me.

I needed a dog.

Soon, on an afternoon in early May, I found myself peering into a pen on a friend’s farm, studying a litter of eight black and white puppies who were playing on and around their mother, a champion Border collie. The puppies were six weeks old and as cute as only puppies can be. I slid through the door and sat down. The puppies, wiggling with excitement and apprehension, quickly jitterbugged over to the safety of their mother’s side. All except one.

The littlest one, an almost all-black ball of downy fur with two white front paws and a white breast, came sidling over to me and crawled into my lap. I lifted her up and looked into her puppy-hazy brown eyes. It was instant love.

“Just remember, Puppy, you chose me, okay?” I whispered. That was the beginning of the longest successful relationship I’ve ever had.

I named my puppy Miso. The next weeks of a glorious early spring were spent basking in the glow of literal puppy love while housebreaking, training and establishing new routines. When I look back, that whole spring and summer was spent incorporating her into my life and me into hers.

Miso’s Border collie heritage dictated lots of time outdoors, preferably running. I’d been eager to have company while I ran my almost-daily three to five miles in predawn darkness, and now I had a running buddy. Miso and I were out in all kinds of weather, rarely missing a day.

Weekends and evenings were spent in quiet, loving solitude with Miso. At my writing desk or art table, Miso would lie relaxed at my side and sigh with contentment. Anywhere I went, Miso came too: camping, swimming at a local lake on weekends, long car rides to my parents’ home in the summer. If an activity precluded taking a dog along, I wasn’t much interested in it anyway. We were a happy couple . . . inseparable and self-sufficient. My heart was nourished, and I felt content and full. We spent two years this way.

Looking back, it’s remarkable that I met my husband-to-be at all. I certainly wasn’t looking for Mr. Right anymore, not when I was so happy being a “single mom” to Miso. Bob just kind of popped into my life, or rather, our lives, because Miso was definitely impacted by Bob’s appearance on the scene.

At first, Bob accepted Miso as part of the “package.” Our dating consisted of lots of outdoor activities where Miso accompanied us easily. But as fall and winter approached, and Miso needed to be indoors more due to cold and wet weather, trouble brewed. Bob wasn’t enthusiastic about dog hair or mud on the furniture and insisted that Miso stay outside when we spent time at his house.

Since the amount of time spent there was increasing, it bothered both Miso and me that she was required to stay outdoors. This was an uncomfortable blip on the radar screen of an otherwise growing and loving relationship with Bob.

A crisis point was reached one particularly cold January night. Bob insisted that Miso bunk out on the enclosed porch for the night, a location Miso and I felt was unacceptable considering the temperature. I argued that anything less than Miso’s admittance to the basement was cruel and inhumane treatment. He argued that I was being unreasonable, and he felt I should respect his “house rules.”

We went back and forth like two lawyers arguing a Supreme Court case. Things got heated. Tempers flared.

We reached an impasse and stood, staring steely-eyed at each other.

The next thing I knew I heard my own voice, thick with emotion, declare, “Don’t make me choose between you and Miso, because you may be in for an unpleasant surprise!”

Bob looked shocked, and in the face of my determination, wisely backed off.

Miso was admitted to the warm basement for the night. The entire indoor/outdoor Miso arrangement was renegotiated over the next couple days and we reached a satisfactory compromise for all three of us.