Chicken Soup for the Cat & Dog Lover's Soul (38 page)

Jacqueline Shuchat-Marx

Circle of Love

Before my husband and I purchased a small ranch in Idaho that included fifty head of Herefords, I never really knew much about cows. I used to think they were large, not particularly bright creatures who spent peaceful uncomplicated lives grazing in green fields or napping in the sunshine. But once we started living on the ranch, I started to pay closer attention and learned to appreciate them on a deeper level.

I soon began to recognize the cows by their different markings, personalities and habits. I gave them all names, and they became my “pets”—in a wild sort of way. Two of my favorites were Freckles and her calf, Spunky.

Freckles first came to my attention early one spring. The cattle had spent the winter months on our lower pasture along the river, but when the cows started calving, we decided to move them to one of the upper pastures near our house. The move was uneventful, except that we discovered that one cow was missing. It was Freckles. We weren’t alarmed because we assumed that she had probably given birth and was hiding in the thick patch of willows near the water. The birthing process is a private matter for most cows, and when labor begins they are quite clever at finding a hiding place away from the rest of the herd.

As we got near the bottom of the hill, Freckles came running out of the willows and headed across the field. A look of fury flashed in her eyes, as if to scold us for intruding. Her belly was considerably smaller since the last time I had seen her and her udder was swollen with milk. These were both signs that she had calved. My husband went after Freckles to coax her back, and I headed toward the willows to find her baby.

The calf was so still I almost tripped over her. Nestled in a soft hollow of spring grass was the most beautiful little creature I had ever seen. The calf was a dark russet color with a white spot on her forehead and a tuft of white at the end of her tail. She was curled up like a fawn and looked up at me with enormous brown eyes. I slowly knelt down and spoke softly as I reached out to stroke her velvety coat. She quivered under my touch, but she didn’t move. She wouldn’t even raise her head. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-four hours old, but she had already learned how to stay put and be quiet.

My husband managed to guide Freckles back toward the willows and when she saw me she bellowed for her baby. In a flash, the little calf understood the command, bolted from her nest and ran bawling toward her mother. We stood back to watch as they came together. The calf reached for the comfort of warm milk while her mother licked her reassuringly.

Once they had calmed down, we walked them up the hill to join the herd. With her head held high and her tail bobbing like a pump handle, the calf pranced behind her mother. We laughed and christened her Spunky—a fitting name, as she turned out to be our liveliest and most mischievous calf that spring.

As we got closer, the other cows started calling to Freckles. They bellowed back and forth, again and again, as if to guide her back to their new location, and they were all waiting by the fence when we arrived. As soon as we closed the gate behind them and moved away, they surrounded Freckles, and with nodding heads and soft lowing sounds they gently greeted her and inspected Spunky. Apparently satisfied, they slowly drifted apart and began to graze. A sense of peace and harmony was restored to their little community.

I was puzzled the first few times I saw a single cow surrounded by several little calves, until I learned that cattle herds establish unique baby-sitting co-ops. Once again, I was amazed at their ability to communicate. How did they decide who would be the baby-sitter? And how did the mothers tell the babies not to move while they wandered away, sometimes for several hours?

One day, I glanced out my kitchen window and was astounded to see Red Man, our huge twenty-five-hundred-pound bull, lying in the pasture with a group of calves. The cows had somehow persuaded him to baby-sit that day. At least fifteen tiny calves surrounded Red Man, all of them content to lie lazily in the sun, except for Spunky, who had obviously grown tired of nap time. She slowly stood up. Her rump came up first, followed by a long stretch extending to the tip of her tail. Then she shook her head, flicked her tail and seemed about to go romping across the field when Red Man lifted his massive head and gave her a disapproving glare. I watched, entranced. Would the tiny calf defy the giant Red Man? Not that day. Spunky gazed at the bull for a long moment, and then her legs seemed to melt back into the ground, once again the docile baby waiting for her mother to return.

One night,we woke up to the terrifying sounds of a pack of coyotes on the hunt. Barking and howling, they raced down the hill behind our ranch and into the pasture where the cattle had settled for the night. Young calves were their favorite prey. The cattle stampeded in their panic to escape from the pack. My husband grabbed the shotgun and ran outdoors. A few shots fired into the air were enough to scare the coyotes, and we stood there listening to them yip and howl as they disappeared into the night. The herd had been badly frightened and their restless bawling went on for hours. But other than that, all was well.

Or so we thought. At daybreak we went out to check. All the animals were unharmed—except for one. We found a dead calf near some rocks, apparently killed in the stampede. My heart nearly stopped beating when I saw the white spot on its forehead, but it wasn’t Spunky. It was a younger calf with similar markings. We carried the little body close to the gate and covered it with a tarp until we could bury it.

A while later, I heard a cow bawling. I looked around and saw the mother of the dead calf nudging it with her nose. Then I watched as Freckles and eleven other cows slowly walked over and formed a circle around them. One by one they began to bawl with the mother. The low, mournful tones of their lamentation drifted across the land as the morning sun rose.

As I watched them, I, too, became a member of their circle; I was one with them in their grief for the little life that had been, and was no more.

The cows stayed in that circle of love for over an hour. Finally, the mother backed away, turned and walked to a far corner of the pasture. Only then did the others end their vigil and move quietly away.

I stood rapt and motionless in the now-silent pasture, feeling the depth of their compassion in my own heart. Filled with awe and admiration for these animals, I turned back towards the house—that rare and tender scene firmly etched in my mind.

Maria Sears

One Last Gift

“Mom, I’m taking Snowflake to the vet on Saturday.” My son slumped in the high-backed chair next to my hospital bed. “He doesn’t seem right to me. I think he’s got a cough, and he won’t eat.”

“I’ll be home before then,” I told him. “The doctor has promised you and Dad can bring me home tomorrow.” I knocked hopefully on the plastic bed table strewn with get-well cards and half-finished glasses of stale ginger ale.

We’d had Snowflake for ten years. He was a black Lab with just enough setter in him to give him long legs and a scrap of white hair on his chest. We brought him home in a snowstorm just before Christmas, all huge puppy feet and a black tail far too long. We named him Snowflake for the storm and for the bit of white hair. He arrived just after my first bout with colon cancer when I was still struggling to make sense of the new and terrifying challenge in my life.

During the next months, Snowflake became my friend and companion. No matter how frightened or depressed I was, he needed to be cared for. We walked together through that snowy winter, his leash tangling around my legs. I watched him bound through snowbanks that nearly buried him. I swear he learned to grin at me as he dug through the snow, shaking the icy flakes off his whiskers.

I got better. I thought less of cancer and more of living. Snowflake got tall and leggy. He learned to walk at heel, although he never was very good at coming when called. He’d come within a few feet, toss me his catch-me-if-you-can look and wait until I got close before he ran just out of reach. I’d turn around to go in the house, and he’d finally follow, refusing to be ignored—a good dog, but one with an independent streak, a little like me.

He loved to run through the woods on the state land near our house. He galloped in wide circles while I walked and daydreamed or picked blueberries. Snowflake would find a stick for me to throw, or a rabbit to chase back into its hole.

It was eight years before the cancer returned. A new tumor in my colon sent me back to the hospital for more surgery. I began a year-long series of weekly chemotherapy injections that left me feeling sick most of the time. Early in the morning, Snowflake walked with me along an old canal towpath. The steady walking relaxed me, and the fresh morning air settled my stomach.

He had long since outgrown the bounding leaps of puppyhood. He walked more sedately now. I’d let him off his leash, and he’d take up a position about eight feet ahead of me, keeping pace and returning immediately to my side when I called. The old game of catch-me-if-you-can was gone, almost as if he knew I had little energy to chase him now. Occasionally he ran down the canal bank barking madly at a passing duck, but mostly he walked steadily ahead of me, turning every so often to check that I was keeping up.

So we walked through that spring and into the summer and into a new diagnosis. I found a lump in my breast that proved, after more surgery, to be breast cancer. I resumed chemotherapy and began daily radiation treatments. For several months I was too exhausted for our morning walks. Snowflake lay beside my bed, his brown eyes half closed.

Toward the end of winter, I began to feel stronger. The dog and I returned to the canal in the morning, walking carefully along the snow-covered towpath.

It was eighteen months before cancer struck again. A new tumor appeared on an ovary. So after Christmas, I left Snowflake once again to go into the hospital. As usual, he begged to go in the car. His white hair was no longer confined to the bit on snow on his chest. His face was almost entirely white and arthritis made his back legs stiff.

I woke from the anesthesia to hopeful news. The cancer appeared not to have spread. There was a good chance that I could get well. But I kept having the thought that there are only so many chances, only so many times to dodge a bullet.

Still I did all the things necessary to recover from surgery. I blew into a small plastic tube designed to exercise my lungs. I got painfully out of bed. I shuffled down the hall pushing my IV pole. I graduated from ice chips to sips of ginger ale and bites of lemon Jell-O.

Now, almost ready to go home, I listened to my son’s worries about Snowflake’s cough, his lethargy and refusal to eat.

“Don’t worry,” my husband said. “Maybe he just misses you.”

The next day my husband packed me and my awkward baskets full of get-well flowers into the car. It was icy cold outside, almost zero, and snowing.

Snowflake was at the door, of course, almost his old self, wagging his tail and rubbing his ears under my hand. “He hasn’t been coughing today,” my son told me. “I think he might be better.”

I curled up on the sofa in the bright winter light from the big windows, and the dog lay down beside me. My husband made a fire and fell asleep in the recliner. So we spent that first afternoon home.

That evening I went to bed early, tired from the effort of leaving the hospital, but I couldn’t fall asleep. In my head I went over the doctor’s words again and again. I thought about the first colon cancer and the second one, the breast cancer, and now ovarian cancer. I thought about dying and how afraid I was.

“Kate,” my husband called from the living room about eleven o’clock. “I think you should come here. Something’s wrong with the dog.”

Snowflake was lying on his side in front of the fire. His breathing was harsh and slow. When he saw me, he lifted his head and moved as if to get up, but his legs crumpled under him.

I sat down on the floor and put his head in my lap. His huge brown eyes looked up at me, and his breathing seemed to ease a bit. I sat there no more than ten minutes, silent in the firelight with Snowflake’s head in my lap. Then, with a sigh so soft I nearly missed it, he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

“You waited for me to get home,” I whispered.

I sat there for a long while, the dog motionless in my arms, thinking of the gentleness and peace of his death, the silence that had filled us both. For the first time since I had been diagnosed with cancer, I felt no fear.

“You waited for me,” I whispered again, tears in my eyes, “to show me not to be afraid.”

Kate Murphy

9
ON
COMPANIONSHIP

I
n order to keep a true perspective of one’s
importance, everyone should have a dog that
will worship him and a cat that will ignore
him.

Dereke Bruce