When I was growing up, we always had a passel of cats and dogs. My sisters (two older, one younger) were all cat people; hence, each had their own cat. My oldest sister had Blackie, a smoky dark long-haired cat who had a mysterious air, and liked to roam outdoors -- we lived in the woods then -- but he'd show up on my oldest sister's bedroom window ledge when night-time came and she'd open the window and let him in. Blackie we lost pretty early on, the first of my oldest sister's many heartbreaks in life.
My second sister had a gentle, genial striped tabby who would allow herself to be dressed in full doll-clothes regalia and pushed around in a stroller. Her name was Baby Face. Baby Face was "easy" -- she was perpetually in heat and thus perpetually pregnant. Whenever we moved to a new locale, which was every six months to two years, Baby Face would immediately become pregnant. Ergo, that sister was always finding a new litter of kittens in her bedsheets, clothes closet, under the bed, in a carboard box in storage -- wherever. I think Baby Face single-handedly -- well, with all the male company she kept -- populated the entire western United States with kittens. Certainly the West Coast because we lived in all three states -- Washington, Oregon, and California -- and she had litters in all of them.
For a while we had a beautiful Irish Setter but he kept knocking me down, me being about two or so. He wanted to rub up against me but only ever succeeded in knocking me over. So when he approached, I would start swinging away in order to preserve my upright status. Sometimes I won, sometimes he did. Old Red. He used to hide under the family Studebaker, a low-sitting car, on the 4th of July when the fireworks all went off, and always got himself stuck. My dad would have to crawl under the car and carefully drag him out.
And for my fifth birthday, I got a dog. A small one, part dachshund but heavier, longer fur, and little bigger. I named her Heidi. She pooped prolifically and everywhere, and if a door opened, man, she was gone -- she was pretty fast on those little legs. Would ignore your calls. It was rare we caught her; she'd amble back home when it damn well suited her.
What used to irritate me was how my sisters would say, "She's not your dog!" That is, until it was time to feed her or scoop up the piles of dog poop in the yard. Then it was, "She's your dog!" This obvious hypocrisy riled me, but apparently didn't bother my sisters any.
Those animals, sans Blackie, made it to the farm with us in August of 1965. Heidi was in 7th heaven (ever wonder where that phrase comes from? someday I'll tell you), running through the wheatfields, at least until the stalks grew taller than she was. Then it was hard to find her way home. You'd see her jumping mid-field, ears flapping in the air, trying to get her bearings. She lived to about fifteen. She went blind but had made a trail around the house and would run laps all day for exercise. You could look out any window at any time of day and in a couple of minutes, Heidi would come trotting by. She was a long-distance trotter until the very end.
Frosty, from my Uncle's litter over the hills, soon joined Heidi. They were about the same size. I don't know how, but Baby Face got pregnant again and before too long -- within a few years -- we had about a dozen cats, and maybe half were feral. My dad could sometimes tame them. He was far more patient with animals than with his kids.
We got more dogs over the years. My favorite was Puddin. This must have been the winter of '66-'67 because my oldest sister had come back up from California. It was snowy and on the bus ride home my other older sister thought she spotted a puppy on the hill in a snow drift. So she walked back to the hilltop and, sure enough, a sweet little black and white shepherd of some sort was now in the family.
He was a great dog. He and I would play rough in the yard. He loved to be rolled and tossed; he'd then run back and start gnawing away at an arm, a hand, my foot. He never broke the skin; he instinctively knew exactly how much pressure to put on and never went past that. If I threw him too hard and he yelped, he'd come running back in for a quick hug and then we'd begin anew.
One mother cat was a little off her rocker. She took a couple of litters of kittens out into the wheatfields and didn't come back with them. The second time this happened my dad realized what was going on and had her spayed. Anyway, this had happened again.
We had moved my dad's mother -- we called her "grandmother" with all the emotional distance that phrase implies -- into a mobile home on the property and dad had built her a deck to sit on. To sit and watch the wheat grow, I guess. Anyway, one of her sisters came to visit and they were both sitting out on the deck. On top of the long hill in front of our house, where they were facing, they could see Puddin -- way up on top of the hill. He was moving very deliberately in a kind of zig-zag pattern down the hill, taking his time. This was late May, early June, and the wheat was about knee high, so they could see Puddin's back but nothing else. They commented on this and wondered what he was doing. It took him about 30-40 minutes to get all the way down to the gravel road, usually a three minute jaunt.
And when he got there, he nosed out this skinny, scrawny little kitten that the mother cat had abandoned on the top of that hill. Puddin had patiently herded this little cat all the way home. If you think animals cannot feel gratitude, let me tell you, that cat never left that dog's side. She would constantly rub up under his chin and he'd be sitting on his haunches, looking at you like, "What did I ever do to deserve this?" But he stoically put up with this cat's undying affection until the she finally passed away -- after a happy cat life around the place.
Puddin and I would go jogging together. We'd be toodling down the road at a comfortable pace when, all of a sudden, I would sprint and get a ten yard lead. Puddin would speed up, catch me, then lope along for a few strides looking over at me as if to say, "You think this is fast?!" Then he'd hit the afterburners and scream down the road at high speed, leaving me far behind in the dust. That was our game.
The last dog we had when I was growing up was Pepper. Small, black and white mutt. Her thing was birds; when she was a puppy she would chase after birds flying, looking up into the sky the whole time -- and fall in a ditch or crash into a bush, or worse, a tree. She eventually figured out how to navigate the obstacles on the ground while chasing the birds in the sky.
Pepper would greet me every morning in a special way.
My "bedroom" was the coal cellar which you entered through a trap door in the floor of the pantry. One corner of the cellar was paved and had walls made of a kind of strong cardboard. The rest of the basement was dirt. Yes, I was interred in the earth for the duration of my adolescence. It really felt that way. One could probably theorize accurately about the psychological symbology of that experience.
In the morning, when I would lift the trap door with my shoulders, Pepper would race over, flip onto her back, and I would blow a big fat raspberry on her tummy. "PHAATTT!!!" It was our little ritual.
I've not had a pet as an adult. I would probably get a dog, but I've lived my adult life in cities and it never seemed appropriate to me, having been raised partly on a farm and seeing how absolutely happy a cat or a dog is on a farm, to raise one within the confines of a city.
My roomie in California had a dog. It was her condo. At first she had two little dogs, elderly, who passed within months of one another. Then she got a German shorthair retriever, a very high-strung, hyper-active dog who couldn't be alone and who never really figured out that I lived at the other end of the hall. I would walk out of my room and be attacked at high speed by a dog barking madly as he dashed down the hall. I was tempted to whack him on the nose out of fear and frustration, though I don't believe in hitting animals. It felt like self-defense. I was never sure if he was going to bite or not. Otherwise, he was a total goofball. Loved to chase balls. Wyatt.
Where I'm staying now, there's a springer spaniel, a little female, who's totally codependent. She can only be where a human is. If she's in, she wants to go out, but only if you'll go with her. If you let her out and don't accompany her, she'll sit on the front step facing the door, staring sadly, wondering why she's been abandoned and tossed so thoughtlessly out of her home. She's sweet enough in temperment, and has a wide assortment of stuffed animals that I throw or play tug of war with, but sometimes I wish she'd just go run around outside. Be a dog, you know?
We do have one ritual together. I'll say, "Cows!" and Toni will immediately jump up and start running around in circles. This increases in rapidity as I put on the bib overalls I wear down to the barn. Then as we approach the barn, she starts running in circles on the NW corner of the building, where the door is. She runs these tight circles until I approach, then runs one big, next-to-last circle around me, one more tight one ending right where the door cracks open. She's sure there's something in the barn to chase! A rat or a cat. (I once managed to quietly save a mouse from her without her noticing.)
Once we hit the barnyard to fill the feed troughs, she scours the ground because who would want to miss out on that delicious doggy delicacy, dried cow pies? What could taste better? I try to get her to stop but she is a dog after all, I guess. She scared up five pheasants this morning, all hens, and was halfway to the creek after them before I could get her to come back. Hunting season hasn't opened yet, dog.
Years ago, I dreamed of having a pick-up truck. I mean this quite literally. I dreamt one night that I owned an old, beat-to-hell late Fifties white Ford pickup, body all banged up, and I woke from that dream the happiest I've ever been in my life.
Well, now I've got the pick-up truck. Seems like the next thing I should get is the dog.
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