“No, no, no!” I shouted, pulling her by her red collar away from the plate. She was licking her chops with pleasure at the caper, her entire face stained with tomato sauce.
Michael looked horrified. “She’s completely out of control,” he snapped.
I poured her briskly back into the kennel, though I admit to remarking that she did look kind of cute in her stained state. (We scrapped the spaghetti and went out to dinner—my treat.)
“I told you this would happen if you handed her the moon and the stars,” clipped Joe the following day, satisfied that Dinah would never err on this side of danger.
“You’ve got to discipline that dog of yours,” he warned, though I had no intention of ever hitting Katie or frightening her, instead preferring the slow, steady, firm approach. So I used lots of no’s and Velveeta cheese, while secretly enjoying Katie’s puppy pranks.
Once Katie was housebroken, she had full access to her extended “crib.” This meant my entire apartment, including the newly renovated living room, a cozy space with red-striped wallpaper, ivory carpeting with a diagonal pattern of pale green vines on it—and lots of dog-comfy chintz.
With so many pieces of upholstered furniture to choose from, Katie discovered lots of soft places to snooze, observe, and hide.
Her favorite was a green tufted chair, and she’d often fall asleep on it, her head hanging down off it as she softly snored. Off-limits was the white silk couch, and she knew it, though it didn’t stop her from trying.
“Katie, NO!” I’d exclaim, as I found her dozing on it more than once. And, with a knowing guilty expression, she’d leap quickly off it, her tail down.
Sometimes when the sun was streaming in, I’d find her on the carpet by the window, stretched out on her back, legs spread, as if sunbathing. Other times, she was lazily stretched out on the cool surface of the hallway floor.
Sometimes, I couldn’t find her at all, until I looked closely.
Then, as I scoured the room, there she was, hilariously, burrowed under the table skirt, with only her black nose sticking out from underneath. This became a regular game. I’d say, “Katie! Where are you?” No movement. Finally, “Katie… I bet you’re real hungry?!”
And like a rocket, she’d fly out from under the table, tail wagging, bound into the kitchen, then eagerly sit down on the floor, waiting for a treat.
When company came over, to keep a better eye on the proceedings, she’d trot into the living room and lounge under the black Chinese coffee table, biting on one of her bones. When it was all chewed up and gone, she’d trail into the kitchen and start scratching on the cabinet door that held the new ones.
Katie soon learned where just about everything was.
I’d ask her, quite softly, “Want to go OUT?” And in one long leap, she was off the bed, running toward the door. She’d pull the leash off the knob, sit down waiting to be hitched up, then race down the hallway to the elevator and patiently wait for it to open.
Smart and agile as she was, her physical abilities couldn’t always keep up with her determined spirit. Most frustrating to her was her inability to leap onto the bed without my help, though she’d try. She’d make a running start but repeatedly fall short of the bed, falling back down onto the carpet like a failed gymnast, toppling over on her back, looking startled and confused.
But we worked it out. I’d say “go,” she’d take a leap, and then from behind, I’d give her a big boost with my palms, lifting her onto the bed. Within eight months, she’d mastered the move. In fact, she was well on her way to running my entire household single-pawedly.
Now it was time to put her to work.
CHAPTER SIX
News Hound
In the fall of 1988, as Katie was practicing her sitting, coming, and staying, and racing up and down the hall with her favorite blue rubber ball, I was busily looking for a full-time job as an entertainment reporter—hoping to end the isolation of working at home.
One wintry day in mid-November, I had a job interview set up at CNN and impulsively decided to take Katie along with me, as Pearl was away that day and I didn’t want to leave her alone. Besides, I thought having a puppy present might break the ice.
“Wow,” said the producer, Scott Leon, marveling at Katie’s long ears. “She looks like Lady from Lady and the Tramp.” I’d never thought of that, but she really did. “I bet she’s photogenic.” Katie shook her ears and went obediently “down” for a nap, snoozing under Scott’s desk as we talked.
We had an enjoyable interview, but Scott must have ultimately thought the dog was better on-camera than me, because I didn’t get the job. But it gave me a good idea.
From then on, I’d take Katie to all my interviews. It couldn’t hurt. And with the weather getting colder, why not increase the entertainment value by dressing her up, usually military-style, in a navy-blue knit coat with brass buttons on it (sometimes complemented by a red knitted hat that tied under her chin in a bow).
Every time we went out on such appointments, Katie jumped into the back seat of the taxi and sat up with her paws on the door and her nose pressed up against the window, studying the view. She soon learned how to negotiate escalators, elevators, revolving doors, and subway steps, all while practicing her new manners.
One day later that month, I had an interview with Gil Spencer, the charismatic editor in chief of the New York Daily News. He had a great sarcastic wit and the ability to tease out someone’s true personality. I instantly clicked with him. And he liked dogs too.
“Where did Katie go to journalism school?” he inquired, looking over my interview clips.
“Well, she took her undergrad degree from Columbia, her master’s from NYU, and now she’s ready to work,” I joked. (Neither of those schools were in my résumé, as my degrees were in classical music, not journalism.)
I had three more follow-up interviews at the Daily News’s classic Art Deco headquarters on 42nd Street, an impressive structure that inspired the design of the Daily Planet building for all the Superman movies of the 1970s and 1980s.
I’d found after my first visit that dogs weren’t allowed in the building—much less in the newsroom. But defying this rule, I snuck Katie in anyway, each time hiding her in a large shopping bag as we passed by the giant globe of the world slowly rotating in the lobby.
Only Katie’s black nose stuck out from the bag as I passed by security guards at the elevator. When she started squirming a bit, I headed her off, “Shhhhhh!”
When we reached the newsroom floor, she’d leap out of the bag and trot through the bustling newsroom and into Gil’s spacious office again.
She’d sit on Gil’s lap and work her magic on him, putting her paws on his desk as he scratched her ears. She never did lick his face, perhaps sensing that this was supposed to be business.
On the final visit, he sent me down the hall to meet the Sunday magazine editor, Jay Maeder, who was also a hospitable host to Katie. “I don’t know how you got her in here, but she classes up the joint,” he smirked. Well, at least they’d never forget this job applicant.
A few days later, I got the call that I was hired! I’d begin in January. And I credited Katie, in some measure, for using her canine charms to land me the job.
Over the next few weeks before I started my new full-time job in midtown, Katie began visiting her new friends Pearl and Arthur more often than ever.
It had all started one morning when I accidentally left my front door ajar after taking out the garbage. I went back into the bedroom for a few minutes, and when I returned to the kitchen, Katie was gone. She’d knocked down the baby gate and pushed open the front door to escape. When I went into the hallway, she wasn’t there either.
I knocked on Pearl’s door, and when it opened, there was my dog, sitting contentedly on Pearl’s green-upholstered dining room chair, her paws gripping the tablecloth, busily eating a piece of toast right out of Arthur’s hand. She didn’t even turn around to look at me.
“How did
this happen?!” I asked, as Pearl and Arthur laughed with uproarious delight.
“She’s my girl now,” Arthur said.
“Your dog,” said Pearl, “has a mind of her own.”
And from that time forward, every morning after eating breakfast and slobbering water all over the kitchen floor, Katie waited impatiently at my door, scratching the wall, anxious to get down the hall into her new friends’ apartment.
Within a year, my doorway had to be replastered and repainted from all her scratching. I told my friends I was somewhat insulted that my own dog couldn’t wait to get away from me. But there was no stopping her. It was as if she was telling me, “Dad, I gotta get going. See ya!”
Once we got the morning routine down, I didn’t even have to leave my apartment. After her regular walk outside and breakfast, Katie would barrel down the red-carpeted hallway from my apartment and make a hard right turn into Pearl’s, pushing against the door, which Pearl now left open. Katie would then trot over to the dining table and jump up on her hind legs to grab a piece of crispy toast, which was always waiting for her, from the corner of the table.
Then, in one smooth motion, she’d leap onto the dining chair and daintily arrange her paws on the table, waiting for some French toast or a snippet of bacon.
“Girlie! You’re hungry today,” laughed Pearl.
“Don’t bite!” scolded Arthur, torturing Katie by dangling a piece of bacon above her.
Gulp. Down it went.
Katie also acquired a taste for honeydew melon and apples, and would soon become an expert at eating corn on the cob (side to side without missing a kernel) and watermelon too (spitting out the seeds). After her various snacks, she’d cover Pearl’s face with kisses, then trail into the bedroom, getting a boost up from Arthur to get on the bed. She’d snooze on Pearl’s nightgown or watch TV for the rest of the morning.
Amazingly, Katie did have an inner alarm clock, and at exactly 5:00 p.m. each day, she’d go to her food bowl, sit down, and wait impatiently for either Pearl or me to fill it.
Then, later at night, she did everything in reverse, scratching at Pearl’s doorway, anxious to go home to me. What a routine—from their bed to mine, from one food bowl to another—a perfect life for a dog.
And so it was that my new puppy had essentially two homes—and was determined to have equal access to both. And even though I never intended for Katie to become a permanent part of Pearl’s household, our routine evolved naturally and became the catalyst for a budding friendship.
“Once you begin your job in January,” said Pearl, “just leave her here in the morning and we’ll take care of her until you get home.”
“You WILL?” I asked incredulously, touched by this generosity. I had planned on hiring a dog walker, but since Katie was only five months old, I was worried about leaving her alone at home between walks.
But beyond the expediency of finding Katie babysitters, my friendship with Pearl and Arthur was touching my heart in ways I hadn’t expected.
I had always loved the company of my grandparents (and older people in general)—and was especially close to my maternal grandmother, Essie, who lived in Buffalo, New York.
Nana, as we nicknamed Essie, was nearly ninety years old—but still clearheaded, charismatic, and a great conversationalist, my all-around favorite person in the world. When I was a kid, she was truly a second mother to me and to my sisters. I became jubilant whenever I saw her car pulling up into our driveway, her yellow tortoise-shell purse catching the light.
Sometimes we’d sit at the kitchen table, laughing for hours as Nana quizzed me on American history, afterward treating me to her fantastic crumb cake or signature Cream of Wheat.
She also played the piano—usually “The Skating Song,” a popular tune in the silent movie days. But mostly, she’d sit on the bench next to me, encouraging my efforts at the keyboard (and years later, attending all my piano recitals).
When I was hospitalized in my twenties for a stomach ailment, there she was, nursing me back to health; a few years later, when my first book was published, she was next to me at Barnes & Noble, smartly dressed, as I signed copies.
And five years after that, we marketed Nana’s shortbread meringue cookies, dubbed “Essie’s Crumby Dessert Squares… The Crumbiest You Ever Had.” Katharine Hepburn, Peter Jennings, Nancy Reagan, Calvin Klein, and Paul Newman all raved about them, giving her endorsements. They were sold at Bloomingdale’s and led to such newspaper headlines as “Top Stars Clamoring for More of Buffalo Grandma’s Cookies” and “Cookies Turning a Grandmother into Rising Star.” Nana was now being interviewed on television and signing autographs!
In short, Nana was remarkable in every way—and with me, every step of the way. On my first visit home with Katie for Thanksgiving, my dog sat on Nana’s lap, looking up at her with adoration—and with high hopes, for she had the baker herself popping those delicious meringue squares into her mouth.
“She’s nice and warm—a good blanket,” laughed Nana, stroking Katie’s head, and later sneaking her pieces of turkey under the table.
Nana was especially thrilled the day I called to announce that I’d gotten a full-time job at a newspaper. “Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone,” she warned me, superstitious that good news could evaporate.
And now, on my phone calls home, Nana would listen, with relish, to all my stories about Pearl and Arthur and Katie’s antics. “You tell Pearl I said hello!” Nana would always say.
With my grandmother still vital but slowing down physically and living in an assisted-living facility, I now, in a way, had “backup” surrogate grandparents right down the hall.
Their companionship and hospitality were therapeutic for me.
Likewise, I sensed that Katie and I were therapeutic for them—filling a void in Pearl and Arthur’s lives. Arthur, an avid reader and TV watcher, didn’t go out much as he was prone to respiratory infections and colds. And while Pearl busied herself with day-to-day domestic chores, she had more energy than she knew what to do with. Somehow, I sensed that both Arthur and Pearl were bored and a bit lonely in their retirement. After all, they had no children, and their dog, Brandy, was gone; they had few relatives, and the ones they had almost never visited.
I would later find out that Arthur had periodically suffered throughout his life from depression, though he seemed reasonably upbeat to me. In any case, having a puppy bounding around was definitely injecting new life into their household.
As for me, apartment 3C was fast becoming my safe harbor and Katie’s favorite playpen—a place for relaxed conversation, sage advice, sharing neighborhood news, and relaxing with Katie. Thanks to Katie and Arthur and Pearl, the loneliness and isolation I had previously felt living alone were now gone.
“So you’re sure you wouldn’t mind?” I asked Arthur about leaving Katie in 3C all day.
“Mind?!” he laughed, pulling Katie against him in his favorite armchair. “I need this little toaster to keep me warm. I’m keeping her.”
“The dog walker,” added Pearl, always the practical one, “can come by to get Katie at lunchtime and at five—but in between, she’s ours.”
Once I began the News job, I was consumed by it. Between writing Sunday magazine cover stories, a syndicated column called “Turning Point” about how celebrities recovered from crisis, and entertainment features for the daily pages, it seemed I was either at the office or away on day trips for interviews, practically never home. I had just about everyone you can imagine in my column, from film stars to criminals—sometimes one and the same.
Interviewing these people about their movies, shows, and books might have seemed glamorous—and it often was—but, for me, it was also incredibly stressful. Although I was usually at ease once the interview began, that first handshake was intimidating.
When the door opened, there was Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, Dolly Parton, Al Pacino, Diana Ross, Mia Farrow, Christopher Reeve, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Calvin Klein, Carol Burnett
, Mary Tyler Moore, Joan Kennedy, or Diane Sawyer—to name-drop just a few interview subjects from that first year. And that’s not to mention one of my favorite repeat interviewees, Donald Trump. Tall, and intimidating at first, he turned warm and witty once relaxed behind his desk at Trump Tower for what turned out to be a series of long talks, first for the Daily News, then a multisession marathon interview for Playboy. This interview drew headlines due to his comments on Leona Helmsley and feelings about women and marriage.
Trump expressed his very human, more reflective side when expressing grief for the deaths of three of his executives in a helicopter crash and for the death of his older brother due to alcoholism. “I was very close to him and it was very sad when he died… toughest situation I’ve had.”
When returning home from this kind of interview, I’d feel drained and content to return to my much less Trump-like existence, relieved to see Katie and Pearl and the gang, escaping what was, for me, a satisfying but stressful profession.
In hindsight, my work life felt a bit like Fear Factor. I pushed myself toward ever-more courageous (celebrity) stunts, and made a game out of how many “exclusives” I could pin down, while facing deadline pressure and my own anxiety about meeting celebrities.
That anxiety, however, often melted away when there was a genuine, heartfelt rapport between me and my interview subject. The most poignant example I can think of is a spring dinner at Senator Edward Kennedy’s house, with all three of his children in attendance, the occasion being a Father’s Day interview. “We never give anyone a house tour, but come on, let’s take a look,” the Senator told me, hospitably leading me into the enormous yellow-and-pink living room of his McLean, Virginia home, then later into his private study to reflect on the tragedies he’d endured. “Obviously, there’s been a great deal of trauma, suffering, and loss in our family,” he said, staring at the pictures of his brothers nearby on a table. “And it’s been a heavy burden. My brothers were my dearest friends. They were just human beings—and wanted to be considered that way. I miss them,” he finished, tears filling his eyes. “No day goes by when I don’t. No way to bridge that.”
Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family Page 5