The Cat That God Sent

by Jim Kraus

  I hung up the phone thinking that I need to make a good impression on this woman, or else I’ll have to find another breeder and the next closest—with puppies available—was in Ohio. I did not want to drive to Ohio. Not just yet. Maybe not ever.

  I arrived at the breeder’s home early—a lifelong trait. To me, being on time is fifteen minutes early. The setting was not exactly rural, but I estimated that I was a good ten minutes from the nearest Starbucks—or a Texaco station selling chilled bottles of Starbucks Iced Coffee. So I sat in the drive and waited. I would have really liked a coffee. Caffeine settles my nerves.

  I rattled in the car, more than a little nervous.

  The breeder was exactly as I had pictured: precise, wore her hair short, trim, with practical glasses clipped to a gold chain around her neck; with that one eye slightly off-kilter to the other. She may have been wearing Earth Shoes. I was unaware if they had made a comeback; hers looked sensible and organic with a leather strap. I admit that I am far from being style-conscious. I buy good clothes, good outfits, designed to last. I haven’t purchased a new outfit in years . . . well . . . since before the accident, I guess.

  She extended her hand for a firm handshake, and escorted me to the basement. I could hear scuffling and yipping as we descended. In a large, airy room, with French doors leading to the outside, now closed, two adult schnauzers were in a large pen with what appeared to be a large, single mass of wiggling puppy. The room smelled of dog—but that inviting new-dog smell.

  “Sit down,” she said, and for that second I was not sure if the breeder meant me or the dogs. I realized that I should sit.

  I sat on a plastic chair—one of two in the enclosure.

  The two adult dogs sniffed the air, not in fear, but in exploration, in greeting. The larger one trotted over to me, placed its front paws on my knees, and stared hard into my eyes.

  Schnauzer eyes are dark, or mostly dark, so the iris in their eyes is all but indistinguishable. They are like cartoon eyes—all one color—so it is difficult to see emotion in them. And schnauzers are not smilers. Some dogs—like labs, for example—can pull their lips back and offer a grin, with a lolling tongue. (I have since discovered that labs aren’t that happy. They are simply manipulative.)

  The larger dog, apparently satisfied with what it was looking for, hopped down.

  The smaller dog walked toward me, with what I took to be deliberate steps. It too placed its paws on my knees and stared.

  “That’s the mom,” the breeder said, not using the word mom, but the breeder word for a female dog—a word, incidentally, that I have never liked using, either in anger or in scientific dog-calling. She was Rufus’s mother after all, though the name Rufus would not be decided for a few weeks.

  She stared deeply, as deeply as a dog can stare, without being distracted by the yelping of one puppy or the whine of another. She stared, just stared, for the longest of moments. Longer than most dogs stare at anything, with the possible exception of an empty food bowl. (This I have learned recently as well.)

  I didn’t know what to do, so I gently covered her paws with my hands—like offering a manner of assurance that I was a good person who would treat her offspring well.

  After what seemed to be a long time, she sort of gave a nod, like she approved, or found me acceptable, or knew her one special offspring was exactly the puppy I needed, then dropped back to the ground, sniffed my leg and shoe for a moment, and walked back to the big ball of puppies in the corner. This was not her first litter, so she obviously knew the routine. Puppies grow up and move on in the wild, and they do the same if they reside in urban domesticity.

  The breeder walked over, reached in, and extracted a small furry lump of wiggle, mostly black, with some white. She handed it to me.

  “This one will be yours if you want.”

  I held the small wriggling bud of puppy cupped in my two hands with plenty of room to spare.

  “The pup can’t see real well yet, so all it sees is your hands.”

  I stroked the little face with a finger, gentle, but not overly gentle. It was a boy puppy, after all. The puppy seemed to like that and promptly fell asleep in my hands.

  “That’s a good sign. Some dogs just stay all riled up—being picked up, carried, strange scents—they’ll struggle to get away. Apparently, he thinks you’re a safe place.”

  He was the most beautiful puppy I had ever seen.

  And he fell asleep. My heart began to sing, just a little. After such a long silence, it startled me at its ability to do so.

  This was indeed the puppy that I needed to have in my life. More surprises came later.

  The breeder gave me a list of things to do, and to have them all accomplished in the three weeks between the initial meeting and the final handoff—Rufus’s adoption, as it was. The list was not extensive, but it was twice as long as I had anticipated.

  “I can’t visit your house, so you have to give me your word that all of it gets done. Okay?”

  It was a command that I could not say no to.

  “Of course.”

  I could see why she was good at training dogs. I really wanted to please her.

  A dog crate; dog carrier for the car ride home; puppy food—one of two preferred brands—a water dish; collar, two leashes; one retractable, one a strong tether; the name of the dog’s veterinarian; a picture of the fenced yard; an appointment set for a puppy class. The list ran on for nearly a full page.

  Obtaining all the necessary documentation and supplies was not that difficult. The cage—sorry, the crate—fit into the alcove of a desk built into the kitchen layout. (I had been told that cage was pejorative, crate was preferred by most breeders.) I never used the kitchen desk, except as a temporary storehouse for receipts, mail, and magazines waiting to be evaluated before becoming recyclables. The top drawer held in the neighborhood of a thousand pens and pencils, all halfway to being thrown away because none of them worked, forcing me to take telephone notes with a huge felt-tipped sign marker on legal pads, the ink soaking through four sheets at a time.

  I have to get better organized. I mean it this time.

  The cage—rather, the crate—fit snugly in the kneehole of the desk. I added two sleeping pads, the top one a leopard print, to ensure a soft rest. I took a picture of it. I would show the breeder all my preparations.

  No one prints pictures anymore. All they do is show others the back of their camera or cellphones. I miss passing actual snapshots around, but I didn’t think I needed a permanent record of a dog crate and food bowls and the like, so I carried my camera with me.

  I’ll probably never delete them from the memory stick, though.

  I wasn’t sure about the crate situation. I never had a crated dog before. The family dog had the run of the house. Looking back, I don’t remember where the dog slept. Did we have a dog bed somewhere? My mother, the sole surviving parent, resided in a nursing home, and while she had only begun to wade into the shallow, yet troubled waters of dementia, for now she would resent being asked inconsequential questions like “Where did the dog sleep?”

  She would become agitated a little, and wave the question off as if it were a pesky mosquito. “How I am expected to remember foolish things like that?” she would snap, prickly as she had ever been. Some things do not change over the decades.

  I would want to say that I did not expect her to recall the details, but that we were simply making conversation. Instead of asking a follow-up question about how the family had decided on a dog name, I would instead sit back, and watch Wheel of Fortune with my mother. She could not hear worth beans and had no use for gadgets like hearing aids, so the volume would be turned up to a painful level. Virtually every television in the Ligonier Valley Nursing Unit remained turned to the same level. I don’t understand how the nurses and aides tolerated it. It would be like working in a tavern that featured heavy metal music. Or working in a steel mill. Here, all televisions, except the one in the main visiting lounge, had to be tu
rned off by eight in the evening. Then silence rolled down the halls like a tsunami.

  The breeder said that the prehistoric dogs lived in dens, so a crate, which she was careful to call a crate, fulfills their ancestral urges of being covered, protected, and easily defended. I draped a thin blanket over the top and sides. I planned to swap the thin one out for a heavier one in colder weather. The door latched easily. The crate provided plenty of turnaround area. The padding looked, and felt, pretty comfortable as well.

  I had not purchased the Kuranda Dog Bed—patented, orthopedic, and chew proof. It certainly looked comfortable in the pet store, nearly as expensive as the new mattress I had purchased for myself eighteen months earlier. That was a necessary purchase; a deluxe dog bed could not be considered in the same category.

  I had an assortment of puppy food, puppy chews, puppy toys, and assorted puppy diversions.

  Even before I handed the breeder a check, this dog purchase had become expensive.

  Do friends ever give puppy showers? My initial reaction was a strong no, with a wishful yes right behind.

  I was ready. I was prepared.

  Yet nothing could prepare me, really and truly, for what was to happen in a few short months.

  The breeder actually looked at every picture I took of my purchases, my preparations, my supplies, my complete photo essay of my backyard. She even checked the photocopy of the medical license of my intended veterinarian.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” she said, “but he went to Cornell. Best vet school in the country.”

  “She. She went. The B. T. stands for Barbara something or other,” I answered.

  The breeder brightened.

  “Good. I’ve always found female vets to be more compassionate—and intuitive. Good choice.”

  I felt proud of what I had accomplished. It was a feeling I had missed in recent months.

  She presented me with the puppy’s papers and AKC registration—a thick packet of documents that displayed his lineage back to the Mayflower, apparently. I had assured her that I had no interest in showing the puppy, or dog, as it grew. I promised to have him neutered; perhaps breeders do not want more competition from unskilled amateurs like me. “Neutered makes for better pets,” she declared. I knew, for certain, that his papers would be filed in my office at home, and then lost in less than six months.

  I’m not going to sell the dog for a profit, like flipping a foreclosed house. He’s not going to procreate. Why would I need to know his great-great-great-grandfather?

  I handed her the check. The dog was now mine.

  “What are you going to name him?” the breeder asked.

  I shrugged, apologetically.

  “I’m not good with names . . . or book titles. I let my publisher pick titles. But with the dog, I thought I might see what sort of name fits him after a day or two.”

  “Don’t wait too long. Puppies get imprinted with whatever you call it—especially if you use it a lot when they’re young.”

  He lay down in the middle of the pet carrier, not frantically trying to escape or cowering in the corner. But in the middle, like that is where he was supposed to be. It did make it easier to carry, since the weight was evenly distributed.

  I had been nervous concerning the ride home, worried about a whining, yelping puppy carrying on so much that I would have to stop. I’d imagined him chewing wildly at the door, scrabbling to escape his new and probably evil owner. But there were no histrionics, no puppy on the edge of puppy craziness. Just a very calm puppy, supine, staring out through the wire mesh door.

  I pulled into the garage, stopped the car, and carefully took the carrier from the car.

  “Show him his bed, his food, and the door you’ll use to take him outside. Take him out on a leash right away and start his bathroom training,” the breeder instructed, touching on the three most important elements in a puppy’s small world.

  I followed her instructions to the letter.

  He dutifully sniffed at his crate, stepped inside, sniffing, looking at the cushion, then up at the top of the crate—like people do on all the HGTV shows when they enter a new room. I have noted that potential homebuyers invariably look at the ceiling, as if to make sure the house has one. Why do people do that? It’s a plain ceiling. Look to see how big the closets are first, and if you have good water pressure. No one checks the water pressure on those shows. I have yet to see a single buyer flush a toilet. There might be a lot fewer home sales if people flushed toilets or ran showers.

  The puppy completed his examination of the crate. I led him to his food dish and water bowl—both filled with fresh supplies.

  He sniffed at both.

  I snapped a leash onto his collar and led him to the . . .

  Wait. What door am I going to use?

  The back door led to a back deck, a second-story affair. A puppy this small would not yet be able to climb stairs.

  I’ll have to use the front door.

  We stepped outside through the main door, and his sniffing became a bit more earnest. It took him fifteen minutes to sniff his way around the front yard. I was cold by the time he completed his inspection. There were other dogs in the neighborhood, so he took some time getting acquainted with their calling cards.

  I am told that dogs can tell the size and sex and temperament of other dogs by the scent they leave. Seems a crude way of doing it—but if you can’t talk or write, I suspect it is the only way.

  He actually relieved himself out there, by a bush toward the side of the house—a bush I didn’t really like, so if his ministrations killed it, I would not be upset. It was some sort of weedy looking shrub that had been billed as the bearer of fragrant flowers. The flowers lasted all of three days; the rest of the time it simply looked weedy. I praised him, as I had been told to do.

  We walked back into the house. I unclipped his leash.

  “Keep him in the kitchen at first. He’ll be overwhelmed if he has too much space to explore.”

  Two doorways led into the kitchen: one a pocket door to the dining room, easily closed off; the other archway could be cut off by opening the basement door, leaving a gap of only an inch or two. The bigger problem was the wide arch between the kitchen and the family room.

  The puppy seemed to be a cautious type, so my initial solution employed two lengths of white clothesline rope, strung at two inches off the floor, and the other at six inches, and affixed to the molding with adhesive-backed Velcro. If the puppy ran into them at full force, which he gave no indication of doing, the ropes would give way. More important, if I ran into them, stumbling toward the sunroom with the first coffee of the day and with my typical morning slit-eyes, then I would dislodge them as easily, without tumbling down and scalding myself with hot coffee.

  The puppy sniffed the ropes, and made no attempt to cross the barrier.

  It appeared effective. Maybe I could market this idea.

  The puppy stared up at me.

  No. How hard would it be to duplicate this? Not very.

  I sat on the floor, my back to the wall, and invited the puppy to play. He slithered over with a wiggle. I imagined that he looked happy. I couldn’t tell. This was the start of a long process, learning how to read the moods of this small animal.

  He crawled into my hands and began a gentle nibbling on my fingers. His breath smelled healthy, like milk.

  “Don’t let him bite you,” the breeder had scolded me. “Bad habit for a dog to have—biting.”

  But chewing is what a puppy does. As long as he did not bite in anger, I would tolerate a dog-to-owner chew every now and again.

  After thirty minutes, the puppy crawled down from my leg and sat on his haunches, looking as tired as a . . . well, a puppy.

  “Go into your crate,” I directed and pointed at the open door to his den.

  The puppy stared at my finger for a moment, as if my finger was the object he should focus on. “No,” I said, as I pushed my finger forward into the air, gesturing toward the door.
The puppy appeared to scowl, or furrow his brow as if in thought, then turned his head toward the crate. He lifted himself off the floor and walked with a surprising deliberateness toward his den, his crate, climbed over the two-inch frame, walked in, circled three times, then lay down, his head on his paws, his eyes facing me.

  “Tired?”

  He blinked, and let his head fall farther onto his paws.

  “Can I get some coffee? Will I keep you awake?”

  He did not answer. I am not sure, in the retelling of this episode, if he understood me at that young age, and simply waited to speak until the right time, or if he was in the process of trying to understand my speech. I think the latter, though I have not asked him. It doesn’t seem to be that pertinent a question, in retrospect.

  I sat in the upholstered chair in the bay window in the kitchen, sat with my coffee, watching The Weather Channel with the sound muted, sipping as quietly as I could manage, watching the puppy fall into a deep, untroubled sleep.

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