My half-sister was born the year I graduated high school, and three years later, Andrea went to live with her mother in Pennsylvania. Midnight went with her. He was an old man by then. One night my step-father had gone outside to dump some hot cooking oil in the grass and tripped over Midnight. Hot oil was spilled all over one side of him and he took off screaming for the nearby woods. When he didn’t return the next day, or for weeks after, Andrea thought he had died of his burns. Amazingly, almost a year later and not long before her move to Pennsylvania, Midnight appeared on the door-step. Thin, hungry, and obviously aged by the experience he was still alive. He was deeply scarred with patches of fur missing that never grew back. But his love for Andrea was apparent as soon as he saw her. He never left her side after that and she told me years later that he had finally died in his sleep one night. He was a good cat and his love and devotion to her were unconditional. I like to believe that it was that love for her that kept him from dying in the woods when he was burned so badly.
Bandit and Brandy were joined by another tabby kitten I named Snookums. Dad, who just barely tolerated the cats and dog as it was, always came up with new names for them. Brandy became “Mutt” and Bandit was simply “That Cat” since she avoided him as much as possible. His girlfriend had a tuxedo cat named Socks, but when Dad started calling him “Stinky” Socks it wasn’t long before he would only answer to Stinky. Snookums, who seemed to suffer from an eating disorder and gained quite a bit of weight, he started to call “Oink.” Before long, she only answered to Oink which was very embarrassing when I called her in at night… “Here Oink, here kitty, kitty, here Oink!” Fortunately with my cats now, I just have to shake their kitty treat can to get them to come running!
Two years later when moving into an apartment, I needed to find a home for Snookums since the apartment would only allow me to have two pets. A friend of mine from work offered to take her, and one Saturday I drove her over to the house. Most cats aren’t huge fans of going for a ride in the car. It usually meant a trip to the vet which was never much fun. Snookums was no different. She hated being in the car and yowled and complained for the entire ride. When I took her onto the enclosed porch of her new home, I set her down to explore while I talked to my friend. Snookums apparently decided she didn’t like the new home and she didn’t want to relocate. She managed to pull open the screen door and went back to the hated car and climbed in an open window. Looking back, I wish I had listened to her and respected her request, but I was too consumed with the grief of having to give her up to stop and think about it. I got her back out of the car and took her again to the porch. My friend held the screen door closed while I drove away so she couldn’t escape again. When I asked her the following Monday how Snookums was adjusting, she said that she had run away again the same day and never returned. She hadn’t called to tell me because she didn’t want me to worry and assumed that the cat would come back. I was devastated. Because I was ignorant of the possibilities of communication with animals, I had ignored her behavior which should have told me that she didn’t want to stay there. For months I drove the streets of her neighborhood after work and several times on weekends, driving slowly with my window open and calling “Here Oink, here kitty, kitty, here Oink.” I never saw her again.
The following year I moved to California with my fiancée. Bandit was now ten years old, and Brandy nine. The long flight from Florida to California seemed to have had a negative affect on Brandy and she began to have behavior issues—hiding under the bed whenever I wasn’t home and snapping at anyone who tried to get her to come out. She was using the bathroom in the house, and her eyes had quickly clouded over with cataracts. She was miserable most of the time, only wagging her tail when she heard my voice. I had to have her put to sleep just three months after we arrived. I was heartbroken. My mother, step-father and sister had moved to Scotland the previous summer and when mom’s father—my grandfather—died just before Thanksgiving I had to call and give her the news. Still reeling from that loss and the realization that my move to California was not a good decision, when I had to have Brandy put down I felt like I had lost my only friend. I was overwhelmed with grief for months.
That marriage was short lived. He had an affinity for a white powered substance that I did not share. I had tried to call the wedding off but my Dad and his new wife made it clear that I was not welcome in what was now “her” home, and so without a job, family or friends in California, I married him believing (naïvely) that he would change. After a year of living in a shared home with four of his friends (all single males) I was tired of the secretive “male bonding” trips out of town, the constant parties, alcohol, and his use of the white powder. I spent my first Thanksgiving in California without him, cooking a turkey for one of his friends, practically a stranger to me, while “the guys” went on a “no girls allowed” ski trip to Mammoth. After our divorce one of his friends told me that they weren’t necessarily “no girls allowed” trips—just not me or any of their girlfriends since there were “other” women they would hope to meet on the trips. I was expected to be a cook and clean-up crew for their frequent parties—parties that would start Friday after work and often not end until Sunday evening. Saturday mornings I was expected to fix breakfast for whoever had slept on sofas, floors, or patio furniture. Clean the house and prepare food for the next round. Friday and Saturday nights I would mingle and socialize until midnight, then lock myself in our bedroom watching old black and white horror movies until I fell asleep. My husband never knocked to come in. In the beginning I sometimes went looking for him as I was making my way to the bedroom, but the night I found him naked in the Jacuzzi with several other (also naked) people I didn’t know, I stopped. I wasn’t a prude, but the drug seemed to give him a side of his personality that I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. I filed for a divorce on our first anniversary. I was 25. Not surprisingly the first week I spent in my new apartment, he wanted to know if I would still do his laundry for him. I’ll let you guess what I said since I’d like this to still be an PG-13 rated book and don’t want to push the literary censor’s buttons but I think it is safe to say that I didn’t go into the laundry washing business.
When I moved into my apartment, I still had Bandit, but now also another kitten—Jazzmin. She was a very sweet cat and both she and Bandit got along well. Unfortunately, Bandit’s health started to decline and less than four months after my divorce, I had to have her put to sleep. When I started dating again, Jazz didn’t really care for my boyfriend, Will, very much. Obviously she was better at sensing a person’s character than I was. I should have taken lessons from her. She would act as if she was finally going to accept him and would walk over as if to rub against his leg, and when he would reach down to pet her, she would flick her tail at him and move just out of reach. We married just over a year later and when we moved into our new home the following spring, he insisted I get rid of her because she had still not accepted him. Hating myself for doing it, I obliged, crying all the way to the animal shelter and looking in the rear view mirror the entire time, hoping and praying he would chase after me to tell me I could keep her.
Looking back now I can see that was the defining moment when I submitted to his control and the manipulation that would keep me bound by fear to him for the duration of our marriage. I had already experienced his temper enough to know that if I refused his demands to get rid of Jazzmin it would not have been an easy life for us, and he most likely would have taken matters into his own hands to get rid of her. Shortly after she was gone, he brought home a little grey kitten he named Angel. Whether or not it was meant as an apology for his dislike of Jazzmin, I don’t know. But I took it as such and life went on.
Angel was joined by Shotzy, an adult German Shepherd that became our “guard” dog. I’m not sure that he would ever have attacked anyone, but he sounded fierce when he barked and certainly would have made anyone think twice before trying to break into the house. Several years later when we
went camping for a long weekend, we set the TV and several lights on timers so that it would look as if someone was home. Shotzy was restricted to the yard—which was fenced in to completely surround the house, but he had access to a covered side patio where his water and food were just out-side the kitchen door. We left him plenty of water and food since he tended to be a grazer and not a gulper when he ate. The kitchen door had a small cat door installed so that Angel could come and go as she wanted, and her food and water were left in the kitchen. We had left them before on previous camping trips for the same amount of time, and never had any problems.
This trip, however, didn’t go as smoothly. When we returned after three nights away, we could hear Shotzy barking like crazy from inside the house as we unlocked the front door. Expecting the worst—broken windows and a burglarized house—Will rushed to get inside.
Shotzy had apparently decided that he needed to be in the house while we were gone this time and managed to squeeze through the tiny cat door in the kitchen. Once inside he realized that he couldn’t get back out so set about to get comfortable. Judging by the mess he left, it appeared he had been in the house for at least two nights. He had eaten all of the cat food, drank both toilets dry, and dragged the trash can into the living room where he scattered everything in his search for more food. Fortunately, he restricted his bathroom breaks to the breakfast nook where the floor was easier cleaned and sanitized than if he had used the living room carpet. The sofa was covered with his fur, so we assumed he had slept there, enjoying the TV when it came on periodically. While we were fishing in the mountains, he was kicking back at home, living the good life.
A year later we got our first pug from friends of ours. Chynna was black, with a little white star on her chest, and when she lay back on my legs during the drive home after we picked her up, she looked like a little fruit bat with her ears out flat. I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, what an ugly little dog. What were we thinking?” That thought was short lived though, and before she was ten weeks old she had won my heart. She was tiny enough to wear a little pink Cabbage Patch doll sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, and when she slept (the only time she was still for any length of time) I would paint her little black toenails a hot pink. When she woke she was a non-stop blur of motion with flashes of pink as she ran around, getting into everyone’s business and letting Shotzy know that she ruled the house. She would grab onto his tail with her mouth and he would stand up and walk away, her front paws off the ground, dancing on her toes trying to make him stop and lay down again. She would growl and bark at him, grabbing his lower lip or neck in her “attacks” and he would just stand there and tolerate it, sometimes “face-fighting” with her. With his mouth open he would make noise and act as if he was going to bite her, but never once actually biting her. We would often find them sleeping together, Shotzy stretched out on his side with Chynna stretched out on top of him as if he were a big soft pillow.
When she was a year and a half old we bred Chynna, wanting her to have one litter before we had her spayed. We were hoping for a fawn female to keep. The pregnancy went well, and the puppies were born on July 5, a Sunday that year. It was the only Sunday Will had ever worked, both before and after that day—which considering his aversion to the sight of blood, was probably a good thing. I’d never been pregnant or even had a dog or cat that had been so was naïve about what would happen—or what could go wrong.
Chynna had been reluctant to get off the water bed that morning, and needing to wash the sheets I picked her up and put her on the floor. As I walked down the hall in front of her, my arms loaded with the sheets, I was talking to her about how much I would have liked to have slept late as well, but there was just too much to do before Will got home from work. As I turned to see if she was following me, I saw her starting to squat in the hall as if to go to the bathroom and knew instantly that she was in labor. I dropped the sheets and hurried to pick her up and carried her to the box we had prepared in the enclosed patio. As soon as I set her down, she delivered her first puppy, and then ran panicked to hide in the bottom of the cat condo. Fortunately, the puppy broke free from the placental sac when it was born. I grabbed the portable phone and called the emergency vet in a panic. Chynna didn’t want anything to do with the puppy, and I didn’t know what to do. As they walked me through tying off the umbilical cord with a piece of dental floss and cutting it with scissors sterilized with rubbing alcohol, Chynna continued to hide. I know she was worried about what she probably thought was a very painful bathroom accident in the house. I gently rubbed the puppy dry with a clean towel and set it on a heating pad, covered with another towel and set to low. It was a little girl, black in color just like Chynna. I then cleaned up the dirty towels and finally coaxed Chynna out of the condo. We didn’t know how many puppies she was pregnant with, and since it had been almost an hour since the birth, I didn’t think she had any more. I gave her lots of praise and hugs while I introduced her to the puppy. Then she started squatting again and tried to deliver another puppy, but this time, the puppy appeared to be stuck. I could see the chubby little face, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Gently I pushed Chynna’s skin back from his cheeks so I could gently pull on his face and he suddenly popped out. He was much bigger than the first little girl, and also a black one. Chynna again hid in the cat condo while I cleaned the new puppy and cut his cord. Once the new puppy was cleaned and resting with the other, they both started crying and Chynna came over to see them. Her curiosity got the best of her and she began to lick them clean. Over the next four hours she delivered four more puppies, almost one an hour. The third puppy was a fawn boy, almost as big as the first boy, then a black girl, another smaller black boy, and then finally—our little fawn girl that we named Crystal. When she was born, her sac didn’t break open when she dropped, and as she frantically scratched from inside the sac, I was frantically trying to tear it open. Finally I was able to snip it open and she was safe. After almost six hours Chynna had six puppies in all, three girls, three boys, four blacks and two fawns. All of them were healthy. By the time the last one was born, Chynna was eagerly cleaning and nursing them.
Over the next eight weeks, the puppies grew quickly and homes were found for all of them except of course our little fawn girl, Crystal. She quickly assumed the role of Queen of the House from her mother, and Shotzy again became a surrogate father, play toy, pillow for her. Angel also did her part—one day when the puppies were about seven weeks old I heard them fighting loudly in the back bedroom where their improvised puppy pen had been set up. As I walked back to the room, I could see Angel sitting on the bed watching them with interest. Looking into the pen, I could see all six puppies pulling a tug-of-war on a bird that Angel had brought in for them. Apparently she didn’t think we were feeding them enough!
Chynna and Crystal went everywhere they could with us. Camping and fishing trips every month during the summer. One year we camped at a different site, and after the first hike up the mountain to see the views both dogs developed horrible limps, holding one of their front paws up in the air. I looked at their pads, between their toes, but couldn’t find any reason for the pain. The rest of the trip they were carried as far as a clearing to go to the bathroom and then spent the rest of the trip resting on pillows. Any attempt to make them walk past the clearing would result in a great deal of pain and limping. I decided that as soon as we got home I was going to have to take them to the vet. When we arrived back home I opened the truck door and climbed out, preparing to pick up and carry the pugs to the house. Amazingly, both dogs jumped out of the truck and ran happily to the house, their excitement to be home unable to be contained. The little brats had been faking it all along, just to avoid going back up the hill and enjoying all the extra pampering and spoiling they got as a result!
The following year I lost my job as the California economy took a dive and employers were forced to lay off employees in order to stay alive. After going through our savings trying to keep the house, we lost
it to foreclosure and moved into a 5th wheel trailer parked on the property of a friend.
Taking three dogs and a cat was not an option, and so the decision was made to find homes for Shotzy and Angel since the pugs would “fit” easier into the 5th wheel, and with coyotes in the area, Angel would not have been able to be an outside cat. Unknown to me, Will had made the decision before actually discussing it with me and had put an ad in one of the local papers. Within the next week I came home twice to find that one of them had gone. Each time I was very upset that I had not been given the opportunity to meet the new owners or say my good-byes to them.
I can see now how Will’s complete disregard for my feelings for Shotzy and Angel were just another sign of his disregard for my feelings at all. I had lost my independence and my individuality as well. I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion unless it was his opinion. I wasn’t allowed to listen to my choice of music, or watch TV shows I wanted. I couldn’t have friends unless they were his friends. If he had a hobby or interest that he was passionate about, I was expected to be just as passionate about it as he was, and could not have any hobby or interests that did not include him or that he wasn’t equally passionate about. When we voted—always by absentee ballot—our cards were punched together so that our votes were the same, regardless of whether or not I agreed with his choices. Discussing any difference of opinion on politics, religion, or any other issue was always a good way to start a fight where no matter what the issue was I was always going to be wrong. I simply wasn’t allowed to have any difference of opinion so there was no need to discuss anything. His word was rule, regardless of whether it was based on solid knowledge or a prejudice based on ignorance and insecurity.
My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs Page 3