Dave said, “Let’s go to the Dutch place.”
Sam said, “Ice cream, Arthur.”
Arthur’s eyes started to roll back in his head.
That’s when Morley said, “Dave, Arthur doesn’t like the Dutch place. They don’t have soft ice cream there.”
There was a pointed silence.
They went to the Dairy Queen. They took a bowl for Arthur’s ice cream. Dave watched the dog snorting it down, ice cream all over his face.
“Don’t you think this is kind of peculiar?” he said to Morley as they watched the dog eat.
She looked at him strangely. She didn’t understand.
Later in the week when Dave came home from work, he dug out the baseball mitts and said, “Where’s Sam?” He thought they could go to the park. He thought they could throw the ball before supper. Sam was in the yard. He had Arthur tied to his wagon, pulling it up and down the sidewalk.
“I’m busy,” he said. “I don’t want to play ball now.” Arthur gave Dave a look that seemed to say, Butt out, Buddy.
The next night Dave said he would make French fries for dinner. But there were no potatoes.
“Check Arthur’s basket,” said Morley.
Dave said, “What?”
When he is left alone in the house, Arthur steals potatoes. Somehow—no one knows how he does this, because no one has ever seen him do it—he can paw open the cupboard door where the potatoes are kept.
Arthur doesn’t eat the potatoes. He carries them across the kitchen, drops them in his basket and sits on them. There is something about the feeling of being near raw potatoes that Arthur likes.
The night he was trying to make the French fries, Dave found five potatoes in Arthur’s basket.
“Five’s enough,” said Morley.
“You mean,” said Dave incredulously, “that you use potatoes that Arthur has sat on? You’re telling me I have eaten potatoes from the dog basket?”
The final straw came a week later, when Dave found the socks. He was looking for potatoes in Arthur’s basket and uncovered a stash of socks instead—ten single unmatched socks stuffed under the blanket. Dave held up the socks in disbelief. It was like finding an elephant graveyard. He went through the socks one by one. Nine of them were his. He had already thrown their partners out.
He looked at Arthur in horror.
“YOU?!!?” he said.
Arthur as much as shrugged as he walked out of the room.
Sam thought it was funny.
Morley said Dave was overreacting.
Stephanie said, “Why don’t you just buy new socks? What’s the big deal?”
Dave said, “That is not the point. You are missing the point.”
Maybe, if someone had taken his side, things would have turned out differently.
But no one took his side, and that night Dave worked out what Arthur was costing them. Food, vet bills, shots, boarding when they went away (except they never went away because they didn’t want to leave Arthur), potatoes.
“You know what he has probably cost us in potatoes?” said Dave. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a calculator, a pencil and a pad of paper. Morley was on the phone and waved him quiet. When she hung up, Dave began again.
“Where’s the cost benefit here?”
Sam and Stephanie were watching television.
“Shhh!” said Stephanie.
“No one wants to hear this, Dave,” said Morley as she left the room, adding, over her shoulder, “Why don’t you work out what I cost?”
Dave said, “This is not a healthy relationship.”
Stephanie said, “That’s for sure.”
Dave said, “If you had a roommate who behaved like that dog, you’d call the police. Or a lawyer.”
No one was paying attention.
That night when he and Morley were reading in bed, Dave put his magazine down and said, “Name me one useful thing Arthur can do.”
Morley sighed and rested her book on her stomach. “He can shake hands.”
Dave propped himself up on an elbow.
“Listen to me. You know what he is? He’s a wolf. He’s just a small evolutionary step away from a wolf. Are you telling me you want to live with a wolf who can shake hands?”
On the weekend Dave went to Canadian Tire and came back with a doghouse made of extruded plastic. It was the last one left, white with dark plastic wood trim in the style of a Swiss ski chalet.
On Sunday night, Arthur went out into the yard. Into the doghouse.
“It’s where a dog belongs,” said Dave, coming back inside, washing his hands.
Not Arthur. Not, where Arthur belongs. As if he didn’t know Arthur’s name. As if they hadn’t lived together for five years.
Dinner was morose, cutlery rattling coldly on china—everyone eating silently while Arthur stood by the back door and whimpered.
“No one say a word,” said Dave.
On Monday, Dave arrived home with a huge bag of beef bones. He threw one into the backyard and the rest into the freezer. Arthur fell onto his bone with wolfish delight.
“See,” said Dave, to no one in particular.
But at dinner Arthur was back at the door.
Whimpering.
They were all hunched over their plates. No one wanted to make eye contact with Arthur. No one wanted to look at Dave.
Sam was pushing his food around his plate half-heartedly. When he reached for the milk jug to refill his glass for the third time, Morley stopped him and said, “Eat your fish first, Sam.”
Sam said, “I hate fish.”
Morley furrowed her brow. “You don’t hate fish,” she said.
Stephanie snorted. “He usually feeds his fish to Arthur.”
Sam hit Stephanie.
Dave smiled triumphantly.
Tuesday night at supper when Arthur appeared at the back door, he was holding his paw up to his chest. He looked like a beggar.
Morley said, “He looks pathetic. He looks like he has been beaten up.”
Dave shook his head. “He’s faking. Don’t pay any attention.”
Arthur turned and limped back to his doghouse.
Dave said, “I’m not falling for that.”
Supper was turning into an ordeal.
On Wednesday Dave said, “He’s just trying to get our sympathy.”
Sam stood up abruptly. “I can’t stand this,” he said. “I hate sausage.” And he left the table.
Morley looked puzzled as she watched Sam storm off. “He has always liked sausage before.”
Dave reached over to Sam’s plate with his fork, speared one of the sausages and brought it over to his plate. “People used to believe that early man domesticated dogs.” He pointed at his son’s plate to see if anyone else wanted anything. “You know what they believe now? They believe that wolves took a look at human campfires and garbage piles and they recognized a good thing. They figured out ways of getting close to the fire without being eaten. They started to wag their tails and whimper—just like Arthur. These are just innate behaviors that have served them on their climb up the evolutionary ladder—behaviors that have helped them mooch off us.”
He had Sam’s last sausage on his fork. He was waving it between his wife and daughter. “Are you sure you don’t want this?”
Morley stood up and walked away. She was going upstairs to talk to Sam.
“I’m serious,” said Dave, raising his voice as she disappeared. “You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out it’s better to curl up by a fire than fight it out in the wild. This is the latest research. We’re being exploited by a wolf !”
“Arthur?” said Stephanie, who was the only one left at the table. “You’re nuts.”
“Theoretically,” said Dave, “Arthur could turn on us at any time. He could drive us out of the cave.”
On Thursday night when Dave took Arthur for his walk, the limp was more pronounced.
On Friday, after a block, Arthur sat down and wouldn’t budge. D
ave had to carry him home.
“Maybe,” he said, “I should take him to the vet.”
It was eleven-thirty at night.
“There’s an all-night place,” said Morley. “I took the guinea pig there once. Please call me if it’s serious.”
As he was heading out the door, Stephanie came downstairs with Arthur’s blanket. She handed it to her father. “If you put him to sleep, I’m leaving home.”
When Dave arrived at the clinic, there were two people in the waiting room. One of them, a young man with green spiked hair and a black leather jacket, was sitting stiffly in his seat holding a small cardboard box. Every few minutes there was a scuffling from the box and it jerked about in his lap. The other person, a man in a charcoal suit, was slumped back and staring at the ceiling. He looked like someone stranded at an airport—his tie was loose, he needed a shave. He was holding a turtle the size of a dinner platter in his lap.
The receptionist looked just as tired. His eyes were heavy and dark. He needed a shave too. He handed Dave a form and said, “It’s seventy-five dollars for an examination. Treatment, if he needs shots or anything, is extra.”
Dave paid the seventy-five dollars.
The receptionist said, “The vet is trying to save a budgie. It could be a while.”
He stood up and looked over the counter at Arthur and he brightened for the first time.
“Hello there,” he said softly.
Arthur, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the moving cardboard box, twisted around. His tail began to wag.
The receptionist walked around the counter and kneeled down, scratching Arthur behind the ears. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. You’re a good boy.” Arthur rested his head on the receptionist’s knees.
The receptionist smiled and looked up at Dave. “I had a dog just like this when I was a kid.
“You’re a good puppy,” he said turning back to Arthur. “It was just the greatest dog in the world. I was sick once and it wouldn’t leave my room.” Arthur was lying down now and the clerk had his hand buried in his belly. “My parents had to bring his food upstairs to my room. He wouldn’t leave. You don’t get that kind of loyalty from the people in your life. No matter how much they tell you they love you.”
He stood up suddenly. “You fill out the form,” he said. “I have to weigh him.” He took Arthur away.
As Dave watched Arthur limp off, he felt an intense wave of affection for the dog. He turned and began to scratch his name onto the form. Suddenly the notion of banishing Arthur to the yard seemed cruel—as foolish as sending one of his children to sleep in the garage. No wonder Arthur’s leg was bothering him. He wasn’t young anymore. The chill of the night ground would make anyone’s legs ache.
The receptionist was back in under a minute. He handed Dave Arthur’s collar. He was shaking his head.
“He had his front leg shoved right through this. I don’t know how he managed that. It was so tight I had to cut it off. It’s amazing he could even walk.”
Dave took the collar and stared at it stupidly.
The vet walked into the front office and looked around.
“Who’s next?”
Arthur was standing by Dave, holding his paw up, examining it as if he had never seen it before.
Dave looked down at his dog and then back at the vet.
But the vet wasn’t looking at Dave, he was already bent over, patting Arthur. Looking down at the top of the vet’s head Dave noticed a dramatic comb-over.
“What a prince,” said the vet.
“I think they were before me,” said Dave, looking at the two men in the waiting room. The man with the turtle had fallen asleep, the turtle was moving ponderously down his outstretched legs toward the floor.
“They’re waiting on blood tests,” said the vet, standing up. He walked over to the sleeping man, picked up the turtle and turned it around so it was crawling up instead of down the man’s legs.
“Follow me,” he said to Dave.
Arthur loped into the examination room beside the vet, his tail thumping.
“What’s the problem?” asked the vet.
Dave said, “I just uh . . . I just wanted . . . uh . . . I just wanted you to check him over. He has been a little . . . listless.”
He looked down at Arthur.
Arthur’s tail was wagging furiously. He looked anything but listless.
The vet lifted him onto the examining table, looked into his eyes, his ears, his mouth. Listened to his heart.
“He seems fine now,” he said. “Do you have air-conditioning at home?”
“It hasn’t been working properly. At night,” said Dave.
“It could be the heat,” said the vet. “Keep him out of the sun. Give him lots of water.”
Dave nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.
The vet looked puzzled.
“Bringing him here. At this time of night. For nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the vet. “There is nothing wrong with worrying about your pet. It’s not owners like you who owe me an apology.” The vet was washing his hands. “I just wish everyone cared enough about their animals to bring them in before real problems develop. You wouldn’t believe the things I see some nights. You wouldn’t believe how some dogs are treated.”
Outside, Arthur looked up at Dave, his tail wagging. Before they pulled out of the parking lot he licked Dave’s hand.
They passed a Dairy Queen on the way home, and Dave pulled over. Dave had a vanilla milkshake. Arthur had a soft cone with sprinkles and nuts.
When they got home, Arthur checked his bowl and finding it empty, headed upstairs.
He was lying in his basket when Dave came up. Dave looked at him and at the vent in his bedroom. He began to shut the bedroom door and then stopped. Instead he went downstairs and fetched an electric fan from the basement. He set it on his bureau, turned it on and crawled into bed. Morley was already asleep.
“We’re back,” he whispered. “Everything is fine.”
Twenty minutes later Arthur opened one eye. Lifted his head and looked around.
Galway
Galway, the cat, arrived in Dave and Morley’s life courtesy of Dave’s sister, Annie. Annie left Galway with Dave when she returned to Nova Scotia after living in and around Boston for almost a decade.
The cat, lean and beige, arrived with an ominous warning. “I don’t like to say this out loud,” cautioned Annie, “but whenever the cat’s around, things seem to go wrong.”
Annie named the cat Galway after the American poet Galway Kinnell—a gesture of affection for the poet’s work.
It didn’t take long, however, for Dave to recognize that the cat, either by coincidence or some quirk of destiny, had a poet’s sensibility—being shy, to the point of misanthropy, and failing, in any real sense, to make connections in her new family. She terrorized Arthur, the dog, picked on Dave and largely ignored Morley and Stephanie. Only Sam, then nine, seemed able to meet Galway on equal ground.
One thing that leads a person to poetry is an inner life of some activity—often even turbulence. There is a weight of emotion, a burden of feeling that has to come out.
Galway had been living with Dave and Morley a year before she began to overgroom. Dave isn’t sure when it began. One day, in the middle of the winter, he noticed Galway had licked the hair off both her front paws. It was not long after when he noticed there were bald spots on her hind legs.
The vet suggested the sleepers.
“Those little one-piece pajamas,” he said. “The ones you put babies in. With the snaps. Cut out the legs. And a bit at the back. So . . . you know.”
Dave said, “You’re kidding.”
The vet said, “It will stop her licking.”
Sam thought Galway looked cute in the pajamas. “She looks like a monkey,” he said. “I’ve always wanted a monkey.”
Galway thought otherwise and disappeared. She was somewhere in the house—she emptied her food dish during the night.
You could sense her shadowy presence, but no one saw her.
“It makes you wonder,” said Dave, “if there are other animals moving around the house you never see.”
Galway reappeared abruptly after a week. One evening while Dave was watching television he looked up, and there was Galway smouldering hatred from the top of the bookshelves. She was still wearing the jammies, though the legs were frayed at the bottom and chewed through at the knees. She had been rubbing at the only fur available—the fur on her ears and the back of her head. She had gone completely bald. In the ripped and threadbare pajamas and with her rat-like head she had the threatening menace of a skinhead.
She was still around the next morning, but she didn’t acknowledge anyone. And she began grooming again. She started with the little balls on Stephanie’s chenille bedspread. In two days Galway licked Stephanie’s bedspread flat. One night Morley got up, went to the bathroom and caught Galway grooming her toothbrush. It took Morley two seconds to teach the cat not to do that again.
She moved on to Arthur. One afternoon Dave came home and found the dog splayed out on the floor with Galway perched on his back, grooming his ear. Arthur, who habitually rushed to greet anyone who walked through the door, looked at Dave self-consciously, then sighed contentedly and dropped his head back to the floor.
“I don’t think she’s necessarily crazy,” said Dave. “Maybe not even neurotic. I think she’s bored. I think she needs a challenge.”
And that is when Dave decided to toilet train the cat.
“If I’m going to take the time to teach her things, they might as well be useful things. Anyway, it’s a skill that seems to dovetail with her interests.”
Dave had seen something on television about a cat who could use a toilet. He figured it wouldn’t be difficult to train her. Like teaching any animal a new trick, the most important part would be to move slowly. The most important part would be patience.
He decided the first step would be to move Galway’s litter box out of the basement. He would do it in stages, so he wouldn’t upset her.
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