My husband’s cat’s name is Pandi. She is currently rubbing against me purring, which means two things: Dan isn’t home and she is hungry. She is a total food whore. if she gets hungry enough she will start biting me. We seem to have an unspoken agreement: I assist in her care and feeding, and she wakes me up …. at 4 am … whenever she damn well feels like it.
I am a dog person married to a cat person. While I tolerate his cat, Dan has informed me that a dog is out of the question. I admit he has good sound reasons. Dogs ARE more work. Dogs DO tie you down; Dogs DO crap all over the yard. But then there is this: A dog is always happy to see you-dogs are the definition of unconditional love. I am a total sucker for those videos of dogs greeting their soldier owners back from the war; it gets me every time–the dogs are completely wild with joy, jumping all over their best friend in the world!
Would a cat do that? Not on your life. A cat would simply stare and blink at you for an extra second or two; before yawning, stretching and settling in for yet another nap.
I used to have a dog named Curly. Curly was a mutt that I got from the pound in the BK (Before kid) days. I was her favorite person. I loved her and she loved me — even when the kids starting arriving and she was no longer at the top of my priority list. At the end of her long life, Curly was deaf, mostly blind, horribly arthritic and mostly incontinent. She would go out in the yard to do her ‘business’ and she would get lost. Since she was deaf, she couldn’t hear us; so I went out into the snow in my robe and slippers to retrieve her on more than one occasion. Her quality of life slowly degraded to a point of no return.
One day at the end of Curly’s decline, My oldest daughter, Kelly, was sick and stayed home from second grade. I stayed home from work and took advantage of the rare day off in the middle of the week to take Curly to the nearby vet to be put down.
By late afternoon, Kelly was feeling better and we were burying Curly’s body in the garden. Kelly’s teacher had said she might stop by with some schoolwork, so I asked Kelly to put a note on the door telling Ms. Fasbender that we were in the back. I should have been more specific, because the note read:
“Ms. Fasbender: Since I was home sick today, my mom killed the dog. We are in the back burying her”.
Well…. I never knew for sure if Ms Fasbender came to our house that day. I do know she didn’t show up in our back yard, and I do know that social services did NOT show up on my door; AND, it was a long time before Kelly was sick on a school day again.