The tragic news of the loss of life and destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has been overwhelming. It’s difficult to imagine writing something serious as it would seem so trite by comparison.
After what has happened, I decided we need more whimsy in the world and on this Blog. We need some sort of feel-good story, or just a simple anecdote or daydream. For reasons I can’t explain, the title of Stephen Sondheim’s play “A Little Night Music” came to mind as something to soothe the heavy heart. Even soothier was the name of the Igmar Bergman film the play was based on, Smiles of a Summer Night.
The last week of the unofficial end to summer seemed like there was nothing to smile about, but I will do my part and oblige with a little light fare. I hope others will post their happy and fun thoughts to help blunt an otherwise depressing news day. By the way, where’s Nicholas when you need him? Cairo? What the hell is he doing there? OK, so here’s my fluffy-animal story:
My favorite daughter Emily, who grew up learning gymnastics with black patent leather shoes apparently too close to the Slade’s entry wall, has an affinity for animals of all sorts. She’s much too pretty and fun to be called that “crazy cat lady” yet, but she’s getting close with her new round of cat fostering. Sitting in “my” bathroom in Sacramento is a bucketful of kittens; five to be exact. A barrel-full of monkeys has nothing on this gaggle of 8-10 week-old kittens.
The reason they have taken over MY bathroom (with the Super Flush 2000, and the air-sucker fan -- ahhhhhh!) is because Emily agreed to take any cats that the animal shelter deems are too sick to be adopted. It turns out there were these five unrelated kittens, all with respiratory illnesses in need of safe harbor while they mend. Naturally five kittens are not too much for my bathroom and Emily to handle (have I told you yet how serene this bathroom is?).
The kittens were all named by Emily to match their namesakes and personalities of characters from Reno 911. Jonesy is always purring but has a habit of scratching; Junior is the shape of a football, small head and tail, huge orange belly. He can’t stop eating, although that isn’t really like Junior from the show. Perhaps she should put a Kevlar vest on him.
While Emily likes Garcia, all the other kittens don’t seem too fond of him and don’t want anything to do with him. He also hit Jonesy once and, like the show, Jonesy had to pull crosswalk duty as a result. Weigel is crazy and won’t take her meds, and Dangle is kind of gay and boring.
They are definitely nocturnal and can be heard banging against the door playing all night long. Anything amuses them. They play with these little balls with bells in them in the bathtub (not that this bathroom hasn’t seen larger balls before, I can tell you). They also play with cat poop, my Super Sucker 2000, Emily’s hair, and virtually anything that moves.
When they sleep, though, they all sleep in a ball that is a mélange of color. One is an orange tabby, Jonesy is orange and white, and the others are sort of gray tabbies.
Emily has found such joy in helping animals. Just about one year ago today, she came to us and said there was a dog on the Animal Shelter’s website that was going to be euthanized the following day. We were skeptical of both the threat to give the dog a fateful shot and of Emily’s long-term willingness to take care of the dog. She took a friend to see this dog and instantly fell in love with a decrepit, broken, scared and battered beagle. She phoned us and told us to come down and give our opinion.
It turns out the dog was indeed marked for death as the Sacramento Animal Shelter euthanizes dogs after a certain period, and nobody was going to take this sad sack of a dog in the next 24 hours except someone with a caring heart. That turned out to be Emily, so we were given a discount to buy the dog (imagine owning a marked-down pet), and put her shaking body in the car. It didn’t seem as though she would survive the trip home, the beagle looked so frightened and old.
We found out that an older couple had dropped the dog off saying they were too old to care for it. When it arrived at the shelter, the workers thought the dog was black because it was covered from head to toe with fleas. Instead she was a white and tan beagle. She also was at least nine years old but looked much older. Her tail was broken, she had such bad arthritis that she walked like a peg-legged pirate, and she had a four-inch glob of tumor dangling from her body. One eye bulged out of her head due to advance stages of glaucoma. A vet told us that the pain from the disease would be impossible to bear if she were human – but I suppose if she were human she would have been better cared for. Oh, and the dog had never been spayed and was nearly bred to death.
Naturally we named her Flash after the “great” speed in which she walked (I think she ran once, though).
We took Flash to the vet and were told she was suffering from many ailments, not the least among them was cancer. We were told that it would cost us $3,000 to have all the operations that were needed. But, as luck would have it, Andrew Whitaker, through some sort of clerical error, was admitted to the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and Emily called him to see what he could do. We believe the school had never seen a dog in such bad shape and agreed to do cancer screening, remove her eye, have her spayed, and give her the once-over for $300. Her biopsy report indicated there was no place that cancer did not exist and Emily was told not to expect her to live very long.
Emily cared for Flash and nurtured her and spent nearly every opportunity by her side. Flash often slept on top of Emily with her nose tucked under Em’s arm. Flash became very comfortable in her new surrounding, particularly after the eye was removed and the pressure gone. She took to sleeping on her back, legs spread, acting very un-lady-like.
Emily had Flash in her life for eight months when it became painfully obvious that her health was rapidly deteriorating. The cancer had moved to her liver and quickly all her organs were slowing down. On a Saturday I was traveling back east for about 10 days and wondered if I would see Flash again as she was slipping so fast. Four hours later, stopping over at the Minneapolis airport, I turned on my cell phone and just as I did, Emily called and simply said “Flash is gone.” I will never forget those words and it made me cry, mostly for Emily who loved Flash so much. Flash was at peace, knowing that the last eight months of her life were better than the previous 10 years all thanks to Emily.
She told me that Flash was unable to get out of her favorite bed to eat or go outside. She called Andrew who assured her the time had come. Emily gathered up her animal soul-mate and, along with her human soul-mate, stayed with Flash and held her for twenty minutes before the medication was given to her to put her at peace. Emily said a lot of people told her how great it was for Flash that Emily had given so much love to her. But Emily said it was the other way around; that she was grateful of all the love Flash gave her back.
So now you’re thinking I have gone from a happy kitten story to a sad ending. But there is a happy ending to this story too. About four months later, a beagle-Jack Russell Terrier mix was running around our backyard. She looked like a younger and skinny version of Flash. It turned out that a neighbor had seen her running around the street and put her in his car to keep her out of traffic. He did his best to find her owner and then took her home. The neighbor couldn’t keep the dog and Emily quickly offered to give it a home until the owners could be found or until she could put her up for adoption.
The neighbor named the dog Spooner because it insists on spooning with you as you try to sleep. It became evident to Emily, Gail and I that Spooner was going to be staying and now Em has another dog who loves her and who she can love. Spooner even got the nickname “Spoonie Love From Up Above” because we all believe she was sent by Flash so we wouldn’t be so lonely. See? Nice ending. I told ya.
The tragic news of the loss of life and destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has been overwhelming. It’s difficult to imagine writing something serious as it would seem so trite by comparison.
After what has happened, I decided we need more whimsy in the world and on this Blog. We need some sort of feel-good story, or just a simple anecdote or daydream. For reasons I can’t explain, the title of Stephen Sondheim’s play “A Little Night Music” came to mind as something to soothe the heavy heart. Even soothier was the name of the Igmar Bergman film the play was based on, Smiles of a Summer Night.
The last week of the unofficial end to summer seemed like there was nothing to smile about, but I will do my part and oblige with a little light fare. I hope others will post their happy and fun thoughts to help blunt an otherwise depressing news day. By the way, where’s Nicholas when you need him? Cairo? What the hell is he doing there? OK, so here’s my fluffy-animal story:
My favorite daughter Emily, who grew up learning gymnastics with black patent leather shoes apparently too close to the Slade’s entry wall, has an affinity for animals of all sorts. She’s much too pretty and fun to be called that “crazy cat lady” yet, but she’s getting close with her new round of cat fostering. Sitting in “my” bathroom in Sacramento is a bucketful of kittens; five to be exact. A barrel-full of monkeys has nothing on this gaggle of 8-10 week-old kittens.
The reason they have taken over MY bathroom (with the Super Flush 2000, and the air-sucker fan -- ahhhhhh!) is because Emily agreed to take any cats that the animal shelter deems are too sick to be adopted. It turns out there were these five unrelated kittens, all with respiratory illnesses in need of safe harbor while they mend. Naturally five kittens are not too much for my bathroom and Emily to handle (have I told you yet how serene this bathroom is?).
The kittens were all named by Emily to match their namesakes and personalities of characters from Reno 911. Jonesy is always purring but has a habit of scratching; Junior is the shape of a football, small head and tail, huge orange belly. He can’t stop eating, although that isn’t really like Junior from the show. Perhaps she should put a Kevlar vest on him.
While Emily likes Garcia, all the other kittens don’t seem too fond of him and don’t want anything to do with him. He also hit Jonesy once and, like the show, Jonesy had to pull crosswalk duty as a result. Weigel is crazy and won’t take her meds, and Dangle is kind of gay and boring.
They are definitely nocturnal and can be heard banging against the door playing all night long. Anything amuses them. They play with these little balls with bells in them in the bathtub (not that this bathroom hasn’t seen larger balls before, I can tell you). They also play with cat poop, my Super Sucker 2000, Emily’s hair, and virtually anything that moves.
When they sleep, though, they all sleep in a ball that is a mélange of color. One is an orange tabby, Jonesy is orange and white, and the others are sort of gray tabbies.
Emily has found such joy in helping animals. Just about one year ago today, she came to us and said there was a dog on the Animal Shelter’s website that was going to be euthanized the following day. We were skeptical of both the threat to give the dog a fateful shot and of Emily’s long-term willingness to take care of the dog. She took a friend to see this dog and instantly fell in love with a decrepit, broken, scared and battered beagle. She phoned us and told us to come down and give our opinion.
It turns out the dog was indeed marked for death as the Sacramento Animal Shelter euthanizes dogs after a certain period, and nobody was going to take this sad sack of a dog in the next 24 hours except someone with a caring heart. That turned out to be Emily, so we were given a discount to buy the dog (imagine owning a marked-down pet), and put her shaking body in the car. It didn’t seem as though she would survive the trip home, the beagle looked so frightened and old.
We found out that an older couple had dropped the dog off saying they were too old to care for it. When it arrived at the shelter, the workers thought the dog was black because it was covered from head to toe with fleas. Instead she was a white and tan beagle. She also was at least nine years old but looked much older. Her tail was broken, she had such bad arthritis that she walked like a peg-legged pirate, and she had a four-inch glob of tumor dangling from her body. One eye bulged out of her head due to advance stages of glaucoma. A vet told us that the pain from the disease would be impossible to bear if she were human – but I suppose if she were human she would have been better cared for. Oh, and the dog had never been spayed and was nearly bred to death.
Naturally we named her Flash after the “great” speed in which she walked (I think she ran once, though).
We took Flash to the vet and were told she was suffering from many ailments, not the least among them was cancer. We were told that it would cost us $3,000 to have all the operations that were needed. But, as luck would have it, Andrew Whitaker, through some sort of clerical error, was admitted to the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and Emily called him to see what he could do. We believe the school had never seen a dog in such bad shape and agreed to do cancer screening, remove her eye, have her spayed, and give her the once-over for $300. Her biopsy report indicated there was no place that cancer did not exist and Emily was told not to expect her to live very long.
Emily cared for Flash and nurtured her and spent nearly every opportunity by her side. Flash often slept on top of Emily with her nose tucked under Em’s arm. Flash became very comfortable in her new surrounding, particularly after the eye was removed and the pressure gone. She took to sleeping on her back, legs spread, acting very un-lady-like.
Emily had Flash in her life for eight months when it became painfully obvious that her health was rapidly deteriorating. The cancer had moved to her liver and quickly all her organs were slowing down. On a Saturday I was traveling back east for about 10 days and wondered if I would see Flash again as she was slipping so fast. Four hours later, stopping over at the Minneapolis airport, I turned on my cell phone and just as I did, Emily called and simply said “Flash is gone.” I will never forget those words and it made me cry, mostly for Emily who loved Flash so much. Flash was at peace, knowing that the last eight months of her life were better than the previous 10 years all thanks to Emily.
She told me that Flash was unable to get out of her favorite bed to eat or go outside. She called Andrew who assured her the time had come. Emily gathered up her animal soul-mate and, along with her human soul-mate, stayed with Flash and held her for twenty minutes before the medication was given to her to put her at peace. Emily said a lot of people told her how great it was for Flash that Emily had given so much love to her. But Emily said it was the other way around; that she was grateful of all the love Flash gave her back.
So now you’re thinking I have gone from a happy kitten story to a sad ending. But there is a happy ending to this story too. About four months later, a beagle-Jack Russell Terrier mix was running around our backyard. She looked like a younger and skinny version of Flash. It turned out that a neighbor had seen her running around the street and put her in his car to keep her out of traffic. He did his best to find her owner and then took her home. The neighbor couldn’t keep the dog and Emily quickly offered to give it a home until the owners could be found or until she could put her up for adoption.
The neighbor named the dog Spooner because it insists on spooning with you as you try to sleep. It became evident to Emily, Gail and I that Spooner was going to be staying and now Em has another dog who loves her and who she can love. Spooner even got the nickname “Spoonie Love From Up Above” because we all believe she was sent by Flash so we wouldn’t be so lonely. See? Nice ending. I told ya.
4 comments:
By the way, who thinks Skip and I need "real" jobs?
I have MANY real jobs. I maintain http://pulltabchain.freewebpage.org; I pet my dog, Cooper, the best dog ever; I watch sports and other stuff on television; I substitute in a classroom when the teacher can't take it anymore; I gaze into the distant; I read Lazlo's Lament; I check ebay everyday; and I contemplate MY navel.
Emily is the best, though evidence of her early gymnastics exploits are lost forever.
I want to date your daughter.
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