Growing
up, we had a handful of family pets – most notably three beagles: Samson,
Delilah, and the product of their union, Sally.
My
dad brought Samson and Delilah home, as freshly weaned puppies, on the same day
in the summer of 1975. They were both AKC registered, purchased from different
bloodlines, so that they could be bred.
My
dad, a corporate lawyer with no prior record of moonlighting, never bothered to
explain his sudden decision to go into the beagle retailing business. But, I
would learn later on my own that when you’re the dad you just get to do stuff
like that. No questions asked.
And because
my dad also ALWAYS did things the right way – and, more importantly, the most difficult
way – the pups’ first very first night with us was not spent with us, but
rather outside in their doghouse, which my dad built himself.
True
to his nature, Dad offered false hope to neither the puppies nor his kids, ruling
out any chance we might bond during long nights of them licking our faces and
laying across our feet and generally being adorable.
Instead,
they were more like our dad’s tools and our mom’s cigarettes – mysterious and
powerful objects which we knew existed, but were forever beyond our grasp.
Okay,
it wasn’t that bad, but the plan did
call for Samson and Delilah to be “outside dogs.” And outside dogs they would
be, from Day One.
On
the bright side, this arrangement did spare us the grief and headache of
attending to whining puppies during those first nights. In fact, to my
knowledge, Dad was the only person to care for them during those midnight hours.
This was a deviation of such magnitude from his normal my-home-is-my-castle
task-delegating policy that I can more easily imagine he simply stared them
both in the eye, on that first night, and whispered, through gritted teeth, “If
I hear one peep out of you, you will regret it for the remainder of your days.”
Hey,
it worked on his children.
Anyway,
Samson and Delilah may have spent their first night outside, but that is not to
say they were alone, because our housecat Eloise stood watch the entire night,
perched safely atop a hedge beside their dog house.
Eloise
was the strangest creature to ever live on the earth. I am not exaggerating. If
Eloise were a person, she would have been, well…nobody I ever met or heard of. Although,
just sitting here, scrolling through my mental Rolodex of odd characters, I
must admit that the image of “Tim the Enchanter” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind. Or, perhaps,
Courtney Love’s angrier, crazier, twin sister.
(Actually,
if I’m being completely honest about it, the creature Eloise most closely
resembled was … my mom. Which would make Eloise the second strangest creature to ever live on the earth.
No shit. Welcome to my world.
Suffice
it to say that “finicky,” “anti-social,” and “eager to claw great hunks of
flesh from bone” were not traits limited only to our feline pet. Just ask Dad.)
Anyway,
prior to the beagles’ arrival, Eloise had never so much as glanced at the bush in
question, much less hunkered down in it for the night. Come to think of it, I’m
not sure she’d ever climbed anything – other than an innocent human’s bare leg
– before that day.
But
there she was, like she knew what she was doing. And while she could not have
known what, exactly, those wiggling blobs of fur meant to her, she must have
sensed something was amiss – and that
it required her undivided attention. So, she stayed out there all night. Up in
that bush. Staring at those dogs.
I
have a theory about that night.
As an
adult cat, Eloise was much bigger than the puppies, but I have to figure she
knew, at some limbic-brained level, that her physical advantage would not last.
And while there were no witnesses – and Eloise was silent on the subject – I’ve
come to believe that at some time during the night, Eloise did in fact come
down from that bush and put the whoop on those hounds, because they never once,
even when they were older, gave that cat any trouble.
Okay,
that’s not true.
There
was one instance when those dogs set aside whatever treaty had been negotiated
between themselves and Eloise and tried to truly, sincerely, kill that cat.
Samson
and Delilah were both full grown at this point, as was Sally, their “daughter.”
And for reasons known only to the God Of Idiot Teenage Boys, some unnamed numbskull thought it would be funny to secure a tanned rabbit pelt to
Eloise’s back – picture a furry Superman cape – and toss Eloise out into the
backyard among the hounds.
The numbskull was right. It was funny. And we can laugh about now for one reason only. We can
laugh today because Eloise was one-zillionth of a step faster than the dogs, in
particular Samson, who abandoned all notions of interspecies détente and went
directly for the kill shot on Eloise. After some commotion, we rounded up the
baying hounds and Eloise, eventually, returned to earth.
Recently,
I came across a blues song by Texas singer/songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard that
could have been inspired by the Eloise/rabbit pelt/Samson backyard showdown.
Well
I saw this old dog, he was chasin’ this rabbit.
I saw
a dog, he was chasin’ this rabbit.
I saw
a dog, he was chasin’ this rabbit.
It
was on a Sunday, about noon.
I
said to the rabbit, “You gonna make it?”
I
said to the rabbit, “Are you gonna make it?”
I
said to the rabbit, “You gonna make it?”
And
the rabbit said, “Well, I’ve got to.”
Anyway,
we had all of those dogs and the cat for about 10 more years. Delilah died
first. I don’t remember why. A few days later, Samson crawled under a bush and
died. He just gave up. Sally and Eloise were euthanized when my parents separated.
That was pretty messed up, now that I think about it.
But
not terribly surprising.
I
tell this hodgepodge of stories because I think stories of how people and
animals relate say a lot – not so much about the animals as the people. And you’re
all free to draw whatever conclusion you want about the people in this story.
The
conclusion I draw is that it’s a dog-eat-dog (or cat) world – for both pets and
people. And sometimes we do the things we do simply because we’ve got to.
© 2014 Lee B. Weaver
No comments:
Post a Comment