Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Four Labs & a Tomcat named Trespasser

Howdy y'all!  That's "Okie" for "G'day, mate!"

And that's apropos of nothing except it's my day to blog about dogs and cats.
The first Lab I knew up close and personal was a guide dog for a blind girl named Kibby. She was a black Lab named Dolly.  Kibby was in my physical anthro class at OU, and we were lab partners.  It was an amazing partnership. I could "show" Kibby things she couldn't see with words, and she could show me things I couldn't see with words, but which she could feel when putting her small hands inside a human skull.  It goes without saying what a help Dolly was to Kibby, but she was the best "Lab" partner an old lady like me (I was 49 when I when back to finish my degree.) could possibly have.  Dolly was getting along in years herself, and the class was in a cold basement with a cement floor.  Dolly liked to sleep on my feet, and I appreciated the warmth, both physical and spiritual.

The second Lab I met was a yellow female named Ralph. The kids down the mountain who "owned" her named her Toto.  It just didn't fit, and she adored my friend Bill, followed him everywhere on his farm. He's the one who named her Ralph.  We were visiting on the occasion of my daughter marrying Bill's son.  One day we were all sitting out on lawn chairs smoking, drinking coffee, and eating cookies.  The only part of that social event my grandson, the Cookie Monster, was sharing in was the cookies.  He had one in each fist, and Ralph trotted by, helping herself to the one in his left hand.  Ethan immediately began to cry over that lost cookie. C'mon, he was only 3 1/2 and he was there to be the "ring bear."  He was deeply disappointed he didn't get to wear a bear suit.  He got over that when he found out he got to wear a cool grey tux just like uncle Blaine's.  He got over the loss of the cookie, too, when we assured he did not want one with doggie slobbers on it and magically replaced it with one just like it.  I don't know why I don't have a picture of either of them, but these two could be Ralph and Bear:


Bear was an abused pound puppy rescued by my grandson Ethan and his mom.  She was truly a loyal, loving creature who saved my grandson's life more than once.  As I mentioned in my post about Bubba, my Basset Hound,
my grandson was one of the smallest preemies ever saved back in those days. As a result, he's had sleep apnea all his life.  He was only on oxygen and a heart lung monitor until he was about two, but he would still stop breathing in his sleep.  One night, in the middle of the night Bear woke my daughter up barking insistently. Thinking the dog need to go out, Kristin said, "Okay, okay." But Bear wouldn't go past Ethan's room and insisted Kris go in there. When she did, Ethan wasn't breathing, and Kris had to revive him.

When I had sell to Mama's house, Kris and Ethan had to move to an apartment where they couldn't have dogs.  Bear came to live with Tom and I.
She stayed until I had to find homes for both Sky and Bear. They were just too big and Tom kept tripping over them. Once I had to call 911 to help me get him up off the floor.  So Sky and Bear went to live with our friend Sarah on her blackberry farm in Tennessee until Sarah got a divorce.  She gave Bear to her three grand daughters, who fussed over her and played "dress up" with her.  Last time I talked to Sarah, the girls' parents had just bought Bear her own yellow Lab puppy, and her heart's desire to be a mommy was fulfilled.  Sky had gone to live with Sarah's son Joel, a grad student in Boulder, CO, so he finally learned that Huskies DO like snow!

The last Lab is a sweet old girl named Dottie.  Like me, Dottie is a senior citizen.  She lives next door to my God daughter in Dongola, IL, where I started writing Ghost Walk.  Dottie loves to play ball, especially with a basket ball.  She'd rather watch someone else run down the hill and fetch it.  So, thanks to Dottie, I lost about 40 pounds while living there.

Trespasser 
 
This big ole marshmallow goes under a couple of names.  He doesn't belong to anyone, just to himself.  Carlene, my God daughter's neighbor, calls him "Papa," because when he first arrived on the scene his goal was to people the neighborhood with little replicas of himself.  After the first litter by another stray cat arrived, the mama cat died.  Carlene helped Papa care for the kittens, then coaxed him into a cat carrier for a trip to the neighborhood vet.
 
Mary Rae has four adorable cats, Pokey a long haired calico, Iesca a big black and white, Pancake a white cat, and Sparky a black cat. Pokey and Iesca are litter mates and don't get along well.  Pancake was a rescued cat, hit by a car on Hwy 51 near Dongola.  His jaw was broken and his tail bobbed.  Mary took him to the vet and he survived.  Sparky we found in the electric company parking lot.  She'd been abandoned one night in a driving rain.  Anyway, Iesca was prone to misbehaving when upset.  Once Pokey was particular mean to him, so he pooped in the kitchen sink.  Mary Rae tossed him out in the cold to ponder his miscreant ways.  Papa promptly beat the snot out of Iesca, and Mary Rae just as promptly let Iesca back in and dubbed the grey tabby Trespasser!
 
Trespasser loves to share meals.  One morning I was sitting on the back stoop eating a bowl of oatmeal with butter and brown sugar in it.  Trespasser stuck his paw in to beg for a bite, and was thrilled to find himself in possession of the entire bowl.  At noon he reciprocated by bringing me a dead frog.  I declined, but that didn't stop him from bringing me more frogs, once a baby bird, and once a shrew or a vole, I'm not sure which.  He's a love, and I'll miss him when I move back to Oklahoma.     
 



 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Tales of Three Cats

Hope this is readable. Today I'm using the "royal purple," because once again I'm blogging about cats - and we all know cats think they rule - and often do.

First a word about Charlie. I forgot one funny story about Charlie that bears telling. When Charlie was a kitten, he loved playing with toys on a string, or just a string. As he moved on into a rotund adulthood, he still loved to play, but wasn't as highly motivated.  One Thanksgiving, my younger daughter (yes, his rescuer) was over to visit.  I was tempting Charlie with a fluffy cat toy on a string. He rolled this way and that on his roly-poly behind, batting at it haphazardly while we all laughed.  She promptly dubbed him "Jabba the Hut!"

During my second marriage, my husband Tom and I were owned by three cats.  The first was Coffee, a little tortoise shell, with ideas of her own.  Busy with a full time job, a husband going back to college for a third degree (no pun intended - Tom was a retired cop), and a red Husky to care for, I guess I didn't get the litter box cleaned out fast enough to please Coffee.  That night, she climbed into the bed and peed on my back.  If the loud cursing while we changed my nightgown and the bedding didn't clue her in, Coffee had to know her days were numbered.  Within the week she found a new home with Wanda, the girlfriend of a rock musician who used to live with us from time to time. 

A couple of weeks later, we were shopping in Wally World.  You know how they cunningly display those appealing pictures of pets who need to be adopted near the pet supplies aisle?  Well, there he was - a purebred Siamese, neutered, named "Tom!"  I knew "Tom" was coming to live with us, and he did.  However, the name just didn't suit him. Tom had had a purebred Siamese named "Sammy" when growing up, so "Tom" became "Sammy Two."  Once we got him home, I did two terrible things to him, quite unwittingly.  We bought him one of those webbed cat collars which was way too long, so I nipped it off to a reasonable length. Unbeknownst to either of us, the damned thing was wicking up water every time Sammy took a drink, then when it dried it shrank until it was eventually choking him.  One day Sammy went missing. We looked all over the house, upstairs and down.  We even got Sky and the De Soto cops in on the search. At long last, I found Sky sitting in the basement, whimpering.  I looked up, and there was Sammy, perched in the basement rafters, unable to meow or even croak. I brought him upstairs, and we cut the offending collar off, doctoring his wound, which encircled his entire neck, with Neosporin.  He forgave us, or at least forgave Tom.

                                 Sammy, post dental surgery to remove the bad tooth.

To add insult to injury, when we got Sammy home, we discovered he only had two toes on his left foot. We never knew if he was born that way - Siamese are prone to foot deformities, but usually it's polydactily, not the other way around, or was the victim of a botched de-clawing.  Once Tom named him Sammy, I promptly nick-named him Sammy Two Toes.  He was not amused, in fact, he was downright offended.  He never forgave me.  Sam also had a lower canine that stuck out, giving him  an upside down sneer, a la Elvis. You know me - I couldn't resist. I called him Snagglepuss. He was also highly offended by that, but at least he had the good grace not to piss in the middle of my back!

When Sam reached the end of his days, about age 17 or 18, my younger daughter paid to have him cremated, and he's in the basement, in a plastic tub, in his pretty little urn, waiting for the move to Mountain Air, NM, a writer's colony where Tom and I intended to retire. Since we never got to make that move, as soon as I find Sammy he's going to reside in my shrink Ray's pet cemetery. Ray is a fancier of the noble Siamese.  

The final character in my litany of felinis nobilis is Larry.  Tom got the bright idea that I should have my own cat, though I was perfectly happy with my red Husky.  He adopted a lilac Burmese with china blue eyes named Ling.  When we got home from our second honeymoon, a trip which entailed picking up my grandson to spend part of the summer with us, they went to the vet and picked up my birthday present - Ling.  Well, Ling hated everybody and everything.  He wouldn't have anything to do with any of us.  Morty, the rock musician I mentioned earlier, promptly diagnosed the problem.  "The problem is, your cat doesn't like you, because you're calling him by the wrong name."  
                                                Larry getting a chuckle under the chin.


Knowing Morty sometimes appeared to be a few tacos short of a complete meal, I snapped back, "How do you know that?"  I shoulda known. "Because he told me so." So, of course I had to ask, "Oh yeah? So what's his real name?"  "Larry." Not wanting to offend Mort, we began to call the cat Larry.  And guess who became Mr. Friendly?  You guessed it.  We discovered a few things about Larry during his tenure with us.  One, he was a bit of an escape artist, which is probably how he came to reside in the pound.  One Sunday morning when chow was served, Larry didn't show up.  As in the case of the missing Sammy, we searched upstairs and down with no result.  I thought I'd take a look outside before calling the cops.  Sure enough, between the wall and our huge dog carrier on the front deck was a pitiful, chilled, very bloody Larry.  Apparently, one of the teenagers who speed up and down this street when school isn't in session, or one of the early arrivers at the church across the street hit Larry.

We weren't able to reach our vet, but found one 50 miles away who was willing to come in on a Sunday to treat our feline foundling.  He howled for 50 miles going and 50 miles returning. All he had was a broken leg and a lot of missing hide.  The vet set the leg, splinted it with a couple of tongue depressors, and wrapped it in gauze. Once we got him home, we discovered it was impossible to keep him from trying to chew the gauze off, so I rigged up a contraption consisting of an empty toilet paper tube fastened on with more gauze. Our gauze bill for the next four weeks was astronomical!

The six week recuperation period was the only time Sammy ever allowed Larry in the bed with us.  He allowed him to sleep between Tom and I.  Since Sammy was doing the fur hat number with Tom, Sky liked to sleep spooned up to me while I was spooned up to Tom, and my grandson's yellow Lab, Bear, liked to sleep on our feet, it was pretty crowded in that bed! By the way, Larry never tried to escape again.

We also discovered Larry was an absolute slut for shrimp. Sammy didn't care for them, he preferred his dry cat food. So when we had shrimp, Larry got the lion's share.  After Tom died, I started remodeling the house for a quick sale and a move back to Oklahoma.  I also decided I never wanted to clean another litter box again as long as I lived. Larry now resides with a friend of mine named Steve. Steve and Larry are great buds, Larry gets the occasional shrimp feast. He even goes outside to poop, and has never attempted to escape.  Go figure!

I know I said this would be my last post on felines, but on the next post, when I talk about Ralph and Bear, two of the most unique female yellow labs I've ever known, I'll also tell you about an adorable black Lab named Dottie and a feral tabby named Trespasser.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Fred the Alligator

I still have a couple of cats and a couple of dogs I want to talk about before I abandon this obsession of reminiscence about what my crazy old cowboy uncle used to refer to as my "livestock," but today seemed like the perfect, dreary day to talk about the most unusual pet my kids ever had.  One day my cousin David was fishing in a bayou somewhere between Houston and Galveston.  He came across an abandoned nest of alligator hatchlings.  The mother had probably been poached for illegal shoes and purses.  He couldn't rescue them all, but good old David decided my kids needed a new pet - like a cat and four dogs weren't enough?

He brought said creature over after the kids and I had gone to bed.  He and my husband decided the best temporary domicile would be our bathtub.  About 2:00 am I had to get up to use the restroom.  Eyes bleary with sleep and nearsightedness, I was totally unaware of my surroundings. Something to my left made a "s-s-s-s-s-ach-ach-ach" sound. I looked over and saw a prehistoric reptile rearing its ugly head in my bathtub.  I instinctively left my seat in mid-stream, literally, and landed on the cold tile floor.  I gathered my jangled nerves, cleaned myself up, found a fresh night gown, glared at the demon long enough to decide it would not be a long term resident, and went back to bed.  


 Next morning, the kids were wild with excitement - it was almost impossible to get them to settle down to breakfast. They couldn't get home from school soon enough.  I have no idea why, but they named it (gender undetermined) Fred.  There was no real emotional bonding on Fred's part, but the kids were entranced.  They dug up an old cat collar, and made a leash from a length of cotton clothesline rope.  For the next three months, Fred lived in an old washtub in the garage, and my kids were the sensation of the neighborhood, taking their alligator for walks on a leash.  Even the neighborhood bully was in awe.

Fred consumed a great deal of hamburger and rapidly outgrew his home. When it became clear that Fred was growing into something that would soon be looking at my kids as lunch, I demanded that David donate him to the Houston zoo.  Instead, David returned him or her to the bayou where it lived out its days being an alligator, hopefully never becoming a pair of alligator boots.  The kids mourned about an hour.  I think they had begun to realize Fred's carnivorous potential, and I mourned not at all.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Tomorrow has come and gone, but I've been busy, so posting about Charley the cat has taken a back seat.  Charley himself never took a back seat. There were things he needed in his world, and he persevered until he got it.  First and foremost was love.  My daughter, Dusty's mom, couldn't resist stopping by the pound on her way home from school one day.  She looked at every cat and dog, but poor, pitiful Charley was the one who reached out of his cage to paw at her and give a rich, deep wail that plainly said, "Please take me home witchya, babe.  I don't wanna die here in da slammer."

She did, and the first thing we discovered about Charley was that he had a seriously infected leg, possibly brought into the pound that way, or the victim of an encounter with another cat or a wild critter while he was on the loose.  My daughter called me at work, and I told her to take him to the vet.  Apparently, Charley thought the trip to the vet was a trip back to the slammer.  When they entered the vet's office, he struggled wildly to get away, and the pus filled wound exploded all over daughter's new skirt.  It was ghastly smelling.  The vet sedated Charley, cleaned the wound thoroughly packed it with antibiotic ointment, stitched it up, gave him a prescription for that sweet, pink amoxcylin my kids got when they were little, and daughter brought a groggy, somewhat mollified Charley home, but not without a little news from the vet.  

While he was still sedated, the vet had given Charley a thorough examination.  He asked, "How old do you think this cat is?"  She replied, "Maybe eight months to a year old."  The vet chuckled.  "No way.  He's still got his baby teeth.  I think what you have here is a purebred Maine Coon.  He's going to be a big cat."  Oh yeah, Charley topped out at 23 lb., and there was no coping with his appetite.  His favorite sound was the whir of the electric can opener, and you'd better not be in his way when he headed for the kitchen or you'd have paw prints up your back!

Once back home, with three attentive nurses to tend his wounds, Charley finally decided he'd found a home.  I liked to go out in the back yard on a weekend and relax with a cup of coffee.  One fine spring day, I was lucky enough to have a day off in the middle of the week, so I took Charley out with me and used Bubba's leash to hook him to Bubba's tie out screw by hooking it to his pretty blue cat collar with the bell on it.  He was in seventh heaven, prowling through the grass, chasing butterflies, exploring the spring jungle of dandelions and crab grass, when up the alley came the weekly garbage truck.  It made that horrible, loud clanking and crunching noise trash trucks will make when they pick up the trash.  Before I could even think, 'Oh darn, I forgot to take out the trash last night,' Charley had snapped that pretty blue collar and was at the bag door clawing and howling to be let in to safety.

Determined that my cat would not be the neighborhood chicken, I went straight to Wally World and bought him a leather dog collar and his own leash.  Whereupon we discovered he loved to go through the neighborhood for a walk.  We never tried to teach him to heel, he preferred to lead the way, whereas most cats will simply assume a prone position and dare you to drag them along the sidewalk, scraping off all their fur.

Charley did have his drawbacks.  He sharpened his claws on one of my  door facings so often he clawed his way straight through to the sheet rock, necessitating a facing replacement.  I detest having a cat de-clawed, but as a single mom rearing four teenagers alone, I could only afford so many facing replacements.  It didn't deter Charley in the least.  He used his back claws to climb the door facing and polished it with his nonexistent front claws for many years.  I could live with the puncture marks from the back claws.

When the girls and I were living there alone after he got his own apartment, my older son installed a Radio Shack burglar alarm for me.  Having run out of electrical tape, he made do with scotch tape on one splice near the door to my room.  One night about 3:00 am, the alarm went off, and the girls and I met in the hallway like a car wreck, looking for the burglar, who was as nonexistent as Charley's claws.  We finally figured out that Charley had brushed up against that scotch tape splice, and the static electricity from his fluffy, striped Maine Coon tail had triggered the alarm.  We slept the remaining few hours, and on the way home from work, I bought a roll of electrical tape.

With the boys' bedroom vacant, I rented it out to a college student who was majoring in Opera and working part time.  Joe was 6' 5'', wore size 14 shoes, had wild, frizzy red hair and beard, and with his schedule, seriously needed his afternoon naps.  Charley liked to tempt the devil and his own fate.  One afternoon, I had come home from work early. I slipped my heels off to rest a bit before thinking about supper.  Charley liked to sneak in Joe's room, leap on the bed, and bat Joe's beard around like it was a fluffy cat toy.  Suddenly, Charley came racing down the hall toward me at a pace that exceeded the well known can opener dash, followed closely by Joe's size 14s thundering after him.  Charley made it into the laundry room and hid under a pile of dirty clothes in the laundry hamper,  Joe grumbled his way back to bed, and I chuckled all the way through supper preparations. 

Everyone loved Charley.  My best friend Jacque was afraid of cats, but Charley wouldn't brook such timidity in humans.  He'd jump in your lap and pound his head against your chest, demanding affection.  Jacque finally succumbed to his charms, and to this day swears he's the only cat she ever liked.  One of my daughter's friends had no room for his male equipment between his chubby thighs, so it was not without justification that he dubbed Charley "the feline nut job."  The tech director of my community theater, Daryl, called him "Garfield in a grey flannel suit."  Perhaps due to his love of chow and his nutty behavior.  

I'm afraid I may have tempted fate once, much like Charley.  One of the guys who occasionally auditioned for our community theater was a local newspaper man named Charlie.  I read that women living alone shouldn't indicate that on their answer machines.  Charlie had a nice gravelly voice and a talent for accents, so I got Charlie the writer to pretend to be Charley the cat, from Brooklyn.  We taped this message, "Hiya. Dis is Charley. Da goils and I ain't home right now, so leave da message, and maybe we'll get back to ya, see?"  Sometimes my theater friends would call and hang up, thinking they'd reached the wrong house.  A few got up the courage to call back and leave a message.  Soon the rumor spread that Charlie and I were having an affair.  Apparently, Mrs. Charlie took it in good humor, because he never showed up sporting a black eye, and they stayed married.  

One Christmas eve, Jacque, Daryl, and his wife Cindy were at our house for egg nog, cookies, and a gift exchange. Charley nonchalantly stepped over a Christmas candle and walked along the back of the couch. I yelled at my daughter that the cat was on fire. She turned around and snuffed out his tail like it was a candle.  He looked at her (the very one who had rescued him from the slammer) with a glare that clearly said, "You bitch, how dare you pull my magnificent tail?" and stalked off never knowing she'd saved his life a second time.

There are many more Charley stories I could tell you, but frankly - I'm "pencil sharpening" to avoid the three new chapters I have to write for my book this weekend.  I will simply let you know that Charley lived to a ripe old age in cat years, helped rear my preemie grandson who is now a whopping 25 years old and a character in my book.  Both were well loved and cared for, and Charley is missed.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Miss Dusty from Durango was a half Corgi/half Dachshund pound puppy.  When I first saw her, I thought she was one of the ugliest dogs I'd ever seen. It didn't take more than five minutes to discover she had such a sweet soul and disposition and was smart as a whip.  She jumped up on the couch and sat straight up on her nubby little excuse for a tail, nudging me with her nose for some affection or a treat.  I promptly dubbed her my "granddogger," and a lot of people have picked that word up since - though I doubt it'll ever wind up in Webster's.  

Dusty's favorite treat was a small McDonald's hamburger, which I was always willing to buy her when I was in town. I've often wondered what I did to her health and felt guilty.  She was an amazing little girl, and ferociously protective of her mom.  She once chased a Rottweiler about 100 yards, so it wouldn't come near her mom.  Daughter and her hubby were going to college in Durango at the time. The college was on top of a mountain, and it was customary to give students walking up the road a lift.  They had four other people in the car when Dusty decided to quietly pass gas.  Soon, even though it was the dead of winter, everyone was choking, rolling down windows and looking for someone to blame.  Dusty sat there innocently, looking at hubby, who, of course, got the blame.


Dusty loved to go winter camping, no matter how deep the snow.  Once they were camped by an icy stream in a national park.  Daughter was trout fishing, and when she quit, Dusty thought mom was going off and leaving her. She jumped into the icy stream and was swept away. Daughter ran down the bank, encouraging her to swim.  At last she was able to jump ashore.  Even after being dried off and warmed thoroughly, she never fully recovered.  It was soon discovered she had Addison's Disease, probably from the muscles she pulled in her effort to swim ashore.  She was on medication the rest of her days.

While Dusty was always loyal to her mom, I can't say she was always loyal to me.  One fine spring day we were fishing at a lake above Durango, and everyone was doing what they did best.  Daughter was fly fishing for trout, Dusty was sniffing out real or imagined rabbits along the shoreline, and I was sitting on my little folding camp stool reading a good book.  I happened to look down at the water's edge and saw what looked to me like a bear paw print. I nudged my daughter and said, "Is that what I think it is?"  Apparently it was, because daughter with all her fishing gear and Dusty were sitting in the car at the top of the hill with windows rolled up before I could even fold up my camp stool and begin the uphill trudge.  Fortunately, the bear never showed up!

Despite her ailments, Dusty lived for 17 years. There are perhaps a hundred more stories I could tell about the amazing Dusty, but that's enough for one day.  Tomorrow, a few words about my favorite feline person, a Maine Coon named Charley.