I was already reading about feral cats. The universal opinion was that unless a feral cat becomes used to people very early in life, taming the cat is virtually impossible. But nobody told Turtle, who grew ever more comfortable with us. She’d fall onto her back with a thud, inviting us to pet her lovely white belly. She’d linger on the deck with our guests, on summer evenings, sampling one lap after another. Then, as soon as everyone had gone, she’d trot off into the darkness.
Could we bring her inside? Roy’s on-again-off-again allergy to cats suddenly returned. But she wouldn’t want to come inside anyway, I proclaimed.
Or would she? My office, on the second floor, looks out upon our hillside. Many times I’d put down my work to gaze out the window, and I’d see Turtle staring at me, her wide golden eyes and her dear, crooked little face—haphazardly splotched in black and tan—not twenty inches from my own face. Often I heard her talking to me before I saw her.
We were having a new wing constructed, and she found another route to my office one day, staring at me through the side window. Her muddy paw prints on the roofing paper led from my window to the builder’s ladder at roof’s edge. I was impressed.
She built a nest for herself in the developing new wing, settling into an open carton where the carpenter had tossed his sweaty T-shirt. She was so comfortable here that she barely lifted her head to greet us when we came looking for her. Roy started getting allergy shots.
With the new wing enclosed, Turtle was again outside. But the next time she looked in at my desk, Roy opened the window screen, waited for her to climb in and carried her downstairs. She was purring loudly. She walked through the living room, poking into all the little places: a cupboard, the bottom of a small bookshelf. She seemed oblivious to us, and indeed we were as dumb as chairs. After a few moments, Roy took her outside.
Later that day, she was sitting near him on the deck, when he got up and moved toward the kitchen. She reached the door ahead of him and scrambled inside. She didn’t mind being taken out again. I didn’t mind either. She might want to be inside (I now conceded the possibility), but did I want her? Wouldn’t a feral cat, even a friendly one, shred everything to tatters? Wouldn’t she scratch us at the slightest provocation? Wouldn’t she yowl all night?
The deciding moment arrived after I’d been away for a few days. Turtle had stayed at the bend in the driveway for most of my absence. But barely fifteen minutes after my return, she was at the kitchen door! When Roy opened the door to bring her some food, she pushed past him into the kitchen and headed straight for me. No curiosity about the house this time. No interest in the food. She jumped into my lap, readjusted her weight and purred— the kind of purring you could hear from twenty feet away. She missed me! She missed me! That was it. I was ready to share my house with her.
Very soon it was also Turtle’s house as she figured out the best spot on our bed (between us, lengthwise) and the sunniest corner of our living room. She had a lot to learn. How to sprawl across my in-basket. How to awaken us for her breakfast. How to keep the house free of the tiny mice that sneak inside every autumn, when the cold air ruffles their rodential dispositions. How to launch a steady stream of complaint at the snow. How to stand guard at the bathtub until I could be meowed safely from the water. How to settle her weight on precisely the document I might be reading from, or typing from, or writing on. The litter box? A snap. She managed that in half a day.
I had a lot to learn, too. And to unlearn, from my mother’s prejudices. But with Turtle’s help, this cat was soon my dear companion, gentle and wise, considerate and affectionate. Roy was delighted to see how I loved her and how she loved us back. She became the subject of several chapters in the book I wrote on feral cats, and I wish she could have understood the gifts and letters she got from adoring readers. Roy however was convinced she understood everything we said, or even thought; he was sure she could read our minds. Once, he was only thinking of her, and was startled to hear her sudden purring from a nearby chair.
She knew plenty, our Turtle. In parts of the British Isles it is considered a good omen when a tortoiseshell cat comes into the house. The tortoiseshell is considered special. But Turtle was special beyond all other specialness. The sweetest pussycat we’ve ever known. And the smartest. Never a pest. Never seeking attention when we were heavily preoccupied with work or chores. But there in a flash whenever a lap became available, whenever a head hit a pillow. She was very special. I knew it, Roy knew it, and Turtle knew that we knew it.
She lived with us for ten sweet years, until kidney disease claimed her, and she is buried just up from the bend in the driveway, under a stone that has her coloring. We see the stone from our kitchen.
I bless the day that she decided to chance it with us. She knew so much more than I did, about the important things. She knew enough to make that running leap that day into my house, my lap, my heart.
Ellen Perry Berkeley
Woman’s Best Friend
Qui me amat, amat et canem meum. (Love me, love my dog.)
St. Bernard De Clairvaux,
“Sermo Primus,” 1150
At age thirty-two, I had just about given up on ever getting married. Over the years, I’d had numerous relationships. Some were wonderful—and some were real disasters. About the only thing they had in common was that they all ended.
The entire relationship and dating scene was wearing me down. I was tired of relationships with no potential. I was weary of putting my heart out there and getting it smashed. Getting married was starting to look like it wasn’t in the stars for me.
Giving up on marriage was one thing. But I wouldn’t, and couldn’t, give up on my heart. I wanted to love and be loved. I needed to nourish my heart in a way that even my best-intentioned friends and family members hadn’t done for me.
I needed a dog.
Soon, on an afternoon in early May, I found myself peering into a pen on a friend’s farm, studying a litter of eight black and white puppies who were playing on and around their mother, a champion Border collie. The puppies were six weeks old and as cute as only puppies can be. I slid through the door and sat down. The puppies, wiggling with excitement and apprehension, quickly jitterbugged over to the safety of their mother’s side. All except one.
The littlest one, an almost all-black ball of downy fur with two white front paws and a white breast, came sidling over to me and crawled into my lap. I lifted her up and looked into her puppy-hazy brown eyes. It was instant love.
“Just remember, Puppy, you chose me, okay?” I whispered. That was the beginning of the longest successful relationship I’ve ever had.
I named my puppy Miso. The next weeks of a glorious early spring were spent basking in the glow of literal puppy love while housebreaking, training and establishing new routines. When I look back, that whole spring and summer was spent incorporating her into my life and me into hers.
Miso’s Border collie heritage dictated lots of time outdoors, preferably running. I’d been eager to have company while I ran my almost-daily three to five miles in predawn darkness, and now I had a running buddy. Miso and I were out in all kinds of weather, rarely missing a day.
Weekends and evenings were spent in quiet, loving solitude with Miso. At my writing desk or art table, Miso would lie relaxed at my side and sigh with contentment. Anywhere I went, Miso came too: camping, swimming at a local lake on weekends, long car rides to my parents’ home in the summer. If an activity precluded taking a dog along, I wasn’t much interested in it anyway. We were a happy couple . . . inseparable and self-sufficient. My heart was nourished, and I felt content and full. We spent two years this way.
Looking back, it’s remarkable that I met my husband-to-be at all. I certainly wasn’t looking for Mr. Right anymore, not when I was so happy being a “single mom” to Miso. Bob just kind of popped into my life, or rather, our lives, because Miso was definitely impacted by Bob’s appearance on the scene.
At first, Bob accepted Miso as part of th
e “package.” Our dating consisted of lots of outdoor activities where Miso accompanied us easily. But as fall and winter approached, and Miso needed to be indoors more due to cold and wet weather, trouble brewed. Bob wasn’t enthusiastic about dog hair or mud on the furniture and insisted that Miso stay outside when we spent time at his house.
Since the amount of time spent there was increasing, it bothered both Miso and me that she was required to stay outdoors. This was an uncomfortable blip on the radar screen of an otherwise growing and loving relationship with Bob.
A crisis point was reached one particularly cold January night. Bob insisted that Miso bunk out on the enclosed porch for the night, a location Miso and I felt was unacceptable considering the temperature. I argued that anything less than Miso’s admittance to the basement was cruel and inhumane treatment. He argued that I was being unreasonable, and he felt I should respect his “house rules.”
We went back and forth like two lawyers arguing a Supreme Court case. Things got heated. Tempers flared.
We reached an impasse and stood, staring steely-eyed at each other.
The next thing I knew I heard my own voice, thick with emotion, declare, “Don’t make me choose between you and Miso, because you may be in for an unpleasant surprise!”
Bob looked shocked, and in the face of my determination, wisely backed off.
Miso was admitted to the warm basement for the night. The entire indoor/outdoor Miso arrangement was renegotiated over the next couple days and we reached a satisfactory compromise for all three of us.
That crisis was a turning point. I realized I had issued my ultimatum in all seriousness. Bob realized that I did not solely depend on him for love and affection—I had loyalties beyond him. And Miso found her new place in my life, no longer my one-and-only, but as a beloved member of a family.
For that’s what we became. Bob and I married, and soon our threesome became a foursome with the birth of our daughter.
Eleven years later, Miso is over fourteen years old. Partially blind and deaf, she suffers the infirmities of old age now, enduring diabetes and arthritis with dignity and grace. The relationship between Bob and Miso has undergone an amazing transformation.
Now I watch Bob tenderly guide Miso to find me when she has “misplaced me” in our house, and lovingly help her up the front steps on a rainy night. I believe Bob has grown to respect the debt he owes Miso. For Miso held a place ready in my life for Bob. She gave love a foothold.
There was never any need to choose between Bob and Miso—both had already laid claim to my heart.
Sometimes now I look into Miso’s eyes, which see only shadows, and speak in her ear, though I know she no longer hears, and tell her once again: “Remember, you chose me.”
Holly Manon Moore
Bedroom Secrets of Pets Revealed
A long, long time ago, people slept in the house; dogs slept in a doghouse in the backyard; and cats, well, they “catted around” and slept in the barn or alley. That was before our pets migrated from the backyard to the bedroom to sleep, and from the kennel to the kitchen to eat. Now, the average doghouse has three bedrooms, two baths, a spa, an entertainment center and a two-car garage. Yes, the doghouse is our house.
Consider this: Before the arrival of our four-legged bed-partners, human bed-partners decided which side of the bed they would sleep on; we carved out property lines on the mattress. But then we decided to welcome pets into our homes, hearts and bedrooms.
That was the last day any of us got a decent night’s sleep.
I was reminded of this recently when, after a hectic trip, I headed home from New York to Almost Heaven Ranch in northern Idaho. Between airplane breakdowns and storms, it was a nightmare trip that took two sleepless days of travel instead of the usual one.
Fighting extreme fatigue, I finally made it home, stumbled into our log house, and headed directly to my bed, ready to slip between the flannel sheets and nestle under the goosedown comforter next to my beloved wife, Teresa. Now at long last I would be able to sleep. It sounded great in theory, but I was dreaming!
Three formidable barriers to my sleep were sprawled across the king-size bed. Scooter, our wired wirehaired fox terrier, was lying perpendicular across the bed, while Turbo and Tango, our two Himalayan-cross cats, were asleep on each pillow. I shoehorned myself next to Teresa and collapsed into deep sleep. I was sawing the timber and dreaming sweet dreams when suddenly, I was shot in the ribs with a deer rifle! At least that’s what it felt like.
It was actually Teresa’s elbow that had poked into my side as a last resort to stop my snoring. Sleepily, I looked across at her. She was crowded onto the tiniest sliver of mattress at the edge of the bed. The cats were wrapped around her neck and face, and our twenty-pound, flabby, fur-covered, thorn-in-the-side, Scooter, was dreamily snoring away, her feet pushing against Teresa’s head. But would Teresa shove an elbow into Scooter, or disturb Tango or Turbo? Are you kidding?
Now, if I snore, Teresa’s sure to find a way of letting me know it, and if I cross over to her side of the bed, she waits only a nanosecond before shoving me back onto my side or onto the floor. But there she lay, unwilling to move a muscle or twitch an eye, because she didn’t want to interrupt the fur-queen’s sleep!
I turned over, pulling instinctively on the down comforter to make sure that Teresa let me have my fair share of it. Yet through this sleepy tug-of-war, I was careful not to disturb my “Scooter Girl,” who slept lying across me, looking warm, toasty and content.
And who needs an alarm clock when you have pets? I had managed to doze off again, but Scooter woke me up before the crack of dawn to be let outside. Again, I looked across at Teresa. Turbo and Tango were kneading her hair and licking her face to show they were ready for breakfast— now!
It was clear that Scooter, Turbo and Tango had had another great night’s sleep, while Teresa and I were battling for shuteye scraps. I knew the pets would fly out of bed fully charged, while my wife and I, chronically sleep-deprived, would crawl out from under the blankets to start another day on the hamster wheel of activity we call life.
And yet . . . that’s not quite the whole story. I knew full well that our four-legged bed partners had as usual gotten the best end of the sleeping arrangements, but I regarded it as just a small payback for the great gift of unconditional love that they give us, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
So as I got out of bed, I paused to kiss Teresa’s cheek, pat Scooter’s furry head and stroke the cats’ tails. Our bed was in purr-fect order and I had had a grrr-eat night’s sleep after all.
Marty Becker, D.V.M.
Mighty Hercules
One April Sunday, my children and I picnicked in the park. I was pouring lemonade when I heard a shout. Andy, my towheaded eleven-year-old, ran toward us, holding what looked like a long, crooked stick. When the stick wriggled, the lemonade splashed across the picnic table.
“Mom!” Andy cried. “It’s a garter snake. May I keep him? Please?”
My instinct was “No!” But the look in Andy’s eyes made me hesitate. Andy was the youngest of my three children, and I worried about him. At four, he’d required surgery on his ears and subsequent speech therapy. A year later, his father died; the same year, doctors diagnosed attention deficit disorder. He had needed special schools in early grades and still required a tutor. And, like many ADD kids, he had grown up feeling “different” and “dumb,” despite his very real intelligence.
From an early age, Andy possessed an affinity for animals. Growling dogs wagged their tails at his approach. Hissing cats purred. But dogs and cats were not allowed in our apartment complex. I looked from Andy’s pleading eyes to the unblinking eyes of the snake. Its tongue flicked at me, and I shuddered.
“Where would you keep it?”
“In my aquarium. I’ll put a lid on and never ever let it bother you, Mom.” He held the striped, black snake up to his face. “Please, Mom. Please?”
I’m still not sure why
I said yes. But Hercules, as Andy triumphantly named him, came home with us.
Andy set to work at once, cleaning the twenty-gallon aquarium, lining it with rocks and dirt, setting a branch upright in one corner for Hercules to climb on, installing a light bulb for warmth.
I admired Andy’s industry, and once Hercules was safely behind glass I could even admire the long, striped snake. In the sunlight, his scales danced and glittered, the way sunlight catches on a dragonfly’s wing.
“He’s not trying to sting you,” said Andy, when I jerked back from Hercules’ flicking tongue. “Snakes use their tongues to sense things around them.”
To a boy with dyslexia, reading can be an excruciating task. Andy had never read for fun, even though his tutor told us he had overcome his early handicaps. But after Hercules’ arrival, Andy checked out every book on snakes in the library. We were amazed at all he learned.
Even more amazing were the changes in Andy, especially after his sixth-grade teacher invited Hercules to school. Andy was smaller than most of his classmates, but I saw his shoulders straighten as he proudly carried the snake to school.
Hercules spent all spring in the classroom, under Andy’s charge, and adapted well. Before long, Andy had only to stick his hand in the aquarium for Hercules to slither to his outstretched fingers and glide smoothly up his arm. On the playground, he looped gracefully around Andy’s neck, basking in the warm Kansas sunshine, his tongue flicking Andy’s cheek.
Hercules returned home when school ended, to be joined, for Andy’s birthday, by a pair of boa constrictors he named Mabel and Sam.
The boas were young, about eighteen inches long, and beautifully mottled in rich shades of brown and tan.
“How do you know they’re male and female?” I asked.
“I just know,” said Andy confidently. “I’m going to put myself through college by selling baby boas.”
College! I marveled again at the changes the snakes had wrought. Here was Andy, who had thought he was “dumb,” suddenly talking about college.