A Boy and His (Three-Legged) Dog

Pancho the overgrown puppy is having the time of his life at my house.  He jumps into the pool approximately every fifteen minutes, which means he stays wet all day long.  So he got a haircut yesterday (a shave, really, since he can't stand on three legs long enough to brush his hair out), and he wears that neckerchief with a jaunty swagger.  I admire him, my damaged dog, for the simple reason that he doesn't mope around focusing on what he's missing.  He's over it.  I find myself wanting to be like Pancho.

The dachshunds have grudgingly accepted him.  They wouldn’t look me in the eye for the first two days he was here, but a large plate of cheese and pastrami scrambled eggs fixed that situation.

Bella the crazy, tainted pussy probably will be pissed forever.  She jumped onto the kitchen counter and punched a hole in the package of beautiful pasta I brought home from Italy just to let me know how much she hates me.

Following is my kid’s version of Pancho’s story:

“What happened?” Mom asks.

“Pancho just lost his leg,” I choke.

“You’re joking,” she says with a chuckle while she fills my bowl with more soup.

I hold up the sweaty phone to show her the text. I feel sad and angry at the same time. Not angry at his new owners, but angry at myself. The best dog in the world just lost his leg because of a careless mistake to put him in the bed of a truck.  What were they thinking? More importantly, what was I thinking letting them have my dog, my best friend?

She slides the bowl away as if she can read my mind. There is nothing I can do. It was my decision to let him stay in the mountains with them.  Images run through my mind of a sad dog that drags through life because he is missing a leg.

A few days pass, and he returns to his house in the mountains. We decide to go visit him and see how he is recovering. I walk around the corner of the house expecting to see him lying in pain.

But boy, was I wrong.

He dashes around the corner and jumps straight onto my chest. He kisses me like he thought he would never see me again. I stand up and look straight at him. He looks at me and settles down. He’s a few feet away, but I know what he’s thinking.  Any sudden movements, and I was sure to be attacked with more licks to the face. I slowly raise my hand and creep over to him.  He knows what’s going on.  I start sprinting the other way in hope for a game of good old-fashioned chase.  But I look over my shoulder and see him sitting there with his head tilted. I sit down on the grass and he trots over to me. He rests his head on my knee as if to say, “Can’t you see I’m missing a leg?”

I pat his head while tears stream down my face.  He immediately answers with a lick to tell me it’s not my fault.  So as we sit on the field watching the kids play, I know who my best friend is.

Karmic Kitties

My friend Jan adopted a stray cat several years ago and very responsibly took the cat to be spayed. Unfortunately for the cat, the vet cut her open to perform the surgery only to find that she had already been spayed.

Several months later, Jan came home from the grocery store and, after bringing in one load of groceries, got distracted and forgot to retrieve the rest. When she remembered, she went outside to discover her cat dangling from the closed trunk by its leg. Apparently, the cat had jumped into the trunk hoping to find something yummy, and the defective spring on Jan’s trunk had given way, closing the trunk on the poor kitty’s leg. Jan’s husband, an emergency room physician, insisted that the major artery feeding the leg had been irreparably damaged and that the leg would have to be amputated. But Jan, responding that he was a “people doctor” and not a “cat doctor,” insisted they try to save the leg. Following a $1300 surgical attempt to salvage the limb, the vet called to tell Jan her husband had been correct. The leg was amputated.

The cat went on to live a relatively happy life, I guess, despite two unnecessary surgeries and the hassles of balancing on three legs. When she developed rectal cancer, there was an unsuccessful attempt to remove the tumor before she was mercifully sent to kitty heaven.

Jan called me several days after the cat died. She was annoyed because the vet had sent a sympathy card reading, “On the death of your four-legged friend.”

“They didn’t even know my cat!” she complained. “They’re the ones who removed her leg. Of all people, they should have known my cat had three legs!”

I tried not to laugh, but it was just too funny. And I’ve told that story often, usually commenting that I wonder what the cat did in a previous life to deserve that kind of existence. Whatever you want to call it, that idea that we get what we give, it’s a fact that sometimes karma’s a real bitch. Somehow, what we put out there always comes back.

I should know, because I laughed at Jan and her cat, and here's what happened: in the past month, my son’s dog had a leg amputated, and Lauren’s Bengal cat, the one who had already been spayed, was in heat.

I called the vet, who claimed it was “impossible” that she was in heat. “We take out BOTH ovaries when we spay,” the receptionist said when I called to make the appointment.

“But she’s trying to escape the house, and there’s blood,” I answered. So they told me to bring her in. And in the examination room, the vet began making strange chirping noises.

“What are you doing?” Lauren asked.

“That’s the noise they make when they’re in heat,” he explained. “I’m trying to get a reaction out of her.” And that was the extent of the examination. He shrugged and said, “We removed both ovaries, so she can’t be in heat. The blood must be the result of a rectal issue.”

So the $1000 kitty with malodorous diarrhea (see the August 26 post for an explanation) is now constipated. And Lauren's daddy, the man responsible for giving me this tainted pussy, now refuses to take the cat until he can get a fence built in his backyard. Apparently, the idiot is hoping to build a fence that will contain an exotic wildcat who may or may not be in heat.

But I'm not going to laugh at him. I'm afraid he might come back to me.