My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs (4 page)

C
HAPTER
4

Past Companions
…

My first pets that I can remember were when we lived in Germany when I was a child. I can’t remember the specific order we got them, but there was a Guinea pig named Greta that I won in a classroom raffle to see who got to take her home for the summer. The following year the school decided that there would be no pets in classrooms and so she was mine to keep. We also had a parakeet named Pete, and the occasional goldfish won at the school carnivals. I don’t remember their personalities, but do remember that I spent a lot of time talking to them. I was shy then (really, there once was a time when I would melt into the wall if anyone even spoke to me!) and didn’t have many friends. The rare times I was found outside of the school library, I spent with the one friend from our apartment building or with books in my bedroom. When there was another girl with the same first name in my class the teacher wanted me to go by my middle name instead. When I told her what it was, she misunderstood me and called me Meg for almost two months. I was embarrassed and wasn’t about to correct her so I started to sign my school work “Meg.” It wasn’t until my mom brought it to her attention in a parent teacher meeting that the confusion was finally cleared up.

After we returned from Germany, my mother, brother and I lived near family in Arizona while my father was in Vietnam for a year. There I had my first cat—a black and white one that I named “Boots” for two reasons. The first was that she had white feet, but the second was that it was the name of the mascot dog on my favorite TV show at the time—“
Emergency
.” I had her for less than a year because my mother insisted I get rid of her before my father returned - she said he didn’t like animals.

When he returned we moved once again, this time to Florida. We were there for two years before I challenged my father’s affection for animals and came home with a kitten one afternoon. Bandit was a grey and black tabby. About six months later a puppy followed me home from school one day (that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!). Brandy was about six months old and appeared to be a mix between a red long-haired dachshund and a cocker spaniel. She was my first dog and went everywhere with me, even sailing on my dad’s boat.

My parents divorced shortly before I turned 15. Mom, my brother, Andrew, and I moved across state to another city along with my new step-father and his teenage daughter. It was a difficult time for all of us as we adjusted to the changes. Bandit and Brandy became my constant companions and confidants in the months… and years that followed. Andrea, my step-sister, got a black cat she named Midnight.

The two years I lived with them after my parents divorce were chaotic with a lot of anger, violence and constant moves as my mother struggled with two or three jobs trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table as my step-father drank away most of his income as a salesman. We lived in three different houses during that time and for a while Andrea and I slept on the floor when mom couldn’t afford to buy us beds after we moved into an unfurnished house. A church that we didn’t even go to finally donated beds for us. Eventually after one too many violent outbursts and getting hit by my step-father, I asked my Dad if I could live with him and moved back for my senior year of high school, dragging along Bandit and Brandy. When Mom found out she was unexpectedly pregnant just before I left, Andrew was sent to live with relatives up north—which my father and I didn’t find out about until almost a year later. When we realized where he was, he came to live with us for a year before he decided to join the Army.

My half-sister was born the year I graduated high school, and three years later, Andrea went to live with her mother in Pennsylvania. Midnight went with her. He was an old man by then. One night my step-father had gone outside to dump some hot cooking oil in the grass and tripped over Midnight. Hot oil was spilled all over one side of him and he took off screaming for the nearby woods. When he didn’t return the next day, or for weeks after, Andrea thought he had died of his burns. Amazingly, almost a year later and not long before her move to Pennsylvania, Midnight appeared on the door-step. Thin, hungry, and obviously aged by the experience he was still alive. He was deeply scarred with patches of fur missing that never grew back. But his love for Andrea was apparent as soon as he saw her. He never left her side after that and she told me years later that he had finally died in his sleep one night. He was a good cat and his love and devotion to her were unconditional. I like to believe that it was that love for her that kept him from dying in the woods when he was burned so badly.

Bandit and Brandy were joined by another tabby kitten I named Snookums. Dad, who just barely tolerated the cats and dog as it was, always came up with new names for them. Brandy became “Mutt” and Bandit was simply “That Cat” since she avoided him as much as possible. His girlfriend had a tuxedo cat named Socks, but when Dad started calling him “Stinky” Socks it wasn’t long before he would only answer to Stinky. Snookums, who seemed to suffer from an eating disorder and gained quite a bit of weight, he started to call “Oink.” Before long, she only answered to Oink which was very embarrassing when I called her in at night… “Here Oink, here kitty, kitty, here Oink!” Fortunately with my cats now, I just have to shake their kitty treat can to get them to come running!

Two years later when moving into an apartment, I needed to find a home for Snookums since the apartment would only allow me to have two pets. A friend of mine from work offered to take her, and one Saturday I drove her over to the house. Most cats aren’t huge fans of going for a ride in the car. It usually meant a trip to the vet which was never much fun. Snookums was no different. She hated being in the car and yowled and complained for the entire ride. When I took her onto the enclosed porch of her new home, I set her down to explore while I talked to my friend. Snookums apparently decided she didn’t like the new home and she didn’t want to relocate. She managed to pull open the screen door and went back to the hated car and climbed in an open window. Looking back, I wish I had listened to her and respected her request, but I was too consumed with the grief of having to give her up to stop and think about it. I got her back out of the car and took her again to the porch. My friend held the screen door closed while I drove away so she couldn’t escape again. When I asked her the following Monday how Snookums was adjusting, she said that she had run away again the same day and never returned. She hadn’t called to tell me because she didn’t want me to worry and assumed that the cat would come back. I was devastated. Because I was ignorant of the possibilities of communication with animals, I had ignored her behavior which should have told me that she didn’t want to stay there. For months I drove the streets of her neighborhood after work and several times on weekends, driving slowly with my window open and calling “Here Oink, here kitty, kitty, here Oink.” I never saw her again.

The following year I moved to California with my fiancée. Bandit was now ten years old, and Brandy nine. The long flight from Florida to California seemed to have had a negative affect on Brandy and she began to have behavior issues—hiding under the bed whenever I wasn’t home and snapping at anyone who tried to get her to come out. She was using the bathroom in the house, and her eyes had quickly clouded over with cataracts. She was miserable most of the time, only wagging her tail when she heard my voice. I had to have her put to sleep just three months after we arrived. I was heartbroken. My mother, step-father and sister had moved to Scotland the previous summer and when mom’s father—my grandfather—died just before Thanksgiving I had to call and give her the news. Still reeling from that loss and the realization that my move to California was not a good decision, when I had to have Brandy put down I felt like I had lost my only friend. I was overwhelmed with grief for months.

That marriage was short lived. He had an affinity for a white powered substance that I did not share. I had tried to call the wedding off but my Dad and his new wife made it clear that I was not welcome in what was now “her” home, and so without a job, family or friends in California, I married him believing (naïvely) that he would change. After a year of living in a shared home with four of his friends (all single males) I was tired of the secretive “male bonding” trips out of town, the constant parties, alcohol, and his use of the white powder. I spent my first Thanksgiving in California without him, cooking a turkey for one of his friends, practically a stranger to me, while “the guys” went on a “no girls allowed” ski trip to Mammoth. After our divorce one of his friends told me that they weren’t necessarily “no girls allowed” trips—just not me or any of their girlfriends since there were “other” women they would hope to meet on the trips. I was expected to be a cook and clean-up crew for their frequent parties—parties that would start Friday after work and often not end until Sunday evening. Saturday mornings I was expected to fix breakfast for whoever had slept on sofas, floors, or patio furniture. Clean the house and prepare food for the next round. Friday and Saturday nights I would mingle and socialize until midnight, then lock myself in our bedroom watching old black and white horror movies until I fell asleep. My husband never knocked to come in. In the beginning I sometimes went looking for him as I was making my way to the bedroom, but the night I found him naked in the Jacuzzi with several other (also naked) people I didn’t know, I stopped. I wasn’t a prude, but the drug seemed to give him a side of his personality that I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. I filed for a divorce on our first anniversary. I was 25. Not surprisingly the first week I spent in my new apartment, he wanted to know if I would still do his laundry for him. I’ll let you guess what I said since I’d like this to still be an PG-13 rated book and don’t want to push the literary censor’s buttons but I think it is safe to say that I didn’t go into the laundry washing business.

When I moved into my apartment, I still had Bandit, but now also another kitten—Jazzmin. She was a very sweet cat and both she and Bandit got along well. Unfortunately, Bandit’s health started to decline and less than four months after my divorce, I had to have her put to sleep. When I started dating again, Jazz didn’t really care for my boyfriend, Will, very much. Obviously she was better at sensing a person’s character than I was. I should have taken lessons from her. She would act as if she was finally going to accept him and would walk over as if to rub against his leg, and when he would reach down to pet her, she would flick her tail at him and move just out of reach. We married just over a year later and when we moved into our new home the following spring, he insisted I get rid of her because she had still not accepted him. Hating myself for doing it, I obliged, crying all the way to the animal shelter and looking in the rear view mirror the entire time, hoping and praying he would chase after me to tell me I could keep her.

Looking back now I can see that was the defining moment when I submitted to his control and the manipulation that would keep me bound by fear to him for the duration of our marriage. I had already experienced his temper enough to know that if I refused his demands to get rid of Jazzmin it would not have been an easy life for us, and he most likely would have taken matters into his own hands to get rid of her. Shortly after she was gone, he brought home a little grey kitten he named Angel. Whether or not it was meant as an apology for his dislike of Jazzmin, I don’t know. But I took it as such and life went on.

Angel was joined by Shotzy, an adult German Shepherd that became our “guard” dog. I’m not sure that he would ever have attacked anyone, but he sounded fierce when he barked and certainly would have made anyone think twice before trying to break into the house. Several years later when we went camping for a long weekend, we set the TV and several lights on timers so that it would look as if someone was home. Shotzy was restricted to the yard—which was fenced in to completely surround the house, but he had access to a covered side patio where his water and food were just out-side the kitchen door. We left him plenty of water and food since he tended to be a grazer and not a gulper when he ate. The kitchen door had a small cat door installed so that Angel could come and go as she wanted, and her food and water were left in the kitchen. We had left them before on previous camping trips for the same amount of time, and never had any problems.