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Humphrey Bogart once said he didn’t trust a man who didn’t drink. The World War II German Luftwaffe always got a new recruit drunk. They wanted to see what kind of person he was when alcohol lowered his barriers and inhibitions. That’s one way to know a person. Another way is with animals. You could say be wary of someone who doesn’t like or get along with animals. You can’t fool animals or small kids. They sense what is inside the person. Trust and love. Fear and hatred. They know. Some people send out the vibrations that attract animals. Others are nervous, even uneasy around animals. It would be hard to imagine a life without animals. My father loved hunting and fishing. Earliest dog I remember was Clipper, a huge—to a small child—white bird dog with a long pointed tail. Then there was Brownie, a small brown and white rat terrier. When we moved to the farm my father bought, it was heavily populated with rats. Not mice. These were rats. Brownie did her job well. She was fast, even fast enough to catch and kill a moccasin snake one day. Brownie was still around after I was in military service, married and had a daughter of my own. Pop always loved beagle hounds. Many summer nights as a child, I was awake in my attic bedroom listening to the howling chants of Duke and Duchess over in the woods chasing a rabbit. Often we kept dogs for hunting friends. One Beagle named Boss loved his stay in the country. When his owner took him back to the city, he disappeared. Two days later he was at our front door, blistered feet, hungry and thirsty. How on earth he did that I’ll never know. It would be impossible to say which breed is my favorite. I’ve had Poodles, Dalmatians, Irish Setters, Weimaraners, Once my wife and daughter went to the humane society shelter and picked out a Benji looking little dog. She had been found in the woods, eaten by ticks. First thing they did was give her a bath and pick the ticks off her. We named her Lucky, because she had escaped the gas chamber. She could just lie there and look at you with such love it would melt the coldest heart. At that time, I had to go to leave before daylight often to go to Nashville and work with Lee Stoller, Cristy Lane’s husband on a screenplay for a proposed movie version of One Day at a Time. Lucky escaped from the fenced in backyard and apparently was chasing my car when, we believe, a truck hit her. A neighbor found her body in a ditch and told us. St. Bernards seemed to be the smartest. As a puppy, Alexander the Great would sit at my feet with his head resting on my shoes and look up at me with adoration. The feeling was mutual. Big dogs seem to have problems with their stomach turning and cutting off the digestive system. They said that was what happened to Alex. Dobermans have a reputation of being dangerous and treacherous. When I had Theodosia, a brown Doberman, was not as fierce as she looked and her only threat was possibly licking you to death. As a puppy, she scratched and bit my hands playfully until I had marks all over them. But the visiting grandbaby could swat her, pull her ears or do whatever she wanted and Theo did nothing but try to lick her hand. Dogs have been my first love, with cats coming in second. As they say, you can own a dog, but a cat owns you. A few years ago we remodeled our home and a garage had to be torn down. Garages have a way of accumulating unwanted items, especially furniture. When the lumber was all hauled off, a torn stuffed chair remained. A black cat kept hanging around and watched from the shrubbery, occasionally meowing. When I started moving the chair, something moved in the stuffing. At first I thought it might be a snake. Pushing the material aside, I saw a small white and brown kitten. My wife fell in love with her. She leaped and bounced with limitless energy and earned the name Bunny. When I would wake up in the morning, she was nuzzling my face to urge me to get up. Her energy began to dwindle. One Sunday my wife insisted I take her to the veterinarian. We went to the only one we could find open, with an extra charge of $25 extra for “after hours.” The vet said it was summer time, explaining animals were like people and animals felt listless like people. I mentioned we had two fish tanks and she drank water from them. This wouldn’t bother her, he said. The vet gave her a “feel good shot,” as he called it and collected $88.77 from me. Two days later she was no better and I carried her to a closer animal clinic. The vet there said she had kidney failure, likely caused by the chemicals in the fish tanks. They began a $500-plus treatment program. They saw no hope for Bunny and suggested she be put to sleep. I said, no, not as long as she wasn’t in pain. Bunny wouldn’t eat the special food from the veterinarian. Regular cat food was said to contain protein that caused kidney failure. My friend Keirl King at Fish Mania said the chemicals used to treat fish could not be harmful to other animals, or the FDA wouldn’t allow it. He had some dry food Bunny liked. Despite anything we could do, she died and my wife didn’t want another pet because it broke her heart. There is an emptiness now because we have no pet. I won’t count the two fish tanks with small hungry mouths waiting for food each morning. In my perfect world, I would like to have a
large tract of land where animals could run free, not restrained by cars
and leashes. Until then, I’ll just have to be satisfied I have loved
and lost. |
