Lilly doesn’t like her photo taken. Her eyes and muzzle are now mostly gray and she is predominantly deaf, with terrible cataracts. What kind of dog is this, BTW?
This is the last post I’d have thought to write this week. But after the last interaction, I suppose it had to come out.
I’ll admit it up front. My wife is the Dog Person. I am the Cat Person. My mantra has been that dogs are for people who require cheerleaders in their lives. My life has predominantly been precisely the opposite. Trying my best to stay out of the limelight in law enforcement. As people are wont to say, cats don’t have owners. Cats have staff. The last thing I need is a cheerleader. I like quiet.
Cats have historically fitted my lifestyle because they’ve been units that I can toss out when necessary and then place on Ignore Mode when also necessary. Cats are very independent. Just like me. As such, they resonate. I’ve always had a cat in my life, until I met my second wife and until I lost Mose. Back to that in a moment.
I didn’t really begin to appreciate dogs until I was asked to try out for the SSD Canine Unit. I was given an older German Shepard dog named Ehren by Bill Lipshin, who trained our dogs in the 1980s. Bill had the final say and didn’t care for my yard layout at home so nixed me as a handler. I spent a few weeks as an agitator and then left. A major regret for me because Ehren was one older, lightweight Mach III neutron bomb.
I’ve always had cats until my second marriage in 2007. My wife is a Dog Person and, as such, had five dogs when I met her. All rescue animals. A cat was right out. That is, until I found Mose, whom I acquired in 2008 at a Placer County cat rescue facility. Raised with the dogs from a kitten, he would play with them until one day he exited through the dog door and never returned. He was my last cat. Ten + years ago.
He was a great cat; friendly, loving, swift to ramp up the Cat Motor. I can only hope that he found a good family who are treating him well.
I still miss Mose terribly to this day. He used to be my blogging buddy (see the photo) and would lay on my upstairs desk with his head over the keyboard as I would create posts, snow falling outside the window, warmed by my desk lamp. Sometimes my keyboard would write O[-O0AJGF-PAYE39HERO9Y due to his, ahem, “efforts.”
Mose as a kitten. I raised him from the proverbial Palm Kitty.
In Winter he would also jump up on the bed and nose himself under the covers, and sleep at my side or at my feet. If I lay on my side, he would curl himself up between my arm and my body. He knew where the Heat Generator was located.
I had a few feral cat buddies for a while, but they are gone now.
Because of my inconsistent schedule, I cannot have any more animals at my cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sometimes I’m at my house three days a week; sometimes I’m here two days a week. Sometimes I’m at my house for only one day. Sometimes, schedule-dependent, I won’t hit my house for two weeks. That’s simply not fair to any animal. The fact that I cannot have another cat disappoints me greatly. But at least I’m smart enough to realize it.
Then we came across Teddy. But that’s a story for another day.
In the meantime, the schedule is something like this. I leave the house to broadcast on SHR on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. I get back at about 10:30 PM.
The Damaged Dog is waiting. Everyone else has gone to bed. Lilly is the Damaged Dog.
The Damaged Dog brooks no love. Until and unless she wants it, which is seldom.
But tonight, at least ten years later, something has happened. She padded into the office as I was writing a post, pushed my left leg and placed her muzzle on top of my left knee.
I responded with patting and beating and smoothing her fur. She loved it. For once.
She is a rescue dog.
She is a Damaged Dog.
Maybe after ten years we’re finally beginning to connect?
BZ
Mrs BZ and I tend to take our vacations on the California coast. We like the ocean, we like the waves, we like the solitude, we like to go places where it’s quiet and simultaneously exposed to the winds and weather of Winter. We don’t take Summer vacations. Summer vacations are for families and the unimaginative. We like to vacation in the winter when it rains and storms and the ocean is in chaos. That’s where you’ll find us.
Having said that, we also rescue dogs. One of those dogs was some sort of a male terrier originally named Buddy. Apparently Buddy had his own local fan club because, after we adopted him and drove down Highway 1 in downtown Ft Bragg, people waved at us and yelled “HI BUDDY.” We were warned: he was this ferocious animal who hated men. Except, uh, not really. He didn’t hate me. We liberated him back in 2010. We were told he was roughly five years old at the time. We think he may have been older.
Here is Buddy on his first car trip from Ft Bragg, leaning into the curves on Highway 20. A great illustration of weight transfer. No kidding. He leaned into the curves. He knew all about weight transfer. And by the way? Mrs BZ changed his name from Buddy to Teddy.
