#26 PUPPY -- A STEAK, A MISTAKE
#26 PUPPY – September 10, 2020
It was Labor Day; it was also a birthday I usually remember but didn’t, an important first wedding anniversary, and the second anniversary of the death of a greatly loved French friend. But those occasions got no nod from me that Monday morning at 2:27a.m. It was a cold nose touching mine that woke me, a small black nose at the tip of a fluffy, four-footed boy whose wide black eyes watched for mine to open. When, quite suddenly, mine did, he gave me a soft lick kiss, then quietly moved to lie atop bed covers, below my feet on our bed (not his), where he doesn’t belong.
The possibility of this event was due to we who share his life; we who yesterday moved from our boat to our home for a few reprovisioning hours before reboarding PineAweigh for the next short cruise.
“Do we need to take his crate home?” asked one. It’s a bother, carting that crate.
“Nah. Let’s take his small bed (you know, the sort nearly every house dog has in a living room), put it in the crate’s spot, and see if he will sleep there for the night.”
Awake I was, once the cold nose met mine. No. He would not choose to remain in his floor-placed cozy bed. 2:27a.m. I was awake. My thoughts thumbing through things one wishes never to think about in the wee hours.
My thoughts rambled back to Sunday afternoon, shortly after all-things-necessary-for-a-few hours-home had, in a hot afternoon, been hauled to the house. My reward for completing so taxing a task was a mid-day meal: wedge salad, a pile of buttered peas, and one rare filet, plated and placed on a TV tray situated for watching NOVA’s program on the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013. Imagine it, a building-sized rock, a superbolide, brighter than our sun, crossing the sky, approaching earth at twelve-miles-per-second, crashing into Russia’s Ural region, sending a shockwave that destroyed structures and injured people.
Plate placed, and nearly was I, but—Oh! First, I’d better—I don’t remember what called me away, but something did—I cut a sliver of the rare filet, popped it in my mouth (perfect!), and left the room—ever so temporarily.
Surely, you know that feeling of seeing something you should see but don’t?
Surely, you can imagine my brain scrambling nearly as fast as that meteor moved, seeing where once lay a filet, but now, only a pile of buttered green peas.
“SCOOTER!!!” Not to be seen was the fluffy four-footed boy with the cold black nose. I admit, I scream his name without a shred of affection, running from room to room, lifting the spread from guest twin beds where often he hides things he means to keep to himself.
I screamed his name as I stooped, glanced under living room sofa and chairs, then moved to the master bedroom where on the Persian carpet sat Scooter, his back to me, scarfing steak like the jungle python that gulped down my Sudanese friend’s fully grown dog. This little python got a swift swat from my foot. He rightly cringed with the hearing of “BAD! BAD! BAD!” (or maybe the cringe was the pain of swallowing without proper chewing?). I slammed the bedroom door, he on one side of it, I on the other. I slowly walked to a plate of peas, repeating to myself, “He’s never done that before.” But then, neither have I ever before walked away from a filet so approachably placed.
Ten minutes. That’s the limit of separation time at our house. Ten minutes followed by an opened door, a stern look, and a period of quiet that conveys recovery.
You won’t often see Scooter Sublime sublime, but here, in the photograph, see the boy a few feet from the chair where I sat (eating peas), quietly suggesting that he recognized a breach of trust. “Really,” says he, “you need to revisit the meaning of causality. Guilty, I may be, but At Fault? I think not. Shall we try that stunt again?”
“Look, Mom. Let’s talk about it, okay?”
