#59 PUPPY -

We all heard it, my husband, Scooter, and I—a great line from a middling movie. A female character feigning feminine before exposing her true criminal self, winced while saying to a thug who seized her arm, “I’m a Gemini. I bruise easily.”

 

It was a stupid movie, so why not accomplish something while we finished watching. My latest knitting was done. I can’t really write while watching something. So . . .

 

“Scooter,” I said. “Let’s get you groomed.” He feigned renewed interest in the movie. I set up his grooming table, fetched his brush, comb, trimming scissors, and bites of apple for rewards. Scooter climbed from floor to chair to grooming table. He wasn’t smiling. I started, as I always do, at the top of his head. I move the comb down his back where his coat gets as thick as an ultra-plush wool carpet. Then to his tail, his ribcage, and belly. All was well.

 

“Stand, Scooter,” I said. Scooter stood. I tended his hind legs, feathers, and feet. I picked up his right front foot. Scooter lay down, tucked his right front foot under his well-brushed chin, and signaled, “Not my front legs.”

 

“Scooter, stand.” He glanced up, whites exposed at the bottom of those gorgeous blackish-brown eyes. A sure signal of resistance.

 

“Scooter, stand.” I gently pressed the bristles of his pin brush against his side, encouraging a change of position. He stood (apple bite consumed). I reach for his right front foot. He locked his snout down, across his foreleg, his mustached flews all but obliterated my attempts to brush his leg.

 

“No, Scooter,” said I, holding on to his struggling right foot. The one under negotiation. He pulled away. He hates having his front legs groomed. He does love all four feet massaged; yes, he does. But please, he makes clear, no comb or brush.

 

“What’s with this?” I asked, putting down the brush. “What’s with the resistance toward having your front legs brushed?”

 

At about that time, the movie’s endangered and distressed female lead was running from trouble along a Philippines island shore, her wedding dress stunningly shredded, her thick, long hair flying free, and her makeup perfectly in place.

 

 “I’m a Virgo,” Scooter said, borrowing an idea from the stupid movie. “I have delicate wrists.”

 “You . . . ,”

 He cut me off. “Virgos are reliable, intelligent, modest, and reserved.”

 “You?” I asked. “You got that information, where?”

“The Internet, Mom.” He didn’t miss a beat. “Virgo’s always strive to improve themselves.” Scooter was on a roll. “We Virgos are open-minded. Constantly thinking.”

 

I scored a bit of combing as he found himself emersed in self-appreciation.

 

“Did you know,” he asked, “that on my birthday in 79CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted? Pompeii was completely buried. Oh! And in the 16th century, King Charles IX ordered massacre of thousands of French Protestants, and get this—on my birthday in 1814, the British sacked Washington D.C., and the White House was burned. On. My. Birth Day!”

 

“Foot, Scooter.”

 “And in 1869, the waffle iron was invented.” He jerked his foot back, lay down, and buried his right leg under his chest.

 

I stretched his foot out from his down position. I massaged his toes. He relaxed.

 

“And just one more thing about my very important day of birth,” he said as I picked up the comb, and he tried to pull his foot away. “In August, on my birthday in 1960, the temperature in Vostok, Antarctica dropped to -127°F. That’s probably very cold, don’t you think?” He tugged.

 

“Colder than your nose,” I said, holding on to his delicate right front wrist.