Wendy and Alby in 1987
[See both in Animals I've Known and Loved, Chap.31]


Chapter 4 (Freedom and Animals, cont.)

Old Dog

Wendy lived to be a very old dog. I could measure her age against Alb, as I got her when my son was two; and he was 19 when we finally had to have her euthanized. (How I hate that word. Why can’t old pets just die in their sleep?)

It’s a memory I regret having. No matter how caring the vet, it’s a horrible experience to have it done to an animal I‘ve nurtured from four weeks old until seventeen years. If I’m impersonal about the process, I’m convinced it’s the most humane, so when Wendy’s life had no more quality--when she was humiliated by her incontinence, and too feeble to walk comfortably, Tom and I decided to take her to a kind old vet in Johnson City, as Dr. Norris had retired. Although the most loving hands led her into the office, and kindly had the vet administer the shot, Wendy looked at me at that point and her eyes said, “So, it has come to this. How could you!” I think I cried for the rest of the day. We had bought the land in Pennsylvania by then, and had even dug her grave weeks before, and buried her there, in back of my new rock garden at the edge of the woods. I wrapped her in the blanket she always slept on… it had changed throughout the years, but was the size of a stadium blanket that one keeps over their knees. Just right for a dog to lie on, and her blanket for her eternal rest. Again I say, "Couldn’t she have just died in her sleep?" Life sometimes seems cruel.

Chapter 3 (Freedom and Animals, cont.)

CLEO, THE OLD ENGLISH SHEEPDOG

It’s only fair that I mention Cleo. I had considered getting an Old English Sheepdog way back when I instead got my Springer, Wendy. Then, when my first husband Al and I separated in 1980, he got my son Alb an Old English Sheepdog puppy. I think it was kind of to make up for our separation and also to make up for having given away Claude, who Alby claimed to be “…My dog that you sold and lost….”

After promising ourselves (and failing) to brush her constantly, once her mutant sheepdog fur grew out, it matted so badly that it required a shearing once a year. I took her to BOCES for the clip. The first time it was done, the neighbor children didn’t recognize her so we tried to convince them we had swapped her in for this [what looked like] a Giant Schnauzer. They actually believed us, and I couldn’t blame them. Not only did she look that different, Cleo even acted differently when trimmed. I think she felt more vulnerable. Her thick fur must have pulled and itched. When we’d pat her, I’m sure she had felt almost nothing. The hair hanging down over her eyes must have been a nuisance. Suddenly she was lighter; the world looked brighter; when someone reached out to pet her she suddenly could feel the loving sensation of being stroked.

Another reason I had given thought to getting a sheepdog was because of the sheepdogs’ wonderful dispositions. I wondered that they would be kept for guarding sheep, as they haven’t a mean bone in their body. I later found out that the sheepdog originally was raised by the ewe. In this way it kept its pack instinct and when its family (of lambs) got threatened, it would defend the fold.

By the time alb was a senior in high school, I was married to Tom. Alb was rattling around in the messy house on Galaxy Drive--alone, except for Cleo for the most part, as his dad had a serious relationship going for him by then. His dad had found a very much more suitable woman for him than I could ever be. However, I hadn’t known that Alby was alone so much.

It had been a bad year for fleas, and with almost no one to care for Cleo, her coat not only got matted, but the fleas caused abrasions which festered, and [UGH] flies laid eggs on that area… Therefore she had maggots under all that matted hair. There was a dog groomer on Bunn Hill--a short walk from Galaxy Drive. Alb was to get her trimmed there. The groomer, I think, got nauseous over the shape Cleo was in. I was contacted, and we took Tom’s classic Camaro to pick up Cleo and bring her to a vet in Binghamton. She stayed there overnight to be treated and cleaned up. I felt guilty about the state of affairs at the old home on Galaxy drive, and also felt badly about how I had let the dog become so neglected. Somehow I felt a certain penance having to drive her--smelly and pest-ridden-- to the vets. Cleo recovered, though her coat looked more ragged than trimmed by the vet's job of finishing her trim, and they shaved her to the skin around her tail giving her a naked look… not at all pretty. But her hair grew back in, and she continued to be a great companion to Alb, but he was off to SUNY in Buffalo the following school year, (1986) and his dad found Cleo a new home with a retired couple... (…Where we hope she lived happily ever after, to die in her sleep with a grin on that funny furry face.)

Chapter 2 (Freedom and Animals, cont.)


Wendy bonds with her new master

Many Changes:

When I became separated from Al, we went from feeling we had to change to keep each other happy, to relaxing and being ourselves, and remained--or became--best of friends. We would even talk to each other about our dating. We had never celebrated our anniversary, so six months after I married Tom, when I came up to pick up Alby, I was wondering why Al said, with irony in his voice, “Happy Anniversary.” I couldn’t think what he meant. I was in a kind of a state of shock, as on my way to pick Alby up, I had hit a dog on Route 26. A plumber’s truck was parked on the highway, and the road was lit up to that point, and in the complete darkness of where the truck was parked, a shadow of a dog dashed out just as I was passing the truck. I jammed on the brakes, and the car went out of control after hitting the dog. No one was coming from the south… thank goodness, as my car went from the right lane into a skidding U-turn where I ended up in the exact opposite direction as if I had been going north and pulled along the side to stop. My first thought was, “How the Hell did I do that! And… Thank YOU God!” I checked on the dog, and the people hadn’t even known. They found her in their front yard seemingly okay but shaking in fear. I took down their telephone number so I could check later on how she was. I called the next morning, and they had taken her to the vets. She had a broken pelvis, but the vet said it would heal on its own. I was so relieved. I love dogs, and this was a cute Benji looking dog.

When while returning to Tom’s home on Charleston Ave. in Vestal, where I now lived--where Alb was visiting, I was pondering over what Al meant… Happy Anniversary. I finally realized that he meant the signing of the divorce papers one year ago to the day. It was then I realized that he may have been more emotionally invested in me then he or I had known. He couldn’t have told you the exact date we were married in 1962, but he knew the day on which we got divorced. Too bad he couldn’t have been more vested in the marriage than in the split.

By then I had taken poor Wendy home to Charleston Avenue. She was making no big hit with my stepchildren. They and Tom made comments to the effect, “I think she’s already dead and just hasn’t realized it… at least she smells that way.” And when she ate the rest of Trese’s pound of chocolate kiss that she had gotten for Christmas… something Trese was biding her time eating… a nibble at a time, really savoring it… Wendy wasn’t exactly the apple of Trese’s eye. But she settled in and survived the move. I had no idea how much my divorce affected not only my children, but my old puppy Wendy. We were so close, as I had her since she was four weeks old. To her, I was her mother, and had deserted her the eight months I lived in Binghamton, though I took her over there for day visits. Now she had Momma back. She was a happy pup ...no matter what her stepfamily thought of her. But eventually they mellowed and liked her the way she was…the old dog smell and all, and she got to sleep on the floor on my side of the bed where I could give her a reassuring pat every once in awhile.

FREEDOM AND ANIMALS (Second book of Animals I’ve known and Loved)

WILD, AND FREE, ARE THE SAME TO ME:

When I married Tom, I began to emerge from someone who was like a chameleon--adapting to everyone else’s claims on me--into who I really am. He not only loved me the way I was, but encouraged me when I wasn’t sure of myself--when I felt that my self expression wasn’t good enough. He saw me as pretty, if not beautiful, and after several years of marriage, rocky mostly because of my own insecurities, I began to feel more sure of who I was and that I was okay after all.

When I was an impressionable young child of four or five, my braids came undone in play and my mother, in an irritable mood said, “Go go inside and fix your hair! You look like a witch that way!” I then thought of myself as ugly unless every hair was in place. I learned how to braid my own hair, and it was in braids from the first grade until the end of the seventh grade. Then it was forever in a pony tail. I actually felt like I didn’t fit in my own skin if I curled my hair and went to school with it falling free around my shoulders.

When I had my first serious boyfriend when about 15, I gave him a camera for his birthday. When he went to take my picture, and when I turned towards him and smiled, he asked me to close my mouth first, then snapped my picture. I think I knew in my gut at that time that I would never really trust that he thought I was pretty. When I forgot and smiled at him from then on, I’d quickly feel I should cover my mouth or close it, as I thought my teeth were unattractive. I had that trademark Carly Simon gap in front. This was before Carly Simon was a singing hit--where some even thought the gap kind of sexy.

The boys in high school sensed my vulnerability, and found great sport in teasing me about anything they could detect that would be a good subject for teasing me for the day… whether it was my choice of wearing both orange and green on St. Patrick’s Day (I wasn’t Irish… what did I know about those being fighting colors), or whether it be my inability to read well out loud. Years later I identified with Charles Shultz’s Peanuts‘ comics when one read, “Security is to know you aren’t going to be called on to read out loud.”

I ended up hating school and hating those boys for a long, long time after graduation. I found more than comfortable companionship with my animals. Like my brother said about his ducks… sometimes my dogs and cats were my “only friends.” My close friends with whom I felt comfortable confiding with were younger than myself so I’d feel I had the upper hand in being older. I dated the losers of society, because I wouldn’t and couldn’t hurt their feelings… they knew this and felt safe asking me out. I had plenty of dates because of that… very virginal ones. They were safe… I was safe. It helped some boys taken as the nerds of my day to show how great their personalities really were when they felt secure.

My first husband Al was a great guy, but he was the type, like Groucho Marx, who said, “I would never belong to a club who would have me as a member.” Instead, with Al, he could never be married to someone who was good enough for him, because if she was good enough for him, she wouldn’t have married him in the first place. So, with that, along with my turning out to be no more domestic than my mother in that I was no cook, nor could I keep a house neat, Al always gave me an impression of being disappointed in me.

I had to find my place in life outside of the home, and finally did at Church Bible studies, and as a Den Mother, then Sunday school teacher for Junior High age, and with the League of Women Voters. When I felt God in my life, I then thought that if I was good enough for God, then how could I be not good enough for ANYBODY down here on earth. By then, I was going into my forties and looked at my life ahead and all I could see is a life that wasn’t really me or mine. Ironically it was then (feeling that God was in my life) that I finally had enough steel in my spine to call it quits in my marriage, and went to a lawyer in Binghamton who drew up legal separation papers for us, and set out to eventually get a no-fault divorce.

Since I couldn’t have an in-house separation, I lived next door at Fessy Washburn’s house. She was a widow by then, and I asked if I could stay in her walk out basement for $100 per month. I then stayed at home during the day… when I wasn’t working at Hilltop Retirement Center as an aide, and going to school to become an RN. It was only at nights that I slept over at Fessy’s. It was as quiet as a tomb in her rec’ room downstairs. I slept on a day bed, and got used to making the bed daily so she would never be embarrassed if her guests passed through her downstairs. The downstairs was cool in the summer, and even cooler in the winter, as she kept the thermostat at 63 degrees… no higher. I liked it cool, and I loved the privacy. I discovered that I had ringing in my ears that I had never noticed before. I guess with the crickets in the summer, and the furnace going in the winter and the regular added noise of kids and a snoring husband, I just never noticed my tinnitus.

Poor Wendy would miss me and come scratching on Washburn’s basement door. I’d let her in quietly and she’d sometimes sleep with me or next to my day bed. Three years later when I moved to an apartment, Fessy sold me the daybed to take with me. I dated while separated, feeling as divorced as anyone who had finalized theirs, though I stayed just separated until I met Tom. I was real marriage shy, and unwilling to ever turn over my freewill again. I felt that free will was a God given right that marriage had stripped away from me. I wrote this poem in those lonely years of hesitant dating:

I tried to feed the wild bird
With quiet outstretched hand
And still it wouldn’t trust me
Nor near me would he land.

I wondered how he learned it
Instinctively a sage,
Misplaced love and trust can mean
A close, confining cage.

With deepest understanding
Why he chooses to be free,
I leave the seed on ground below
While he watches from a tree.

With my spirit soaring
in abandonment and ease,
I am alone, not lonely
And I travel with the breeze.

You stretch your hand to beckon
To trust you I may learn
Just leave your gift beneath the tree
Perhaps I will return.


I think I felt wild and free in my separation from Al. I told Tom my shortcomings, and he was good about it, and accepted me for ME. But there is always a feeling of a bond in marriage, and I’d have it no other way. However, I have a problem fencing anything in, and keeping anything tied up. You see… wild and free is the same to me. Somewhere inside me, I’m wild again, and will remain wild forever. So I live vicariously on the wings of the birds I’ve raised, and the unleashed dogs with whom I rove through the woods while they seek rabbits and chase squirrels. Yes, wild/ and free/ are the same to me.

Hello All,
I'm going into a new book... book two called Freedom and Animals, but first, to let you know what kind of a family I was from, my brother just sent me this email:

Jo
I wrote this to Dick Strong when he sent me a letter about a super tanker. Thaught you could ad it to your blog.
Jerry

Richard,
When I was an apprentice at GE Lynn Mass, I lived in a room in an old Hotel called the Anchorage at the end of Nahant about 5 miles out into Boston Harbor from Lynn. I had a 12 foot sailboat that I kept moored on a buoy off the shore. After work in the summer months I used to pack a sandwich supper and set sail into the harbor.
I was quite tired after a full days work and would often set the sails and tie the tiller off and sleep with my head hanging off the port side and my feet over the other side. One day while sailing I slept very soundly. I awoke in a dark space and heard strange language from men somewhere above.
When I looked up I could see above the dark roof above my head, was the side of a super Freighter and The noise was the crew yelling at me in some foreign language. They must have stopped the ship to avoid running me over and the huge hull of the ship seemed 20 stories above me.
I had to paddle the boat away with an oar, as I had no wind that close to the ship. One of the crew that could speak English finally started yelling and he was well versed in 4 letter English words.
Needless to say, That was the last time I ever went to sleep on a sailboat.
Jerry Lawrence

Chapter 45 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)
Snowballing Problem:

I don’t remember when I began cross country skiing, but I know that it was after we got Wendy, and I got her in 1970 when my youngest son was 2 years old. It was sometime in the 70s, and she would diligently follow me in the snow. Sometimes the snow would be so deep, the only place she could comfortably walk was on the path I’d packed down with my skis. Now, 30+ years later I still ski on paths in the woods in Pennsylvania instead of Vestal New York in the deep snow and my dogs usually pad along behind on the packed trail.

Throughout the years I’ve noticed the different ways snow affects my skiing AND, how it affects the dog’s that I’ve had which have long hair, like the hair on spaniels. When it’s dry and very cold, the snow doesn’t bother anything but their paws, and to make matters worse, they’ll chew between their toes. But when the snow is the snowball stage… You know, so you could pack it into a snowball? It sticks to the bottom of my skis, but also to their long hair along their abdomens and the feathering along their legs.

Once with Wendy, poor dog, it got so bad that I realized too late that Wendy was so bogged down she no longer could move. I had to leave her stranded below while I went up the hill to the house to get a plastic slider; I lifted her into it, and pushed her up the hill from the snowy field behind the house back in Vestal. She wouldn’t go sliding with either me or the kids, but being pushed up the hill, and having no choice she agreed to it. I don’t know how Bear would put up with such a thing. He’s a 4 ½ year old English cocker, but still has that spaniel hair that seems to beckon snowballs to gather.

We got about 9 inches of new-fallen snow last week, and for awhile it lovely for cross country skiing, but one day, though it was just OK for skiing, poor Bear got his testicles back via "snow balls" as well as getting so many snowballs that were gathering on his long spaniel hair giving more and more heft as we went along the path until he was walking bowlegged… you know the stance… like a baby with a full diaper. I turned back half way from the lake, as he was becoming so bogged down, and remembered Wendy‘s plight years ago. Bear would have had a fit if I left him bogged down in the woods, and I could just imagine all the snapping and growling if I had to push HIM in a plastic slider.

Wendy would let me trim her, comb her, do whatever to her to keep the snow from sticking to her on those sticky-snow days, even spraying her paws with Pam. But with bear, it’s a completely different story. He gets all growl-y and threatening. When this happened last week I filled his water dish as a ruse, and had a large pot which I filled with warm water to dissolve as many snowballs as I could on his legs.  I grabbed the old towels we have handy all year long for mud and wetness from the dogs or our boots, and with the help of Milk Bones, though with much growling, got his feet dipped into the warm water in the pot and tried my best to break up the larger snowballs that would have taken awhile to melt.  He both knew what I was doing and was grateful, while at the same time growling in a complaining way to let me know he was blaming me for the whole fiasco. At least Wendy would patiently let me get the snow balls off her any way I could.

(I marked on the 2008 October calendar, "Get Bear TRIMMED mid-November!" )

Such is life at our small rural home.

Chapter 44 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)
PIP, THE STARLING:

Pip was my only successfully raised wild bird. If I felt at all bad about raising a sparrow, it wasn’t as bad as what people think of starlings. ...Even what I thought of starlings. Strangely enough, I found Pip in my Church’s parking lot. So, that should remind me that whatever bird Jesus was referring to when it was translated to “sparrow” it could have been a Middle Eastern equivalent of a starling.

I had dropped by the church during the week to drop something off at the office and found the activities director chasing this bird. This man, Keith, said the bird wouldn’t stay outside. I found when one didn’t flail his arms about, it was easy to just walk over and pick up the scared starling. I wasn’t really sure it was a starling at the time. Catbirds are valued thrushes, and young starlings could be mistaken for one.

From the moment I picked up this bird, it nestled down into my hand, and thought of me as its mother, so there was no “finding the real mother” to take over the job of raising him.

I simply took him home. Pip, being a well-developed bird had to be taught to open is mouth for my feedings. August’s old guinea pigs’ cage fit in my bedroom window in a way so the door fit flush with the open window frame. The first morning we awoke to Pip’s squeaky-hinge voice, we saw that he had company, as two adult birds had perched on the outside wire of his cage… and they were definitely starlings attracted by the "...bird of the same feather."

My feelings about starlings mellowed once I got to know Pip. He was affectionate and trusting-- following me around chattering like a child who had just learned how to talk. Even the fierce look of his close-set eyes seemed to soften. I resented a bumper-sticker that read, “Clean up Binghamton--Eat a Starling.”

First Pip coveted the house and its hanging plants were he’d perch watching us. Then he coveted our hearts. Fearlessly he’d fly to our heads, and then hop down to our shoulders, then try to nestle between our collars and neck… some of us had long hair which gave him the comfort of a mother bird’s wings.

Like with the sparrow, we had to teach Pip to forage on his own. He had no trouble finding ants …then when back in the house, he would try to pick the newsprint off the newspaper. And like before, he totally depended upon us feeding him, then at some magic moment of development he suddenly began independently feeding himself. Before that time, our expeditions to the lawn and garden weren’t too successful. But he’d peck into the grass, and part it by opening his beak…very cute; very clever. However, once when barefoot, he pecked between my toes, opening his beak to part them as if looking for food. [Toe-jam?] I moved my toes thinking it would alarm him, but he excitedly pecked between them all the more.

We first gave him indoor flight lessons. As soon as he could gain height and fly to the high windowsills, I knew he was ready for the outdoors, and eventually… independence. The first day of outdoor flight, he would return to shrubs near the house and announce his presence. We were still feeding him, so I hadn’t expected he would leave, but when he was let out in the evening, he stayed out overnight. I was worried the first time, but in the morning he flew back to us, and announced that he was hungry with his noisy chattering.

My neighbor, Mrs. Washburn (Fessy), had said she would have the Naturalist Club band him, but I never knew when Pip would be around for this “ceremony.” Pip had been flying off and returning at will for several days when I saw Fessy outside mowing her lawn with her old fashioned non-motorized push mower--She said it not only did the job, but gave her healthy exercise. I asked her about the bird banding. She said they were up to our place several days earlier. I apologized for not being there so he could get banded. She said, “Well, we figured that the tame starling that flew to one of our shoulders was your bird, so we banded it.” I hadn’t even noticed his new bracelet… Our Pip now had the distinction of a bird-band registered with the Binghamton Naturalist Club.

Once I knew for sure that Pip was independent, I drove him to a small nature preserve off Bunn Hill Road and let him go. It made me feel good , but sad at the same time. I wondered what would become of him… like so many other mysteries of recognizing a wild animal and then it wandering out of our life, I was to never know how his story would end. When seeing a flock of starlings, I’d sometimes call, “Pip! Pip!“ hoping he’d have found the old neighborhood and fly down to my shoulder. I prefer to think of a happy ending to this story, and that he lived a long, happy, wild and free life.

Chapter 43 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

Not a Sparrow Falls without His Knowing:

The problem with loving animals is that one’s heart is so often broken.

A boy named Jessy Smith brought me a catbird to raise. He hadn’t realized that the mother bird would have been still attentive, even after the nestlings get too big for their nest, and this catbird was well feathered and almost ready to be on it‘s own. I called a local bird-watching club to find out what to feed it. They suggested medicated Chick-feed, so I went down to Agway and bought some. While I was there I got some clover seed to help nourish the back lawn (clover returns nitrogen to the soil. [I never weed out any clover anywhere it grows…ever]).

In the mixing of the chick-feed, I was amazed how the feed was in perfectly round and very tiny pellets. The bird ate it well, and later, it being on my mind, I thought to check the other package from Agway. The other looked more like a mixture for chickens. I had fed this poor bird clover seed. I didn’t know what effect it would have on it. I had borrowed the bird cage from the Garbers, as they kept canaries, so I called Mr. Garber to ask if he thought I damaged the bird. He said, ”Probably not. Just keep an eye on his droppings, as that can tell a lot about the health of the bird, and reported back that they looked normal. I then gave the catbird chick-feed every hour on the hour until sundown, then covered the cage until early the next morning, and feeding it every few hours throughout the day.

As soon as the catbird showed signs of wanting to fly, I brought in a cut tree, which I anchored under the high windows of one of the children’s rooms. This sweet bird was almost ready for his independence. The same morning of his demise, he had nestled into my hand when I held him. I felt a warm thrill as it had shown me that it loved and trusted me. Later he flew from his indoor perch on the tree to the floor, just behind the closed bedroom door just as one of the children burst through, and our catbird was instantly killed. It was an accident, and I didn’t compound it by letting my child know what had killed the bird.
~~~~~~~~~
A year or so later we got more practice on raising a bird. This was a sweet little miracle. It was a hot spring day when my son Alby almost stepped on what looked like a giant cricket. When he looked closer, he realized it was a baby bird so young it still had no feathers, and at that stage, baby birds are really ugly, which Alby thought was cool, as it resembled a prehistoric bird, and he was in that dinosaur phase I swear all children go through. There were no nests in the young maple trees on our lawn, and we couldn’t figure out where this baby bird came from. Later I figured the only answer was that perhaps a blue jay had plucked him out of a nest, and dropped him there, as blue jays are known for stealing nests of other birds. This poor little bird was so helpless that it could hardly lift its ugly head to peep. First thing we had to do was to give it water with an eyedropper. Then I had the children scoop up this baby bird and place it in a cardboard box cushioned with rags and we placed it safely in the branches of a tree hoping the mother bird would come and feed it (doing all the work). No luck. We were again to play mother bird for a hatchling, feeding it every hour for awhile.

We went to our next door neighbor and resource for bird information, Fessy Washburn, who was one of the bird-watchers. She recommended the same recipe that my own mother fed the robin hatchlings so long ago: a mixture of mashed potatoes, egg yolks, and milk, mixed thick enough to gather up on a wooden match stick to drop it down its throat. (The main worry was not to let go of the matchstick, as when feeding this “ugly duckling of a bird”, it would open its mouth wide enough to peer down to its stomach, and it would gulp at the food as if trying to ingest it stick and all.) With this bird the children were a big help feeding the bird every hour. We got a break each night as after sundown we could cover his box while he slept, only to be awoken with his hungry chirping at dawn to continue the feeding the next day.

Soon Chip, as we called him, demanded less frequent feeding, and we again got the chickfeed at Agway, and had him on that as well as other snacks. Soon Chip's downy feathers began developing and he was beginning to look pretty nice. Alb kind of missed his dinosaur look. I was hoping that this would be some kind of a rare bird.

Chip was getting old enough to be brought outside, and I’d take him on excursions, sometimes the kids would help. We’d try to capture grasshoppers, ants, any crawly critter to tempt his gullet, but he wouldn't eat them unless we put it into his beak. I’ve since seen this: baby birds will not feed themselves even when they are as big their parents. They seem to have an instinctive timetable that flips almost as fast as a switch… they only take the food from their parents, and then “click” their instinct has them catch and eat their food like experts.

Mrs. Washburn stopped by on one of our outdoor excursions told us that our Chip was a sparrow. “I hope it’s not an English sparrow,” she said. She thought them a nuisance as there are so many of them--one of the most common birds. The children didn’t seem to care; they loved the bird no matter what. It more or less had to run of the house. Our old cat Muffin seemed to distinguish our pet birds or hamsters from the wild birds or mice. Chip would spend most of the time on window sills looking out at the world and practicing flying from one to another. The kids laughed at the way Chip would do a little dance on the window sill when we approached him to give him a ride on our fingers or shoulders.

As its plumage grew in, more and more it resembled an English sparrow. I was wishing it would be something rare, as I felt that because it was so loved, it deserved to be better than a nuisance bird. He began catching bugs that would land on the screen, and we realized that he was ready to find his own food. We had planned to release him the next day. Meanwhile, Joanna had let a young stray orange striped cat follow her home from Vestal Center. For some stupid reason we didn’t think a thing of letting the cat into the house. The first time the cat spied the bird, it caught and killed it in a flash. Though we dashed after it and pried the bird from its jaws, it was too late. We never felt so badly about losing a pet bird before or since.

I told Mrs. Washburn about it, and Fessy said to bring it over. Although it was a young English sparrow, her bird club had a mounted display of a every local bird and had none of the English sparrow in its young plumage phase. At least Chip served as a teaching tool when we had our young sparrow mounted.

Back then I was still going to Church, and I was doing the children’s sermons at First United Methodist Church in Endicott. I wrote a sermon with a better ending about our sparrow, Chip, but it was still an English sparrow in the story, and the little girl in the story was disappointed… that is, until one Sunday when they read the line from Matthew 10:29, “Not even the sparrow falls without your Father‘s will.” Then she knew that there was no such thing as some bird that was too common to be a part of God’s intentions. I still believe that… no matter what you call him: God, Lord, Allah, The Force, or Mother Nature …we are all a part of the whole scheme of things, and important in our own way.

Postscript:
As for the orange cat, we found him a very nice home. We were given directions to the new owners house. We were to look for an orange mailbox on her street. We found the mailbox… and the house was orange too. When the lady opened the door, you could see she was one of those redheads who had very orange hair. She welcomed us into her home. The furniture in the living room had orange upholstery, and the kitchen floor was a dappled orange linoleum. (There should be a poem there… like “the crooked man, crooked mile and crooked stile. Crooked cat, crooked mouse, …etc.) …”And they all lived together in a very orange house.

Chapter 42 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

PICKLE-PUSS

Pickle puss was a scrawny orange striped cat with a protruding belly-button and chronic digestive problems. Joanna and her friend Linda had gotten this kitten for free (“Y-I-P-E-E“) from a pet shop in Endicott. They had bicycled over there from her girlfriend’s house and brought the little kitten back ducked down inside one of their shirts. Linda’s mother who had a neat and shiny house (and wild and disrespectful kids) wouldn’t let her keep the kitten.

[I once said of this woman that if she ever had a creative thought, she’d had sprayed it with Windex and wiped it away.]

Joanna pedaled home with her new kitten. I don’t know how she convinced me to keep the cat, but it may have been easy, as I was afraid it had been a drop-off, and the pet shop owner would probably have had it destroyed if she returned it. Of course, it was Joanna’s responsibility, but mothers know how that goes: With school and the busy social life now that she was in Junior High her scope of friends extended for several miles further than ever, she had no time for the cat.

Walking the dogs in the woods was no company for myself, as they would be off following their noses while I walked along on the path. Then I had Pickle-Puss… and every day for almost a year he walked my path keeping me company. The poor cat wasn’t healthy, but had an unusual zest for life. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t live long, and felt that his few days on this earth were therefore more valuable and to be treasured. I took him back and forth to Dr. Norris trying one medication after another, all disguised in milk, to try to perk up the health of the cat. In the long run, it turned out that he was allergic to milk, so the very thing we were putting the medicine in was slowly killing the cat. He had probably been weaned early having no source of milk for long enough so the enzyme that digests it was no longer in his system. But he didn’t let his health get him down, and enjoyed our walk in the woods below our property and to the right on the path I had carved between no trespassing signs across the hills above Route 26 in Vestal.

I had figured it was No-Man’s Land on that small strip of land not claimed to the right or left with their signs not quite up to my path. With a booted foot, I had kicked at the pine needles and the ground under to make a narrow path, and when I came across a rock, I put it on the down side. After a few months of that, I had a nice path which otherwise would be just a hillside slippery with years of fallen coppery pine needles. It had been necessary when I had Claude to take him out for exercise where he wouldn’t get into trouble. Before he came along, I hadn’t been much of a walker. Perhaps he was responsible for my becoming addicted to the healthy habit of daily walks. Now I had a virtual park and I felt like it was mine… a place all to myself… to now share with my cat.

Pickle-Puss would perch on a sawed off branch near a place where I’d leave seed for the wild birds. He’d teeter almost losing his balance, his eyes searching the limbs above for a hungry bold blue jay who may make that fatal and wonderful mistake of coming too close.

Laughing, I’d walk on and soon he would cry for me to wait. In the cold of winter, he would cry for me to pick him up and tuck him inside the front of my jacket, and at those times he resembled a joey in it’s kangaroo pouch more than a kitten. And he was as content as a prince carried in a hand carriage.

Other times he would make his kitten attempt at climbing trees, and, honestly, he tried to climb up a small beech tree. Its trunk looked like the pipe to a church organ, and he couldn’t get his claws in once his momentum upwards stopped, he slid down like a fireman down a pole.

That ugly scrawny allergic, misshapen cat captured my heart and taught me a great lesson about life. Even as I think of him now, I think that however he felt, he wouldn’t let his spirit be wilted by poor health. He seemed to be amazed at life… Each day he seemed surprised to be alive, and it seemed to me he thought each day was created for him… as a special gift.

When he could no longer eat, and listening to him breathe, I could hear the rattle of pneumonia, I knew that we had lost the fight. I tried once more to have the vet give him a boost with a shot of penicillin, but it was too late. Rather than prolong his life, when his lungs began filling and he had to struggle to breathe, I had Dr. Norris euthanize him. I felt so badly that as soon as I got home, I went down to our path to be alone where he used to watch for squirrels and blue jays. (Once a squirrel stood on a branch facing us and scolded us for being in his area--that had been exciting.) I just let my mind go with thoughts of that kitten, and then in the midst of my tears, it hit me. He was now a part of it ALL. He was a part of Nature. That zest… his spirit was what never got sick, would never die. He was there in the breath of the wind through the pine; he was in the chatter of the angry squirrel, and the clapping leaves of the poplar. And he lives with me still, as do all my animals, and family, and friends I‘ve lost throughout the years.

Chapter 41 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

“Guard Dog For Sale”

I was always running on empty… so when I stopped for gas at Van Dervort's when I was pressed for time, I couldn’t get the tricky gas cap off. It was the kind under the license plate and almost touching the back bumper. The pipe had shifted a little and sometimes I couldn’t get the gas cap off easily. I had a roast in the oven and had to get home, so I ended up impatiently slamming the pump nozzle back in the slot of the pump, and tore off for home on the dregs of the tank.

About two hours later, a patrol car came up the street and turned into our driveway. A uniformed officer started towards our house on the front walk. The only convenient place to place the dog run had been from the front steps to the Maple in the yard which was now large and strong enough to support the run with a big dog struggling to attack this tasty uniformed man. Seeing Claude out there may have discouraged some visitors, but it was the ONLY place we could have put him. And, because Claude didn’t like strangers… uniforms… or males, this policeman fit the bill for public enemy no.1. As he took his stance of a tightly wound killing machine, and started growling at the officer, the cop guardedly reached over to his gun. Fortunately we were out front and grabbed Claude off his dog run and shoved him into the house. The policeman said, “You’d better be careful having a dog like that." I was shaken by his reaction to Claude, like he’d have shot first asked questions later if we weren’t there, more than what he had come for. He explained that someone had seen me attempting to put gas in my car and then drove away without paying, and had made a note of my license plate number. I told him about our tricky gas cap and that I had pumped no gas… and that the people at the gas station knew us personally and of my problem tank. Satisfied, he left. Later the people at Van Dervort’s apologized for the incident… they didn’t see me personally, just got the license number from a citizen trying to be helpful.

Finally Claude tore up a little male poodle in the owner’s own backyard when Claude followed August down the hill to where our neighbor, Mr. Bracken, had told him there was left over wood for one of Aug’s many construction projects. After paying that vet bill and suffering the embarrassment of such an incident, you think we would have said, “Enough!”… But when Claude scared a Little Leaguer in uniform who was collecting money for Vestal Little League, chasing him across the lawn like he was fresh meat, we decided Claude had to go.

In September 1977, we found a good home having advertised him as a guard dog… and that HE was! Several days after he was at his new home, the woman let Claude out without tying him up and he ran away. We both called every dog shelter in the area, but I didn’t place a lost dog ad in the paper. We kept an eye on the “Lost and Found” ads to see if anyone picked up a dog of his description, but never saw hide or hair of Claude again. I figured he was either dead or happy, for with Claude, there was no two ways about it. We had sold him for $35 and I hadn’t deposited the check. I told the woman that I was ripping it up. Explained that I only asked for money to have someone take the dog seriously. Giving him away you never knew what was to happen to him.

It’s strange how long a lost animal affected me. For years I would do a double-take each time I saw a yellow German Shepherd. We knew he was out there somewhere--dead or alive--and the not knowing his fate bothered me more than if I had found out he died. It helps me to understand what others go through when they’ve lost someone or some pet that is part of the family. There is something in us that needs to know… no matter how mean the truth. I guess that’s what is meant by closure.