Regarding Dolly: An Update

 

Just a quick post here to honor a dog and her human.

Three years ago, in August of 2021, I took my neighbor Linda on a day-long jaunt to find a dog. Her beloved pug mix, Abbey, had passed away some months before, and she and her husband were feeling the absence of a dog’s magic in the house. You know, that quality they have of somehow brightening everyone’s spirits. So Linda asked me to help her find the right dog.

We went looking for “a younger dog” and came home with a fourteen-year-old. Yep. You can read that story by clicking here.

Linda and her husband Bob took that old dog that had been uncared for (and unbathed) for so long, and they scrubbed her up, brushed her out, gave her warm, soft bedding, and started feeding her cooked chicken breasts every night. I kid you not. (Thus the roly-poly Dolly you see in the photo above.) I remember Linda telling me at the time that they were committed to giving her a great life for whatever time she had left, whether that be days or weeks or months or—if they were lucky—years.

And years it was. Nearly three exactly. Dolly passed away this week at the age of seventeen. Seventeen, y’all! And that dog…. Boy howdy, was she a happy girl in her last days! Oh, not at first. She was quiet and reserved and withdrawn (and very wary of Bob). But her humans were patient. And they had chicken. And daily love and encouragement. And that dog finally began to respond, so much so that she found her happy feet. I will never forget stopping by one day and Linda telling me: “Every evening after dinner she goes into the den and dances around.” Dolly might have been too old to do zoomies, but she was never too old to dance.

A good lesson for all of us who are easing into the silver muzzle stage of life, I reckon.

How Maya is Grieving

 

Maya Angelou Murphy

A number of people have asked how Maya and Jenny the Cat have been doing since Thomas left us. Both feel his absence, for sure, and I have no doubt that they sense my sadness as well. Consequently, Jenny has slept with me every night since our last day with him. I believe cats sense when humans are ill, and she interprets my sadness as a state of being unwell. (Purrl, before her, could also sense when I was physically ill or deeply sad, and she would crawl under the covers in those times and place her body against mine, purring as a mother cat would do with kittens—even though Purrl never had any of her own.)

Maya is another story altogether. Thomas, it seems, was her assumed body guard. When Thom could still go for walks, I would sometimes walk them together around the block, and Maya would actually be happy and excited on the leash. (In case you’re unaware, unless we’re hiking, Maya hates going for walks—because it’s just “too peoply” out there.) In the morning, with Thomas here, Maya would run into and through the kitchen, then tear through the living room, looking for things to play with, hopping and wagging her tail and barking if I didn’t get her breakfast ready fast enough. It was hilarious and entertaining every morning.

At the time of this writing, Thomas has been gone for two weeks and two days, and for two weeks and two days, Maya has gone right back to the safety of her bed after we come back in from the back yard. No running through the house. No hopping. No playing. She looks for him in the kitchen, and when she sees he isn’t there, she simply retreats to the den and curls up again.

This makes me very, very sad for her. She had come so far, but seems to be withdrawing again. I’m giving her extra love, of course, and simply going to sit with her often. But she has lost her rock, her anchor. (It’s probably a good thing she doesn’t realize that looking to Thomas for protection would be like Dorothy looking to the Cowardly Lion to do the same.)

As some of you know, months before I lost Thom, I had begun looking for a dog companion for Maya, a confident dog that would help her continue to recover and make her feel safe on walks, perhaps draw her out to interact with me more. And I wanted to get a new dog settled into my pack before Thomas left us, so that his passing would be easier on Maya. Alas, that did not happen. But, to that end….

<Spoiler alert: Big Announcement ahead>

On Friday, I adopted a dog. Before you go thinking that I rushed out to my nearest shelter and impulsively grabbed a sweet dog to comfort me in my grief, let me assure you it did not happen that way. Like, at all. This dog’s story—and I do know the entire back story—is so complex and complicated that names will be changed to keep the guilty from being publicly shamed, and I won’t even be able to share all of it here. But in my next post, I’ll give you an update on my new little girl, Stevie (not her original name), and I’ll tell you as much as I can. (If you want the full story after that, you’ll have to call me and be sworn to lifelong secrecy.)

For now, I can tell you this: Despite everything that has happened to her in recent weeks, Stevie is filled with joy and enthusiasm. Her tail never stops wagging. She loves everyone she meets—people, dogs (cats, I hope). She’s got sass and spirit (thus her name; that’s “Stevie” from Schitt’s Creek, not Stevie Nicks, though she would do for a namesake, too).

That’s all I know for now because she isn’t even home yet. She’s still in dog jail. I can’t pick her up until her spay surgery, and that can’t happen until Tuesday because of the holiday. Oh my dragons! Hasn’t this dog endured enough?? But wait—you don’t know that part of the story yet. More to come, but let me conclude by sharing one more thing.

You may be thinking that I’m all excited about bringing a new dog home. The truth is, I am 20% excited and 80% terrified. New situations and changes in routine are very difficult for me, to say the least. I function much better when things are the same, day after day—calm, steady, predictable. This is part of my mental health journey, and though I am aware of it, that doesn’t make new situations any easier. I know. You’re thinking, “New dog! Yay!” and I’m over here wringing my hands and worrying about whether my new girl will chase Jenny or pee on the carpeting or somehow (heaven help us) escape the yard. But I felt exactly this way when I brought Maya home. Well, no, with Maya I was 10% excited, 90% terrified. OK, maybe 5% excited. Really. Same with Thomas. And look what became of that.

So if you call to get the whole scoop on Stevie and I sound flustered, just reassure me that the sun will rise the next day, Jenny will come out from under the bed eventually, and Stevie will add another dimension of joy to this home that has been far too quiet without the tip-tapping of Thomas’s feet on the floor. Stay tuned. Here we go…. And may the New Year bring a new dimension of joy to your life as well (preferably a rescue dog, but that’s just my own bias speaking).

Six years in

 

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, please stop right now, just for a few seconds, and celebrate with us. We made it. Sgt. Thomas Tibbs, my quirky, wonderful, problematic, sweet dog and I made our goal of six years.

Six years ago I brought him home from Upland Animal Shelter. He'd been listed upon intake (by San Bernardino County Animal Control) as being five years old. When I told my vet his age, he smiled and said, "They were being kind."

"So... six?" I responded.
"Six... ish," he said.

So my deal with Thomas (of which I would remind him from time to time over the years, usually at night when I sat beside him, brushing or petting him to calm him before bed) was this: Give me at least six years, Pal. Six years to show you that humans really can be kind. You need at least as many years with kindness and comfort as you've had with starvation and deprivation and the stars only know what else you've endured.

As of January 4th, we've made it. Thomas has given me six years of daily walks, incredible hikes, contented dog sighs, floppy trotting ears, post-bath victory laps around the yard, and tail wags. (Oh, I am so grateful for all those tail wags, which took sooooo long to finally see in the beginning.)

He still loves Purrl, who was only four months old when I brought Thom home,

 and his stuffy friends

and riding in Cloud, my 2003 Ford Ranger,

an activity which is now a daily sojourn to pick up mail in the afternoon, but often it also means a mid-morning break to drive around the park and look for people out walking their dogs. Well, not the people--Thomas is only interested in spying on other dogs from the comfort of his man cave in the backseat of the truck. I think he is fascinated by how happy they all seem, trotting along in broad daylight with their people attached, seemingly without a care in the world. We still walk before the sun comes up, which is when he feels safest.

That is, unless we're going off into the hills to hike. If we head out where the coyotes sing, Thomas relaxes, trotting along the dirt trails and fire roads beside me, occasionally stopping to sniff--something that took years for him to feel comfortable doing.

And I gotta tell ya, this boy has hiked everywhere with me--up steep hills, over boulders, through fields so thick with wildflowers the trail was lost to us, across streams and past a very beautiful but amorous female coyote who thought Thomas was The One she'd been longing for.

We still walk every day, logging 350 out of 365 days for 2019. (Sciatica and a couple of short vacations out of state account for the 15 days we missed.)

With all that walking and the years gone by, has Thomas calmed down, grown out of his quirks? Absolutely not.

I still have to warn him when I'm about to print something, so he can trot out to the garage and jump into the truck, as the sound of the printer absolutely terrifies him. Not the sound of the vacuum cleaner or the garbage disposal or my blow dryer. The printer. And my cell phone, which is still always left on Do Not Disturb mode when I'm at home, as it sends him tearing through the house in a panic if it so much as quietly dings to notify me of a text message.

He still flinches when I touch him if I don't let him know in advance I'm going to do so.

Of course, he is showing signs of aging. We no longer walk miles when we hike together. He's good for a mile and a half, though. He will always have Pemphigas, the auto-immune disease, but it is currently well controlled, and only flares up when he is particularly stressed. Every few months, he has severe gastro-intestinal issues, so he's on a probiotic and gets tasty organic pumpkin added to his food.

Most days he is active and happy, and he has gone from barely tolerating my bedtime routine of petting and singing to him to eagerly anticipating it--so much so that, as soon as I begin my flossing and brushing routine, he camps out on the floor just outside the bathroom door, ears up and waiting for his ear scratch + back massage + belly rubs. Spoiled? Yes, absolutely. I can't begin to imagine the horror of his life before, having to scrounge for food and water in the desert, being literally eaten alive by mange--not for days or weeks or months, but years. Oh, my poor boy! But he's safe now. And hopefully, I have a few more years to spoil him.

 

Merry...

Sgt. Thomas Tibbs hates Christmas. I'm sorry. He does. That is not my snowman in that photo, but that is definitely Thomas attempting to, once again, slink away while I'm trying to take a photo. This is one of the downsides (really there are so few! Maybe a handful at best! Okay, honestly, the list is long, but who cares?) of deciding that a feral dog is your best buddy. First of all, he's never learned "sit." Telling him that and doing that age-old motion of pulling up on the leash while pushing down on the dog's hindquarters scares him enough to put him in That's-it-I-mistrust-you-again mode. He knows "wait" as a command when I drop the leash, but... yeah, he's only going to hold that wait as long as I'm close enough to step on the leash if he starts walking. That cute snowman is on my next-door-neighbors' front lawn. Their house looks beautiful, so I positioned said feral dog first near the sleigh... but no, he wasn't having it... then by the snowman... again, he was quite insecure about it. So every time I tried to back up into the street and take the iconic "Look! It's Christmas! Here's my cute dog!" photo, he would slowly start idling toward our front porch next door. I don't blame him. I understand. He fears the snowman. He fears all the bright shiny tinkling twinkling moving singing Christmas decorations.

And that's so sad. Because I love them. So, full disclosure here, I've been tormenting my best buddy every night by making him take long walks around my neighborhood so I (selfishly) can look at the lights and tell him (quietly) "Thomas, that's so cute, though! Why you scared o' him?" Poor guy.

The girls, on the other hand (Princess Purrl and Sugar Plum), are in love with Christmas every year. Mostly because of the wrapping. Also because of the ribbons. Definitely because of the fuzzy feathered catnip toys their Big Sister Nic brings them:

This is Purrl's favorite position in the morning, by the way: Bottom to heater. We've been waking to temps in the 30's, so I don't blame her. In this photo, she is jealously guarding this toy so Sug can't get it. Naughty....

On the upside for Thomas, though, I do have to say this has been a great year for him. Since I no longer leave the house to work, we've bonded even more, and we often take long walks out in the country where he feels much more comfortable than walking where there are terrifying things such as people and flags and Christmas decorations and ducks and other dogs and lawn ornaments.

What he likes most, though, is to ride in the extra cab of the truck, looking at everything from the place where he feels safest in the world. So yes, I'm still driving him around every afternoon when we go to fetch the mail. "Thomas, ride?" is all I have to say. He trots down the hall, out to the garage and jumps in the truck--if the door is open. If it's not, he dances, shifting his weight from one front foot to the other while shaking his head in delirious joy. Riiiiiiide!

And now he plays. He has created a game that he adores. I'm not sure how it started, but he will often run for the bedroom when he sees me getting the leash. (Yes, I know; he's the opposite of most dog-buddies.) It makes me laugh, and some weeks ago I told him, "I'm going to get you!" which made him laugh and wag his tail--and run away faster. So now it's a game. I pick up the leash and he gallops down the hall to the bedroom, spins around in a circle and does a dog bow. I follow, then I turn and run back down the hall and he chases me. I stop when I get to the kitchen, turn and say, "I'm going to get you!" and he tears down the hallway again, wagging his tail furiously. It's hilarious. And man, does it ever make me happy to see him happy.

Oh--there is that other game he plays. Possum. You know how most dogs get excited in the morning when their human gets up? It's time to go outside! Yes! Pee time! Hooray! Major sniffs and leg hiking and all that! Not Thomas. He waits for me to come and sit beside his bed and rub his back and scratch his ears and massage his head until he finally rolls over on his back and laughs and says, "I have the best life in the world!" as he wraps his front paws around my arm.

Yes, yes he does. The new year marks the end of his fourth year with me. He was living as a wild dog for at least five before he was rescued. So I tell him often: "You've gotta have at least five good ones, buddy, to make up for the five awful ones." We're working on it.

Rescuing Dogs: Part One

Once upon a time, Sgt. Thomas Tibbs looked like this.

So this happened:

Not long after I moved in August—to this place with cleaner air, bluer skies, fluffier clouds and a thousand dog walking trails—I started exploring my neighborhood and looking for dog rescues and shelters with a mind to eventually (after I finish my current book project and I finally unpack that last box) doing volunteer work.

One nearby shelter I found has a website that gives basic information about events and donations but redirects to Petango.com to list dogs that are available for adoption. I scrolled through the profiles and stopped when I saw an Irish Wolfhound mix. The Grandson has been wanting an Irish Wolfhound since he was... I don't know, ten? Now he's twenty-two and finally living in a house with a yard, ready for his first very own dog. Huh, I thought. Maybe it's serendipity.... (It wasn't, as you'll see.)

So on a very cold (low 40's) December day with wind gusts dropping the temperature even more, I stopped in at the shelter to see what it was like and also take a look at the Wolfhound. I met a nice volunteer who spent some time answering my questions about who manages the shelter and how they get funding (entirely from donations, without help from municipalities, which may explain why adoption fees there range from $200-$400). Then I asked about seeing the dogs. She told me that they were "probably all inside" as it was so cold, and that I might want to come back another day. I made a small donation then left, somewhat confused.

A week later, when I returned, I understood what she meant. The dogs are kept in kennels that have dual access, inside and out, which is great for them. But it's difficult for potential adopters because we can only see them from the outside. And direct access to the kennel is prohibited. Visitors have to view the dogs from behind a low chain link fence that sits five feet or so away from the kennel. I asked a young woman who was volunteering to "show me the Irish Wolfhound," so she walked to his kennel (with me on the far side of the low fence, herself on the inside) and pointed into his cage. The dog remained sitting toward the back of his kennel, watching us. He wasn't timid or wary; he just wasn't very interested in either of us.

Then it was just... awkward. She didn't offer to bring the dog out, nor did she come to the fence where I was standing, but I had questions, so we engaged in a conversation that had to be shouted above the barking of the dogs in other kennels.

I mentioned I'd seen the Wolfhound online and that it seemed he'd been with them a long time. She shrugged, said, "Not really," and explained that he'd been adopted and was gone for awhile but had just been returned. I had to ask why he'd been returned, and she allowed as how he "went after" the smaller dog in the family. To my question regarding whether he'd actually harmed the other dog or just growled, she shrugged again and said, "I don't know. He gets along well with other big dogs here. Maybe he just doesn't like little dogs." She gazed off into the distance.

Pulling out my phone, I asked if she would bring him out long enough for me to take his picture. She leaned against the door to the kennel—next to the leash that was hanging there—and told me there was a picture of him on their website. (That's the one I'd seen—a glamour shot of him in a bow tie, taken from a distance, which didn't offer a close-up of his face or any perspective on how tall he was.)

I offered to post a photo on my Facebook page that might help him find a forever home, since I have a lot of dog-loving friends.

She replied defensively that he was "well taken care of" there at the shelter, that he received "good food" and got to "run in the yard" every day.

Then she said I wouldn't be allowed to photograph him unless I spoke to someone in the main office and signed a "media release" form. She excused herself to go help someone else "for a minute" and never returned, leaving me standing there, trying to get a sense of the big dog who still sat quietly ten feet away.

I considered going to the main office, asking if another volunteer could help me, but by then all the sense of fun and adventure had gone out of the experience, and I just wanted to go home and hug Sgt. ThomasTibbs. So I did.

If you're wondering, it does appear at this time as if the Irish Wolfhound has been adopted. Best wishes to him and his new family.

*****UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE*****

Not long after I posted this, a story appeared in the local newspaper about this very dog (now named Sherlock). And I quote: "Sherlock is now the newest member of the San Bernardino Police Department's community affairs team. Sherlock has quickly stepped up in his new role and served as a source of comfort to North Park Elementary students after a recent on-campus shooting." Lt. Vicki Cervantes had gone to the shelter in search of a dog and met the (alleged) Irish Wolfhound/Lab mix. When she took Sherlock to her office, he was so well-mannered and such a gentleman that he became a member of her team. She said they never expected to use him so quickly after adopting him, but the need arose with the shooting, so she took him to comfort the kids, later telling a reporter, "His demeanor was just so amazing with these kids during this tragic event. They all just fell in love with him and he put smiles on all their faces."

Cool, huh? Three cheers for dogs with jobs! Especially this sweet guy!

The Return of Bunny Tibbs

This is what she’s supposed to look like:

This is what she looked like when I finally—inadvertently—found her this week:

If you haven’t followed the saga of Sgt. Thomas Tibbs’ favorite companion in the world (after me, I’d like to hope), click here for the back story. To summarize, Bunny was the first plush toy I gave Thomas when he came to live with me, and he is bonded to her just like a three-year-old with a favorite blankie. Trouble is, he’s very possessive. The first time I picked her up from the yard and returned her to Thom’s bed, he buried her the next day. It took him some months, but he eventually taught me to keep my hands off of her or else she went into ‘deep hiding’ for a few days… or weeks… or months.

I don’t know what happened last spring to make Thomas feel threatened, but something kicked his hoarding inclination into overdrive, and I realized one day that he had buried not just Bunny, but every plush toy in the yard. (Currently, he has six inside buddies and four or five outside buddies—I’ve lost count because I can’t remember who’s buried in the yard.) And he buried them so deep, I couldn’t find any of them. Over time, he dug up every one of them—except Bunny. When she didn’t appear after many weeks, I went looking for her one day, digging up each one of his holes. (I did this in the late evening using a flashlight, after Thom had gone to bed in the house, so he wouldn’t know what I was doing. If you think it might’ve been a bit creepy, looking for small lifeless bodies by digging quietly in the dark with a hand spade, you would be correct.) Alas, I never found her.

With the heavy rains this past week, I thought we had lost Bunny forever, that she would be entombed in mud that would dry around her, incasing her forever and eventually degrading her lovely soft self. But no! The rains unearthed her, much to my glee. Or at least partially unearthed her; I actually went looking for yet another plush toy Thomas had buried (in the mud) the day before, but when I began digging, a long slender ear emerged. Poor Bunny had been buried for so long, a weed had actually grown through her foot. If you look closely at this photo, you might be able to see it:

Yes, I probably should have left her in the yard for Thom. But she was so dirty. So into the washer and dryer she went. Later that night, at bedtime, I presented her to Thom. In the past when I’ve done this, Thomas has awakened me in the middle of the night whimpering, trotting back and forth across the family room floor with Bunny clamped firmly in his jaws, frantic to get out to bury her once again. This time, however, I woke the next morning to find him happily sprawled out in his bed, the tip of his nose gently brushing her soft clean fur. 

I just love that he loves her so much, because in those first hours with me, when he was dazed and confused, recovering from neuter surgery (though not ready in the least to begin recovering from all the trauma that occurred to him before he was rescued), I didn't know what to do to comfort him, and I questioned whether giving him my favorite bunny meant anything to him at all. Turns out it did.

Our New Normal (wherein I anthropomorphize to my heart's content)

Summer is here. As I write this, Sugie is beside me, curled into a fold of the softly worn green blanket that has covered this swing for eight summers now. During the school year, when things get so crazy with early hours, papers to grade, parents to call and impossible time schedules, this is what I daydream about. This is what keeps me putting one foot in front of the other, shuffling one more graded essay to the bottom of the stack, these long blissful moments of swing-sitting with this little chunk of a cat… and writing slowly, leisurely, thinking through my word choices as the ice cubes twirl slowly in my glass of sweet tea.

This is heaven for both of us. For me it’s the writing. For Sug it’s having her mom home so she can spend hours outside on the patio if she so desires (as long as I am out here with her).

This summer, of course, our routine is just a wee bit altered. Sug now shares me with annoying little sister Purrrl and the world’s most quirky dog, Sgt. Thomas Tibbs. So far, things are working out just fine.

In previous summers, when I’ve done my annual pilgrimage to Missouri, Sug has been left with various housesitters. I have always returned to find her somewhat emotionally shut down, always clingy and anxious for many days after my return. (And if you think I’m simply projecting or anthropomorphizing here, take a moment to read this piece in today’s Los Angeles Times by Amy Hubbard.) Even those closest to me have never fully understood that my deep anxiety in leaving her stems not from worry about her physical well-being but about how her psyche will fare while I’m gone. I am the center of her daily routine, her source not only of food but of safety and security. My absence means subjecting her to her own ‘worries,’ primal as they may be. Keep in mind, this is a sentient being I have cared for and loved for eight years. I know the difference in her response when I’ve been gone for an hour compared with an absence of twelve hours. It’s not about the food; she does truly ‘miss’me.

To help Sug feel slightly less alone when I travel—or when I’m gone from the house for a grueling early-morning-to-work-plus-parent-meeting-plus-grocery-shopping day—I brought little Purrrl into our lives last fall. And this year, when I returned from Missouri, Sug had not shut down. Well at least, not to the extent she usually does. Yes, I’m sure there were some moments of anxiety—my housesitter, with whom Sug is acquainted, invited people over a few times, so the house was noisy and there were strangers. But when the girls get anxious, they dive under the bed and huddle up together. They don’t cuddle, but I have no doubt that being near each other during a potentially scary experience helps them both to cope and offers them the comfort of familiarity.

All of that is preamble to say that, where my late summer mornings used to consist of yawning, stretching, and strolling outside to the patio with Sug, there is a bit more to it now. Now when I wake I have to move cautiously around a sleepy gray kitten who hogs the middle of the bed (Sug and I relegated to the left side, always) and who will lash out with cranky claws if her beauty sleep is disturbed. But ten minutes later, I will hear the girls chasing each other through the house. Because apparently cats do not need one or two cups of tea before they can officially begin to wake up; they seem to be able to go from I’m-still-sleeping-Mom! to I-got-you!/I-got-you-back! in about thirty seconds.

And after everyone is fed—except for me, though I am allowed one cup of tea to drink while I dispense fresh water, pick up rawhide chew remnants from the floor, start the sprinklers and put my shoes on—there follows a long, luxurious walk with my boy, Thomas, who is quite the happy dog these days. (Update on the good boy in an upcoming post.) Later in the morning, Sug will let me know it’s time to stop cleaning or folding laundry or goofing off on Facebook, and we will wander outside together to this very spot. This routine is what keeps me sane, and I am grateful to the Universe that the sanity it brings will last me for ten months when school starts again.

Today’s blog post is dedicated to my dear friend and faithful reader Barbara Tinsley, who gave me just the nudge I needed at just the right time.

Covington One

On Wednesday afternoon, I finished reading Homer’s Odyssey, a soon-to-be-released memoir about author Gwen Cooper’s “wonder cat,” Homer. As a tiny kitten, Homer’s eyes were so badly infected that they had to be removed. Gwen’s vet asked her to adopt the little cat, and thus began an amazing relationship that has lasted over a decade. The book was a completely absorbing read, both for Cooper’s skilled writing and for the stories of Homer’s amazing courage in the face of a challenge he apparently still hasn’t realized he has.

Having recently lost my own domestic shorthair cat (black, like Homer), reading the book took me on quite an emotional journey. I miss my Boo every morning when I wake up and realize it is only Sugie on the bed with me. Oh, I don’t know what I’d do without her—my own courageous little black cat who suffered horribly at the hands of some less-than-human cretin before finding her way into my heart. But we have felt the loss of our beautiful boy cat for some months now. Mostly for me this happens at bedtime, when Boo is not there to push my journal away and climb into my lap. For Sugie, it is in the long hours she spends alone when I am at work. Yes, there are birds to watch from the windows, mice to stalk in the basement, and warm sun spots beneath the skylights in which to curl up and nap. But I know from the way she clings to me constantly after being alone all day that she needs someone to be here with her always. She and Boo were never the best of buddies; by the time Sug came to us, Boo had entered the winter of his life and was no longer interested in racing through the house, playing hide ‘n’ seek. But let there be danger, and the two cats would quickly find each other and huddle up, usually under the bed. And it was Sugie who watched over Boo in my absence as he became sicker and sicker, crawling under the bed to check on him and soothe his fretfulness by kissing his head.

I found myself inspired by the story of Homer’s inner strength (and that of his mom, the young Ms. Cooper who decided at one point in her life to move from South Beach, Florida to New York City—with all three of her cats, something I would never be able to summon the resolve to do). So, on Thursday, I headed down the mountain to run some errands, and I stopped by the Upland Animal Shelter.

When I adopted Sug, it was through a local rescue organization (HOPE), which contracts with Petsmart. The cats are kept in the store in small but clean quarters behind a large Plexiglas window. Some months after the death of Calpurnia, the little black spitfire my daughter had given me for my birthday sixteen years previously, I went looking for “a black cat” as a companion for Boo. I walked into Petsmart one Sunday afternoon, and there was "Sugar Plum"—the only black cat they had. “I want her,” I told the volunteer who was there to clean litter boxes and fill water bowls. All the other cats were beautiful feline specimens. Sug was short, overweight (not the case any longer), and missing half her tail. I had to undergo a grueling process to get her, including filling out a three-page application, submitting to a home inspection, and taking Boo to an unfamiliar vet for all manner of tests to make sure he wasn’t afflicted with any feline maladies (despite my offer to produce documentation of shots and annual check-ups from our regular vet). “Sugar Plum,” I asked her when I was finally allowed to bring her home, weeks after initially finding her, “are you worth it?” She was.

Someday soon, I hope, the City of Upland will follow the lead of neighboring Rancho Cucamonga and renovate its shelter facility. It seems hard to believe that it is the same stark place I visited in 1986 and again in 1987, adopting first our beautiful huskie/coyote mix, “Nikita,” and the next summer finding “Alex Haley,” the Rottweiler/Chow mix who was the best dog a girl could ever ask for. The Upland shelter is still far too small for the number of animals housed there, especially for the cats. According to the original design of the building, there was one room set aside for housing cats, with large cages along three of the four walls. But the shelter now houses so many cats that part of a laundry room has been used, with cages stacked one atop another against the wall that divides the laundry room from the dog kennels. Cats housed here are exposed to the constant barking of terrified, impounded dogs for hours on end.

When I first arrived at the shelter, I headed for the larger cat room after signing in. I was looking for a black cat, just as I had been when I went looking for Sug. It’s not that I have some affinity for black cats over others—I’m not prejudiced (though my kids will tell you otherwise). But I’ve learned from various shelter and rescue groups over the years that black cats (and black dogs, as well) are very hard to place. Yes, my bright, educated friends, there are still so many superstitious folks out there that black cats often languish in shelters for months if not years. No one wants them. HOPE took custody of Sugie when she was a year old, living on the street with three kittens. They’d had her for a year and a half when I came looking for her.
I assumed (silly me) that there might be a handful of black cats at the Upland shelter, and I could quickly narrow my search by finding a male. Ha. In the large cat room I discovered kittens, many, many little black kittens, mewling, tumbling, shoving their way to the front of the cage. For a moment, I was overwhelmed. How does one choose from a batch of identical black kittens, all with huge ears and wide eyes?
“Me.” I heard someone say.
I looked down. In a lower cage was a black and white kitten, somewhat older than the others, maybe twelve weeks to their eight.
“Hey, little guy,” I said.
“Me. Please. Me.” He put his front paws up on the cage door. I reached my finger in and scratched his neck. He mewed and purred, mewed and purred. Hmmm.
“I’ll be back,” I told him. I left the room and walked through the door marked “Cats and Dogs.”

Here were the cages where I’d found my beloved canines years ago. Off to the side, in the laundry room, small cat cages lined the walls. There were more black kittens here, a few gray ones, a gorgeous Siamese, a beautiful but sleepy orange tabby—and a young black male cat, lying on his side, one paw listlessly protruding through the bars of the cage. I stood in front of him, talking softly, stroking his paw. He wasn’t sleeping; his eyes were slits as he scrutinized me. Finally, I slid my fingers through the bars and stroked his forehead, then stopped. He stood up and pushed his face into the metal bars. Please pet me again. I did, reaching my whole hand through as far as I could to scratch his ears, his chin, his head as he rubbed his face against my fingers repeatedly, purring and occasionally mewing when I stopped.

It’s true what people say: When you find The One, you’ll just know. I knew. I looked at his card. “Available 1-10-09.” He’d been here, in this tiny metal cage, for seven months.
“I’ll be back,” I told him. I knew I couldn’t take him home on Thursday; I had a book signing to do on Friday, a reunion with a cousin on Saturday, but I would return home and start making preparations for him to join the family. Before I left, I stopped by the large cat room again to wash my hands. A young man and his lady were looking at kittens. The little black and white orphan stood with his paws on the cage door, talking to the girl.
“Hey babe,” the young man called from across the room, “look how pretty this one is!”
“I like this one,” she told him, never taking her eyes off Mr. B&W.
“Me. Please. Me,” the kitten said.
I left smiling, vowing to return the next day.

As I realize this post is rather long… and I also realize the value of a good cliffhanger… I will post Part II tomorrow….