Misery Prefers to Fly Solo

Last night was one of those nights: my partner was snoring, the coyotes were prowling, and our dogs were ready to abandon their home and join them. Well, let me qualify that. Griffy sat on the back porch for the next hour, trying to commune with his charming bark; whereas Chebbi, fraidy-cat, just paced back and forth in the house.  I want to go out; I can’t go out; I should go out; I dare not go out, his pacing seemed to say. Because we are bad parents and have not yet broken him of the habit of sleeping on our bed (hold your tweets and emails, I am already drenched in shame), he was doing most of his pacing on the end of our bed.  Then there was the nylabone he found to chew on, which was made out of the most indestructible material ever invented and produced the loudest gnawing sounds imaginable.

As I was lying there enjoying the blissful cacophony, I thought I heard, underneath all the clatter, a small squeaking sound.  Great, Shadow Mouse had returned. But no it wasn’t Shadow Mouse, or a mouse at all; the squeaky sound, which became more of a whistling sound, was in fact Phyll snoring.  Weird. It turned out she had inhaled the corner of her pillow, and the pillowcase was actually flappity-flapping with every exhalation.  As I gently tugged the pillowcase free, I felt like one of those old magicians pulling scarf after scarf from his sleeve.

Once I cleared her passageways and she was officially pillow-free, her snoring returned to the low drone I know and love so well.  At this point, Chebbi got off the bed and headed to the back door, indicating he wanted to join Griffy.  As I walked towards him, still in a very cheerful Doctor Doolittlely state of mind, I glanced at the couch in the living room, and thought I might as well get some blankets out and curl up there for the night, because the dogs were howling, Phyll had launched into a coughing fit, and this might be the only oasis I was going to find.

I made a little nest of sorts and tucked myself into what I must say is a pretty comfy couch.  Sure I had to share it with Xena, who nestled her cat self right beside me; yes, I had to endure Chebbi coming to stick his doggy snout into my face; and of course my dreams were strange and unsettling, and when I woke at 5 a.m. I didn’t feel completely rested. Still, it beat lying beside my slumbering partner (really, I was coughing a lot?) or levitating above the bed in a heightened state of irritation.

When I recounted my night of torment to a friend at work, she suggested I use something to sedate the dogs, and I reminded her of the last time she had given me that advice. We had just gotten Chebbi, at six months of age, when his first owners gave him away.  Imagine if your family gave you away; I mean really gave you away, not just simply ignored you through your teenage years.  Well, Chebbi was a bit of a wreck as a result, so the first weekend with him was rough.  Now it also happened that the first weekend we had him was also Toronto Pride, but I cavalierly told Phyll to go to Pride, because I would be fine.  Chebbi was pretty agitated throughout the day, so in the evening I took my friend’s advice and gave him some Gravol then waited for him to sleep the sleep of the dead.  Not so much.  Instead he seemed even more awake, and kept clamouring to go out. I let him out, again and again, but at some point in the middle of the night, I finally fell asleep.  I had a faint sense of Chebbi moving around, but by the time I awoke, the reason for his agitation was cooling in a heap on the kitchen floor.  Surely he would be okay now, though, so after scrubbing the kitchen floor, I fed him, took him out for a final bathroom break and then headed out for my hour long run.

Arriving home, I found the kitchen floor still spotless.  Feeling victorious--I got my run in; what had Phyll been so worried about?--I went into the bedroom to discover a horrifying mixture of poo and vomit on the rug at Phyll’s side of the bed. Cue frenzied music and cut to me dragging the rug into bathroom and frantically tipping the disgusting mess into the toilet, then hauling the rug out to the pool deck where I flopped it over the fence in order to hose it down. And of course the whole time, I was accompanied by Chebbi wiggling anxiously, wondering what he had done.

It couldn’t get worse, right?  I had the smell of vomit and poo in my nostrils; I was stuck with this neurotic dog, and now I had to blast the rug with water until that most inglorious stain was gone.  Chebbi stood close behind me, too close, and with the first spurt of the hose, he leapt back in terror, and fell into the pool.  Okay, don’t panic; it’s just a new pool liner, with a puppy clawing madly at edge of pool.  I threw the hose down, still on, and it snaked around crazily as I hauled Chebbi out of the pool.

And then Phyll called to tell me how fabulous Pride was, and to see how I was doing.  How was I doing?  Well I had drugged our new puppy and caused him to poo and vomit all over our lovely house, so I guess I was doing well, wasn’t I?  Except of course I couldn’t tell her I had drugged our dog, or left him for an hour while I completed my run, so I said I was fine, just fine.

No, my friends, I will not be medicating the dogs tonight, though I might take a little Gravol, and then Misery and I can listen to a podcast, perhaps on the art of living well or the power of positive thinking, and enjoy a nightcap of self-indulgence with a splash of woe is me.

Road Rat

What are the chances I should encounter two rodents within 24 hours? Well, depending on where I lived, or what my line of work was, I guess the likelihood might be pretty high, and someone with more interest in stats than I could be crunching the numbers as we speak, but for the purpose of narrative, let’s just say it’s unusual.

My rodent rendezvous this morning was a tad different than my meeting with Shadow Mouse yesterday.  I was running near our schoolhouse when I saw on the road ahead of me a creature clearly deceased, as in very still and slightly flattened.  At first, I thought it might be a possum, because it wasn’t big enough to be a raccoon or a skunk.  As I got closer I saw it was no possum; it was a rat, and I mean a good-sized rat.  This thing was at least a pound; were it a preemie, it could have kicked its way out of an incubator.  I am going to be up front, no false bravado here. I am glad this thing did not drop down into a bucket in front of me, because I would not have handled it well.  I envisioned its long, scaly tail brushing against my skin while its ferocious teeth gnawed their way through my rubber gloves.  Oh, Rat That Is No More, I apologize that I could not feel for you what I felt for little nose-twitching Shadow Mouse.  Even with your one paw flung out as if trying to hitch a ride, I struggled to conjure you as a loving pet, and yet your size qualified you for pet status. I confess, though, as the image of your tail and teeth began to fade, I grew sentimental about you, Rat on Road, lying there in the chill of what should be a spring morning.

Chapter 2

I went back to the scene of Dearly Departed Rat.  That’s right, after Phyll and I went shopping for pants so I could throw away the awful pairs I have worn all winter, I asked Phyll if she would mind driving by the scene in order to get a picture for the blog.

Even as we approached the scene, I could see that Road Rat was in worse shape than he had been when I ran by him.  I could not take a photo as the scene was all too gruesome. Phyll turned the car around as I put my camera away; no viewer should see this rat carnage.  I wish I had not returned; I wish I had left the image of He Who Was Once a Rat in my head, departed but not dismembered.

We are home now, surrounded by two dogs determined to sleep right beside me, as if to reassure me of their aliveness.  The winds have picked up, our fireplace is roaring, and I imagine Spring out there somewhere, asking for directions to get to Southern Ontario.

Shadow Mouse

This morning as I leaned into the closet in the laundry room, a dark shadow fell from above me. Looking down, I watched as the shadow materialized into a mouse scrambling to get out of the bucket on the floor. 

With incredible calm I informed my partner, Phyll, that there was a mouse in the house and that she needed to take the dogs into the bedroom so that I could remove it. She walked towards the back door to open it, whether to help me or to take the dogs outside I am not sure, so I again instructed her, with her mouth frozen in a surprised "o", to take the dogs into the bedroom. 

My plan was to put a towel on top of the mouse in the bucket to carry him safely outside, but when I opened the closet again, he was busy shimmying up the mop handle, so I took him as gently as possible in my rubber-gloved hands, and said to him, in the only language I know, that it was going to be all right. I could see from the one eye and twitching nose peeking out from my gloved grasp that he felt otherwise, and really who would feel all right in the hands of a creature hundreds of times its size?

Still I tried to make his journey as painless as possible, walking quietly out the back door and putting him down in the garden next to the porch. Sure he will find his way back in and will join his gazillion cousins in the basement or, perhaps the vast space between the ceiling and the roof of our school house, but for now he is at large. 

When I returned I found Phyll still looking startled, but she immediately shifted to the blame game. "That's it, the cats aren't doing their jobs; they should be fired."

Now we've only had Duke for a year or so, but Xena and Willow have been with us for the five years we have been together. Can you imagine the kind of severance packages we've have to put together for them?  And what is the likelihood of them ever finding work again at their age?  Sure Willow would be okay. According to Willow, once a street cat, always a street cat.  She has stayed sharp and ready, her knapsack packed and tucked near the door in case she has to take flight. Xena is another story. She has gone soft in all senses of the word. After she got off the streets she never looked back. I don't see her coping out there, though she could probably cry her way into a taxi ride if it came to that. She could make people do just about anything to make that crying stop. 

But no we won't fire the cats, at least not today. We're all about second chances and teachable moments, though it's a little discouraging when your pupils curl up in the sunlight, completely uninterested in your existence now that you've fed them. If they could put headphones on they would, which brings to mind my students: eyes glazed; jaws slack; in another world. Very inspiring. 

As I head out for my run, my thoughts return to shadow mouse, and I conjure him scurrying over mud and ice and snow, his heart thump-thumping his way to safety. 

P.S. Upon returning from my run, I found Duke on the kitchen counter batting about the ants that were traversing the counter.  Batting, mind you, not killing. It seems Phyll's threats of job termination fell on perky but deaf ears.