During the dogs’ absence, I have witnessed an interesting
phenomenon. When the cats and I were
first on our own, back at the beginning of the summer, they were tentative
about moving upstairs to eat or to sleep or play their all-night games of Crazy
Eights, because, let’s face it, with the arrival of Chebbi, it was a lot safer
and quieter in the basement, where they still had an endless supply of food,
several beds to choose from, without being pursued or tormented by a impossibly
large creature with unmanageable hair and golden brown eyes.
After a few days, though, Willow began to venture
upstairs. The first day she could only
manage a few bites of food before bolting, but gradually she grew bolder and
not only did she eat an entire bowl of food, but she took to staying for the
whole day, curled up in the vastness of the dog bed.
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| Willow at sea. |
Having never put the cameras
in to track their actions, I can’t say for certain what the cats got up to in
our absence, but let’s just say they had become pretty territorial by the time
I got back and felt it was within their right to ask for two pieces of I.D.
before letting me in. Xena seems to have left her own body weight worth of hair
on the rugs, while Duke, when he sees fit to come home at all, sprawls wherever he chooses. Willow has taken to curling up with me when I read, though like
the best of cats, her objective is to disrupt my reading by walking back and
forth between my book and me.
I can’t help but feel the cats know that their halcyon days
are growing to a close. They have been
lounging all over the house and out on the pool deck as if they want to take
advantage of every final moment of dog-free existence. I swear they are
tracking the dogs’ progress; I’m sure they made Duke look up New Brunswick on
the map last night after they heard Phyll had made it to Edmunston. They probably counted on their paws how many
hours it would be before Chebbi and Griff rolled in.
I feel awful knowing that the moment Willow registers the
dogs’ arrival, she will retreat downstairs, and I will see her only when I
venture into the coolness of the basement. They are cats, they will be fine,
Phyll tells me when I express my concerns.
Just get ready, she says as she drives towards home, for a big dog on
the bed tonight.
The reality is that sometimes it’s difficult to make
everybody happy regardless of your best efforts. This truth became glaringly
obvious to me yesterday when my friend Kelly and I offered to look after our
friend Tanya’s twins, Easton and Emmett, for a few hours while she and her
husband Ryan packed up their house to get ready to move. Tanya and Kelly live
only a block apart, so Tanya wheeled the boys over to Kelly’s in their little
wagon, and we took them from there to the nearby park. As Kelly pulled them, I
walked alongside of the wagon, and watched as both boys stared at us intently. Facing
each other as they rode along, they were content, but as we stopped the wagon
and reached down to lift them out, they suddenly realized that we were not
familiar, not familiar at all. And they
howled. More precisely, Easton, as Kelly
lifted him into her arms, began to bellow.
Not more than a second or two later, Emmett, now in my arms, chimed
in. Two distraught boys, crying in
stereo, can create quite a cacophony. In that swell neighbourhood, I was
worried someone might alert the authorities. Now Kelly has raised two sons and
is no stranger to the world of a child’s tears, and I have plenty of memories of
babysitting children who would suddenly “play strange” as the expression goes,
so we both went into distraction mode. Kelly tried the swings and the big
digger truck that some kind person had left at the playground, while I pointed
out the movable blocks with pictures of animals on them, but to no avail. We knew we were in difficulty when Kelly offered
them each a biscuit and they shook their heads vehemently. No, no, no.
They were clearly stressed, and thinking back to my own
moments of homesickness upon waking in my camp bunk and wishing desperately
that I were home in my bed, I felt terrible for them. Luckily, the solution for our charges was
less drastic than building a raft and paddling home from camp. The moment we
placed them back in the wagon and started to move, the crying stopped. Perhaps the boys thought that as long as they
were in motion they were potentially coming closer to mommy and daddy, but I
imagine it was more simple than that. The
motion of the wagon was soothing, and the sights and sounds were
distracting. They were fascinated by a
man mowing his lawn, and we considered going in search of mower after mower,
but because it was one of the hottest days of the summer, shade was our first
priority, and we simply walked the streets of the nearby neighbourhoods. As they recovered from their crying jags, with
the odd shudder from the after shock, they began to look around more, and as
every good teacher does, I tried to point out things that might interest them.
I started with leaves and then amped it up with maple keys. And that was enough. Who doesn’t love twirling a maple leaf in his
hot little hand, or dragging a clump of maple leaf keys over his chubby legs? Being
the mother she is, Kelly came well prepared with bottles of cold water, which
they enjoyed picking up and putting down. Simple distractions; simple
pleasures.
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| Easton and Emmett in motion |
We were all relatively happy, if somewhat weary, as we
rolled the wagon into Tanya and Ryan’s backyard an hour or two later. I am happy to report they did not burst into
tears upon seeing Tanya and Ryan, though they were eager to crawl all over her
as we sat in the shade in the backyard, Kelly and I with a nice cold cider,
which I have to say we earned. I was happy to see them splashing in the pool,
digging in the dirt, no worse off for the momentary trauma they had
experienced.
We do what we can to keep the people (and animals) we care about happy and safe. On a lucky day, a wagon
in motion will suffice.
