January 19, 2010; Adoption

Back in the day

Cate is going through the adoption process. The problem is that she has moved into a spiffy (and verrrrry expensive new apartment) and that she has an elderly mother with whom she lives and so not just any old dog will do. She has been scanning the internet and has seen a bunch of dogs she likes but every time she gets to the place, they've gone to another home. She's even done volunteer work with a lady who rescues animals but it seems she is so persnickety about who gets to adopt them that she has become one of those nutjobs who will one day die and be remembered because she had her face eaten off by all her "saved" dogs.

Cate needs something about my size but younger and a little less "energetic" and "tempermental"...so, in effect, she is looking for a stuffed animal. Okay, I'm being mean. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt because she is one of the rare decent people who doesn 't get all like that when you try to hump her but in my experience adopting a dog is a shoot in the dark kind of business and it usually boils down to taking something that you like and then either human or dog giving up their souls in a series of compromises which usually end in death.

The most tiresome thing about Cate's search process is that I am treated to stories of all the other dogs in Cate's and The Mooks' past; especially where they came from. Cate's last and very beloved Chablis was a pound dog who was completely trained and behaved like a prince from the start (though judging from the name and behaviour I would say "princess" was more to the point 'cause any male who acts like he did is obviously a queer).

Before me, here, there was of course the sainted Cosmo. It seems that Mook A, grieving over the dog before, was ordered by Mook B to go to the SPCA and adopt something. Once there, A saw only dalmatians (it was the year Disney's infamous live-action film came out). The idea of owning a dalmatian struck A's fancy. One, however, shrieked like a hyena from the moment A walked into the pound. Another was curled up in a corner shivering neurotically. The third, standing in all his regal beauty, stared disdainfully at A and that, of course, was Cosmo (né Sam) who became the be-all and end-all for the Mooks (especially B who cried this Christmas because it was his first one without Cosmo).

Before Cosmo there had been a pair of small dogs (one I can still smell in this apartment): Buddy and Kitoune. (Chablis? Kitoune? What is wrong with these people!) Buddy was an adult pet-shop dog—a blond pomeranian/collie mix which had been given up by his owners in the suburbs as they were moving. He was an angel from the first, sleeping under A's seat in the theatre as he rehearsed a play which he had written. (A used to be a writer, don't you know...but then who hasn't been?)

But Buddy looked lonely so A and his then-roommate decided to adopt a second dog and went to the pound. It was Saturday night and the pound was closing and the lady there told A and his roommate that any dogs who were left at closing would be euthanized. Well, it was going to be an easy job for the death-bringers because there was only one dog: she was a small, unspayed, ratting terrier who had been found in an alley and was still covered with filth. Her teeth were all crooked and though she was supposedly six months old she looked about 80 years. When A and the roommate took her home (how could they leave the creature to her doom) they immediately dumped her stinking body into a bath. The water turned black. They emptied the water and did it again. Black again. After filling and emptying the tub three times they could finally see her skin was a normal shade and that her fur was black and not greasy brown.

Kitoune and Buddy were a love-at-first-sight story (especially since Kitoune, unspayed, was heading towards her first heat). They would play relentlessly and fight like puppies do and Kitoune would always win because she had a ratting terrier talent: she would stick her nose in Buddy's mouth and bite down on his cheek. He'd shriek, they'd stop play-fighting and they would drop, exhausted, to sleep—curled around each other. Buddy died ten years later at thirteen or so. Kitoune, an old soul, started to develop the body to match losing all her teeth, then her sight and finally her hearing before she had to be put down at 18.

Beautiful stories, aren't they?

How the fuck is any dog—me, the one Cate is looking for, ugly fucks in the pound—supposed to be adopted when myths like those are floating about!

I say it again: take a dog which touches you and adapt (or, if you can—and you probably can't—make them adapt).

And Cate, one more thing: your new dog...I'm going to kill it anyway 'cause you're mine.