Moving from an affinity for felines to a love for dogs is fraught with danger. For one, your heart will be torn asunder, never to heal again.


Inspired by  poetigress and the Thursday Prompt.

oOo


At the tender age of six, I got landed with a kitten and named him Mushroom, for he was white on top and black on the underside. I wouldn't know if he tasted like a mushroom, I don't go around licking cats, but he sometimes smelled like one -- all musty and damp. But then, he was an outdoor cat and they can end up rough sometimes. So I started into cats when I was real young. We never had a dog. My uncle didn't like them.

Over the years, there was always a cat around, some good, some bad. Mushroom lost an eye in a fight with a grizzled old tom from up our road. Back then, we didn't have things like vets, nor the money to pay for them. His eye turned milky white and that was that. One day he crawled off someplace and never came back. My uncle said that's what cats do when they get old and want to die. They crawl off and die someplace on their own. I think that's real sad.

Then came Tiger, then came Jake. Jake, he was a good cat. Tiger was his sister, but she died when she was small from eating bees. My uncle would put out honey-traps for wasps in summer and I'd watch them float in the water for a while until they stopped moving. Bad things, wasps, he'd say and spit. They stung me once and I cried. When Tiger ate the bees, she started coughing and headed for the hay barn. I ran after her but I could hear nothing in there. It was big and full of hay. Took me a week afore I found her, huddled into the back of the horse's manger, cold body under warm fur, hard flesh solid and a fright for my pains. My uncle threw her into the creek. She'd gone bad, he said. I cried all night.

After Jake there came Sooty. She was special. She slept in my bed with me. I was getting bigger now, and I could do what I wanted. Jet black, that cat, and as friendly as you could want. When I'd come home from school she'd be waiting at the gate, so I'd carry her on my shoulder all the way back to the house. When I turned eighteen I left home and moved to the city. I left Sooty behind. She'll be fine, my uncle said. She's a farm cat. She knows her place.

I got married to a country girl a couple of years after, and we lived in the city until both of us could stick it no longer. My uncle died. He left the farm to me. We moved back home: me, my wife and my wife's dog, a little runt she calls Scotty. When we got back, Sooty wasn't there. I expect she got old and sick and crawled off someplace on her own. That's what my uncle would have said, rest his soul. I miss him.

Before too long, I was thinking about getting myself another cat. I wanted one that would scare her dog Scotty, and maybe put his eyes out in the bargain, but it didn't happen that way. Scotty stopped it from happening. One fine late winter's day, just as the thaw was setting in, he jumped over the fence that split our place from the neighbour's. She was a funny one, our neighbour, never really knowing what went on abouts, and her with that pedigree bitch of hers and everything, but when we found Scottie in there we jumped the fence and got him back afore anyone did see.

After all, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your neighbours.

A couple of months went by. Suzie, that was our neighbour's dog. A pedigree. Guess she was the only thing with papers round where we lived, but she had them, and she was a pedigree, sure enough. As the line went, Martha's dog was the only thing in our county with the daddy's name on the papers. Nice little thing she was too; Susie, I mean, but the kids from back over the hill tormented her and drove her wild, so she barked and yelped a lot and we didn't think too much to stop them, not wanting to interfere, and anyway that's the kind of thing them high strung pedigree dogs do. Barking and such.

She smiled too. Funny, that. If you stopped at her gate and you talked to her, she wrinkled up her little black nose and smiled back at you. Some folks thought she was snarling, but me and my wife and Martha, well, we knew she was smiling. She was raised with people and she just did what she thought was the right thing when folks were smiling down at her. Nice dog, Susie.

Then one day in mid-August, I think it was, Martha came into the house in a state and she yelled for my wife, shouting and hollering there was rats in her bedroom. Now my wife ain't too fond of rats, but she was good with animals and didn't think nothing of Martha claiming there was rats in her bedroom, so she went out to look, but didn't find any rats there. Instead, she found a litter of four new-born puppies, all wet and perfect, lying on the wooden floor where Suzie had dropped them. You can imagine what she said to Martha as she got a box ready for Suzie and the puppies, taking a small pillow from our couch. I like to have some pillows on the couch, so as I can get nice and comfortable on it when relaxing.

When I got home that night, my wife started telling me about the puppies and about Martha, and how she thought they were rats. Well, I didn't much care for dogs, or puppies, or Martha, and I sure didn't want to think about her being so plain dumb. I guess I'm tough about these things, but wouldn't anyone at all think there was a puppy on the ground when their fat bitch went into labour? Martha didn't seem like the best one for looking after a nursing bitch, and I said that, but my wife told me to hush, and what did I know about dogs, seeing as I only never had one, and all I ever wanted was a cat.

So I said nothing.

I guess it was six weeks later when my wife ran into the kitchen with something in her arms, looking like a cock of the walk and whooping in up like a wild thing. I had to ask her to calm down, and looked at the little something in her arms. It's not a something, she said to me, it's a someone. I guess I just shrugged went out, but my wife wouldn't stop. She shoved something small and brown under my nose and told me she's the first puppy to come out of the box and that makes her special. Great, I said, backing away. We're gonna keep her and call her Mitzie, she said, and she's gonna be real special, just you wait! We? I said. I don't think so.

It wasn't like I had any choice. My wife is a stubborn woman and she knows her own mind and I try not to get in her way. I do my chores and she does her chores and of an evening we listen to the radio and read magazines and such, and life is good. See what you done, I said to her dog Scotty, and he growled at me and went away. That dog never liked me. But now there was a second mutt in the house. She was a small thing, like her daddy, and she was into everything. The first night, my wife kept her in the kitchen. She howled the house down. My wife moved her into the bedroom. She yelped and yelped. My wife lifted her up into the bed. I don't want a smelly dog in our bed, I said. Hush, she told me. I don't want a smelly farmer in my bed either, she said. It's me or the dog, I said. Fine, she said. There's room for you in the barn with the horse. I shut up and held my tongue. The dog slept in the bed. She didn't howl or yelp any more.

I don't like pups. They chew on stuff that costs money. They widdle on the rugs. They poop where you're walking. Mitzie did all of these and every time she did, I roared at her. Never laid a finger on her, but I made sure she knew I was mad. And she never ran away from me, or hid behind things. She made herself real small, and she shook like she was real scared, and she looked up at me with her little brown eyes and blinked like a kid who got slapped for stealing. I kinda admired her for that. My cats ran away like lightning streaks if'n I got mad. But time passes and small pups grow up into small dogs

Every day about noon, my wife would go into town to get things, taking her dog Scotty. With no-one else around, Mitzie started to follow me everywhere. Soon I was carrying her about on the tractor, and she got so good at riding up top that I never saw her once to slip, even if we went up the slope at the back of the creek, and that wasn't easy to walk up. Before too long, she was sleeping on my side of the bed at night, snuggled up to my chest under the blankets, as warm as a hot water bottle and ignoring my wife's complaints that I was cuddling the dog more than I was cuddling her. That's right, I said. This bitch doesn't bite. I thought that was funny.

She smacked my face and I slept in the barn for a whole week. With the dog.

She did everything I ever asked of her, and more. In town, the men with hounds always had to keep their dogs on leads, for they would get together and swarm in packs, scaring children and chasing pets. Mitzie could hold her own against them and they never bothered her. I never once used a lead on her. She stuck with me like glue. Storekeepers welcomed her in as much as they welcomed me, and when we went to the bar together, she would get fat on peanuts and sips of beer. Me and that dog, we were always together. It wasn't Mister and Missus Fleming anymore in town. It was Andy and Mitzie. My wife said she felt left out when the two of us were around.

I recall she laughed when we came home of an evening after planting one time. You look like you dug the field on your own with your bare hands, she smiled, but your dog looks like the Queen of Sheba - not a speck of dust on her. I left her on a cushion in the tractor, I said, and I did the work, not her. Any dinner for a hungry man, I said, and she pointed at her dog Scotty. You put your dog on a cushion, she said, so I put your dinner in my dog. She was only joking. I was hungry. My dog Mitzie and her dog Scotty got on like a house on fire. If we were away without the dogs, we would come home to find the two of them on my chair asleep and waiting.

Ten years we had together, Mitzie and me. She got cancer last year and I had to put her to sleep. Damn well broke my heart. Didn't eat for days. Couldn't talk much neither, save to just nod and say yay or nay. My wife did her best for me and was kind, but I was numb. Cold to her, I guess. After a month of it she moved me out to the barn -- to get my act together, she said. I'm back in the house now, but I'm still sad and lonely, looking at the spot on our bed where my dog used to sleep, snuggled into me.

My uncle told me once why he didn't like dogs. He said that's what dogs do when they get old and die. They crawl into your heart and a little piece of you dies along with them. I think that's real sad.

oOo