Dizzy the Dog, a Yorkshire Terrier who enabled my daughter Avery to no longer need to answer questions in writing prompts at school to describe her pets with wildly aberrant answers. No longer did she need to write, when asked about the species, breed, habits or appearance of her domesticated four-legged friends: "I do not have a pet." (Literally, what she wrote in second grade across an entire grid asking about our then non-existent menagerie.)
Dizzy, who was blind, toothless, incontinent, confused, lost and clueless, was laid to rest towards the end of September. It became too much for us to watch him stumble for whatever part of the day that he wasn't sleeping, out like a light. I do not know how he managed to navigate his way to a clothes hamper, no matter where we put it, even while he couldn't find his bed or his food bowl. Outdoors was a fine place to pee, but indoors was far more convenient. He could still, at the end, if placed on our bed, find his "mommy" -- my wife. But he could hardly locate anything else.
He was with us from the time that he was a tiny speck of puppy, my wife having brought him home from a breeder "on approval" -- subject to me saying he could stay. The kids waited all day -- from the time they returned from school until I got home, late as usual from work. They were terrified that I'd say that he'd make me sneeze and say he had to go back. My kids, then, didn't realize the utter softness of my many soft spots. Of course, I said, not only could he stay, but that he HAD to stay.
He was a trouble-making sprite. He was apt to bolt at the slightest opportunity, running as far and as fast as his little legs could carry him, and, trust me, that was far and fast. Far and fast enough that Pammy once chased him through our yard, not on foot, but driving a Volkswagen. Of course, he was too agile for her to lasso him if she had a lasso and any clue about how to do whatever it is one does with it.
There was the time that, mistreated as he was (read: spoiled), the poor little bugger needed more to eat and found a way to leap from floor to chair to table where I found him ravenously chowing down on a bag of Happy Meal french fries. Later, his eating habits descended into whatever he could get his chops on (note: look up the word coprophagist; gross! On second thought: don't.).
Dizzy, circa 2010, "enjoying" a bath.
Next came Koko, our cat, who joined us shortly after Dizzy came to stay (or, correct me, dear Pammy, was it after?). A sort of a rescue pet, she was one of those animals that people with lots of property, barns and various outbuildings accidentally seem to accumulate out here in New Vernon (a state of mind as much as it is an actual place; this, the home of quasi-pseudo-ruralism practiced by gentlemanly, genetically-inbred ersatz farmers or actual descendants of actual farmers). I guess these folks had a litter and Pammy saw a card posted on the bulletin board at the post office or some other such vague suggestion that we needed to get poor, lonely, forlorn Dizzy a daytime companion (hadn't we ever seen cartoons that would have informed us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that dogs and cats hate each other and that their favorite pastime is sabotage, torture, murder, false accusations, etc? ).
Koko, 2009.
Koko was possibly the prettiest cat - barnyard castoff or highfalutin' pedigree(d, the "d" standing in for this being Harding) any of us had ever seen. A delicate and coquettish calico of high-born mien despite her modest breeding (in Harding, we are all from exceptional bloodlines, aren't we?). She was everything Dizzy wasn't. No one ever chased Koko in a car to capture her. In fact, she was with us for a year or more before she figured out how to burst past us out of the house into the yard. And, even when she got out, she always wanted to come back inside promptly. She was dainty and polite. She was quiet and demure. She was fastidious (heck, she was a feline). For whatever reason, she was never as interesting to the kids or their parents as the irascible Dizzy dog. But, she was utterly reliable.
Unfortunately, today, Koko joined Dizzy, as something -- our vet says kidney failure -- rendered her unable to digest a meal or even a tidbit. The conundrum here was that until the last, Koko looked spectacularly well, like one of those Upper East Side matrons who, well past their salad days and deep into their dotage, appear to be the picture of health and beauty. She purred. She craved attention. She preened. (Sounds more and more like one of those Manhattan heiresses.) She never had any "work done." Though she looked like a million (a billion these days) bucks, she was rotting from the inside out. Upon seeing her this afternoon, the vet said, "she's ready."
They lived great lives. They were deeply loved. They were anthropomorphized (what greater love does a human show for an animal than to act as if the animal were one of us?).
THEY WERE MAGNETS FOR AND MIRRORS OF OUR SILLY, STUPID HUMAN LOVE. THEY DOMESTICATED THEIR HUMANS, TEACHING US TO BE BETTER, MORE PATIENT AND UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE.
We will miss them. Bye Dizzy. Bye Koko.
For those of you who mourn for us, don't be too sad. We live on and we share our lives with the strange and wonderful pair, the alleged "brothers" Fritz und Otto (claimed to be not only blood relatives of each other, but also to be "Yorkshire Terriers;" nonsense, say I).
From left to right, Otto (come on, honestly, who really believe HE'S a Yorkie???), Fritz (doubtful, but still...), Peanut (departed in ... I can't remember; is four years ago now?) and Dizzy.
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