I don't understand people who don't keep animals. My best friend hates pets, thinks it's disgusting to keep them in the house, and finds it strange that I would do things like take pictures of raccoons and possums. Excuse me, seeing a possum is a thrill. I know this can be a cultural thing (Indians think keeping dogs in your house is fucking gross, but have you seen their dogs?), but he's just a white American. For years, he thought cats are what stink, and not their litter boxes. The first time he came over to my house years ago, he exclaimed, "I can't smell the cat!" Yeah bro, because I slavishly empty the box while she watches.
He doesn't even notice animals. He visited recently and looked surprised and suspicious when my cat jumped onto the couch and sniffed her way over to him. He leaned away with a vague expression of disgust, then patted her head with his fingers splayed out and said, "I paid tribute to you in your home. You go away now." Shoo wave.
Something clearly happened to him in childhood. Something bad.
My dad was the same way. For years, he endured his partners' pets. He was neglectful of our dogs, shrieking at them to SHUT THE FACK UP every time they barked more than once, and in his darker moments, he'd hit or kick them for offenses. I may be lucky that those are the worst memories of my childhood, but they do suck. He loves to tell a story about how I got bucked off a horse who then primly trotted over to him. I ran over, crying, kicking up dirt. "Don't hit her!" "I wasn't going to," he said, shruggingly surprised that I would even think that. "It was your fault." Then he made me get back on her, because he saw that in a movie. I shakily endured it for two passes around the pen, then got off authoritatively. The afternoon at the barn was done.
It's not that he didn't like animals. He did. He just didn't treat them well in a consistent manner. There were always dogs and cats in his house growing up and he and all of his siblings speak wistfully of their black lab, Susie, as though she was a person. She was the smartest dog of all time, she saved our lives, blah blah blah. All four of them and my grandma insisted on this, so I believe them, but it was so over the top. She did apparently save their lives, though. Two of my grandmother's cats were fighting in the night in the late 60s and knocked over a lamp that had been left on, doutbtless waiting for one of the rotten siblings to come home. The hot bulb burned into some delicate fabric (likely a doily) and set the couch on fire. The living room began to go up when Susie ran all through the house, barking, and woke the family up who put out the fire.
She's the only childhood pet he talks about except for the hated cats. Later, he and my mom had an ugly black poodle named Ty, and I have photos of him putting panties and my toddler t-shirts on Ty and feeding beer to her while he carried her on his hip like a baby. Ty had just come around one day, so they took her in, but it turned out she was actually someone else's dog, and my mom cried when they had to give her back.
My mom was always picking up stray dogs. We'd pull over on the way to school or grandma's house and she'd load some dog up and bring it home. They didn't usually stay long, I don't know why, either she took them to the humane society or found their owners. She stopped doing that after she picked up a big German Shepherd who was covered in giant green ticks. I remember them as the size of olives. My dad came home from work, put his hand over his face when he saw the dog, but immediately named him Rufus. Rufus would lay on the back patio as I pried the ticks off his body with a butter knife while the neighbor kid winced in horror. Unfortunately, Rufus attacked the girl down the street while we were playing in the yard one after-school afternoon. A strange look came over him and he was on her in a second, biting and tearing at her chest. I just stood there, screaming hysterically. My mom came running out clutching a cordless phone just as the neighbor kid's dad dashed in through our gate and wrested the dog off her. She had to have surgery. I don't know what happened to Rufus and I guess her parents didn't sue us. After that, my mom had a strict "no screaming unless you are in trouble," rule, and chastised me over and over for shrieking around the yard while playing, because it raised the panic in her throat. Sorry, Ma.
Sidebar: My dad has come around to loving dogs in his elder state. Not other animals, but dogs. He and his common law llorona have had a series of ill-fated pitbulls over the years, the recent best of which was Pinky II (really lazy dog-namers), who died of cancer. To his credit, he sought formal healthcare for Pinky, but he also did shit like rub her head with olive oil and hang a piece of pink quartz from her collar, because he read it in some mommy blog about treating the spiritual aspect of your dog's cancer. I mean, whatever makes him feel productive, but this is why the man votes Trump and believes aliens built the pyramids. He's basically an antivax mama grizzly, but for dogs.
My grandma's backyard is a literal pet cemetery. I need to ask my dad who the first animal to be buried there was - it might've been Susie. [Update: Dad: "I believe that it was a German Shorthaired Pointer in 1969. There were cats that far back also."] My grandma was very pragmatic about animals, as a farm child, so this is surprising. Then again, farm folk do tend to bury their dead on the property. To her, cats were for barns, dogs were for passive friendship, but you don't lose much sleep over either one, except in rare cases when they're special. When I was very young, she had this massive Chesapeake Bay retriever named Arthur. Arthur was a gross and unfun dog and my cousins and I love to talk about him. He had lumpy fur in the way of the Chesapeake, and I think he came from the pound. He was grossly overweight, truly a massive dog, and he would jump on the couch and army crawl into my grandma's lap while she cursed and admonished him for being too big for laps, and certainly old lady laps. Arthur had various illnesses and a pesky recurrent case of fleas. She would "dip" him regularly and then slap my hand away when I tried to pet him. "No honey, he's poisonous right now." I don't think Arthur was buried in the yard, probably because my dad just said no, it was too damn much.
The reason it was too damn much is because there are two St. Bernards buried back there, and my dad dug both of their graves. Conductor and Ally. These psycho dogs were the center of my uncle Mark's heart, even though Conductor hated children (except for Mark's kids) and legitimately rage-charged me more than once when I was under 3. What did I do? I've always been hurt and embarrassed that Conductor wanted to kill me. Mark has continued to buy breeder St. Bernards and they have continued to attack his family, the most recent one nearly tearing his adult son's face off about ten years ago. They still talk about her lovingly.
Anyway, Conductor apparently had a heart attack and died, perhaps because he lived in Arizona and was a St. Bernard. Conveniently, he was at over at grandma's at the time. Mark collapsed, weeping, useless, and grandma called my dad, who sighed and put his shovel in the back of the truck. He dug a grave for a full sized male St. Bernard where the flower bushes go at the perimeter of the yard. A while later Ally died, and my dad buried her back there too. My dad has always been given the manual labor jobs because of his size, always been asked to beat up his siblings' enemies (literally into contemporary times - fyi he won't), and yeah, he does kind of resent it. Then my cousins started bringing their dead to grandma too, who would point out to the increasingly limited empty spaces in the yard, and they'd bury their cats and dogs and birds and frogs accordingly. None of my pets are in there because my mom thought their pet cemetery was gross, and there are no places left except for in the middle of the yard anyway. That would violate the only rule: you don't damage the grass.
My aunt lives there now and I want her to make a map of the graves.
And those are my weirdest pet stories. Poor old Vaughn died today with his mate Gilby, and it's nice that they got to take that trip together so neither would miss the other. Vaughn was a little silver runt that I found on Craigslist. He was living with an Indian family. When I came over, the mother called out and clapped her ringed hands, "Puppies! Puppiesss!" and 8 tiny, fat, ear-flapping baby dogs came racing into the room. I picked Vaughn up and that was the rest of the story. The first thing my cat Fatima did was slap him in the eye, which squinted for a week. Despite being treated well (other than by Fatima), he was extremely timid and he was terrified of doors. I still think my mom or my grandma (it wasn't me) accidentally shut him in a door once, but no one's talking.
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