This is pet memorial day...so I am remembering some of my pets today. This picture to the right is of our pet Rory. I say "pet" loosely because he really was a wild raccoon...and could be a pest at times (he really liked to get the dogs all riled up), but we fed him and he liked to sit on our front porch at our place in Indiana. My dad loved to spoil him, so he had cat food as a regular entree. I have to give Rory credit that he did seem to like us, at least he didn't "move" away...and after a while he did become a part of our circle of pets.
We had a lot of pets growing up, but here's to Mahogany (my first dog and one of my bestest friends ever!), Johann Sebastian Bark, Lady Carmelita, Prince Red Cinnamon, Miss Kitty (Marshall Dillon is still alive), Alaska and Sadie. Like I said, there were lots more but these I give special recognition. They are missed.
3 comments:
As I was reading Kendra's blog, I remembered a few of my dead pets that I truly liked. They were Vanna Brown, Maggie, and Copper. They were wonderful dogs. And should always be remembered in our hearts even if you didn't know them.
I was thinking about my pets too. Sasha the Alaskan Huskie who ate chickens and rabbits and anything that moved, Ginger the Dachshund named Super Dog. Of course the loss of Bear is still fresh in my mind. This is a poem I wrote about him the winter before he passed:
Descending
Every night at ten o’clock
my dog Bear comes to be with me.
Stiff with splayed hips—
his clouded brown eyes tear up,
sending long glistening trails
from his eye creases to his graying muzzle.
His elbows are leathery and dry
like fine heavy paper.
He leans on me,
placing his grizzled face on my thigh,
rolling his eyes at my continued writing.
My newly bathed foot, pink and puckered,
softly caresses the hardness in his stomach:
A spleenic tumor, it has grown to the size of
a football in six short months.
More tumors differentiate themselves
from the muscle and sinew—
the hard bumps of spinal cord
coupled with soft fatty bumps of sarcoma.
The vet says that he will die before Christmas,
that we must dig the hole, six feet deep,
four feet wide, before the ground freezes.
She suggests we cover it with plywood until it is needed.
I remember her smile as she caressed Bear’s distended belly,
I knew she was thinking of her greyhound,
saved from the racetrack,
crippled by a spinal tumor,
"Pray that he goes in his sleep."
Golden hairs cover my bedspread.
He insists on sleeping on the bed,
though he can no longer
get on and off without help.
He huffs and mumbles when I don’t respond,
leaves to sit at the entrance of my door,
solid, sphinx-like, detached.
I suddenly realize how cold my foot is
after the pulse of his body.
I sigh, thinking of the hole in the backyard,
and cover my legs with my quilt.
Saw your blog and remembered my old girl, Lady Ann. THANKS for helping me remember.
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