Our Animals / Terry Pratchett

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My wife and I belong to a couple of animals: a Dog, whom we shall call Fuzzy (not her real name), and a Cat, Buzzy (not her real name either).

Fuzz came to live with us two years ago, when the Reelect Obama campaign was getting underway in the Fall of 2012.  I noticed, when she first arrived, that she was a mixed breed of great dignity and intelligence.  She was about 12 years old then, or at least my wife’s family had had her for that long.  She had walked into their store in a town some sixty miles away from here, and taken over the place with her wit and charm.  Or at any rate, her seductive puppy ways.

When my wife and I were still dating (we’re sort of newlyweds; we’ve only been married a few years), Fuzz would regard me with a certain reserve, more a sort of tolerance than real warmth.  After we got married, Fuzz went to live with my wife’s son, who acquired another puppy, Hank, who soon grew huge.  Fuzzy had great trouble coping, and so she moved in with us.

Once she got to my home, she became a lot more friendly, and was very unhappy with having to live downstairs, because my wife and I were convinced that her constant shedding was giving us problems, especially in our bedroom (though we all know lots of other folks who often slept with their animals, sometimes even in their beds).

We quickly settled into a sort of routine, where Kate (ouch; there, I’ve gone and mentioned her name.  I wonder whether it is common to place a semicolon right after an ‘ouch’?  Wait; should I put the question mark inside the quotes?  This is getting crazy...) would zip downstairs early morning to get the coffee started, and stare balefully at the weather reports on her little tablet, and then come upstairs with the Fuzz and the coffee.  (Fuzz was allowed upstairs briefly, but not overnight.)

Pretty soon, Kate would announced that I had a visitor, and Fuzz would march up to me and demand a scratch while I was still in bed, and I would give her a pretty thorough scratch, after which she would walk round to Kate, and demand some sort of acknowledgement, and get a little chitchat, but not very much of a scratch, but she seemed happy with the little she got.

Then we would all head downstairs for breakfast, and feed the Fuzz, and let her out, and then Kate would head off into the wilds of where she worked, in the County office, and Fuzz would mope until she got back.

Over the next year, I learned that Fuzz’s intelligence was the usual one of being able to tell to an almost uncanny degree what Kate (and often I, myself,) were thinking.  We would exchange a few coded remarks about the mere possibility of going out for a brief excursion, and Fuzz would caper about like a maniac.  But to the question, “Well, where’s your leash?”, she would just grin and wag her tail.  She would never fetch anything, not even a toy with which to play.  I cannot figure out, to this day, whether it is because she doesn’t know what the words mean, or whether she regards all that as our department, and not hers.  It is as if she were saying, “You guys get all the equipment, and I’ll help with the walking.”

Fuzzy, giving the camera the Evil Eye

She is a very pretty dog.  I can never get a good photo of her, mostly because she keeps fooling around, or showing the camera her hindquarters.  I have a photo or two that Kate took, which are the best ones we have.  She is at least half Beagle, but opinion is divided as to what the other half is: Pit Bull (Staffordshire Terrier) or Labrador.  I lean toward the latter.

Lately, she has trouble with her hindquarters; she finds it almost impossible to climb our rather narrow stairs, and Kate comes behind her, to help in case Fuzzy slips off a step, which she has done often.  We have a lot of smooth floor in our house—not my idea; I got the house that way—which sometimes results in Fuzzy doing an unintended split, which simply has to be very uncomfortable or even painful.

Buzzy, smiling for the camera

KT has, over the years, lived with numerous cats and dogs, and one day she declared that she was going to look up on the Internet to see whether there was a cat of a specific description available in any animal shelters within a radius of about 50 miles, and presently we were bringing home a little lady, whom KT named something fancy, but I called Buzz, because of her purring.  I, too, had grown up with cats, but except for a sort of absent-minded benevolence towards them, can remember little of the specific individuals our family had adopted over the years.  They were often fond of me, and would climb up onto my lap, and generally mess up my homework during my high school years, or when I was home from college.  But this one seemed smaller than the majority of cats I could remember, and certainly half the size of KT’s own cat, who is enormous, and lives with her daughter, and is a sort of feline version of the character Wimpy in the Popeye cartoon series.  Well, no; he is quite adorable, but not a very active cat.  The young lady also has a Chihuahua, and a young python.

Going through the fotos, I discovered a variety of critters whom we encountered over the last several years.  From left to right:
* we have Hank, still in his puppyhood; he is now a couple of inches larger, and a few tons heavier;
* Channing, a little foal born earlier this year, to a former neighbor of Katie’s;
* A nameless possum, who turned up on the roof of our shed last winter;
* Katie’s enormous cat, who now lives with Pam;
* Another daughter’s puppy, Bibsey, taken a few years ago.

We’re still missing photos of the python, and Pam’s doggie Jack, of whom I don’t have suitably flattering photos yet.

Some names have not been mentioned for various reasons!

Anyway, Fuzz is slowing down.  She still manages a great deal of enthusiasm when the prospect of a perambulation arises, but otherwise drags herself around the house with her head hanging.  She could last a couple more years, but they will not be happy ones.  I adore that dog, and I’m awaiting her passing almost with fear.  She still raids the garbage, when it contains something suitably odoriferous which we have forgotten to take out.  When we return home after such an event has taken place in our absence, Fuzz is walking around with a broad grin on her face.  Remorse, she says, is for the birds (though none of us has ever seen a remorseful bird).

Buzzy, meanwhile, is just the most charming, elegant, graceful cat.  She was very cautious with the dog when she first got here, but now she walks right up to her and licks her, and plays with her tail, and generally considers Fuzz her property.  She even lies down on Fuzz’s bed, and Fuzz simply lies down on the rug somewhere.  This seems a constant of cat/dog interaction all over the world.  Unlike Fuzz, who is game to eat absolutely anything (except strawberries), Buzzy doesn’t eat anything except dry cat kibble, and occasionally a few grams of the canned cat food Katie so lovingly puts in her bowl.  The cat also walks on tables and shelves and furniture, only coming down to floor level occasionally; you get a really good idea of why they call those things catwalks.  These are things I had never noticed in all my years of not noticing things!  Junior (my daughter) owned a ferret one time, called Jefferey, who also liked to walk about on the tops of shelves, and of course, push things over, onto the floor, something Buzzy likes to do.  She plays furiously for a while, then sits and stares out the window for a while, then goes to sleep, and then wakes up and does a poop, and then starts all over again, watched with apparent disapproval by the dog Fuzz.

I have been tempted to put yet more cat videos on the Web, but it seems a superfluous thing to do.  So I will be content to just blog on the little andamuls, as I call them, and leave it there.

Terry Pratchett
We have gotten news that Terry Pratchett, the well-known British author whose humorous novels of mythical Discworld have earned him a Knighthood, and worldwide recognition, has just cancelled appearing at an annual gathering in Britain to celebrate Discworld.  It appears that he has never skipped this event in the past, but the depredations of Alzheimer's Disease, which began several years ago, has left Pratchett unable to travel.  The implications are difficult to assess, because patients can survive for years.  But it is almost certain that Terry Pratchett will be contributing very much less to the intellectual discourse of various topics that he was interested in.  He was an environmentalist, and a rationalist (which meant that he was an atheist).  Though religious folks are fond of regarding atheists as devoid of any moral or ethical values, Terry Pratchett is clearly a man of what I would call great spirituality, because his books simply radiate values that go far beyond those that one would attribute to a mere rationalist.

I urge my readers to read his book Small Gods.  It is not only screamingly funny, but it also brings out how forgiving a man he is.  His criticism is relentless, but his chides are gentle, and to that extent I hope that I have been influenced by him.

This is by no means intended to be an obituary, but the news of Pratchett’s being indisposed has reminded me that I have been remiss in blogging about what a great author and all-round neat person he is.

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