Chicken Soup for the Cat & Dog Lover's Soul (11 page)

The girl interrupted me, “How much will you give us for her?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“We’ll take it,” she said, without a moment of hesitation. Her brother nodded in agreement.

Dizzy with relief, I fished a twenty out of my purse and handed it over. I hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

As I turned to go, the brother called after me, “Her name is White Fang.”

Not any more,
I thought. I could think of no name that suited the white dog less.

Larry and I went to the game, but I spent the whole time thinking about the dog. I was eager to get her out of that awful cage and to give her a large dose of the attention she craved. I intended to find her a new home that provided a life that was full of comfort, fun and especially love.

When the game was over, I hurried over to the dog’s pen. She was as happy to see me as before. I fumbled with the latch to the gate, my excitement making me clumsy.

Finally I yanked the gate wide, expecting her to bolt. My husband was waiting with a leash to catch her as soon as she left the enclosure.

To our surprise, she didn’t move. She stood motionless in front of the now-open space in the fence. It seemed as if she didn’t fully register what was happening. Then her brow furrowed slightly, and an expression of mild bewilderment crossed her face. She took two steps forward, then stood still again, half in and half out of the pen. She looked up at me and when I smiled at her, her tail, held low, wagged once or twice uncertainly.

“C’mon, girl,” I said. “Let’s get outta here.”

She took another step, and this time there was no mistaking the look of confusion in her eyes. But with each step away from the pen and toward our car, her confusion faded. Not once did she look back at the filthy prison that had been her home for so long.

With her tail sweeping madly from side to side, she trembled with anticipation and joy as she jumped in to the back seat of our car. She poked her nose over the seat rest and started snuffling the side of my face, punctuating her affection with little woofs of excitement.

When my husband got in and started the car, the dog transferred her snuffling to the back of his head. She seemed very pleased to be with us. I think we both knew, even then, that the white dog was going to be ours for a long time.

What we didn’t realize then was that we had probably saved the dog’s life. A few months later, the police had to break into that same house when the neighbors alerted them to continued barking coming from inside. The people living there had gone on vacation for two weeks, leaving numerous cats and dogs inside with inadequate food and water. Many of the neglected animals had to be euthanized. The white dog could so easily have been one of them.

That is how White Fang became our Hannah. The first time she went indoors, I saw that same mildly bewildered look on her face that I’d seen when she left her pen. It appeared again going up her first flight of stairs, and the first time we rubbed her belly. On her first walk in the park, she seemed overwhelmed by the sights and smells around her. She didn’t strain on the leash, but walked steadily in front of me, swinging her head from side to side, her nose twitching.

When she first laid down on her fleece-covered dog bed in a sun-drenched spot in the living room, she looked as if she couldn’t quite believe anything could really be so comfortable. No more awful pen, it had been left behind like a bad dream. Hannah gave a long contented sigh as she rested her head on her paws, closed her eyes and settled into sleep.

Carol Kline

The Princess and the Toad

Some years ago, our family expanded to include a one-year-old Siberian husky named Princess Misha. Like all Siberian huskies, Misha had an innate love of the outdoors, and of course, the cooler the better. She would lie curled up in a ball on top of a snowdrift on the coldest of winter days with her tail flicked over her only vulnerable spot—her nose. When fresh snow fell, she would lay so still that she soon disappeared under a blanket of snow and became a part of the landscape. Every so often, she stood up, shook off, turned in a few circles, and then laid back down to keep watch over her domain.

On warm summer days, she found the coolest corner in the house and spent her days napping. Then after her nightly walk, she’d spend the rest of the evening stretched out on the cool cement of the front patio. All through the hot summers and into the fall, this was her nightly ritual.

One summer evening, as we sat out on the front patio relishing a late-evening breeze, we saw a small toad hop out of the grass, then down the sidewalk to a few feet away from where Misha was lying. Suddenly Misha stood up, walked over to the toad, picked it up in her mouth and then walked back to her resting place and lay back down. She then put her chin down on the walk, opened her mouth and let the toad hop out while we watched in astonishment. The toad sat there in front of Misha’s eyes, the two seeming to stare at one another for some time. Then the toad hopped down the walk and back into the grass.

On other nights that summer, we noticed this same ritual. We commented on the fact that Misha seemed to have a fondness for toads. We worried because some toads can be poisonous, but since she never experienced any ill effect and never hurt them, we didn’t interfere. If she spotted a toad in the street on one of her walks, she would actually run over to it and nudge it with her nose till it had safely hopped off the street and back on to the grass, out of harm’s way.

The following summer was the same. Misha enjoyed cooling off by lying out on the front patio after nightfall. Many times, we noticed a toad within inches of her face. At other times, we watched as she walked into the grass and came back to her resting spot with a toad in her mouth, only to release it. The toads always stayed near her for some time before hopping off into the night. The only difference from the previous summer was that she spent more nights in this manner, and the toads were bigger. A toad always seemed to be close at hand.

One night early in the third summer, after letting Misha out, we watched as a large toad hopped out of the grass and over to her, stopping inches in front of her. Misha gently laid her head down so that her nose almost touched the toad. That was when it finally dawned on us—perhaps there was just one toad! Could Misha have shared the past three summers with the same toad? We called a local wildlife expert who told us that toads can live three to six years, so it was entirely possible. Somehow these two unlikely companions had formed a bond. At first it seemed so strange to us. But then we realized we were very different from Misha too, but the love between us seemed completely natural. If she could love us, we marveled, why not a toad?

Misha had a minor operation that summer, and we kept her indoors for a while afterwards to recuperate. Each night she went to the front door and asked to be let out, but we didn’t let her. Instead, leash in hand, we took her for short walks. One evening a few days later, I went to the front door to turn on the porch light for guests we were expecting. When the light came on illuminating the front stoop, there, to my utter amazement, sat Toad (as we came to call him), staring up at me through the screen door! He had hopped up the three steps from the patio, and we supposed he was looking for Misha. Such devotion could not be denied. We let Misha out to be with her pal. She immediately picked the toad up in her mouth and took it down the steps where she and Toad stayed nose to nose until we brought her in for the night. After that, if Misha didn’t come out soon enough, Toad frequently came to the door to get her. We made sure that the porch light was turned on before dark and posted a big sign on the porch, “Please don’t step on the toad!”

We often laughed about the incongruous friendship— they did made a comical sight, gazing into each other’s eyes. But their devotion sometimes made me wonder if I should regard them so lightly. Maybe it was more than just friendship. Maybe in her stalwart toad, Princess Misha had found her Prince Charming.

Joan Sutula

Sheba

I first met Sheba in 1956. I was a third-grade student at the Round Meadow Elementary School. She was a seven-week-old kitten in a pet-shop window. She caught my eye immediately. I had always wanted a kitten, or at least that’s what I told myself when I saw her there on display.

At first, she didn’t even notice me standing there. I tried tapping on the glass, but her concentration remained elsewhere as she gave full attention to the task at hand. A thousand generations of hunting and stalking instinct were brought to bear as she successfully brought down her quarry—her sister’s tail.

I tapped again. She stared at me for a moment, and the bond was made. Following a brief discussion through the glass we concluded that we were made for each other. I vowed to return later in the day to take her home with me.

Unfortunately, I soon found that the road to kitten ownership was not without obstacles. Mom and Dad didn’t think much of my plans. It seemed that they knew quite a lot about the subject of acquiring pets. “Who ever heard of paying money for a cat? A kitten is something that you can get for free at any barn. Besides, we’re dog people.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant but, even at eight years old, I could see that the only true stumbling stone here was the finances. You see, Sheba came with a stiff price tag, two dollars and fifty cents. “A lot of money for something that you can get for free anywhere.”

Getting my own way this time was not going to be easy. However, I felt up to the challenge at hand and, after a day of typical little kid whining and a chunk of “birthday money” that came from Uncle Lou, Sheba was mine.

I was an instant hit with her, and the feeling wasmutual. She slept on my bed every night. We had long and meaningful conversations when no one else was around. In fact, it was Sheba who was largely responsible for my deciding somewhat early in life to pursue a career as a veterinarian.

Through junior high, high school, college and veterinary school, she remained a close feline friend. Many important decisions regarding my career as well as my personal life were influenced by conversations, whether real or imagined, with Sheba.

Though she lived with Mom and Dad while I was busy getting married, raising a family and practicing the profession that she influenced me to join, she remained a close friend and seemed to enjoy visits from me, my wife and kids.

Undoubtedly, it was her influence once again that got me thinking about opening a veterinary hospital for cats only. She seemed to love the idea when we “talked” about it, and I knew from past experience that her judgment was flawless, so I set off down a new career path. In June of 1978, my new hospital, The Allentown Clinic for Cats, opened its doors.

Sheba was twenty-two years old on opening day when Mom and Dad brought her to see me and the beautiful new hospital that she had inspired. They hadn’t warned me in advance that there was a second reason for the visit.

Sheba looked horrible. Apparently she had become quite ill that week. I did a thorough exam and was forced to a bitter conclusion. You see, I had been in practice long enough to know when a situation was hopeless.

It seemed fitting that in the new hospital, Sheba was the first cat whose suffering we could ease. We had the last of our long conversations as she fell gently asleep in my arms.

Michael A. Obenski, V.M.D.

Ranch of Dreams

After reading the book
Black Beauty
as a child, I dreamed that I would someday have a place—a ranch—where animals would not be abused, but like Black Beauty, would live their lives roaming proud and free.

Yet even in my dreams, I thought more about what the Black Beauty Ranch would
not
be rather than about what it would be. It would not be a place where animals were primarily to be looked
at;
rather it would be a place where they were primarily to be looked
after.
And it would not be a place where animals did what people wanted them to do. Instead, the animals would do whatever they wanted to do, because finally, it would not be a people’s place at all but an animals’ place—a place that the animals felt, from the day they arrived, belonged to them and would always belong to them as long as they lived.

I even dreamed about the sign that would be on the gate at the ranch. It would have on it the words from the last lines of
Black Beauty:
“I have nothing to fear and here my story ends. My troubles are all over and I am at home.”

Today Black Beauty Ranch is all that I had dreamed of and more than I could have imagined. The Ranch, over a thousand acres located in Texas, is home to almost six hundred animals, including buffalo, horses, chimpanzees, deer, cats and elephants, to name a few. Rescued from cruel situations or retired after years of service, all the animals have the best care we can provide and the most freedom possible. The animals in our sanctuary live in that extraordinary gray area that lies between petdom and wilddom as the following story illustrates.

At the time we first acquired the Ranch, it was to be primarily a home for—of all animals—burros. We rescued the burros from the Grand Canyon and later Death Valley. In both places, they were scheduled to be shot and killed by the National Park Service. After extensive research on the safest and most effective way of getting the burros out of the canyon, we hired highly skilled ropers to catch the burros and then we airlifted them out by helicopter. Altogether, the Grand Canyon rescue took two years and involved saving 577 burros. To my knowledge, not a single burro, horse or rider was badly injured.