FAMILIARITY

The proverbial ‘they’ say that familiarity breeds contempt. 

While this may be true, spending time and getting to know others can also be hilarious.  I’m talking animals here, humans are too complicated to be trusted.

I’ve mentioned Turbo before.  He’s a beautiful dog: smart, loving, gentle, tolerant, but he’s not without his quirks.  For one thing, he doesn’t trust doors.  The wide open kind are okay, and the fully shut ones are safe too, but the half ajar ones are to be avoided.  Even if his food dish and water are on the other side he’ll hang back and give us his sad eyes treatment but won’t try to get past it on his own.  He was two years old when we met him – it’s always makes me wonder, somewhere in his puppyhood did he lose a battle with a door?

Another idiosyncrasy is due to genetics.  He’s part Husky and apparently they are very concerned with keeping their pack together. If either one of his humans has failed to return by sundown he lies at the garden doors and watches for them to return.  If they are away overnight he’s a very anxious dog.  I guess this makes sense for a breed expected to pull heavy sleighs around – you would want the whole team there to help with the work.

He’s not much of a hunter though.  Oh, he thinks he is.  Any time the farmer goes out to bring the gopher population down Turbo’s out there like a dirty shirt, running from one hole to another, digging wildly, snorting dirt up his nose, catching nothing and scaring away anything that the farmer might have had a shot at.  Once when we were out for a walk he actually got one.  I don’t know who was the most surprised – me, the gopher, or the dog – but the triumphant march home was like a victory parade at the end of WWll.

Because of Turbo’s feeble hunting skills and the fact that mice like to move in for the winters I decided last fall that we would expand our pet population by one cat.  We acquired Thundercat in late summer – a black, nondescript half-grown kitten - hoping that he would take his job seriously.  The cat set about claiming the house as his own and tormenting the dog with way too much purring and cuddling.  Or  sneak attacks while he was sleeping.  Many times have those sad puppy dog eyes asked me why we needed a cat.  Much as I hate to hurt his feelings I have repeatedly explained about unwanted varmints and his lack of prey drive.

By this spring the newly renamed cat (Turbo’s choice, can’t be used in polite company) had earned his ‘you get to stay’ papers and rated a trip to the vet for the shots to keep him healthy and the surgery to keep him home.  He is never not hunting and there are mouse carcasses delivered daily: I like that in a cat.

In fact, I’ve kind of grown to like him.  So much so that when he disappeared for a day I was quite concerned that a coyote might have made lunch out of him.  It wasn’t just the $100.00 vet bill, I actually liked him.  I looked, I called, I asked Turbo – nada. 

Almost a complete day after his last sighting I went to get in my car to go to town.  I opened the driver’s door and looked across to the passenger’s seat at one very disgruntled cat.  He stood up, glared at me, and uttered a meow that unmistakably translated into “Where the #$@& have you been?” and stomped (yes, stomped!) out of the car. 

Talk about mixed emotions! Joy because the lost was found.  Terror about what 20 hours of an angry cat locked in a car might mean.  Cautiously I stuck my head back in and sniffed.

 Nothing. 

I now love that cat.