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Animals and Feral Girl Children
Oct. 5th, 2016 11:32 am“I once had a dog that traveled 250 miles to find me. Two hundred and fifty miles!” said Lois Lane.
She was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of the one-time Arlington Library, now the home of Dutchess Literacy. I was standing just as close as I could to inhale the secondhand smoke.
“Really?” I said.
Lois Lane nodded. “Really. My parents - Well. When I was a kid, we moved ever six months. To keep one step ahead of the creditors. And I loved that dog more than anything. And one night – we were living in Poughkeepsie then, right near Garden Street – my father woke us up in the middle of the night and announced, Time to move! But we couldn’t take my dog.
“My father found him a home, With some people he knew in Connecticut. We drove Bear up there. I was crying every inch of the way.
“We ended up in Red Hook. And every week, I would call the people in Connecticut to ask them how Bear was doing. And they would say, Oh, he’s fine; oh, he’s having a great time. And then one night, I heard this scratching at the door, and I opened it up. And it was Bear. He was really skinny and beat-up looking. But it was Bear.”
“Wow,” I said.
“He had never, ever been to that house in Red Hook. He’d never even been to Red Hook!”
“Wow,” I said again. “What happened to him?”
“Oh,” said Lois Lane. She flicked her cigarette butt to the ground. “I shouldn’t have done that, right?” She scooped the butt back up. “My father shot him.”
“What?”
“Well, not then. Not right away. When I finally called the cops on my parents couple of months later. It was the very first thing my father did when he got out on bail. He shot my dog.” She shrugged. “And then I went into foster care.”
###
After class – more tongue twisters! discussions about Halloween and garage sales! a deconstruction of The Star Spangled Banner! dictation! – Lois Lane approached me once more. “So-o-o, I need your advice about Imane. There’s an issue –“
Turns out Imane has been a baaaad girl. Few weeks back, before she got her off-the-books job, Lois Lane had given Imane permission to use the Literacy Center phone to look for a job. Imane had followed up online applications she’d submitted at McDonald’s, Wendy’s. Lois Lane had not been keeping close tabs.
And when the phone bill arrived, there were $247 worth of charges for phone calls to Morocco.
“So Marisol” – the Literacy Center’s absolutely useless Director – “calls me into the office screaming. And I don’t know what to do.”
“Wow!” I said. "Wow" was the expletive du nuit, I guess. “Have you spoken with Imane?”
“Yes. I was very nice about it. I tried not to seem too threatening, to let her know I still liked her. But you notice she wasn’t in class this evening.”
“No, but she showed up to her individual tutoring session with me yesterday,” I said.
This misdeed was exactly the kind of petty hustle that I pulled all the time back when I was 21, 22. I tried to remember what my justifications had been: (A) They were old, they didn’t matter, and (B) They owed it to me.
That second one was most interesting.
“So what do I do?” Lois Lane asked.
“That’s a hard one,” I said. “Will Marisol take it out of your salary?”
“She might. If she does, I’ll walk.”
“If you walk, I walk,” I said. “The only reason I volunteer here is because of you.”
Lois Lane can’t really afford to walk, though.
“Well,” I said, “She probably didn’t realize the phone bill would be quite that high. I guess we tag team her. We take her on a tour of the fabulous Vassar campus and tell her, Some day, all this could be yours – but only if you stick with our program. And then we take her out to lunch – some place cheap! – and we lay down the law. What she did was a kind of theft. She’s got to pay that money back. Say $30 a week – She’s working; that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’d be glad to match the funds –“ said Lois Lane.
“NO! That would be a really bad idea. Imane needs to take responsibility for this.”
“Do you think she will?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I can’t really read her. The culture is too different. I mean we’re Americans, and we’re old – to her, we’re not real human beings, you know? You can’t rely much on empathy at that age even with kids who do come from the same culture. No. Maybe we hunt down a copy of the Quran and read her the part about punishments for theft. I’ll bring my meat cleaver.”
Lois Lane and I laugh hysterically.
###
Also last night, my oldest cat, the Meezer, had another psycho episode.
She’s on Advantage II for fleas and ticks, but somehow the ticks latch on to her anyway. She’s a longhaired cat, and she won’t let me groom her, and her coat is matted with dreadlocks.
She’s been a mostly outdoor cat all her life: I let her out early in the morning; I take her in at supper time, so the coyotes won’t get her. Sometimes, she sleeps on my bed. Mostly, she sleeps in my closet.
Anyway, yesterday, she picked up an enormous tick -- not a deer tick; no worries -- which would have been very easy to pick off – except that when I tried, she turned into a snarling ball of absolute fury, latched on to my arm with teeth and claws, would not let go – I immediately smeared antibiotic ointment on the lacerations, so they didn’t become infected, but ouch.
And the fucking tick is still there.
The Meezer is 17 years old. She had a really hard kittenhood – she was regularly tortured by my neighbors in Monterey who were deadbeats with a lot in common with Lois Lane’s parents; they dumped her when they vanished in the middle of the night; and after watching her prowl the garbage cans for a week, I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and took her in.
My vet in Ithaca told me, “You know, she’s the kind of cat that No Kill shelters make exceptions for.”
He wasn’t kidding.
Her quality of life is still pretty good in many respects. She’s very sprightly as she patrols the perimeters of L’s property. She comes when I call her; most of the time, she purrs when I pick her up. I wouldn’t call this love or even affection, but I don’t know a non-anthropomorphic term to call it.
It’s about time for her to have her booster immunizations. So, I guess I bring her to the nice vet down the street – he named all his cats after Famous Jewish Intellectuals: Einstein, Freud, Marx – and then pick his brain.
Rutger, my orange kitty, who is more-or-less a dog in a feline body, does love me, and sprang into action when the Meezer had her psychotic episode, hissing and swatting at her. That’s what stopped her.
And he slept right next to me all night long. Protecting me.
She was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of the one-time Arlington Library, now the home of Dutchess Literacy. I was standing just as close as I could to inhale the secondhand smoke.
“Really?” I said.
Lois Lane nodded. “Really. My parents - Well. When I was a kid, we moved ever six months. To keep one step ahead of the creditors. And I loved that dog more than anything. And one night – we were living in Poughkeepsie then, right near Garden Street – my father woke us up in the middle of the night and announced, Time to move! But we couldn’t take my dog.
“My father found him a home, With some people he knew in Connecticut. We drove Bear up there. I was crying every inch of the way.
“We ended up in Red Hook. And every week, I would call the people in Connecticut to ask them how Bear was doing. And they would say, Oh, he’s fine; oh, he’s having a great time. And then one night, I heard this scratching at the door, and I opened it up. And it was Bear. He was really skinny and beat-up looking. But it was Bear.”
“Wow,” I said.
“He had never, ever been to that house in Red Hook. He’d never even been to Red Hook!”
“Wow,” I said again. “What happened to him?”
“Oh,” said Lois Lane. She flicked her cigarette butt to the ground. “I shouldn’t have done that, right?” She scooped the butt back up. “My father shot him.”
“What?”
“Well, not then. Not right away. When I finally called the cops on my parents couple of months later. It was the very first thing my father did when he got out on bail. He shot my dog.” She shrugged. “And then I went into foster care.”
###
After class – more tongue twisters! discussions about Halloween and garage sales! a deconstruction of The Star Spangled Banner! dictation! – Lois Lane approached me once more. “So-o-o, I need your advice about Imane. There’s an issue –“
Turns out Imane has been a baaaad girl. Few weeks back, before she got her off-the-books job, Lois Lane had given Imane permission to use the Literacy Center phone to look for a job. Imane had followed up online applications she’d submitted at McDonald’s, Wendy’s. Lois Lane had not been keeping close tabs.
And when the phone bill arrived, there were $247 worth of charges for phone calls to Morocco.
“So Marisol” – the Literacy Center’s absolutely useless Director – “calls me into the office screaming. And I don’t know what to do.”
“Wow!” I said. "Wow" was the expletive du nuit, I guess. “Have you spoken with Imane?”
“Yes. I was very nice about it. I tried not to seem too threatening, to let her know I still liked her. But you notice she wasn’t in class this evening.”
“No, but she showed up to her individual tutoring session with me yesterday,” I said.
This misdeed was exactly the kind of petty hustle that I pulled all the time back when I was 21, 22. I tried to remember what my justifications had been: (A) They were old, they didn’t matter, and (B) They owed it to me.
That second one was most interesting.
“So what do I do?” Lois Lane asked.
“That’s a hard one,” I said. “Will Marisol take it out of your salary?”
“She might. If she does, I’ll walk.”
“If you walk, I walk,” I said. “The only reason I volunteer here is because of you.”
Lois Lane can’t really afford to walk, though.
“Well,” I said, “She probably didn’t realize the phone bill would be quite that high. I guess we tag team her. We take her on a tour of the fabulous Vassar campus and tell her, Some day, all this could be yours – but only if you stick with our program. And then we take her out to lunch – some place cheap! – and we lay down the law. What she did was a kind of theft. She’s got to pay that money back. Say $30 a week – She’s working; that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’d be glad to match the funds –“ said Lois Lane.
“NO! That would be a really bad idea. Imane needs to take responsibility for this.”
“Do you think she will?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I can’t really read her. The culture is too different. I mean we’re Americans, and we’re old – to her, we’re not real human beings, you know? You can’t rely much on empathy at that age even with kids who do come from the same culture. No. Maybe we hunt down a copy of the Quran and read her the part about punishments for theft. I’ll bring my meat cleaver.”
Lois Lane and I laugh hysterically.
###
Also last night, my oldest cat, the Meezer, had another psycho episode.
She’s on Advantage II for fleas and ticks, but somehow the ticks latch on to her anyway. She’s a longhaired cat, and she won’t let me groom her, and her coat is matted with dreadlocks.
She’s been a mostly outdoor cat all her life: I let her out early in the morning; I take her in at supper time, so the coyotes won’t get her. Sometimes, she sleeps on my bed. Mostly, she sleeps in my closet.
Anyway, yesterday, she picked up an enormous tick -- not a deer tick; no worries -- which would have been very easy to pick off – except that when I tried, she turned into a snarling ball of absolute fury, latched on to my arm with teeth and claws, would not let go – I immediately smeared antibiotic ointment on the lacerations, so they didn’t become infected, but ouch.
And the fucking tick is still there.
The Meezer is 17 years old. She had a really hard kittenhood – she was regularly tortured by my neighbors in Monterey who were deadbeats with a lot in common with Lois Lane’s parents; they dumped her when they vanished in the middle of the night; and after watching her prowl the garbage cans for a week, I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and took her in.
My vet in Ithaca told me, “You know, she’s the kind of cat that No Kill shelters make exceptions for.”
He wasn’t kidding.
Her quality of life is still pretty good in many respects. She’s very sprightly as she patrols the perimeters of L’s property. She comes when I call her; most of the time, she purrs when I pick her up. I wouldn’t call this love or even affection, but I don’t know a non-anthropomorphic term to call it.
It’s about time for her to have her booster immunizations. So, I guess I bring her to the nice vet down the street – he named all his cats after Famous Jewish Intellectuals: Einstein, Freud, Marx – and then pick his brain.
Rutger, my orange kitty, who is more-or-less a dog in a feline body, does love me, and sprang into action when the Meezer had her psychotic episode, hissing and swatting at her. That’s what stopped her.
And he slept right next to me all night long. Protecting me.
