Through Fresh Eyes and Ears
He appears to be just sitting. "Goofy dog," I mutter, but he is alert, sniffing, completely captivated by his new surroundings.
He came from a home out in the middle of nowhere, "the borough" my S.O. jokingly called it. We traveled down a long dirt road nearly to the end where the house numbers belied the actual number of houses on the road. He lived a secluded existence until we swept him up and carried him off in our big, green chariot.
Now he sits in our front yard trembling everytime a car passes, or at the wail of sirens up the road. He sits intently watching our neighbor across the street shoveling the latest white dumping, the sound of the shovel against the pavement making him a bit edgy. I stand and listen with him, the toy I brought to amuse us sitting unnoticed a few feet away.
I can hear the birds in the tree overhead. I listen more intently. There are birds further away, a different variety calling forth spring. Another neighbor is making a different scraping noise, he's clearing off a car window. There is the sound of a door closing a block away. Water is dripping off our roof and the roof of our neighbor. The longer I stand listening, the more I hear. For a quiet, snowy morning, it is filled with sounds I would have normally blocked out in my rush to get from one place to another.
He is excited when he hears a familiar voice, my oldest son and some of his friends are coming down the sidewalk from his friend's house. I don't even realize it is him at first, but the puppy knew from a block away. I know it won't be long before he'll recognize the sound of my S.O.'s truck coming down the road after a long day apart. He will be able to tell the difference somehow.
It is a quiet neighborhood when we take our stroll around the block every morning. At 5:30, the smallest of sounds seem deafening. I never noticed that the house two doors down has a funny whirring noise coming from it. I can hear the sounds of cars on Route 3 a mile away. Even with windows shut tight I can hear the sound of a clock radio going off in someones bedroom. Water trickling down the street toward a drainage hole sounds more like a river and waterfall. The pup is wary, giving plenty of room between the hole and himself.
He loves the snow. He buries his nose in the snow and flicks bits of crusty snow into the air to chase. The sound of dried up fallen leaves laid bare on the crusty snow is his greatest amusement. He pounces, snatches up a leaf and proudly struts around the yard carrying his trophy. I find myself laughing at his antics instead of standing there thinking about how much yard work there will be once the snow is gone. For now, the messy yard is a playground of fun toys. I probably wouldn't have noticed my very first crocus bud, it's bright purple head waiting for the heat of the sun to coax it open had I not been outside waiting for him to do his duty.
I recall the thrill of seeing everything for the first time through the experiences of my children as they grew from infant to toddler. It is so easy to forget to enjoy the simple things in life when we are running around, multi-tasking, trying to pack 48 hours of activity into 24 hours, but babies (be they human or pup or kitten) can help us slow down a little and notice.
My S.O. is mystified when he meets people our age who are still having babies, or who lament about how much they desire having another baby. Our puppy already runs us ragged. Our usual lazy ritual of sitting through an evening of bad TV has gone by the wayside and we fall into bed exhausted now.
"Can you imagine if we had to deal with diapers and feedings too?" he asks me. "With a dog at least you can stick him in his kennel when we have to go to the store for four hours; can't do that with a baby! There's packing up the diaper bag, bundling up the kid, putting him in his car seat, taking him out of his car seat. I can't imagine anyone our age missing that." But I know the attraction. It is the experience of seeing, hearing, smelling everything as though it were new again through the eyes and ears of an innocent. I could probably live with the diaper bags and car seats again if I didn't have to go through the rest of the childhood and teen years that would follow suit.
Until grandchildren start coming along, the pup will help me recall the simple pleasures again.
Cats seem to stay young forever...
We have a cat as well. She is nearly 16 now. I got her for my daughter who was 3 at the time. Since my daughter had been uprooted from her family and pets when I left her father, I thought a kitten would help her adjust. Although our Nikki Kitty is probably the most mellow cat you will ever come across (one more terrified of bugs then any of the rest of us), we have many similar amusing stories we love to retell over and over about her experiences.
The story about falling off chairs brings to mind one about our cat. When we were preparing to move to Pembroke after 9 years in the same townhouse, our cat sensed what was coming. For weeks prior to our move she would lay in her favorite spot, a little ledge at the top of the staircase, but as soon as she nodded off, she would lose her balance and fall, tumbling all the way down the stairs. Every night I'd lay in bed listening to her scratching the wall as she tried (unsuccessfully) to catch herself, tumble down the stairs, then moments later jump back up on the ledge. She repeated this over and over every night, all night for weeks. I have to admit we all found it amusing and laughed about it all the time. Finally I took her to the vet to find out why she was behaving so oddly. He agreed that she was most likely just stressed by the changes she sensed were coming and he gave me what basically boiled down to Kitty Valium to help her get through the rough patch. Too funny though how she never quit trying to get through the night on that little piece of ledge.
Oh, Teri, I just loved your piece!
We to have recently become 'parents'. We found our cat baby Sophie at a nearby town's animal shelter. Originally we were heading in for another cat, but we brought her home because she was sticking her paw outside of her cage and she batted Al's arm, and thought it'd be good to have two cats. Unfortunately, both the cats were terribly ill, and we were only able to save Sophie.
Sophie is our pride, our terror, our cockroach finder, and our bird lover. She is incredibly smart (she plays fetch and likes to play peek-a-boo), and is constantly nearby when we are at home. She wears me out playing soccer, and opening the closet doors when she puts her little balls under the doors! Always seeming to go 100 miles per hour, especially on the hardwood floors, she has recently mastered the art of rug surfing. But I have to say the funniest thing she's ever done is fall off chairs. One second, she is the epitome of cat-like gracefulness, the next, she's fallen off the side of the chair, and looks at me with that 'OK, who knocked me over?' look. She has certainly enriched and enlivened our lives.