Don't Pet the Sweaty Things!

George Carlin died last week. RIP. Here’s one of the curmudgeon’s lines I love: “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.” I grew up with sweaty pets and petty sweats – the two are expected if you want to have a full, rich life. A little dog came into my life last year and his name is Gio. Through him, I’ve reached an understanding that an animal in your life, whatever it may be (a monkey, tiger, chihuahua), can teach you a heap about living as a human here on Gaia. I also found out how attached I am to him when one night last week, amidst the crackle of bottlerockets over Marble Hill, he went missing.

For eight years I lived in an apartment in the East Village in which the landlord didn’t allow pets of any kind. When I say any kind, I mean it. Technically, based on my lease, I couldn’t even have a goldfish. Cockroaches were bueno. In New York City, pests like cat-sized rats lumbering around trashcans and indignant waterbugs the size of Volkswagens in your bathtub aren’t even blinked at – they all go along with the old Ben Franklin adage about death and taxes.

My landlord was an old Puerto Rican woman named Rosa. Her husband was Luis. He was a sweet ol’ guy who loved to drink rum in the afternoon and then stumble out into the hood. One time, I heard him return home drunk only to have Rosa smack him in the face and throw him through the door into the kitchen. (I couldn’t resist watching through my door’s peephole.) After Luis died, Rosa’s mind began slipping a bit. By slipping I mean that one day I was her favorite tenant, the next she was shaking her fist in my face, screaming at me that I was a no good “illegitimate child”. Her growing loss of connection to reality ran like a gradual upslope climb on the dementia graph. When I signed my final two-year lease, there was a scribbled note above the “no pets” clause that read: No hamsters, no goldfish, no washing machines! I wasn’t aware that a washing machine was a pet, but I guess in some circles….

I grew up in South Jersey. The forest was my backyard, a dairy farm ambled down a long slope behind that, and apple and peach orchards surrounded it all. It was a bucolic backyard in which to learn and grow, a place to create imagined stories and alternate universes outside of time. An afternoon in the woods was a lifetime of adventures, and animals were all a part of it.

My grandfather was an avid rabbit hunter and his passion was breeding beagles that competed in trials that tested a dog’s hunting ability. His dogs were blue ribbon winners and he made extra money breeding and selling the dogs. I didn’t know him well. He died when I was four, but I remember sitting on his lap once, a Camel cigarette hanging from his lips. I liked the tobacco and aftershave smell that preceded his entrance to a room.

My dad built a house two miles away from his own home and inherited his dad’s love for dogs. We always had beagles around, a big blue pen in the backyard in which the dogs could run around and hump quietly in beech-tree shaded corners. When I asked why the stud Mike was riding around on Penny’s back, my dad fumbled for the right words, settling for: “They’re playing a game.” Penny howled in a painful merriment and I assumed she was losing the game.

Penny, the sweet mama of the kennel, had puppies every Spring. My dad had built large boxes for the dogs to sleep in. He filled them with cedar shavings. The boxes offered a safe haven from the elements in any season. The top of the box lifted up on a hinge so that my sisters and I could check in on the little nursing puppies. Their hair was always soft and smooth, and when we picked them up to cuddle, they melted in our hands like chocolate on a plate under an August sun.

I always hated to see people park their cars in our driveway and walk away with a puppy. I did my best to disparage Mike’s pedigree and hunting prowess to potential buyers, while my dad calmly squeezed my arm to let me know I should shut my yap. My mom and he had gotten good at that after four children. They never had to yell or make a scene, they simply reached down and gave a little painless squeeze on the arm. Inevitably, one by one, the puppies left the box to grow up and run rabbits. One year, my dad kept two of the puppies. We named them Jessie and Jason. Never before had there been sweeter pups.

We always had a house dog, too. For many years a mongrel named Sniffer lived with us, until one day she walked into the woods and never came back. After Sniffer disappeared, my parents bought me a Brittany Spaniel named Star. She was mine and I was hers. Love at first sight kind of thing. I used to dress her up in scarves and hats and take pictures of her.

Star liked to play hide-and-seek. The game went like this: we had a woodshed off the driveway with an old sliding barn door my dad picked up from a local farmer; I ran into the shed, closed the door, and Star bolted around it as if I was going to pop out on the other side; when I heard her careening around the back corner, I exited and ran after her, leaving the dog to find an open door with no Timmie in sight; I would catch up with her, hide around the corner, and wait for her to take off again, crouching down low and surprising her on her second return.

Star went to be with Jesus the moment she was hit by the car. She liked to follow my mom around when I was at school learning Algebra and what king was declaring the next war in the world’s bloody history. As part of my mom’s daily ritual, she walked down the driveway and crossed the street to our mailbox. Unbeknownst to her, Star had followed her and, as she was crossing the street, a car came around the bend and struck the dog.

When I came home from school my mom cried and told me that Star was dead. We buried her in the backyard and I prayed that St. Francis would take care of her from then on. That was the last dog we ever had. I was leaving for college the next year and my parents would have no more children in the house. They didn’t want any more dogs. They were going to retire and wanted to be free to come and go like when they first married.

I never considered myself what some may call a “Cat Person”, but my own personality is somewhat like theirs. I’m a Gemini: I’m schizophrenic… and so am I. Two sides, two personalities. That’s me. On the one side is the creative, friendly, gregarious and go-with-the-flow Timmie. The other side is circumspect; it wants structure, safety, and often erupts in a vociferously evil temper over things that in retrospect seem rather silly. I walk the fine line between spontaneity and a yearning for 1, 2, buckle my friggin’ shoe.

Cats live this kind of life. One moment they’re purring and loving you like there’s nobody else in the universe, the next they’re clawing your eyes out, devouring them in a primitive ritual like cats before them, under a salmon moon during a lunar eclipse. I see no rhyme or reason to a cat, other than what they see as only normal, and if you lived with me, a Gemini, you’d know it for a fact.

I sat in my apartment one night, alone. I missed having an animal in my life. Foregoing the “no pets” clause in my lease, I decided that a good alternative to a dog would be a cat. A cat is mostly quiet, relatively low maintenance, and I could be gone all day without having to take it outside to pee and poop.

I adopted a cat from Whiskers, a local holistic pet care store. She was black and beautiful, sleek-like. I forget what I named her. Blacky? Midnight? Onyx? I should have named her Sybil. She was out of her mind and took an instant dislike to me. I should have known better. When I met her at Whiskers she cowered in the corner and sunk her teeth into my hand. At home, she climbed up the iron gates over the windows to get away from me. She hid under the bed and when I walked by she reached out a paw to scratch at me, scaring me terribly. She also snuck up behind me a lot and jumped on the back of my chair while I was writing. I broke three wine glasses from fear of living with this foul beasty.

After two weeks of cat hell, the woman at the store agreed to take her back.

I then bought a little Siamese that I named Som Chai and surreptitiously got him into my apartment via a kitty backpack I’d bought.

Som Chai liked curling up on my arm while I worked at my computer. He liked sleeping in the crook of my neck at night. He liked the dried chicken treats and organic cat food I bought at Whiskers. He also liked to climb behind furniture, which was the cause of his death.

He had gotten wedged between the wall and my wardrobe and after I pulled him out he began to howl and wretch, vomit coming out in violent spurts. When I took him to the vet, I found out that he had torn his digestive tract. (Perhaps I had caused it when trying to extricate him from his stuck situation? I’ll never know.) The operation would cost two thousand dollars, for which there was no guarantee of success. I didn't have the money. I had to have him euthanized. This was during a time when I had a terrible case of pneumonia and was out of work for three weeks. The little guy kept me company and showed me much love and nurturing, an instinctual awareness of his owner’s needs. I miss him to this day.

After I recovered from pneumonia, I found out about a Siamese cat rescue in the city. I emailed the woman in charge about volunteering so I could get to know some of the cats – to possibly adopt one. She was enthusiastic. I met her at Petco on the Upper East Side early one Saturday morning to watch over the cats that were put on display every weekend for possible adopters.

I waited outside Petco and sipped a tasteless cup of chamomile tea. A van pulled up, the door slid open, and amidst the meowing of twenty annoyed and freaked out cats, a woman jumped out who looked like the witch in the Bugs Bunny cartoon – the one who cackles with hair that defies hairspray, hairpins flying in every direction. Her coffee-stained sweatshirt, which had a large, cheesily-rendered depiction of a Siamese cat on it, was matted with a thick layer of cat hair. She smelled like a litter box. What used to be white sweatpants, were now beige, a few patches of yellow peeking through. They were too small. I could see the harsh line of her Hanes panties. Was that cat pee on her sneakers?

After volunteering for two consecutive Saturdays I got to know a lovely little cat that I wanted to adopt. Let me tell you right now that adopting a pet in New York City is harder than flying to Sri Lanka and adopting an orphan. Truly. My friends (and landlords) upstairs adopted a child from Vietnam last year, but when they wanted to adopt a dog, they were refused because the animal rescue people felt the stairs would be too much for the dog, even though there was a full first floor to live in and a backyard in which he could romp around freely. What the hell is wrong with these agencies? It’s almost as if they try their hardest not to find a home for these animals. They are completely deranged.

When I asked about adopting the cat, Catlitter Lady emailed me to set up a visit in which the cat would come to my apartment and see if she liked it. I was asked to fill out a lengthy application, give three references with phone numbers and email addresses, my social security number, employer information. I almost expected a urine test. Jeez Louise. All this so she could check me out ad nauseum to see if I was worthy of the cat with whom I wanted to share my home. Give me the friggin’ cat already!

I flatly refused to go through such a litigious process and the emailed response from Catlitter Lady was this: “Well! I guess our screening process works because you’re obviously not the right person for this cat!”

I ended up buying two brother Siamese kittens, but they drove me crazy with their meowing and keeping me up all night to play. After a year of contentious cat issues, I realized that it simply wasn’t working. I checked in with God and saw him on a street corner, laughing under a big neon sign that blinked: Fuggedaboutit!

I adopted the kittens out to a woman in New Jersey where they are currently enjoying a peaceful life sans Timmie. I simply wasn’t meant to live with a cat.

A year passed and I met F. Instant knowing that I wanted to be with him (and vice versa) ensued. A year later we were living together, along with his Shih Tzu, Gio.

Gio has worked his way into my heart, leaving his little pawprints on it forever. He’s the most feline dog I’ve ever met. He sleeps a lot during the day, likes to play at night, is obsessive about his cleanliness, more often than not preening and licking himself as a cat does. He also – like a cat – has his own mind, and if he doesn’t want to play, doesn’t want to be petted, isn’t interested in interaction of any kind, he’ll let you know by simply moving away from you, raising his little nose and black lips in defiance. His hints aren’t masked, his intentions quite clear: leave me alone, Bucko.

I respect that. I admire these qualities in him. I also respect his ability to be completely in the Now. He is the epitome of Eckhart Tolle’s teaching of being present. For Gio, there is no other time but the Now. There is no past, no future. He has taught me endearing lessons on love, respect, and Presence. I love this little guy as if he were my own baby child. He is my Buddha, Krishna, he is the Wizard of Oz, and as one of F.’s friends once said: “He’s Jesus’s little lamby.”

My birthday is June 20th. I hadn’t seen my dear friends for a long time. During the past year, living and commuting downtown from Marble Hill up near the Bronx precluded as many get-togethers as I used to have with them when I lived in the East Village. I decided to have a birthday picnic in our backyard last Saturday.

It was F.’s idea to ask everyone to dress in white. I made white sangria and we all sat outside in chairs and on quilts. It was very Victorian and everyone looked fantastic. Two of F.’s friends from Lancaster, Daniel and Gloria, drove out to stay the night and go to church the next morning at St. Bart’s. After everyone left, the four of us, and Gio, sat outside, sipping Sangria and chatting.

The past few nights, kids in the neighborhood had shot off fireworks. On one night, I ran outside to see white sparkling showers shoot off over the house. Gio has three fears: monkeys, thunder, and fireworks. After the first bottlerocket shot off and cracked across the nighttime soundtrack, Gio bolted. We thought he had gone up the stairs into the house, but a few minutes later, F. went looking for the little guy. He was gone. We looked all over the apartment, under the deck, but he was gone.

F. and Daniel took off in Daniel’s car to slowly prowl the neighborhood while Gloria and I stood vigil out front on the sidewalk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gio. Daniel and F. made a circle, checked in with us, and then went off again. They were gone for what seemed an hour. I prayed hard and even cried a bit in fear over the lost puppy. Poor little guy. Where was he? He’d never before run off like this, but now he was missing, lost in the winding streets on top of a hill overlooking the Harlem River.

Terrible images and thoughts overwhelmed me. I pictured him being hit and dragging himself under a car to quietly die. The thought of him being mauled by one of the neighborhood rottweilers flashed in my brain. I visualized a van pulling up and swarthy men who spoke in a clicking language taking him away to sell him into white puppy slavery, like Indonesian women trapped in Park Avenue apartments by middle-aged WASPs. I had to stop these thoughts, so I prayed again and gave thanks for Gio’s safe return. The Bible says to pray as if something has already happened, so I do that. I always give thanks for things before they happen, and more often than not (but not always in my own time) they happen.

I engaged passers-by, asking them if they had seen a small gray and white Shih Tzu. Nothing. I asked a fetching older woman dressed in black. She touched my shoulder in sympathy and told me she would be on the lookout. I talked with more people in the neighborhood in that hour than I had in the entire first year of living on the hill.

Gloria walked up from the backyard and we continued to watch. Suddenly, from the east I heard a voice yell: “We’ve got a lost puppy here!”

I looked down the street, heavy oaks and magnolias stretching their branches to create a comfortable canopy that felt safe. Under the orange glow of the streetlight, in the hazy, humid air that diffuses sharp lines and angles, I saw two teenage boys approaching. Next to them, trotting along like a gadabout, as if everything was hunky-dorey, was Gio. I ran towards them and yelled, “He’s ours!”

I reached down and scooped up Gio, hugging him tightly. He was back, and the weight of fear and loss left my body like evaporating water.

I asked the boys’ names: Juan and Alex. They lived over on the next street, Van Corlear, and found Gio in their backyard. They must have had a dog because Gio was attached to a leash, which they unfastened. I walked with them back to the house and thanked them several times. They were kind, sweet, and told me that if he ever got lost again, they’d bring him back. I showed them where I lived so they would know where to bring him, and then they were gone: two skinny Dominican teenagers, whom I’d probably never have spoken to.

Gloria dialed F.’s cell phone and as she waited for an answer, the car pulled up. I raised Gio in the air. F. got out of the car and grabbed him, at once loving and scolding, both of which he deserved, but he was home again, and no matter what had happened, no matter what fear had given him the impulse to flee, there was a comfort in knowing that an animal that was so much an indelible part of our lives, was back in it again.

For me, Woody Allen’s film, Broadway Danny Rose, recently became an undiscovered gem – one of his best. It’s a Felliniesque-inspired comedy in which Woody plays a hasbin theatrical agent. In a time of great despair, he finds hope in the words of his diabetic uncle: forgiveness, acceptance, and love.