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Closing the 'animal shelter'
Ten items or less:
- By moving to the country, I realized my family would be prime candidates for stray animals and the extras of large litters. But that responsibility is taking too large of a toll on me and I'm implementing a moratorium on any new pets.
Not only did my parents recently move to the moon (the same distance to me as the 13 hours they moved away -- but I'm not bitter), they left two of their animals with me. I've been around these animals for years, so I assumed it would be an easy transition. (Everyone knows what happens when you assume and it can't be printed in a family newspaper.)
The animals in question include a cat which I have been trying for years to procure because of its fondness of killing unwanted animals larger than itself and a pug which resembles, in my husband's words, a tick on four legs. In other words, it needs to go on a strict diet.
My mother dropped off the cat the evening before she left town. Figuring the cat wanted to do its "duty," I let the cat out the next morning. By my calculations, the feline was missing before my parents crossed the Nebraska-Kansas border. Every hour on the hour I would go outside, holler and return inside empty-handed. Although he was still nowhere to be found the next morning, I was still holding out hope the cat would return.
In the meantime, I had a robust, rotund, readily-barking dog to contend with. I hadn't heard the pooch yelp in several hours, so I strolled to his pen, calling his name. No response. I was nearing the pen, still calling his name and not seeing any movement. Still no response. I was growing frantic. I looked in the pen and he was nowhere to be seen. Peering into his doghouse, I saw a large mass of a dog lying still -- absolutely still. I yelled out the dog's name -- four times -- to no response.
Great, the cat is lost and the dog is dead and my parents have been gone all of 27 hours. I crawled inside, still calling the dog's name, and poked him in the head. He finally moved and I breathed a sigh of relief.
The cat showed up later that same day, meowing outside of my bedroom window. I'm thinking about putting it and the dog in a pen together, so the cat sticks around and so its' meowing keeps the dog moving and I keep my sanity.
- There is a bit of confusion in my household. My children understand that summer just ended and fall just started, but they occasionally think winter has arrived early. Every time we venture onto the country road, we inevitably end up behind a truck hauling silage with the top layer blowing onto our windshield. If only it was as easy to drive in bits of corn as it is in the middle of a blizzard.
- The B-29 and B-24 that flew in earlier this week have been the talk of the town and we are privileged to have them here. Their arrival was hard to miss and many people were drawn outside to watch their numerous circles above McCook. I cannot imagine what it was like during the war with those flying constantly overhead
My 4-year-old son has his own take on the arrival of the planes, having had the chance to watch their arrival with his preschool class.
On the drive out to the airport to see them up close, he commented: "Those planes sure are old. They're even older than my teacher. Those planes sure are big. They're even bigger than my teacher. Those planes sure are wide. They're even wider than my teacher." I haven't told his teacher any of these "compliments" yet.