My Redacted Life: Pets of all sorts

We had been married maybe six months and were enjoying the home we purchased on the GI Bill. My beautiful, long-haired redhead—no longer long-haired and no longer a redhead, but still breathtakingly beautiful—decided we needed a dog. Six months of marriage had been enough to teach me that total and complete acquiescence greatly trumped any attempt at Pauline male dominance.

So she found a dog, and thus began a, so-far, 46 year-old family protocol. Feeling Biblical that day, we named him Jeremiah. He was a mutt, black with orange circles above his eyes, perhaps evolutionarily designed to convince predators that he was awake, when actually he was sleeping, which was most of the time.

Having grown to adulthood, he discovered the joy of eating, or attempting to eat, anything left within reach. He particularly enjoyed my treasured edition of Victorian poetry, but he shunned no potential meals. This brought him into contact with Marcel the Mystery Plant.

Marcel was a gift from a neo-hippy friend named Wes. With a gnome-like appearance and a taste for all things from the 1960s, he was a favorite with young kids who hung out at the Art Center. Thus, we understood it when he brought us a small container of soil and a mystery seed, explaining that some of the kids who gathered at his place were untrustworthy, whatever that meant.

We planted the seed and cared for the resulting plant. Of course, being good Methodists, we had no idea what kind of plant it was, but we nourished the slender young thing, awaiting our friend’s return for it. Going through a Gaulian phase, we named it Marcel.

It had grown to approximately a foot in height, with nice, long, serrated leaves when Jeremiah noticed it. It sat in a quiet corner of the kitchen where watering was simple and, since we feared there was something vaguely sinister about it, out of sight from most visitors.

Well anyway, Jeremiah quietly watched Marcel grow, giving us no indication of impending “planticide.”

Then one Sabbath morning, Marcel was gone, nipped down to soil level. Jeremiah lay beside it with the spots over his eyes doing a sort of “ping-pong” dance over the most innocent-looking canine face one could imagine. Every once in awhile, he would make this dog-moan, like Lassie had just walked by wearing a bikini.

It got worse. Brenda was cooking breakfast when her mother called to inquire about any intentions we had of attending church services that day. It took some time for her to employ her best prevarication skills and get us excused. When she returned to the kitchen, the remnants of an entire package of raw bacon lay scattered about the kitchen floor.

An emergency?

She thought so, and demanded that I find a vet who answered calls on Sunday. For once in our marriage, I refused a direct order, saying, “You call one and explain what just happened."

We compromised. I sat in a chair and watched Jeremiah for any sign of seizures or fits. He had none. Rather, he just belched bacon grease for several hours, hummed tunes like “Come on Over to the Other Side,” and from time to time looked up at me and said, “Far out man.” His eye spots danced in rhythm with the music and he would shake his head from side to side, especially when he did, “Don’t Bogart That Joint, My Friend.”

We lost a pound of bacon that day. Jeremiah lost his innocence. Marcel lost his life. Our friend Wes lost his safe house, and the 1960s lost some of the allure that had drifted with us along a smoke-filled path through time.

Jeremiah stayed with us, apparently un-phased by the experience, for 16 years. I don’t like to talk about the day he passed over the Rainbow Bridge, so we’ll leave him with the memory of moaning, “My Sweet Lady Jane.”

Yeah, I know. She's never
held me like that.