The Cast of Characters

My beloved sweetie Pam and I live in what I call our personal animal shelter. We have three dogs and eight cats. I was really worried about the seventh cat. I figured, hey we went into double digits, what's stopping us from making it triple digits? I was convinced that the next time you'd read about me in the newspaper again it would be about us being led away in handcuffs as rescue workers from seven states are called in the excavate the mess. But we seem to have stabalized our numbers for now.

I worried about getting involved with a cat person. I always hated living with other people's cats because they'd invariably mistake my bed for the litterbox or equally heinous cat crimes. But the moment I first visited Pam at her old house, my fears were dispelled. Being a genius, she had discovered the secret. She uses alfalfa pellets as kitty litter. They work great, very absorbant and best of all they go a very long way to neutralize the smell. Having grown up in Oklahoma, I found the faint whiff of alfalfa that greeted me at her front door far more pleasant than the scent I expected.

Some day soon I'll figure out how to attach pictures.

Nutty is the dean of the household, the cutest little mutt anyone has ever seen, with a kind of Son of Benji look. Known as "the heartbreaker" at my vet's. He's 13 now and slowing down a bit. Nutty just got over pneumonia, which apparantly is much harder on dogs than on people, and he sometimes needs help getting up and down the stairs to go outside. I'm very attached to the fellow, he and I have been through a lot together, both marriages and the time in between. We got him when I was still married to Sarah, and when we split we decided custody based pretty much on who stole - uh, I mean rescued - which dog. Sarah still has the Thirteen (who I think is 15 now), but sadly Lena died earlier this year. Anyway, when I was single Nutty taught me that you really can't spend too much time feeling sorry for yourself in the presence of the unconditional love only a dog can offer. That crappy day at work just melts away when you open the door and see that tail a-waggin'. It's funny because I started out just hating that dog. He was tied to the other side of the fence beneath our bedroom window and every night from midnight to dawn he would just not stop barking his displeasure. As soon as he got into the house his disposition totally changed. Once liberated from the fence, he set up camp on our porch, staring at our door, thinking "if I can just get past that door everything will be great." So I call him our Died and Gone to Heaven Boy. But he never showed an interest in sleeping on the bed until Hurricane Fran.

Abby is a needy girl. I have no idea what her breed mix is, except that it's about 60 pounds but she still thinks she's a lapdog. She just wants so much to be good, probably because she spent the first 1.5 years of her life tied to a tree down the street. We got her very much the same way we got Nutty. After too many incidents of the dog getting loose with no one at her home, we finally just put her inside our own fence. After a couple days I finally spotted the brother-in-law of the dog owner, who also lived there, talking on a cell phone outside. He spotted me too, and went into a soto voce mode. "You know, your dog is inside the neighbor's fence," loud enough for me to hear three houses away. So I went up and said we'd be happy to keep her if the owner didn't want her anymore. "The guy says he'll keep the dog. You want that don't you?" By then my suspicion was completely confirmed, that everybody else in the extended family was tired of looking after this dog he was always neglecting. So not only did we get a wonderful new dog, we also solved a neighbor's family crisis. Bonus. It is all my fault that she keeps sleeping on the bed.

Dennis was named after the hurricane because that's when we took him in. I'm guessing he's at least part chow, almost all black with the barest white accents. He was a stray hanging out closer and closer to our house over the course of a year and a half. Eventually he made his home underneath my broken down station wagon in the driveway. (No North Carolina home is complete without either a broken down vehicle and/or indoor furniture out front.) I knew as soon as he would let Pam actually touch him, he was ours. He was crazy paranoid, ate very little and almost never slept because he was so worried. He had this bizarre habit of looking straight up in the sky with rapt attention. We conjectured he was talking to angels. I mean, what else could it be? Anyway, once we got him in and cleaned up we started understanding. He had to have most of front teeth removed because they had worn down to the nerve, and then all of a sudden he had an appetite worthy of a dog now that it didn't hurt to eat anymore. We washed more flea dirt off of him than I thought could possibly be on one dog. Inside the house, in a different light, his angel talking behavior became clear. Turns out he was tracking flying bugs. He hates bugs, they are his tormentors. He has honed his attention so much that he can actually leap up and snatch flies out of midair. It's only annoying when he mistakes a floating dust mote for an insect. He makes funny monkey like noises when he wants attention, and makes facial expressions just like Sparky on South Park, which is just too cute. And he sleeps much better now. To this date the most beautiful noise I have ever heard was the first time I caught him snoring.

I still think Pam should write that children's book, "The Dog Who Talks with Angels."

Wow, that's a lot. I guess I will have to bore you to tears with descriptions of cats you will probably never meet later.