The great company of furry creatures

By Lois Eckhardt
Posted 9/30/20

Tacked up close to my front door is a list of names to which I frequently refer. It’s an important list.

No, it’s not a list of neighbors’ names. It’s a list of my current …

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The great company of furry creatures

Posted

Tacked up close to my front door is a list of names to which I frequently refer. It’s an important list.

No, it’s not a list of neighbors’ names. It’s a list of my current neighbors’ pets.

As emphasized, the list is an important one of “not all” but many of the furry inhabitants of my immediate neighborhood: There is Benson, Rocky, Jasper, and Dexter, to mention a few. They are, as you no doubt suspect right off, dogs — mostly male dogs.

But wait, there are (also) but not as widely noticed, cats: Fiona, Louisa Mae “all-cat”, Punkin, and, of course, my Kee Kee, whom nearly everyone knows and will articulate “scat!” at regular intervals.

Why do I emphasize interest in the animals more than the humans? The answer is simple: They are the ones who address me more readily. They notice a new stick recently fallen from my tree. They might even pick it up and present it to me.

The humans trot on by quickly, totally obliviously, to the rhythmic beat of whatever music is chiming away in their ear plugs.

I never offer my animal visitors compensation other than a few words and sometime a pat on an accepted body part. If they want anything, they don’t ask, and if they have to leave they indicate a hesitancy to depart.

When I was three years old, my parents and I moved to a farm near the town where I was born. I never learned why, but my father, best known locally for his carpentry skills, was suddenly drawn into becoming a farmer.

We had a barn, a chicken house and all the other buildings of a usual rural setting.

In the barn I quickly found kittens. I often spent my nighttime hours there, cuddling them while my parents slept peacefully, assuming I was tucked soundly in my bed.

One day I was surprised with a bouncy, fuzzy little dog named Skippy.

This was a difficult time of life, the early 1930s, and a great depression was evolving. People’s pets didn’t always get the kind of attention they should have. My doggy died when a neighbor mistook him for a sheep killer — it was later proven not. The neighbor apologized but we didn’t recover easily from the loss and soon moved away.

It was many years before I was to have another dog. Until then I consoled myself with kitties.