The Little Pack

Over the last week I have shared a favorite memory with almost all of the pack. Tonight is one so big, it needs no title other than Archie’s name attached to the word “Incident.”

One evening my husband and I had a friend over for dinner. After dinner, my friend and I went for a walk with IO and Jack. Archie was a wee thing, a tiny orange furball and maybe 10 weeks old at best. When we came back, I saw my husband standing on the front porch holding little Archie up to the sky. That’s odd, I thought. He seemed relieved to see me and quickly explained that he had “broken” the cat and now Archie was making a funny noise. “What?!”, I exclaimed. And this is what he told me happened:

My husband was sitting in the recliner reading the paper, when Archie suddenly went crazy. He began making strange growling sounds, “Raow raow ra-raow!” at the top of the spiral staircase. He continued growling, raced down the stairs, and smacked headfirst into the wall opposite the stairs. Before my husband could process this spectacle, Archie continued the rampage and galloped across the living room towards my husband. He tussled with the cord to the lamp, knocked it over, simultaneously breaking the light bulb and causing the room to go dark; all before yet again hurtling headfirst, this time into the floor-to-ceiling window behind the aforementioned recliner. Upon hearing the thump, my husband immediately sat up to see if he was okay, released the footrest on the recliner,  closed it and promptly heard that horrifyingly unmistakable sound that every cat owner dreads hearing. You know, the same bloodcurdling sound that occurs upon accidentally stepping on a cat… Yeah, that sound, times about a thousand.  Archie had apparently decided to take cover in the chair, and my husband, in trying to make sure he was OK, had unwittingly smooshed him in it. Finally, my husband rescued Archie. By this time he was wheezing so my husband brought him outside, thinking the fresh air might help…

…And this is when we walked up. I put my ear to Archie’s chest and listened to the wheezing sound. Terrified that he had somehow punctured a lung I looked at the clock and gave myself a maximum of 10 minutes to decide if emergency vet care was necessary—it was a Sunday night, because why wouldn’t it be? Within a few minutes his breathing had returned to normal. He seemed to have simply knocked the wind out of himself.  We laugh about it now, but man, did he ever frighten us that night.

For the next week or so I am sharing a favorite memory with each one of the animals. Tonight is Baby Titten’s turn and although “favorite” may not be the best adjective to describe this story, it is certainly one of our most memorable experiences, and one of the most telling of her kittenhood.

In the past, I may have mentioned the terror that was Baby Titten as a kitten. I called her a variety of names, the nice ones (if you get my drift) being Hell on Paws and Ninja Kitty. She was terrible. For example, she loved playing the under the covers game: specifically speaking, a game she made up where she would attack whatever moved under a blanket… Sounds innocent enough until you realize that what was moving was us… in our sleep… AND she had all her claws.

So we’ve demonstrated that she was a handful. She was extremely curious about her environment. And her way to learn was to interact with her environment, however violently that may be. At the time, we lived in a 3-story townhouse where the living area was open to the floors above it. There was a loft above part of the living area, and in the open area, 2 stories of floor-to-ceiling windows. One day she decided to “explore”. She climbed through the railing of the loft onto a beam and before we could stop her, leapt into the windowsill of the 2nd story window. The windowsill was only about an inch or so wide and she was trapped up there. She didn’t have enough room to turn around, and she panicked. Before my husband and I could get to her, she took matters into her own hands and jumped from the window, one story below into the living room. She was still very small and although she did land on all fours, she landed hard. Inevitably, she began limping badly so we took her to the vet. They took X-rays and we were relieved to find out that she hadn’t broken her leg. However, they determined that she had most likely broken all of the toes in her left back foot. She was still small and growing and all we could do is let them heal. Classic Baby Titten.

For the next week or so I will be sharing some of our favorite memories about each one of our little pack. Today is Dixie’s turn, and although she has only been with us since last October, we have known her since she was about 3 months old. This is our first meeting.

We came home for Christmas one year and stayed with family. They had just gotten Dixie, and she was all of about 3 pounds. She was this tiny, white fluffball with a huge, fluffy tail and just about the cutest thing I had ever seen. We loved her instantly. Jackson, however, was not so sure. He felt threatened by this little wee thing. He decided to show her who’s boss, ran up to her and snapped right in her face. She immediately began to yipe, “Aye Yie Yie Yie Yie Yie Yie” over and over again. I was horrified, thinking that Jackson had hurt her. Jackson panicked, ran across the room to the farthest corner away from her and punished himself by laying down in the closet. Turns out, Dixie was not hurt, she was just scared and Jack’s bravado was blown.

And so was the beginning of a long love affair. Don’t get me wrong, he hated her for the rest of the week.  Several months later, we moved in while we built a house nearby. He kept the pretense up. But little by little, he began to weaken until he grudgingly found himself liking her. In the beginning, he would only play with her outside, when no one was watching. Then, when we were all downstairs, they would chase each other all over the upstairs. He thought he was hiding this from us since we couldn’t see him, but he didn’t realize that we could hear them. Gradually, they began to play in front of us until they could no longer contain their excitement and love for one another. Now they absolutely adore each other, and I am sure Jackson is happy that Dixie has come to live with us.

For the next week or so I am taking a look back some of the most memorable and hilarious stories with each of the animals. Tonight is Jackson’s turn, and one of my all-time favorite memories.

When Jackson was little, we lived near a reservoir with a bike path around it. Often we would take IO and Jackson for a bike ride. (I can barely even remember what it was like to only have 2). The reservoir was next to a cattle ranch. One beautiful spring day we set out. Jackson was just under a year old. On the way back to the car, we came around a corner to cattle scattered everywhere: in the trail, down by the water, on the other side of the trail. Apparently there was a hole in the fence between the trail and the ranch. Somehow I had never noticed just how BIG cattle are until there was no fence between them and me. One of them saw me and began trotting straight towards me.  And when I say trotting, that does not fully convey exactly how fast an approximately ½ ton animal was quickly closing the gap between itself and me.

Suddenly, Jackson, in all his tiny little Border collie glory, sprinted ahead and placed himself between the cow and me. I started to call him back, but my husband said, “Let him go.” I was nervous, I had read never to turn your border collie loose in a herd of cattle because they could hurt the cattle, or get hurt themselves. He was so small still—the runt of his litter and 25 pounds on a good day, and the cows were impossibly big next to him. I just didn’t see how this was going to end well. But I did have serious trepidation about riding my bike through the herd and I had no idea how else to get back to my car. This was not the rancher’s property and I certainly did not bring Jack with the intention of testing his herding skills. So with a sigh and a prayer, I let him go.

I needn’t have worried about either his safety or lack of experience. He knew exactly what to do. This little dog immediately started bossing the cows around, beginning with the one running straight at me. He rounded it up, began driving it down the trail and before I could blink, others soon followed suit. I could see this moment of success spark something in Jackson, and soon instinct took over. He methodically began to gather all the smaller groups of cattle with the larger herd. A little cluster of cows was down by the water, he circled them, made them start moving, and deposited them into the herd, before moving on to another group on the other side of the trail.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Not only did he know exactly what to do, not only was he unafraid of these huge animals, they were actually listening to him. I realized I was witnessing a very old “dance”, an interspecies relationship that has evolved over centuries, one hardwired into both these animals’ DNA. It was breathtaking to watch. Words cannot express how beautiful and amazing this moment was to behold.

We soon made it back to the car and Jackson was beside himself with excitement. He strutted around with his chest puffed out for week afterwards, as though he had found his calling. It is bittersweet to note this, as he has not had opportunity to pursue this skill and live the life that is in his blood.

This week I am taking a look back some of the most memorable and hilarious stories with each of the animals. Tonight is Cheyenne’s turn and I find myself curious as to why all of our Cheyenne memories end in the word “incident”.

One day I came home thinking today was like any other day. Ha. I should have known better. I came across a cough drop—regular flavor and trust me, this becomes important—on the floor and assumed (incorrectly, of course) that Archie had found one somewhere and been playing little games with it all day. I walked a little further and found a second cough drop, again, regular flavored. Odd, I thought. But I still chalked it up to Archie. And then. I walked past the couch into the living area, and could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring for…ever… trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Tiny pieces of cherry cough drops everywhere. Partially eaten, sticky. Stuck in the carpet, and on the couch. Empty wrappers strewn about in piles. I followed the pieces of cough drops down the hallway and into the bedroom where I now found pieces of cough drops stuck to the bed, on the bedroom floor and in my dirty laundry.

I began gathering the items that would need to be washed into a pile, where I found a treasure trove of cough drops in a little pile underneath some clothes as though she was saving them for later. I picked up the pile of cough drops and Cheyenne, who up until now has been following my every move, steals several out of my hand and takes off running. So now I am chasing her, yelling at her to drop them and still in absolute disbelief and more than a little overwhelmed at the destruction in my house. Once we are back in the living room, I see the empty bag of cherry cough drops. It has been chewed open and I wonder how I missed this in the first walk through. My husband calls and I inform him what his dog did today.

I call the vet, who I just had to call the day before, because she ate half a bottle of Pyoben gel (don’t ask). I am, by the way, on a first name with all the vets at the practice. He laughs as I explain what happened, and I tell him the # of cough drops in the bag, and the amount of menthol in each cough drop. He tells me that although menthol can be lethal to dogs, she is in no danger for her body weight and the dosage she has consumed.

I realize that both a half eaten bag of regular flavored cough drops (found in tact with about the same amount of drops in it as before) and an entire, unopened, bag of cherry cough drops had been left on the dining table. Clearly, she sampled both and preferred the cherry to the regular. At the time, I blame Archie for knocking the bags off the table and assumed Cheyenne took over from there. This is, however, before we learned that she knew how to climb on top of the table. My husband comes home and we laugh and laugh, picturing the gleeful heyday she must have had when she found that bag of cough drops.  To this day, I can only imagine the play session that ensued when she realized the treasure was there, and I still laugh when I think about it.