Molly & Milty continues...
I just said losing Miss Betty was the saddest day of my life, that was until six weeks ago when a big, floppy dog bounded and barked his way into my fake Tudor house. Fred hadn’t given me a heads up, not one clue, like maybe a doggy dish next to the kitchen door or a leash draped over the back of a chair. That way I could have made a mental adjustment to the new arrival. Frankly, the dog has all but destroyed my peace and solitude. You simply can’t think when a beast is barking. Even worse, he’s scared away Princess Gabriella and Chester who used to visit me on the shingle roof and in our nicely trimmed backyard on summer days.
Fred has tried to convince me that, with Miss Betty’s passing, the house is empty all day and needs some kind of protection. What am I? I thought to myself. I’ve been protecting the fake Tudor house for the last two years. Not one stranger has gotten past the front door. I’m a guard cat! And, if purrs come to paws, I have Princess Gabriella and Chester to back me up.
Then Fred played the sympathy card. He told me that the dog – Milton, that’s his name – was a rescue dog. He’d been very badly treated by the people he’d lived with and lost part of his right ear and then he was left to wander the streets, until the Animal Rescue truck picked him up.
I’ve got a heart. You’ll agree that his was definitely a sad story. Gaby and Chester had told me more than once of cruel animal owners mistreating their pets, doing all kinds of mean, thoughtless acts, like leaving a pet for hours in a locked car on a really hot day or flushing a turtle down the toilet to see if it could swim back up, but rescuing Milton was keeping me from some very peaceful afternoons dozing on the arm of the living room chair and hours of silence remembering Miss Betty.
I’ve just been watching Milton chew on a leather bone, toss it from his lips to the sofa, race to the sofa and grab the bone in his mouth and start chewing it again. To me, that’s taking a lot of energy to find the same bone that he had in his mouth in the first place. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know it’s a fake bone, just like he doesn’t know this house is a fake Tudor. What kind of protection is a dog like that going to give Fred’s house?
Milton is bigger than the dog house Fred should have bought him. His head is even with the kitchen table. Every time he runs through the house, his brown ears droop and flap, even the one that’s partly missing. Don’t ask me what he’s chasing because I can’t see anything in front of his shiny black eyes. All I see is the blur of his spotted brown and white fur and all I hear is his big brown paws pounding the carpet and the polished hardwood floors that Miss Betty loved, and his gross panting that sounds like he’s trying to get a sock out of his throat.
That’s why, one summer night, without thinking too much, I hustled into the den and decided to wake up my real protector. He always dozes after dinner in his brown Lazy Boy chair. “Fred… Fred.” I did a purr-rub against his leg. “This is really important or I wouldn’t have awakened you. I’m not going to mention that all Milton does is toss a leather bone around the living room. I won’t waste your time with that, although, just as an aside, when was the last time you bought me a toy that didn’t have a bell on it?” I could see his eyes slowly closing again so I got right to the point. “Milton really doesn’t know what space means. He wags his tail against the glass coffee table with all of Miss Betty’s beautiful candy dishes on it, which, by the way, have been empty for two years, and he races upstairs and runs in and out of the bathroom knocking over shampoo bottles and your shaving cream. I’ve been following him and he really has no agility. I’m just sayin,’ he has no sense of space.” I raised myself on my front paws and repeated, “No sense of space.”
