Our first stray was a cat. It was around Christmas-time and I was probably no more than 6 years old. It was customary in the family – back then – to deck the living room in basking glory (that means putting up a huge-ass tree that barely fits through the doorway and throw the boxloads of new, old and inherited ornaments on it … then, as an afterthought, plant the nativity scene – all old and stinking of mold – underneath). My mom tells that this particular year a cat started coming around. It was a dark colored cat, clean and well kept. It looked more like a lost cat than a cat born on the streets. I used to put out a tiny saucer of milk for him and pet him (or her?) for a while.
Then, one day, my mother had the brightest idea of them all: bring the cat in! And then go out. Yes. Leave the feline unattended … with a huge-ass fir treeeeeeee!
You know where the tree ended up, right?
And you know where the cat went, right?
After that, the strays that appeared were only fed, not brought in. I remember this black pup that came every afternoon to get his customary buscuit. This wasn’t a stray, he was a neighbor’s dog, but I liked to think of him as partly mine anyway. That’s why his demise under the tires of a car was a bit more painful than it should’ve been. His absence after that was my first taste of what happens when something you love goes away.
All the while, we’d been proud family to a small pack of white poodles. My parents started off with two (male & female), to pair them off and get at least one litter of purebred white poodles. At one point, there were about 6 or 7 puppies running around the house (additional to momma and pappa poodle). I was a very happy toddler, I had the best playmates ever! What else could I ask for?
Fuck playing with other kids! Dogs are AWESOME!
Things changed: we moved, my parents got divorced, time passed… eventually only one dog remained from the vast empire of curls: Laika, the original female (a sort of Eve). Then I brought in Sasha, handpicked by my grandfather to be our next canine companion at home. Some years after that, I got my first true stray: Lucky.
Lucky was a black kitten. I found her under a tree, mewing her lungs off. I glimpsed her mother’s body squished in the middle of the road. I couldn’t resist. I knelt on the floor, opened my arms, and Lucky came home. I took her to the ved, fed her, cared for her, and all was fine until the day one of my family members left the door open. After that she never came back inside (mostly because my father’s boxer wouldn’t let her). I was later told that she was sighted alive and well, in the wilderness of our yard (which was pretty expansive), nursing a litter. I guess muy job was complete.
That was 1999 and, after that, I didn’t get a stray for the longest while.Pets came and went: 2nd and 3rd generation litters from the pets we already had, adoptions, hand-me-downs. I had the most tragic deaths in 2003 – my 4 dogs, Sasha included, died in a fire that destroyed everything I had. It took me a while longer to realize I hadn’t been the best pet caretaker. Two adoptions later – both resulting in handing them over to someone better suited for the job – I finally had my first era of my life without a pet. And lord, did it suck!
Eze and I got a hamster to fill that void. Medea was the cutest thing – totally tame, 0 hamster bites in her year of life. She died a terrible death: tumors killed her off slowly. It was a painful thing to watch and I cried her death for the longest you can cry a hamster death. After that, I was certain I was ready to care for a dog again.
A few years later, Caprica came. A friend called me one night to tell me that her kids’ tutor had found two puppies abandoned in a park nearby. I asked about the approximate age of the pups: I knew I didn’t have the time to bottle feed weeks-old puppies. I went there next day, committed to at least help the woman out to find a place that would take good care of the pups. When I arrived, she said someone else had already adopted the male pup. Only the female was left: a tiny tuft of hair and mange, dotted with the teeniest ticks, still smelling of mother’s milk. My first thought was that I wasn’t ready to take on this. Hell, that was my first, second and third thought, for the next 3 hours. I brought her into my car inside of a small cardboard box, and I set course toward Humacao, looking for a no-kill shelter I had heard about. As it turns out, no one in Humacao knew about the shelter, no one could point me in the right direction. I drove around, lost, for the next few hours, and the puppy was so well behaved, she only voiced discomfort once, as I proceeded to step out of the car in a gas station to ask for directions.
I remember she woke up when I stopped the car, looked at me, and yelped twice loudly, as if saying “What the hell is taking so long?”. I fell in love right there and then. A pup that could withstand hours riding around in a car without crying or peeing on my seat was a special pup. She stayed. We named her Caprica, after the home planet in our favorite sci-fi series, BSG. She made our lives more complicated, more expensive, more difficult… but also, much more pleasant. She was our first child.
..she spent her first 3 months with that startled look on her face. I guess she wasn't expecting to be rescued..
After that, we were pretty content. We had a run-in with a stray dove: fed her for a few weeks – a very complicated thing to do – and eventually realized Eze’s father could do a better job at it, so we took her to his house, where a stray cat promptly killed her with a swift swipe of the paw. We also got a second stray dog, bigger than Caprica herself. We quickly took her to Eze’s parents’ home, but she apparently had a taste for freedom, and she ran away successfully on her second attempt.
A year and a half after Caprica came into our lives, we got our last stray. I was driving to the supermarket on a Sunday morning, and the tiniest cat crossed the road right in front of my car. I saw another car pass over him, I remember I yelped “Noooo!” and stopped dead on my tracks. Thankfully, the pickup truck on the next lane took my cue and stopped too, ‘cuz when we came around, we found the cat clinging to their front tire. He was a mess of oil-ridden hair and eye secretions. I grabbed him, got him in my car and took him to the nearest vet, thinking that they would take him in. No luck, except the attendant was nice enough to give me a box to put the cat in. I kept him that night, bathed him and cleaned his eyes, with the idea to take him to the shelter the next day. The next day was a holiday. The cat stayed – to Eze’s chagrin. And after that, I had already named named him. He was definitely mine.
Thing about strays is: in my case, these animals have proved to be the most thankful critters, capable of infinite affection. They both came into my lives with a slew of diseases and conditions that have cost me more money than what I have, but it’s been worth it. I’m not sorry in the leastest bit of having taken them in. They were born on the streets, but they have become family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Happiness is a bundle of fur and legs.
