Chaela and Silly

At this point I've pretty much given up trying to keep the story in exact chronological order, but given how often we moved the geographical order is pretty darn close... So about all I can say is that everything I've been talking about recently happened during that year or so we spent in Tyler...

I've mention our cat (Chaela) and our miniature dachshund (Silly) before. We acquired them when we moved into the house on Chilton Street. I've also talked about how fond Silly was of cat droppings. Yeah - we never could break him of that... But there are other stories (some sad - some not).

Both of them were still in kitten / puppy mode when we got them - lots of chasing around the house. Chaela would use the back of the sectional sofa like the banked turn on a Nascar track - she'd jump up onto one end and run through the 90 degree arc to the other end. It was pretty cool to watch - and it made Silly really mad because he couldn't follow her - he never seemed to catch on that he could intercept her at the other end :-)

One of most vivid memories of Silly (other than the cat poop thing) was when he got his head stuck in a milk carton. He couldn't get his head free and was walking into walls and stuff. We watched for a good long time (laughing) before we finally took pity and pulled it off of him.

Another time I was out in the front yard watching some gathering storm clouds with Silly sitting right next to me. A bolt of lightning hit a tree in the yard next door (about 100 feet away) and dropped a huge limb onto the neighbor's car. There was no warning - just a simultaneous flash and ear-splitting crash / thump... I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out what happened to Silly. I looked down right after the strike and he had disappeared... After a quick check of the house (the front door had been open) I canvassed the neighborhood - there was no sign of him. I finally did a thorough search of the house and found him under a pile of laundry in my closet. I don't why he didn't respond to my calls... He probably figured it was all my fault :-)

Unfortunately Silly was in the habit of sitting in the middle of the road. One day I looked out and noticed him out there but just as I opened the front door to call him a car topped the rise by our house going about 50 MPH (in a 25 zone) and clipped him. The driver didn't even slow down. The girl across the street drove me to the vet and Silly died in my arms on the way. (It still brings tears to my eyes to think about it.)

Now on to Chaela:

When Chaela was little she was constantly crouching in the "ready to strike" position - poised to attack some imaginary prey (practicing her hunting skills I guess). One day she was under the coffee table ready to pounce and I got to wondering if she realized that she didn't have very much headroom under there... Apparently not - I balled up one of my socks and pegged her in the butt with it. She was facing away from me and didn't see it coming. She jumped straight up and whacked the bottom of the table so hard it almost knocked her senseless... I felt absolutely horrible about it - I honestly didn't think she was that unaware. She never did practice her pouncing around me again...

And here's another one I felt even worse about (although it wasn't really my fault):
I've mentioned Bernie before (the amazing jazz guitarist). I don't recall precisely when, but he and Karina were briefly married - she had it annulled. Of course - that didn't imply that she didn't want to be with him - she just didn't want to be married to him... At some point he moved to Dallas to work in a music store there and Karina would go stay with him when she felt like it.
One weekend Karina insisted I come visit her in Dallas (I don't recall why). This was after the demise of Silly but I still had to figure out what to do with Chaela. It seemed like a cat should be able to survive a day or two without a human so I blocked the back door open just enough for her to get in and out and left a bunch of food and water in the kitchen.

When I got back home on Monday Chaela greeted me out front. She was acting really upset and walking funny. When I took a closer look I realized that her left femur was completely separated from the hip and was poking up next to her spine... I have absolutely no clue how that could have happened - aside from the fracture there wasn't a scratch on her...
So I rushed her to the vet. I still remember having to hold her down on the examination table while he worked her leg like a 4-speed shifter - she didn't like that very much... He told me that the femur had broken off from the ball and it was too small to put a pin in - they usually euthanized cats when that happened. When I asked him if there wasn't anything he could do he mentioned an experimental surgery he had heard about - it involved sticking the bones back together and suturing the femur to the hip to hold it in place while it healed. It didn't always work but it was the only option.

The surgery was a success - Chaela recovered completely. But even more amazing was the bill: For the X-rays, the surgery, the anesthesia and a couple of days of recovery time the vet charged a grand total of $20. (That's less than $120 adjusted for inflation.) The guy was simply amazing. It was obvious that he cared more about the animals than making a living... Of course - it hadn't been that long since I had shown up there with a dead dachshund so he might have taken pity on me... Regardless - he was a godsend :-)
Out of the whole incident the thing that really upset me was wondering how long the poor kitty had been wandering around with a broken leg waiting for me to get home. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it...

It's no secret that I don't like having pets, but it's not because I don't like animals - it's because I do like them... I just can't help thinking about my first dog (Bozo) who had to be force fed when we left him in a kennel because he wouldn't eat without us around. (I'm sure he had to be euthanized when we left for Germany.) And seeing Silly get hit by the car - and Chaela getting badly injured the only time I left her alone... And that poor squirrel getting flattened by a car when I was 9... Hmm - I never did blog about that... I was so upset that I had trouble sleeping for a month and I didn't even see it happen...

Yeah - some of the absolute best and worst moments of my life involved animals. Unfortunately - the worst seem to affect me a lot more than the best... I assume that all of my kids will eventually read this and when they do I hope they'll better understand why I was always so resistant to having pets.... (Of course - that never stopped us from having dogs, cats, birds, fishes, lizards and turtles.) I always blamed it on my allergies but it was really more about my memories...