That night all mayhem broke loose! Our mutt, Mike, had frantically dug up our neighbor’s garden. It appeared as though a herd of elephants had rushed through their property. They raced over, banging on our door. My timid mother ran in retreat to her bedroom and called my father to come home immediately.
My mother’s flight instincts prevailed as she declared, “Carl, we have to move!”
My father calmed her down, “Grace, stop, listen, I’ve just gotten a promotion and am being transferred to New York City.”
My mother threw her arms around him exclaiming, “Oh, Carl, you are the best!”
Too bad, our move from a semi-rural area to a busy suburb only made things worse. Mike wanted out. He kept scratching at the door. To be on the cautious side, my parents kept him inside until my father came home to take him for a walk. Meanwhile, Mike started sitting at the window all day barking at passersby. This upset my mother terribly, as she was worried he was disturbing the neighbors, which, he was, big time. Hoping to silence him, she impulsively tied one of my father’s neckties tightly around his nose and neck. This made him go totally berserk. Just then, I came home from school and Mike raced out the door.
She screamed, “What have you done?”
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, he was like lightening!”
She hurriedly called my father, but it went straight to voicemail. At that point she fixed a drink and slumped onto the couch.
On the loose, my dog, who was the heart of my childhood, who I loved more than anything, was about to commit an unforgivable crime. A woman was nonchalantly walking along the sidewalk with a fur jacket over her arm. Mike spotted the fur, made a mad dash for it, grabbed it in his jaws, and raced off. The last glimpse I caught of him was a black and white streak disappearing into the distance.
My father couldn’t stop laughing when I told him about the fur jacket, but my mother had reached a breaking point with Mike.
The next day when I came home from school, Mike wasn’t there. No more jumping dog giving lavish kisses. My world came crashing down.
My stressed out mother explained, “ I sent Mike to a farm where he will be much better off; it couldn’t be helped.”
I sobbed. “How could you do that, Mike is part of our family?”
I knew he would miss me as much as I missed him. I went up to my room and cried and cried. Could I ever forgive my mother? I felt betrayed.
She never apologized, but a few months later, at Christmas, there were two adorable kittens under the tree. This was my mother’s way of trying to heal my doubt and pain. It worked. I loved the kittens. They slept on my bed, ate and played in my room. They lived for eighteen years, being true companions until well after I was out of school. I never really got over the bitter abrupt loss of my dog, but the sweet kittens filled my heart.
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