Feliz Crompleaños
It’s possible that yesterday, on the ninth birthday of crommy
crom, the bombest of crommests, we spoiled him the tiniest bit. It’s possible
this is because every time I look at his little face, which has gotten so very
gray, my heart seizes up and I get to thinking about the life spans of dogs and
the feeling of loss and the inevitable heat death of my own personal universe and
my heart seizes up and my brain goes all haywire and then suddenly my dog is
buried under an avalanche of love, some of which is in boughten form.
In the morning we jumped right up, when he indicated he was
awake by whopping me on the head with a heavy paw and whining about the difficulities
of being him, Crom, in the world without a person to love him or understand the
pain the he, Crom, suffers every day vis a vis being understood, loved properly
the way he should, treated with the respect he deserves, and not ever having a
stomach full enough of things that are not kibble, which is evil formed into small
crunchy pieces and sent to earth to plague him.
We leapt into the world where he got to run free and happy
in the park and then fly down the seawall, barking after birds without me trailing
behind weakly saying no, stop, Crom, hey, don’t, what, oh, hell, fuck, and damn.
We stopped at a play structure and clambered all over it, and he went down the
slide many times, and then demanded that I too go down the slide many times (dampening
my butt) as he followed after, and then we experimented with various configurations
of going down the slide together, most of which were awkward but all of which
he celebrated as successful.
We ran across the big old soccer field, and then I hooked him
up to his leash and he towed me across the boulevard because he had opinions
about our next stop, the pet store. He had strong opinions about how fast we
should get there (quickly) and how we should improve our time (by diving into
traffic and cutting diagonally across the street) and three small older ladies
found his determination charming and hilarious because they were not the ones
trying to hold back a 35 pound dog who is stronger than I am and always has
been.
At the pet store, he carefully inspected all the offered
wares and selected a four-foot-long bull penis. I handed it to him, and he
bolted for the door because no way was anyone going to take away his bull
penis, no how. He dragged me home and he settled down in our bed with his bull
penis (our bed!) and he spent the entire afternoon gnawing that thing down to a
greasy spot on our bed (our bed!).
And then we napped the nap of the just (and for some of us
the just-have-eaten a four-foot bull penis). For his evening walk, K took him
to the beach where he frolicked like a dog who took a deep and satisfying nap
after eating a four-foot bull penis, and then came home and napped the nap of
the dog who had played in the park and then ate a four-foot bull penis and then
chased birds at the beach and who had never napped before and was making up for
lost time.
Bedtime is always an adventure of a routine for all the pets,
because at bedtime we feed the cats a can of wet food divided between them, and
then we offer the dogs the can (and a decoy can) to lick clean.
“It’s Crommy’s birthday!” we said. “We should
give him a real treat!”
“We should give him a cake!” K said, and you have
never seen a prettier cake fashioned of an entire can of cat food, with a candle
right in the center, and a can with some scraps to distract Woody.
“Feliz Crompleanos!” we sang, and looked askance
at the candle, but we blew it out for him, and then he sniffed his cake, looked
at Woody going to town on his can, and seemed to feel he had gotten the bad
side of the deal.
“Eat your cake!” we urged, and he sniffed it
again, and then delicately lifted the entire patty of cat food off the plate
and in a single breath hoovered it into the black hole of his head. And then he
was mad, because Woody was still working away at the empty can that this patty
had come out of.
We fed him a Pepto Bismol, because we realized that this was
probably not the happiest day his digestion ever encountered, and then he was
ready to play his customary game of bedtime tug as if he had not spent the day
eating questionable things.
He is nine years old now, and so grey, though fast as ever
after the birds who mock him, excited as ever about a slide, as stubborn as
ever about the excellent ideas he has, as loud as ever when he snores, with the
silkiest ears and the worst farts in the world. He’s my little monster-brat
baby and nine is too old for him to be, because he needs far more time to be
terrible and sweet and ridiculous and whiny. It’s never enough time.
