Emma’s Molt and Other Instincts
Yesterday, after the beloved left for a few days in New York, I took the brush out with me for Emma’s walk. I thought she needed a little brushing for the week; I did not expect her to be in full molt the first week of February, but she is. I spent about twenty minutes brushing her out, capturing much of the hair for a garbage bag, but it still covered my coat and left tumbleweeds on the exposed grass. Today, I brushed her more and, on each walk picked at her coat, pulling out more fur. It has actually been a while since Emma has had a full on molt. More frequently, she just sheds throughout the year, never getting a really thick winter coat and never quite shedding everything in the summer. So I was thrilled about the molt. Happy to brush her, to pick at her coat, to rub her and touch her, inspecting her skin, making sure she is healthy. So happy, I almost thought that I would write about the inevitability of change and optimism about change.
Optimism about change is, of course, what everyone wants. On Facebook, kind friends suggest that what is happening is a sign, that I need to be in Saginaw for some reason, that we needed to leave Maryland, that this circumstance we find ourselves in is destined, preordained, predetermined. I want to believe them. I want to believe the optimist aphorisms that implore us to not lose the lesson in the difficult experiences. Experiences transform us. We learn from them, but I am not convinced that experience transforms us positively. Some experiences damage us. Forever. In the midst of the experience, the outcome, positive or negative, is unclear.
So Emma’s molt started yesterday, this afternoon, I found our little Vita playing with her first mouse. Vita is, you may remember, only about eighteen months old. She has not demonstrated her skills as a mouser prior to today, and today’s demonstration left something to be desired. Yes, Vita found a mouse, played with a mouse, but could not quite close the deal. As she rested on Emma’s bed, I went to pick up the mouse, who moved. I had to gather up its live little body in a plastic container to deposit outside. It may live; it may die.
I hesitate to write about Vita’s killer behavior (I’ll be calling her NBK for the next few days). The bullying bigots used my Facebook posts and this blog to gather information to prove that we are negligent animal owners, to prove that Tibe is a vicious dog. Might they now read this post and determine that Vita is endangered at our house? That we are exposing her to live rodents, encouraging her to kill? Bemoaning her failure? Am I not protecting her enough? Should the local animal control be protecting the local rodent population from our little would-be killer? Should I expect a visit from animal control impounding Vita for attacking a mouse? Will there be a detention, a hearing, a trial?
Prior to the experience of the last four months, I considered myself a communitarian. I believed in community as a unit of solution to the challenges in people’s lives. Now I believe community is nefarious. I believe it is a way for people who are alike, people who share a set of immutable characteristics, to come together to shun, ostracize, pathologize, and harm people who are note like them. I believe community is a way to diminish people and enforce one’s will on people deemed to be less powerful. Community to me is now about power and control and keeping people in line. It is not something of which I want to be a part. I am no longer interested in the communal, the collective, the shared; I am interested in privacy, property rights, and protection.
Experience changes us and not always in good ways. In the midst of our anguish about Tiberius, we considered returning him to the animal rescue from where we adopted him. The possibilities for pups who are returned, however, are bleak. More than that, however, we had to contemplate the consequences for us of not fulfilling our commitment to Tibe. For Some people, these considerations may not be significant, but for us there were emotional implications of returning and adoptee. The beloved was adopted. On the dark day animal control visited, she knew if we gave Tibe back, she would be altered forever. Her sense of what is right in the world, her sense of how people fulfill their obligations to others would be challenged, altered, even potentially destroyed. One of our fundamental commitments and beliefs in the world is that family is built by love and commitment, not simply by blood. How could we turn our backs on that? How could I love my beloved if we abandoned the dog that we adopted? How could abandoning our adopted pup not psychically alter us? So we made our decisions and had the resources to implement them. Yet, the experience changes us.
Our little Vita, now sleeping a few feet from Emma who is snoring, will be changed by her experience with the mouse. Maybe she will sharpen her hunting skills, finding more mice and learning to kill them. Maybe she will adopt an anti-instinctual platform and find a way to coexist peacefully with mice friends. She will be changed. In three weeks, Emma too will be changed, lighter, clean, molten. We, too, will be changed, though we do not know yet all the ways.
Emma at rest.
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