I am not a Dog Person. To me, the world was always divided into two basic groups: Dog People and Cat people. Dog People are extroverted, like to do outdoorsy things like throwing frisbees in the park (to each other, to dogs, whatever), and they drink beer. Not micro-brewed, small-batch, trendy beers, but that yellow stuff that comes in a can and tastes like, well, you know. Dog People are loyal, friendly, and open. Like, well, dogs.
Cat People, on the other hand, are cool. They dress in black, they hang out in coffee shops (except Starbucks, that’s for Dog People) and book stores. You know who I’m talking about. Except for the Cat Ladies, and I know you know what I mean by this, as it’s what every female Cat Person is secretly afraid of becoming: the shunned old lady on the block who the children all think might just actually be a witch and whose body will someday be gnawed on by her 30-odd cats because no one knew she collapsed days ago on the kitchen floor after unsuccessfully attempting to operate the electric can opener for their dinner.
So imagine my well-hidden chagrin when my love Michael brings his 70-pound child Mickey home to live with us, the one covered with an unimpenetrable coat of fur that creates a scattering of 4-inch long hairs over the entire floor that I often have to pull out of odd places like of course food, and my eye. Or Eric’s diaper.
Mickey, as dogs go, is quite well-behaved. He doesn’t jump on people or furniture. He does wait silently but hopefully, salivating over any handy surface, while we eat. He regularly licks plates and the swath of crumbs found on the floor circumference around Eric’s chair. This crumb- awareness habit almost makes up for the extra vacuuming due to the fur quantity.
I have tried, really tried, to be as welcoming and loving of Mickey as I can. It was me who researched raw diets for dogs and developed the recipe we now use, buying approximately $50 of chicken, ground beef and turkey, cod liver oil and nutritional yeast, as well as broccoli, zucchini and mushrooms, every couple of weeks. I also have done energy work on Mickey, helping him to heal or at least relieve his discomfort from maladies expected due to his advancing age: arthritis, digestive problems, and even tumors.
But it doesn’t disguise the fact that I am not a Dog Person.
Neither is my father. He took care of Mickey this past week while we all went to Pennsylvania for court appearances and potential court appearances involving my divorce. Michael’s friend Heather was lined up to care for Mickey; she has in the past, Mickey knows her well, and she’s been in our house before and knows where things are. But Heather wasn’t returning Michael’s calls, so at the last minute we asked my father.
My father claims to be a Cat Person, but is not. He certainly isn’t a Dog Person. Cats seem attracted to his energy. They sidle up to him and surreptitiously climb into his lap, which he allows. He won’t touch them though other than perfunctorily when they’re settled there, and when he gets up he simply stands, no warning for the cat, every cat for himself. This from a man who takes pride on being intellectually centered, a former physicist and still scientist at heart, whose emotional life seems to be mostly confined to tearing up while watching Braveheart or listening to Shostakovich. Looking at relationship and emotion through the template of science can’t be easy. He truly is an emotional person, but keeps it within the confines of what is comfortable for him. Nothing wrong with that, really. It’s safe.
Still, he doggedly (sorry) came over twice a day in our absence, and did what had to be done. It’s probably much what I’d do in the same circumstance, with a dog who wasn’t Mickey.
For me, though, there is now Mickey (who has somewhat moved into the Cat camp by virtue of my knowing him, having begun to work his canine magic on me, looking up at me with those liquid brown eyes, daring me not to love him), and dogs-who-aren’t-Mickey, who I still avoid.
So now I’m the stepmother of a big hairy salivating black-and-brown dog. There are worse things to be.
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