My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [84]
We all loved George, but really couldn’t have him attempting to assassinate every guest in our home, particularly since he weighed in around a hundred and thirty pounds. Desperate to accommodate him, my parents spent twenty-five thousand dollars on an addition to the house, where George could hang out when anyone visited.164 But apparently a room of his own didn’t fix Georgie’s problems, so my dad’s secretary found a doggie psychologist.
Every Saturday morning as I’d get ready to head to one of my two jobs, I’d hear my parents and the dog shrink downstairs training with George. We had to call the dog guy “Uncle Kent” so George would believe he was family, a member of our pack. The Saturday-morning pattern was always the same. George would bark and lunge, his electronic shock collar would go off, he’d yelp, and then the smell of singed fur would waft up to my bedroom.
Sadly, all their effort was for naught, as George tried to murder my mother one night when she sat in my father’s chair, and then George—who, frankly, was always sweet with me—was no more.
In retrospect, there’s a chance Uncle Kent was taking my parents for a ride, because who ever heard of a dog psychologist, particularly in northeastern Indiana at that time?
George was followed by Ted, an overbred hundred-thirty-pound Newfoundland. Apparently my family did not learn the lesson of buying a purebred from the least expensive breeder the first time.165 Perhaps they figured we’d have more luck with a behemoth creature if they picked one that was, say, black and not white this time.
It might stand to reason that since the former guard dog made guard ing his sole priority in life, the water-rescue dog would have a great deal of enthusiasm for water rescue, yet everyone seemed rather surprised when Ted would do things like dive through windows to “save us” when we were out enjoying the pool.
Poor old Teddy didn’t even make it a year.
I returned to my college campus around this time and adopted a magnificent Malamute/Akita mix named Nixon. I made the mistake of bringing him home one weekend, whereupon he and my father fell instantly, madly, deeply in love. I can’t say my dad stole my dog so much as I simply ceased to exist when my father walked into the room.
Essentially, Nixon resigned from being my dog.
Nixon lived for more than another decade, far longer than most of his size and breed166 largely because my dad’s world revolved around him. He spent his life driving around with my father, perched in the front seat of his tiny Toyota, his enormous head pressed against the car’s ceiling, on their way to get him his daily sausage biscuit.
Anyway, the fact that I’m far less insane than my family in all matters regarding pets is moot because if Fletch says we can’t rescue a kitten, then I need to defer to his wishes.
The funny thing is, I’m with Fletch because of these very cats. When we met fourteen years ago, my cats were the arbiter of who was and wasn’t worthy of my attention. I’d never date anyone who my pets didn’t like; I mean, they’re instinctive like that. My rationale was if someone wasn’t nice to my pets, eventually, they wouldn’t be nice to me, either.
When Maggie met Fletch, she immediately climbed on the couch and curled up on his shoulder in a fluffy little ball of calico fur, and I knew he was a keeper.
When I wake up this morning, two days after our brunch with Gina, Maggie isn’t waiting for me at the top of the stairs for the first time ever.
When I find her lying on the counter, she’s encircled by all the other cats, who normally never gather together.
She refuses her shrimp.
And then she looks up at me with her big, round, wise eyes that so enchanted me almost seventeen