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Blogs by Russell A Vassallo
Normal Animals???? 2/23/2017 5:25:45 AM
I often wonder if any of our animals are normal. Why do I say this? Because there is not a single animal on our farm that does not have some kind of emotional dysfunction.
Let me start with Sassy. She is a black cat with a single white spot on her chest. She was being cared for by a kindly lady who operated a grooming salon and adopted more animals that her husband could stand. It finally came to a head when he issued a mandate that if she adopted one more animal, he was out of there.
Sassy resided in sheer pandemonium with dogs howling, barking, whining, crying, scratching and making any noise they could muster. She hid for days, so much so that the kind lady thought she had gotten out of the kennel and was now lost.
We were picking up Sweet Pea when Sassy jumped up on the counter and began rubbing my hand. Kathy, the groomer, mentioned that she never did that and, in fact, avoided people who came to pick up their animals.
I felt a sense of sympathy for Sassy and, thought I dislike cats, I took her home. She promptly took up residence in our upstairs bedroom and disappeared for days at a time.
Our cat, Boots, was so distraught he had a nervous breakdown and out vet had to tranquilize him and give us advise on how to integrate the two cats. He did this with a snicker, by the way, after five hundred dollars worth of testing.
These days Sassy sleeps in bed with us and usually finds time to play with her noisiest toys around four in the morning. I know she is dysfunctional. Every morning without fail, she watches me putting on my socks and comes over to scratch her head on my toe nails. Then she races out of the bedroom, down the stairs only to reappear minutes later to continue rubbing on my stocking feet.
One of our barn cats was named Kit Kat. She was about as friendly as an untrained tiger. Out vet long ago gave up trying to do anything for her. I mean, she was one nasty cat with a disposition like an unfed grizzly. In her time, of course, someone shot her so that she limped home for us to care for her. She permitted that luxury only until she was well.
The last time we brought her to the vet they sedated her and she was still ferocious. Kit bears out my theory that there is no such thing as a trustworthy cat. I have the scars to prove that, by the way.
Her vocabulary was limited to: "Where's my special food?"
Our dog, Spunky, suffered from separation anxiety which is, oddly enough, what I suffered from after my cancer. It was not possible to leave him alone during a thunderstorm so we had to take turns sleeping downstairs with him the moment the weather turned nasty. Once he realized that someone was sleeping with him, he would roll and cavort with happiness, stepping on us with his size twelve paws, rubbing his back on us, whining and then darn near pushing the lucky human out of the bed. And just when you were falling asleep, he would decide a goodnight kiss was in order.
Of course, Spunky was rescued from a negligent owner at a very young age. He had been chained on an eighteen inch chain and then left alone for days at a time and was finally confiscated by the County Attorney. Spunky is the subject of three stories, two in Tears and Tales and one in Heart of an Animal. Our vet says Spunky had his wires crossed. I don't know how many times the UPS driver had to bring him home when Spunky climbed into his truck looking for treats.
But I will match his loyalty against any animal or human. Although he was a coward at heart, he did put on a good show. And in his time Spunky tangled with five skunks and a groundhog and lost every battle.
Then there was Boots who has gone to his Heavenly reward. If you read Heart of an Animal, you know how he got there. He could not drink water from a water dish. he had to have water dripping from our whirlpool faucet. When he was three, we sent him to a local grooming salon to get him spruced up with a bath and have his thickly matted hair pulled off. Two hours later the groomer called and told us to come and get Boots who was hanging upside down in the cage and snarling at everyone. He had that oh-so-smug look on his face when we came to get him.
