Time For A Story

Let me tell you a story. It’s a story or lost and found. It’s a story of welcome. It’s the story of a surprise I have been torturing people with for days.

About two weeks ago, we lost out cat Kitty. Frankly, I have been very upset by this. First of all, we lost our cat Cleo several months ago. I was sad about that, but it wasn’t as devastating of a loss as we had not had her as long. However, we have had Kitty nearly four years. She has been through 4 moves, a divorce, other dogs and cats, and anything else. She is a funny cat who walked on a leash and enjoyed riding in the car and going to PetSmart. It is a sad loss. Especially for David. She was technically his cat. He got her when he first moved to California. He spoiled her. She spent most of her time on his lap.

The strange thing about the two losses of cat… They were identical disappearances. Both happened on a Saturday when no one was home. Both times the garage door was not working properly. Both cats were indoor cats, well cared for, groomed and micro chipped. Both were wearing collars with their names and phone numbers. All that and they never ran off before. I right away reported them missing at all local shelters. I continued to look for them there. Especially Kitty. I have been hitting the shelters every couple of days looking for her. I even went a couple of mornings, right after work, still in uniform, asking neighbors if they had seen her. To no avail. I have come to the sad conclusion that someone is stealing our cats. Across the street from our house is a big empty field where I suppose they could have met coyotes, but I never knew them to go across that way. Usually they went and walked around behind the house, occasionally venturing into the alley between houses. Back there is all residential. It is not likely that coyotes roamed that close to homes.

We still have Betty. That is the cat we got when we lost Cleo. Carolynn was very upset by the loss of Cleo so I got Betty from the shelter. She is a good cat. She does like to nibble on people a little, but she doesn’t claw the furniture or pee on the carpet. I had already decided that if we couldn’t find Kitty, we weren’t getting any more cats. The yard just can’t contain them, and the girls are just not good enough at keeping the cat box clean. Besides, we have dogs.

We have our old beagle, Elvis. He is 8 now and we have had him since he was a puppy. My mom’s friend Helen gave him to us and she named him Elvis. She is a huge Elvis fan, and, after all, he ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. He is getting pretty lazy in his old age. He got all pooped after one jog around the park. But he is a good dog. He doesn’t go in the house and he doesn’t bark and howl much. He does snore pretty loud. He is definitely Catherine’s dog. He sleeps in her bed with her. She feeds him and brushes him. She chases him around the yard. He’s been her dog since they were both younger and Catherine used to try and ride him around the house in Wisconsin. He hiked all the trails of the Lake County, Illinois hiking guide. He rode to Wisconsin and back. He doesn’t fetch or do many tricks. But we love him.

Then there is Gibby. He is Pomeranian and Chihuahua. Gibby is my dog all the way. From the day I picked him up, he has been mine. My mom bought him for me and my dad and my Grandpa named him Gibby, after the baseball player Kirk Gibson. He is a Dodger dog after all. He goes where I go. I take him to the park, to my moms, to the concerts each week. When I worked at the pet store, I even took him to work. He follows me all day. He sleeps in my bed. David says he mopes around when I am not here. I have taught him a bunch of tricks. He fetches and loves to play Frisbee. He wears clothes and I spoil him. I love him.

Anyways, on Saturday, Catherine and I were out running errands. We were going to the bank and to softball sign ups. I decided to check once again for Kitty at the shelters. Usually I go alone, but, this time I had Catherine. We went to one, the softball sign ups, and then another. No cat. Finally we went to the last one. Still no cat. But Catherine wanted to look at the dogs. No harm in that. I had no intention of getting one. So we walked down the range and saw all the dogs. I was surprised at the amount of small dogs like Gibby. The people who worked at the shelter said that people get the little dogs because it is trendy now, but don’t realize how much work they are. It is sad really. We also saw a lot of pit bull puppies. That is just not responsible pet ownership in my opinion. At the end of the row, we came to a cage with a German Shepherd puppy. The man working there said it was a purebred someone had bought and then decided they couldn’t have a big dog where they lived. He thought it was an apartment. She was very pretty. They called her Roxy. While we were talking to the shelter guy (he was feeding her) a lady came and put another dog in the same cage (it was a pit bull puppy) and said she was going to take Roxy out for her daily walk and to the exercise yard. They asked Catherine if she would lie to do it. Of course she did. She took Roxy out to the exercise yard and threw a ball for her for a bit. We were in love. We couldn’t very well leave her there at the shelter.

This wasn’t nearly as willy-nilly as it may seem. There was reasoning behind it. First, there was David. David, who despite popular opinion, has never been anything but good to us. David who works at a crappy job, while constantly searching for another one. David who goes to college. David who takes good care of the girls and everything else while I work. David who gives me nearly every dime he makes to pay his share. He may not be very tidy and he may enjoy a lot of video games, but he is a pretty good person and a good friend. He just lost his cat. He has been saying for years that one day he’d like a real manly dog, specifically a German Shepherd or an Australian Sheep dog. I actually looked into getting him one once, but it was $300 to $500 for one and that didn’t include shots or having it fixed. If you adopt a dog from the shelter, it is $75 and all of the shots and the fixing is included. Of course, what are the chances you are going to find a pure German Shepherd puppy in a shelter?

Then there are the people at my work. They encourage me to make sure and keep my home safe. Truthfully, I could be a target. I have heard of a state correctional officer, in Michigan I think, that was killed on her way home from work simply because she was a cop. I want to make sure my home stays safe. Many people have encouraged me to own a gun, but they are very expensive. Yes, I am very educated in them now and am qualified to carry them at work and being a federal officer, I am within my rights to own and carry one all the time. They used to scare me, but now that I am educated, I know how to deal with them. But they are just so expensive. Plus all the safety accessories I will insist on having will be another huge expense. Maybe one day, but not now. David owns a really neat WWII Russian rifle. It is very cool, but not exactly for home protection. It’s wooden and as tall as me. It is a real working gun however.

More than one officer has suggested we have a good guard dog. I know a guy who raises pit bulls. Like I said the other day, not my thing, but a guard dog sounds like a good idea. My kind of protection. Besides, I love animals. Just ask my mom about the menagerie of pets I had as a child. Everything from dogs and cats to goats, chickens and potbellied pigs. And a German Shepherd certainly is your traditional police dog.

So there we were. I paid the $75 on Saturday, as well as made a donation to the shelter of another $10. Of course there is a law preventing the shelter from allowing us to take her home before she was fixed. (A very good law that I am totally for) And they don’t do that unless the dog gets adopted. Why fix a dog that doesn’t get a home? Sad but true, I know. The shelter is closed on Sunday and Monday and they do their spaying and neutering on Tuesday, so we had to wait until today to pick her up. That is why you all had to wait until now to hear the news.

That gave us time to go out and get her some stuff. That is one of the real reasons we were at PetSmart on Saturday. Yes, we did buy dog food for Gibby and Elvis. But we bought large breed puppy food as well. We bought her a new bowl. (That is what was in the hint picture.) We got her a collar and some toys. We got all the stuff we needed for her. What we didn’t have was a name.

I suggested a nice German name. I made a list of ones I liked. Emma, Ella, Gertrude, Helga, Hanna… it was a heck of a list. I got it off a website for German names. The girls wanted to call her Zelda. It is a German name, and also a video game. In the end we left it to David. He wanted to call her Drizella. He apparently had a German Shepherd growing up named Drizele. He just loved that dog. Drizella is the name of one of the evil step sisters in Disney’s Cinderella. It was a Brothers Grimm tale and they were German brothers. So it worked.

So here she is, Drizella. She had surgery this morning so she is just chilling. The girls have been so excited all weekend waiting. I could have picked her up at 2, but the girls wanted to go so I had to wait until they got home. Then when we got there, they were having a hard time getting her to wake up from the drugs, so we had to wait. That means I had to wait to tell everyone else. She will be fine in a few days and ready to play with Gibby, chase the cat and annoy Elvis.