Sunday Musings From a Mundane Life

Mr. Darcy is a serial killer.

This past week our back porch, which sits cozily and comfortably between our dining room and main bedroom, became a crime scene. I stepped outside to see a not small bird laying next to two large pools of blood, stiff on its back with its thin little legs shooting straight up into the air. The scene wasn’t just that of a dead bird. It was a murder. In my mind, I saw a chalk outline around the body. I half expected a bird CSI team to descend from the crepe myrtle.

With no thought to the deadlines I have at work, Mr. Darcy has now put me in the position of having to prepare his defense. My main argument for the jury is going to be that, regardless of the fact that he allows me to pick him up at will and carry him like a rag doll all over the house and that he sits in my lap and purrs when I scratch under his chin, he is, genetically, a feral cat. Mr. Darcy was rescued as a kitten from a feral colony that lives behind our abandoned JC Penney. Honestly, that any wildlife is alive in our neighborhood at all is a testament to his self-control. Or at least to the cat food we provide.

Meanwhile, a single grape cost us $500. You see, my husband, Dave, is only slightly less feral than Mr. Darcy. He sits on the couch and drops food on his t-shirt as he eats and watches TV. Julie Bell sits on the couch next to him and cleans up everything that falls on his shirt. Dave is not a fan of vegetables or fruit. His diet is mostly meat, cheese, bread and French fries. But, in an effort I now seriously regret, I have been trying to improve his diet. Thus, he was popping red grapes in his mouth when he missed and one fell onto his t-shirt and, before he could grab it, Julie had it in her mouth and into her stomach. It just so happens that one of the best vet hospitals, the University of California, Davis, is in our backyard. We immediately called them and they advised us that one of two things was possible: Julie could be totally fine or she could go into renal failure and die. Even though Julie is just a mutt from the Stockton shelter who yaps at EVERYTHING that passes within a mile of our front door, Dave and I felt that life without her was something we just couldn’t chance.

The vet took her straight back and gave her eyedrops that made her puke. Up came the entire grape, undigested. The vet put it in a little bag for us to take home. It was the least they could do after charging us $500 for it.

Not wanting to feel ignored and irrelevant, our 14 year-old dog, and unofficial mother of the house, Alba Jane, developed Old Dog Syndrome, which is a name I find to be unhelpfully vague and unnecessarily pejorative, especially as someone who is graying at the same rate that she is. While I cannot tell you exactly what Old Dog Syndrome is, I can tell you that it manifests as an unsteady gait, falling down, nausea and vomiting. Essentially, Alba is drunk. Luckily, our house is a single story with no stairs. It also has very little in the way of carpet. Most of the floors in our house are stone, solid wood or laminate wood. The only carpet in our house is a rug we bought 2 months ago, for which I am sure we paid way too much money, and placed in our living room to soften and brighten up the area. Alba was walking, more like swaying, from her water bowl in the laundry room toward the kitchen when she began gagging. Now keep in mind that her legs are unsteady. She is barely able to walk and yet, she purposefully moves from the stone floor and onto the rug and then lets it all come out. Dog puke hurled onto our overpriced, hand loomed imported rug. This left me wondering if puking on a rug is infinitely more comfortable than puking on stone.

That is all there is to update. From all of us, Mr. Darcy, Julie Bell, Alba Jane and me, have a great week. Namaste.