Raining Cats and Dogs

My Non-Human Friends

In our half-century together, including thirty-six years in the same upstate New York house, Susan and I have shared eighteen companion animals — five dogs and thirteen cats. We’ve also visited various farm animals and shared thrilling glimpses of wild coyotes, bears, falcons, bald eagles, copperheads, rattlesnakes, beavers, and fishers — but when I talk about the eighteen, I’m talking about non-human beings who’ve actually been in bed with us.

We entered our relationship in 1974 with two cats apiece. Mine were Baba, who had six toes on each forepaw and liked to climb the window drapes, and Navel, an affectionate, short-haired orange male who disappeared into the Brooklyn night, probably looking for me, when a house-sitter left a window open. Susan had Buggo (formally named Pan), a long-haired orange male who was her other romantic partner — he would sing arias at midnight — and Bodaccia, a petite, long-haired black cat who had a litter of only two kittens, sired by a stranger (she was named for a British warrior queen, accent on the “cci”).

Corinna, our first dog, was an Irish Wolfhound mix, very tall, and quite wild due to our poor efforts at training her. She lived most of her life alongside three cats: Moses (Moey), a grey-and-white long-hair; Maccabee, a tabby adoptee from the ASPCA, who became Corinna’s best friend; and Rashi, a short-haired orange male whom Corinna and I picked up as a flea-bitten kitten along a forest trail on Rosh Hashone. Given the auspicious day, I named him Rashi — and when Susan got home from synagogue, knowing nothing of this, and saw a kitten on the floor lapping milk, she asked: “Is this Rashi?”

Mental telepathy sometimes works.

Mr. Goldberg, a short-haired orange toughie, came after Rashi died, and Malke, a very handsome black-and-tan pooch who liked to pick berries off bushes like a bear, arrived after Corinna died. We also had Miami, an orange-and-white stray who showed at our window for days until we let her in. She went back out some two years later and never came back.

Next among our cats were Bunky (formal name Bunky Billings, after Billings, Montana held a famous march against antisemitism) and Kadya, a calico long-hair who spent most of her thirteen years in our daughter’s lap.

Malke the dog died young and was replaced by Reba, a very large, placid yellow hound, and Wolly, a little Shitzu who was my daughter’s acquisition but was solely trained in dog ways by Reba. Reba and Wolly shared space with two cats: Baby, a tabby so fat that she looked like she’d swallowed a basketball, and Bela, a petite black cat whom I named after Bela Lugosi because, during one of her weeks as a kitten, she transformed from long-haired to short-haired and back, which made me believe I had a monster on my hands.

Finally came Elsie, our Newfoundland, whom we brought home as a puppy at the start of the Covid pandemic and lost to a congenital condition this past summer. She was huge, stately, sloppy, fun-loving, smart, and very well-trained. She understood a lot of English, and she liked little children, especially our grandson. Just being at Elsie’s side filled me with a silly pride. She helped ease me into my retirement and into new levels of belonging and fulfillment — and then she died abruptly and left us to mourn and slowly reconstruct our walking-on-the-rail-trail-without-Elsie discipline.

Our home is now empty of non-human beings for the first time in fifty years. I expect that will change within the year.

I wouldn’t think to tax readers with more thank a single sentence or a single memory about each of these characters, yet their collective impact upon us has been quite profound: profound in comfort, in hilarity, in sensuous experience. The cat who purrs on your chest and lies there with just the right weight; the dog who run frees and then runs to you when you call her; the feeling of fur breathing beneath your hand or face; the sense of being in a pack, not just a family, but a pack; the expansion of your private realm in a way that sets in perspective the demands of the wider world — all of this has surrounded Susan and me with a deep, deep sense of “home” that secures us in our existence.

Here’s my musical portrait of Elsie, called “Elsie’s Jump.”

It’s your turn, now, to send us your thoughts on “Non-Human Beings,” for the next issue of ALTE, which will soon appear online. Write or make art for us: about alien abductions, gut bacteria, trees, psychopaths, fire ants, tropical fish, insensitive parents, whatever the topic brings to mind. Send your work to: altetogether@gmail.com.