When I was a pup and first came to live with Mommy and Daddy, there
was already a dog here, the much beloved Blake Bear. Blake was a Shih
Tzu who could have been Gracie’s Mom. Every time I see that pretty baby,
she reminds me so much of Sister Blake.
She taught me so much. Everything I know about being a dog I learned
from Blakesie. She only stayed with Mommy and Daddy a little over five
years, a much too short time, but there were mountains of stories she
accumulated over that time, and, with no puppy sites to blog them on,
she just barked them down to me.
This is one of my favorites:
You may not believe this, but the first pet that Mommy and Daddy had
was a Siamese cat named Gizmo. Now, don’t think too poorly of them. They
were young and in love and susceptible to making grievous errors.
Thankfully, none of them involved breeding.
Gizmo was a good kitty, but as he got older, he got meaner. He would
hide behind furniture and jump out, clawing at anyone who had the poor
sense to pass by, attack naked ankles, hide in the linen closet and
pounce out when the door opened, and snarl and hiss at everything that
invaded his space.
And he had one fatal flaw that would eventually lead to his early
exit to the bridge (and his parent's longing to get Blake a playmate who
would turn out to be…you guessed it, a Mini Monster.) Gizmo liked to
eat plastic.
And not just sandwich bags. Gizmo once ate an entire trash bag. This
didn’t buy him a ticket to the bridge, just to the vet where Mommy and
Daddy left lots of money. It also made them hide the plastic, but Gizmo
was good at opening drawers and ripping boxes in his thirst for plastic.
It is from here that I will let Blake take over.
“Gizmo used to Vick in this sandy box upstairs, which was great. It
was like getting extra crispy chicken from the Colonel. Mommy and Daddy
really tried hard to keep me away from it. However, I still found ways
of sneaking in, like the morning I woke Daddy up early to pee, then
snuck away from him while he was getting a treat, snack on a little
Gizmo Vick, then climbed back into bed with him and snuggled up, and a
half hour later that Vick came back in the most disgusting thing you
ever saw.
“Now, this one morning, Mommy and Daddy and my human sister Kellie
were all rushing about getting ready for their job when we heard a
screech and then saw a blur, which was Gizmo tearing down the stairs
with a long piece of trash bag attached to his butt. He had eaten a
trash bag the night before and had spent several minutes trying to push
it out, but it had gotten stuck when she ran out of push, and now she
was trying to outrun it with little luck.
“Now, for me, this was the greatest gift of all, a running kitty
trailing a bright piece of plastic covered in poo. Mommy, Daddy, Kellie,
and I all looked at one another and shared the same thoughts. ‘Get that
kitty.’ All four of us then took off after him. Mommy tried to coax him
to her, but if you’ve ever been trailing two feet of plastic that you
just pushed through your intestines, you know you have no interest in
being coaxed; Kellie, who did not have much experience with kitties
trailing two feet of poo covered plastic, was trying to grab his collar,
but Gizmo had more moves than Adrian Peterson, without two feet of poo
covered plastic coming out of his butt; Daddy tried to stomp on the
plastic but kept missing; while I wanted to grab it in my teeth, but it
was flipping around like Eyeore’s tacked on tail on a blustery day.
“I must give credit to Gizmo, who kept darting, dashing, jumping, and
swirling while the four of us tripped over one another like a game of
Twister if Twister involved a cat with a tail of plastic poo.
“Finally, Daddy and I worked together. I ran beside him and nudged
him towards Daddy, and he stomped down his foot, and it landed on the
plastic. Gizmo kept running, and another foot of plastic slipped right
out of him as he yelled like Bernie Madoff spent his first night with
the Aryans.
“Gizmo ran upstairs, and the four of us stood around this genuinely
magnificent piece of trash bag, trying to decide who would pick it up
when I decided on the obvious choice. Me! I got my mouth on it before
Daddy ripped it out of my mouth and put it in the trash, which was kind
of silly because that’s how all this began in the first place.
“Then Mommy and Daddy went upstairs with the kitty travel bag, and I
heard a ferocious fight as Gizmo clawed and hissed and spit and bit
until they corralled him in the bag and took him to the vet who gave
them an excellent piece of advice: Stop letting him eat plastic.
”Well, they were never able to stop him. He started figuring out how
to get in the closed trash bin and then snuck down to Chad’s room and
ate another bag, which did him in. It was sad, but the cat was mean,
plastic-eating mean. And anyway, when he went to the bridge to eat the
plastic trees, I met my best friend, Foley Monster.
And I got to meet my best friend too, Blake, even if I didn’t get to
know her for long, so all my friends at the bridge, keep your eyes and
ears open for Blake and give her a big kiss and for the kitty trailing
the long plastic stand covered in poo.
