She was three years old then, my niece, and I was slightly terrified. I’m not a kid person. Thank God my mom was with us because I felt like I was pretending to be courageous and knowledgeable. She was visiting me for an entire week, and keeping a little child alive was something I’d never done.
That, and Circe had just died. Literally. The day before.
It was 2009, and Circe had been with me since I was 17. She was my stability, my strength. I knew from the minute I held her fuzzy little Rottweiler butt and smelled that addictive puppy breath that she had saved me. And from every second going forward, I relied on her to be my moral North—she pulled me forward into the correct decisions each day until I found myself properly aligned with adulthood. I hesitate to postulate about life without Circe. It isn’t worth the time to imagine that type of degenerate possibility.
So when she passed, I took care of business on her behalf, and I curled up into a ball—as expected, and I died inside for an entire day, but I knew that Maya was coming the next day, and I knew that she and I got very little time together anyway.
So I pulled it together the next morning, hauled myself off to Burbank airport, and I picked up that little glittering ray of mischief alongside my mother, and we galloped like dorky giraffes out to the car, where I struggled for an hour to install a child-safety seat (holy hell.). I would have been still curled into a ball if it weren’t for her—my three-year-old niece throwing pixie dust into my sadness.
She curled up next to me that night, so I knew I couldn’t cry myself to sleep—and she asked me to tell her a story. Everything in my brain is always about pets, so I recalled the day I brought Circe home and described the unwelcoming committee she received from the resident cat. As I spun that into a children’s tale, it became “Whatever, Said the Cat.” It was intended to make both of us laugh, to explain to a 3-year-old why pets get spayed and neutered, and to help Maya choose rescue someday because there are so many dogs that need it.
It was written for her, for the child that helped save me from sadness, and it was written for Circe, who also saved me so many times. And just a few months later, I found a very needy, abandoned German Shepherd that I rescued in Circe’s memory, and surely enough, she was taught all of the lessons from Whatever, Said the Cat by the resident felines.
The cycle, of course, continues. Love, rescue, life, happiness, and then death. Recently we’ve lost George Harrison Ford, and then unexpectedly, Bonham. I can’t even bring myself to talk about that yet, but perhaps soon, it’ll become a book.
Now, the story has been rewritten to remember Georgie and to star the ubiquitous Tyson—because Pitbulls need a PR campaign, and he’s the poster dog to represent them. Both of them had terrible stories but amazing comebacks, so they are appropriate for Whatever.
People need to stop giving me such fodder for my stories—and I’m skeptical that the shelters will empty out anytime soon, but maybe if the next generation does a better job, we can hope.
Skeptically Yours,
Roadmistress.
Amy Liming 