The Things We Do For Love.

I went to the supermarket this afternoon and picked up some bread, milk, cat food, and Mennen Extreme Speed Stick. This last thing, the under-arm stuff was most important. It’s what brought me there. Yesterday I was getting some dirty looks at work. Especially as I walked through the office area, saying “Whoo doggies! Someone’s deodorant has quit working! And it can’t be mine, because I’m not wearing any!”
Today, I’m fresh as a masculine-smelling flower.

The cat food was a last moment thing. My cat, Jack, is very picky about food.
He only likes this certain kind.... the high-end stuff. It’s $20.00 for a three pound bag and can only be bought at a certain pet store.
However, recently a friend gave me a half-finished bag of this plain old Purina stuff because her own cat had given up on it for some reason. I said “No no. My Jack will not eat this. He only eats this certain kind of expensive-as-hell food.”
Hah!
To my amazement, when I got home and sprinkled some of this cheapo stuff into a separate dish, he went wild over it. Now I have the reverse problem happening.... he will no longer eat the expensive stuff, made with the holistically nutritious brown rice and other top-notch ingredients!
His regular dish remains full of Royal Expens-O-Chow, but the other dish... with the junk-food in it?
Empty.
And meticulously so! Picked clean.
See. I want him to eat HEALTHY but I also want to be NICE!
And his plaintive meows and mournful look when I hold back on the Purina stuff... well, it is killing me. He makes me feel like I’m the wicked Master of the Orphanage in some Dickens novel.
“What? More Purina? Never. You eat what you are given young lad!”
The meows are killing me....
He has recently just finished off the bag of junk food.

So, as I was already in the cash lineup at the store, I looked over, and there was this display of Purina products. ON SALE!
With visions in my mind of a cat who “wants his fix” I gave up my place in line and sauntered over.
To a new and unexpected problem. TOO MANY VARIETIES.
[What did the bag look like? The one I threw away when he finished it. Did it have this picture on it? Or that one? Was it real chicken, or real turkey? Hairball control? He’s going to throw up in my shoes whether there is hairball control or not, so it doesn’t matter. But which one was it now? I want him to have the right flavour!.....]
You would not believe how long I spent over at this display.
I was scrunching the bags of cat food, trying to discern the SHAPE of the morsels inside.
[Maybe that would be a good clue? The ones he loved were perfectly round. Like little UFO’s. These ones seem sort of star-shaped. Can’t be it. How about this one?..... scrunch, scrunch....]
Anyone watching me would have thought that I was trying to choose my own snackfood!
Eegads!
Someone is watching me. When my eyes met hers, this lady to the left of me ran away!
Finally, I chose a bag of roundish-feeling catfood and went back to the lineup. I have yet to see if Jack will love it or hate it.

So now I am out in the parking lot, walking towards my car, proud as punch. My cat will love it, I know he will....
A car backs up right in front of me, and I stop to let it pass.
In the passenger seat is the most gorgeous dog I have ever seen. I just get a brief glimpse, and since the driver’s window is rolled down I blurt out, pointing with my eyes “Beautiful dog.”
He stops, and I instantly think.... Oh oh! Weirdo alert! I shouldn’t have said that.....
So I quickly seek to explain myself, bending down a bit, in fact, resting my two bags of stuff on the pavement, “Just noticed your dog. He’s gorgeous. Norweigan Elkhound?”
“Yes,” the guy says. “He’s been dead for ten months.”

If there is a screen in the mind whereupon we read the data of our incoming thoughts, my screen at that moment was flashing, in bright red, the word WHAT?
But at the same half-second I peered a bit further into the car and saw that the dog was indeed fixed to a sort of wooden platform, in a sitting position. His head was cocked a bit to the left, ever so playfully facing me. Ready to fetch a hundred sticks, it seemed, but without breathing. Not moving at all.
[Nor is the car..... is it my turn to say something....?]
“Wow. That is really really interesting. So well done. He looks very alive.”
The guy reaches over and pets the dog on the head a bit, and says, “Yeah! Him and I have been together a long long time. But he started getting sick about two years ago and there was nothing I could do for him. Just kept getting worse. The vet said his liver was shot. It was sad. I paid more in vet fees than I paid for this car!”
[The way the thing was idling in a cranky fashion, and the tailpipe rattling a backbeat, I wasn’t sure at that moment to be mentally charging this guy with heroism or negligence... but I said to him]...
“So you got him, sort of....”
He helped me say it.... “Stuffed, yes! I could not bear to be without him.”
“And you..... [I wasn’t sure if I should be talking to this guy]..... you still umm... drive around with him then?”
“Uh-huh! I rarely go anywhere without him. A lot of people think I am nuts, but when you love someone, you know....”
“What was his name?”
“No, no. Not was. Is.”
“Oh yes. I’m sorry. Is. What is his name?”
“Roscoe.”
[I’m guessing on the spelling. For all I know it could be Ross Coe. First name and last.]
“Well. Good to meet you Roscoe,” I said, in that special voice that we reserve for the moments when we are talking to animals. “I best be going now.”
I sort of hoisted my bags of groceries in a semblance of a farewell wave to the human occupant of the car, and he then continued to back up and let me pass by.
“Take care.”
“Take care.”

As I continued on to my car and then drove away, I turned the radio down to better concentrate on my visions of this guy lugging that dead dog around.
I pictured him sitting on a lawn chair in his back yard, drinking a beer. Roscoe beside him. A big pile of sticks that have never been retrieved, over in the far corner of the fence.
The squeaky wheels of one of those red Radio-Flyer wagons, a Norweigan Elkhound in the center of it on his little plyboard pedestal. Out for a “walk” with Dad, as the sun goes down. Roscoe ever watchful for oncoming traffic to the left!
A big round, deep, food dish on the kitchen floor of some dingy apartment. This guy leaning old Roscoe forward so his dead doglips can touch upon the Alpo in there.
I found it all very amusing.

But then I looked over at the grocery bags in my own passenger seat, the word “Purina” clearly visible out the top of one of them.
And then I quit smirking.
My time will come!