Jennifer Sander - The Dog with the Old Soul

I cried the first time I heard the story of Llama. The second time I heard it, I knew it was a story that needed to be shared. Give yourself to a dog, and you will get love and loyalty in return. Dogs know when you need them most.

Maryellen Burns

Knock! Knock! Knock!!

Six-thirty in the morning! My husband, Leo, and I wake up. Someone’s incessantly knocking on the door downstairs. I panic. Who is it? A loved one had an accident? A neighbor found one of our cats dead in the street? I try to shake off my anxiety and the five cats that had rooted themselves to my lap and legs all night.

We stumble to the door. My friend Angela is there. “I’m sorry to come over so early,” she says, “but I’m supposed to shoot a commercial for Safeway grocers at seven-thirty and my scheduled location is kaput. You have such a wonderful kitchen. Could I possibly bring a film crew here in an hour?” Her British accent adds an extra note to this early morning request.

My first thoughts are, Leo has to teach and the kitchen is a mess. We haven’t cleaned up from dinner last night. Piles of dishes are in the sink and on the stove. We’d need to hide cat bowls and kitty litter, and vacuum up mucho cat hair.

Second thought? Yes! We spent two years restoring our kitchen and are proud of its 1910 Craftsman features: a six-burner, double-oven Magic Chef range, lush redwood-veneer cabinets, a black-and-white soda-fountain floor and old-fashioned comfiness.

We look at each other. A lot needs to get done. Leo rushes to the kitchen to feed cats, clean and make coffee before dressing and going to work, while I attempt to de-cat the living room.

An hour or so later a crew of eight gathers on the front porch—producer Angela; three men with camera gear; Rosa Nosa, our fluffy tortoiseshell, who has rushed out to greet them; and three outdoor cats, who scramble to hide.

Opening the front door is a struggle because Nishan, our little disabled, back-legs-all-tangled-in-on-themselves cat, is parked in front of it.

I finally get the door open, and a sullen-voiced man, the director, asks, “How many damn cats do you have?”

“Nine,” I tell him. “Or possibly more. You never know who they brought home last night.”

“There aren’t going to be any cats in the kitchen, right?” he asks.

I assure him that the kitchen can be shut off from the rest of the house and it won’t be a problem.

Brushing cats away from his legs, he hurries through the living room and into the kitchen, as if he knows the way.

“We need to set up. No time for niceties,” he says.

I follow him, and there is Rosa, sitting on the butcher-block island, looking every bit the superb hostess she is.

He picks her up and plops her roughly to the floor. “I said no cats in the kitchen!”

I pick her up, reassure her and take her outside.

“What have you done? Angela said your kitchen had a slightly messy, warm, lived-in look. You’ve cleaned it. Now we’ll have to dirty it again!”

Angela and I look at each other. I can tell that this guy is a major pain in the neck, and I hope I can get through a whole day with him in my house. He gives the room a cursory look.

“I like the stove. I want a pot of water, steam rising from it. Mess up the counters. I want fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes, a flour sack spilling out. Move the butcher block to the center of the room. It should be the focal point. What’s that cat doing here? I thought I told you to remove all the cats!”

Angela picks up the cat. It’s Rosa Nosa again. She starts to purr, presses her red nose against Angela’s face. Meanwhile, Hephzibah and Honky, the two oldest cats in the household, wander in, looking for food and water. They jump up on the kitchen table, demanding attention.

For the first time, the director spots Nishan hiding under the kitchen table. She scurries out, dragging her useless hind legs. The director looks disgusted. “What is it with these cats? Get. Them. Out. Of. The. Kitchen. Now!”

“Oh, Terry,” pleads Angela. “The talent won’t be here for an hour. Let the cats be. We’ll clear them out before we start filming.”

He looks as if he might relent, but something in the tone of his voice spooks the cats. This is not a cat person. They scatter. Except for Rosa, who insists on taking up residence beneath the butcher block with Nishan, her shadow.

To understand Rosa and Nishan’s relationship, you need to know a little about how we came to keep them. Rosa was born about three months after my mother died, one of six kittens from Little Guy, Mom’s faithful companion throughout her illness. Of all the kittens she was the prettiest, the liveliest, a furry lump of playfulness with an air of responsibility, a dignified poise and a beautiful red patch across her cute little nose. Everything about her reminded us of my mother, Rose. We wanted to keep her but couldn’t justify it, because she had so many offers of a home and we had so many kittens to place. We gave her to Monica, a little girl who lived down the street.

Within twenty-four hours, Monica was on our doorstep, a squirming kitten in hand, face and cheeks swollen and red. She was allergic. Would we keep her until she could give her to a new home on Monday? My mother had always said she’d return one day as a madam of a cathouse or as one of Leo’s cats. There was a reason this cat had come back to us. We were meant to keep her.

A year later Rosa and Giselle, a loveable stray we had taken in, bore kittens within a few days of each other. A couple of weeks later Giselle moved her kittens atop a bed in Mom’s old room, except for the runt, a tortoiseshell that looked a little like Rosa. Leo picked her up. For the first time we realized she had twisted, deformed hind legs. “I don’t know if this one is going to survive,” he said, carrying her to Giselle and placing her at a teat. But Giselle rejected her and moved the other kittens again. This happened two or three more times.

Leo is softhearted. He hates to see any little critter suffer. Obviously, Giselle didn’t want her. Something had to be done. The next day we took her to our vet.

“If her mother refuses to nurse her, she could die in a couple of days on her own, but she looks like a survivor to me. It’s a big responsibility, but why don’t you try again? You could feed her by hand, and in a week or two we could put a cast on her legs and try to straighten them.”

Home she went. Giselle wouldn’t nurse her. That night she moved the others yet again. Next morning we’re lying in bed. Rosa is nursing her kittens under our desk. We see a little face peeking in at the foot of the doorway and then watch the disabled kitten scurry across the floor to Rosa and push all the other kittens out of the way, looking for sustenance. Rosa begins licking Nishan all over and looks up at us as if to say, “What’s one more?”

When almost all the kittens had new homes, my niece Penny showed up with six more, barely three weeks old. Someone had abandoned them. Would Rosa nurse them? Rosa didn’t hesitate. All kittens were welcome, but Nishan was her favorite. She never grew beyond the size of an eight-week-old kitten. Rosa continued to nurse Nishan for almost two years. Wherever Rosa went, Nishan followed.

They are together now, watching the crew ready the kitchen for filming. The actors arrive. Rosa runs to the door to greet them and lead them into the kitchen.

Everything is ready for the first take. Spaghetti pot boiling on the stove, lettuce washed and dried by hand, husband and wife intimately touching shoulders as they laugh and make dinner together.

“Cut! Where did that damn cat come from?”

There is Rosa, perched majestically on the lower deck of the butcher block, taking a keen interest in the proceedings. I pick her up and put her on the back porch.