noticeable?” And this is why I stopped taking my ass to church. Would a loving God actually humiliate me like this??
* * *
—
Obviously, I am an expert on ghosts. And Helen was clearly still hovering in the drafty corners of the house, clucking softly to herself about my disappointing choices and willing the other cats to do her bidding. Speaking of Bootie and Coco, and their staunch resistance to my soppy desperation, they are my lady’s cats. I live with them, I tag along when they have to go to the vet, I brush them off the countertops when they’re trying to get at whatever waterlogged food is rotting in the sink, but they are not my cats. I didn’t pick them. I didn’t lock eyes with them through the bars of a shelter cage and feel that little furry paw wrap around my heartstring and gently tug at it. They were already living here when I arrived from Chicago. They had their own nooks and crannies and hideaways, their own schedules and patterns and antipathy toward another human taking up the space they’d already designated as their own. So after Helen died, I needed to get a new Helen.
But what if I replaced her with a dumb, happy dog? What must it be like to come home to an animal who is overjoyed upon your return, who is grateful for you and the wonderfully cozy and sheltered life you have provided for them? Imagine coming home at the end of the day to the aggressively wagging tail of a creature who spent the entirety of their waking hours dreaming of your tires crunching over the leaves in the driveway! What a dream to have a companion who not only worships the very ground I walk on, but also would rescue me from a well if I happened to slip and fall down one!
As I have mentioned too many times, I worked in an animal hospital for fourteen years, which means I know everything there is to know about pet ownership. I wish I was exaggerating. In a job where every day presented a new and confounding horror, one of the things that continued to surprise me was how often people would pick up the phone and actually risk embarrassing themselves in front of another person to ask basic pet care information they could just google to figure out without having to suffer through a painful human interaction. Because countless people decided to waste their anytime minutes calling in to ask me whether plastic food bowls would be harmful to their beloved dachshund, or if prong collars are safe, or what prophylactic flea and tick topical treatments work best, I am full of useless trivia about the most basic shit a child could probably tell you about dogs.
“Tell me all the things I need to have a dog!” was a common request, especially from people who shouldn’t own one. The answer generally boils down to these things:
a crate large enough for the dog to comfortably stand and turn around in
a soft, adjustable collar that fits snugly, but that you can get two fingers under
several leads, but not a retractable one, especially if you’re going to text or do some other distracted shit while walking your dog
bedding
puppy pads, because that dog is definitely going to shit all over your house
large water and food bowls
food and treats, which, wow oh wow, the fucking rabbit hole you could go down. You can kill yourself researching the best organic, grain-free kibble or buy logs of raw food for upward of a hundred dollars a month, and no matter what you choose, there will still be some asshole on the Internet trying to convince you you’re doing it wrong
a ton of chew toys
medicine! Your dog will need all kinds of medicines! It will not be cheap!
baby-proofed kitchen cabinets
a better hiding place for your delicious rat poison
plastic baby gates to keep the dog from ruining all your shit