The Dandy Lion
When I was around seven years old, I wrote a eulogy for a dying cat. I was a melodramatic child who lived out in the country in an area known for dog and cat dumping. The 70s were crazy times. Animal rescue wasn’t a thing. Pets seemed more, well, disposable, for lack of better words. At least, that is the way it seemed to me. Every morning was a new adventure. One day might provide the companionship of a heavily pregnant shepherd mix. The next day could have me wooing timid cats. We even provided a wayward goose with a soft place to land for a few months. We rehabilitated a nestless trio of too young bunnies whose mother had fallen victim to an evil tractor. Though never successfully hatched, there were many fallen swallow eggs coddled under lights, wrapped in the warmth of my mother’s heating pad. My father was not excited by the thought of spending money on feeding animal mouths over people mouths, but we did everything we could to help. Daddy was known to show up at his friends’ homes with a plea to accompany him to the animal shelter where a city address could enable a guy from the boondocks to drop off a collection of mutts no one wanted anymore. I would become inconsolable at the loss of “my” dogs and cats (the goose left town on his own), but daddy would sit me in his lap and tell me the story of Peter Rabbit and how he freed all the pets from the tar pit. “You see, DD,” my father would gently say, “if Peter kept all these animals, he wouldn’t be able to help all the new ones who needed him.” This was all before Emmanuel, though.
