If I wanted a dog, ...

    I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
    It is not that I don't like dogs. As a youth, I had several dogs; I had cats, too.
    Since we have been married, we have had a succession of cats. Both of us worked long, and often odd, hours. A dog would have demanded far more attention than we could give. Cats, on the other hand, regarded us as staff and occasional entertainment, often pretending they hadn't noticed we'd been gone. Their demands for affection, while single-minded (it's impossible to ignore a cat who doesn't wish to be ignored), are brief.
    We are retired now, but when the last cat disappeared, we decided that we did not want to have another pet. At least not now. It is nice to simply close the door and leave home without boarding an animal.
    As I am writing these words Raka is lying on floor of my study, regarding me with his sad brown eyes.    Raka is definitely a dog. And he is living in my house (all of my dogs were outside pets) But he is not my dog. He belongs to our older son and his family.
    How he came to be here is one of those long stories that is best told briefly. Our son, an Air Force officer, spent the past two years in South Korea. He moved on to a new assignment in England this summer. The family couldn't take Raka directly from South Korea to England without the dog spending six months in quarantine. If, however, Raka spent six months in the United States, he could go to England without being quarantined. So Raka came to the states to stay with our daughter-in-law's family. When our son's family came to stay at our house en route to England, Raka came  with them. Somehow he never got back our daughter-in-law's folks, and when time came for the humans to go to England, Raka stayed here. He will  be eligible to go to England sometime this fall, and I suppose whoever goes to visit England first will take him.
    The family got the dog when they were stationed in Turkey, and they originally named him Raki after the Turkish national drink. No one seemed to be able to pronounce the name properly, so they changed the spelling to Raka.
    Raka is a Vizsla, a Hungarian breed which Wikipedia describes as "elite sporting dogs and loyal companions." It goes on to say that "through the centuries the Vizsla has held a unique position for a sporting dog – that of household companion and family dog."
    I don't know about the hunting part, but I can attest to Raka's qualities as a household companion. He is very much a people dog, and he likes to be where we are. When I go downstairs to have coffee early every morning, he follows to see whether I am doing anything interesting. When he decides that I'm not he goes back up and curls up in his bed in our bedroom. I go up and down the stairs about a million times a day, and each time Raka follows, although he is somewhat conflicted when one of us is upstairs and the other down. When I -- and he -- make one of my brief trips up and down, he looks at me with some disgust, as if to say, can't you just sit still for a minute?
    Like most dogs, Raka likes to sit on the car seat and poke his head into the breeze, reveling in new smells and sights. When I pop out of the car for a minute, he is sitting behind the steering wheel when I come back.
    All of this may sound as if I am leaning toward getting a dog.
    I am not.
    I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
    But if I did want a dog, I would want him to be like Raka.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

I Don't Think Hendry Is Coming Back

    It has been four weeks since Hendry went missing, and I am gradually acknowledging that she is not coming back.
    Still, every morning when I come downstairs, I look out the door to the side deck, half expecting her to be sitting there waiting for me to let her in and ready to give me a scolding for leaving her outside so long.
    When I am dressing in the morning, I automatically reach out to the small step ladder I use for getting things down from the closet shelf as though she had hopped up to the top step and was waiting for me to scratch her ears.
    When I sit down on the stair to put on my shoes, I expect her to come sit by my right side, always the right side, and to butt my hand with her head until I stop and give her the attention she craves.
    Although Hendry technically is not our cat, we have been her people long enough for her to be a part of our daily lives. In theory, Hendry belongs to our son’s family, but even as their cat, Hendry showed an independent streak that led our oldest granddaughter, Nora, then eight years old, to proclaim, “Hendry belongs to the world.”
    It was Nora who gave Hendry her name. Her family adopted a small kitten when Nora was four. They thought it was a male, and they named it Henry. When Nora tried to say the name, though, it came out Hendry. So Hendry it became, and the name stuck, even after it turned out that Hendry was a she.
    Our son’s family lived next door to us in Montgomery then, and although Hendry spent a good deal of time outdoors, she never displayed any particular interest in us.
    But a few weeks after our son’s family moved several miles away, Hendry showed up at our house. Our son, who happened to visiting us at the time, took Hendry home, and they kept her inside for several more weeks.
          Hendry kept coming back, crossing several busy thoroughfares en route. So, even though we had decided not to have any more pets after Lightnin’, our little Manx cat, disappeared, we took Hendry in, reasoning that sooner or later she was going to get hit by a car as she crossed one of those streets.
    When we moved fulltime to the lake, we brought Hendry with us. We kept her inside for months, fearing she’d undertake a long trek back to her old neighborhood. She made no such effort; she was as content with the peace and quiet of the lake as we are.
    Hendry craved attention only on her terms, and most of the time she was content simply to be in whatever room we were occupying. She would curl up on the couch in the living room, or sprawl on the floor in our bedroom as we slept. If we walked down to the dock, she followed along, although after having taken an unhappy ride on the pontoon boat she kept out of reach.
    One of the times that she did demand attention was right after dinner. She seemed to sense when I had finished eating, and when I pushed away from the table, she would come sit by my chair until I made room for her to jump up beside me and have her ears scratched. When she’d had enough, she would jump down.
    After the Yellow Cat died, Hendry began spending more time outdoors, but she was mostly an indoor cat. She often wanted to go out in the evening. When we were ready to go upstairs at bedtime, I would go to the door. She was usually waiting to come in or sitting on the stoop or the railing contemplating the evening.
    So when she was eager to go outside on a Wednesday evening, I opened the door and she scampered out. A couple of hours later we were ready to go up for the evening and I went to the door to let her in. She wasn’t at the door or on the steps or on the railing. Nor was she on the hood of the car, another of her favorite perches.
    She did not come when I called, which was not unusual. Dogs come when you call them; cats respond with studied indifference.
    I expected that she would be waiting at the door the next morning, as she had been several times before, complaining loudly about being left out all night. But she was not there. We checked around the property; no sign of her or of a fight of any kind. The neighbors said they had not seen her. I checked along the roads near the house; no sign of a dead animal.
    I had not wanted another pet, but with cats, you are chosen about as often as you choose.
    But this time, like Sherman, if elected I will not serve.
    Still, every morning when I come downstairs, the first thing I do is look to the door.


Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com