The Boss

I thought as a writer, you were your own boss? I hear you question.

Well my boss sits right beside my chair and is most disgruntled if I am not right there with him. See that expression, right there, on his face?

We’ve always had pets at our house. Well, if I go back far enough, I could say, all our houses, from when dh and I lived at home with our respective parents to when we, ahem, moved in together.

As a kid, I was a bit of a collector of stray creatures. Half-feathered baby robins who departed the nest too early were fed on bread and milk from an eye dropper; a blind-in-one-eye hedgehog who went round in circles left me with an infestation of fleas (quickly dealt with by a very knowing mother); a pigeon lived in a budgie cage on our dining room table through one winter and then on the bathroom window ledge
(outside) for another year. With a heap of you know what in the corner.

My husband lays claim to two red squirrel babies abandoned in his family’s garden shed. For years they would come racing across the lawn for treats.

These are but a few of our memorable rescues. There was a lamb in there somewhere too, I recall. Leopards don’t change their spots and while we have always had creatures in our house, from mice to dogs, very few were purchased, most found us or our genetically programmed children.


When we moved to North America, we took on two black cats no one wanted. Then, at a time when we were struggling financially, my husband “found” a german shepherd pup wandering in the road, and brought him home. He ate my Christmas cake. I have never made one since. Not long after that a green and yellow budgie fell out of a tree. When dh picked it up, it attacked his thumb and drew blood. A free budgie, he said, when I arrived home from work that night. And a forty dollar cage, when a week’s groceries was on the order of twenty bucks. The cat and the dog were terrified of this bird, let me tell you.

Recently we found ourselves petless. Aha, I cried. No more! Until we heard of a Maltese Terrier abandoned at a nearby shelter. We had actually purchased our last dog and he had also been a Maltese, after our dear old shepherd left us. Spike (who should have been named snowball) was a great little dog, but with the children grown up we were going to travel, weren’t we?

Teaser, as we call the most recent addition to the family, can’t believe his luck. We know nothing of his past, but we do think he lived in an apartment because at first, walks to him meant getting in the car. He still won’t go out in the garden by himself, but is very happy looking off the edge of the deck or, when he visits my daughter, traveling up in the elevator and looking off her tenth floor balcony.

He joins me for lunch. Or he would if I let him. And he makes me get exercise every day, because if I don’t take him for a walk, he leaves me a gift I don’t want. Ah well, pound puppies don’t always come from good families. What can I say? I hope you like the pictures. If you are wondering what those are on his feet, they are boots. They keep his feet from freezing in the cold weather.

So there you have it. My boss. Isn't he cute?