Cats and Dogs

When we lived in Harvard Square, we had a beautiful and highly snobbish cat called Carruthers: aplomp was his middle name. He would coil himself around Jerry’s neck while he, Maggie, Sally and I strolled to a coffee shop in the Square. Carruthers would sit on a chair like ‘a real people’ and drink cream from a saucer. OK, he wasn’t an octopus, but he would only do his shoulder-draping act for Jerry.

On one of our weekend sojourns at their Vermont pad, their dog chomped on a porcupine in the middle of the night, impaling itself with numerous spikes which penetrated both his upper and his lower jaws. To say that said dog was not altogether happy stretches even a Brit’s gift for understatement. Luckily, a more or less local vet told us to bring him over, but to restrain him from his own frenzied and futile attempts at spike removal…. So off we went in the Model A Ford, Jerry driving on seemingly endless dirt roads in almost total darkness while I was in the backseat trying to keep that poor dog from self-destruction. By the time we arrived at the large and sadistic individual who claimed to be a vet, the dog and I were both close to extinction.

After the brutally extraction of the spikes, the sedated animal and I again cuddled up in the back of the car for the journey home. And so endeth another vacation night in beautiful Vermont.

Ed Mlavsky