The Demise of Miz Squeak

The Demise of Miz Squeak

I grew up in a home that always had dogs and cats. Even though we lived in the mountains of Colorado our animals all lived outside. There was a woodshed behind the house where they may have slept. I just remember they lived outside.

The dog I remember best from our time in Leadville Colorado was a large black, furry Newfoundland which was appropriately named "Blackie." Blackie was a female and a classic caretaker. I had a brother and sister six years younger than me (they were twins). Blackie believed it was her job to take care of these children. A playground was right across the street from our house. If the twins started across the street and a car was coming, Blackie crowded them off the gravel street and knocked them down in the ditch. They would come home extremely angry complaining about how Blackie had knocked them down again. On several occasions when I would be riding one of them on my bicycle Blackie bulldozed us into the ditch when she saw a car coming. The truth is that the twins lived passed early childhood because of the care Blackie provided.

Blackie had one serious problem. She liked to go into the woods and find porcupines. She would come home with a mouth full of quills. My dad would go to the pharmacy and get a bottle of chloroform, put Blackie to sleep, and pull all the quills. The problem with porcupine quills is that they are barbed. If they are not removed they can work themselves inside the victim and cause serious injury. It also means they were difficult and painful to remove. But Blackie never connected the pain of removal with the porcupines and was involved in a dozen or more episodes.

When my brother and sister reached an age where they no longer needed a protector, Blackie moved down the street on her own and began to take care of a little boy. We never saw her again at our house.

The next dogs I remember at home were dachshunds. My mother had several of them before she died. In fact, the last two she had became part of my younger sisters' family.

After I was married we had all sorts of pets. A selection of dogs and cats, an occasional hamster, gerbil, and guinea pig. The guinea pig came from Idaho where he was given to me while I was on a college tour for Intermountain Bible College. He had one brown eye and one blue eye. Among the dogs we had was a St. Bernard. We had to keep him chained up in the yard because he had no trouble clearing the fence.

One time Bernie got out of the yard. I knew something was up when I heard a high pitched scream. I ran out the door to see a tiny girl on the ground with Bernie standing over her, slobbering like he always did. I knew the family and I was sure that I would shortly get a phone call threatening me for being so careless with this dangerous animal. But the call never came. Days later I saw the little girl's mother. I asked her what her daughter told her. She said, "I thought he was going to eat me up in one gulp." But the dog never harmed except for the slobber.

The dog belonged to our oldest son. One day our son chose to hook Bernie to a sled. As our son got on the sled a cat crossed the street. Bernie set out in hot pursuit and our son hung on for dear life. Trash cans went flying as they went through yards and down alleys. When it was over Bernie was winded but our son unhurt.

When we moved to Cincinnati we didn't have any pets. Along the way in 1991 a family gave Arletta the pick of the litter of their latest batch of Schnauzers. Muffin came to our home at that time and she would be Arletta's special pet until 2005. Along the way Muffin developed cataracts and would spend her last years blind. When it was obvious she was too sick to live we had her put to sleep.

Shortly after Arletta got Muffin she was at the veterinarian for a checkup on the little dog. While there a little girl from England and her mother were there with a tiny newborn kitten. The little girl had seen a man place the kitten near the tire of a care so that when the car moved the kitten would be killed. She was stunned by such behavior. She rushed to the kitten and rescued it. But now they needed to know what they had to do to keep the kitten alive because it had no mother. Now she faced another dilemma. The family lived in married students' housing and pets were not allowed.

The little girl named the kitten Evie and looking up at Arletta asked her if she could take the kitten home. So Arletta came home with Muffin, Evie, and a can of kitten milk that we would feed to the kitten via a hypodermic syringe. Arletta took the kitten to work in a box with a hot water bottle and fed it regularly. She kept Evie hid in a filing cabinet room until the kitten was strong enough to leave home alone all day. Evie became part of our family until 2008. I dubbed her "Miz Squeak" because she never meowed. In Russia the Russians enjoyed my name for her—"Malinki Squeak."

We brought Miz Squeak from Cincinnati to Manhattan where we have lived for the last 13 years. Miz Squeak lived and ruled the house for the duration. But last week she began to slow down and stopped eating and drinking. She lay on the floor softly breathing, not in any pain until she passed away. Miz Squeak was my cat, my buddy, and we were very close although everything had to be done according to what she wanted. The writer of Ecclesiastes said, "A time to be born and a time to die." Miz Squeak has completed her span. She will be missed.