Heavy Petting
An Anthology of Stories About Creatures Big and Small
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2011 Suburban Write People
Gail Cohen
Jennifer Djordjevic
William D. Hicks
Marjie Killeen
Susan O’Brien
Jim Szczepaniak
Barbara Yohnka
An Imprint of
Musa Publishing
Heavy Petting
By Gail Cohen, Jennifer Djordjevic, William D. Hicks, Marjie Killeen, Susan O’Brien, Jim Szczepaniak, Barbara Yohnka
Copyright © Gail Cohen, Jennifer Djordjevic, William D. Hicks, Marjie Killeen, Susan O’Brien, Jim Szczepaniak, Barbara Yohnka, 2011
Smashwords Edition
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All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.
Musa
Publishing
633 Edgewood Ave
Lancaster, OH 43130
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Published by Musa Publishing, December 2011
“The Purrfect Murder” was previously published in Save the Last Stall for Me, a 2009 anthology authored by Suburban Write People; "The Butler Did It" appeared in Twisted Cat Tales, published February 28, 2006.
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This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-61937-932-9
Published in the United States of America
Editor: Annie Seaton
Cover Design: Kelly Shorten
Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna
Section One—Creatures Big and Small
~ “Strange Companions” by William D. Hicks
~ “Gerbil Tales” by Sue O’Brien
~ “The Reincarnation of Snappy Bogdanovich” by Barbara K. Yohnka
Section Two—Who Let the Dogs Out?
~ “Duffy at the Dog Park” by Marjie Killeen
~ “How Doggone Crazy Are You?” a quiz by Jim Szczepaniak
~ “A Lesson in Gratitude” by Jennifer Djordjevic
~ “Wolfie” by William D. Hicks
Section Three—Tales from the Litter Box
~ “PD’s Possession: House of Terror” by William D. Hicks
~ “How I Plan to Pay My Cat’s Medical Bills” by Gail Cohen
~ “Lizzy’s Legacy” by William D. Hicks
~ “Tabby the Fat Cat’s Blog: One Less Life to Live” by William D. Hicks
~ “Emergency Exit” by Marjie Killeen
~ “Old Green Eyes” by William D. Hicks
~ “Paw-sing to Play and Pray” by William D. Hicks
Section Four—Meows and Murders
~ “The Purrfect Murder” by Jennifer Djordjevic
~ “The Case of the Catatonic Murders” by Gail Cohen
~ “The Butler Did It” by William D. Hicks
Section One: Creatures Big and Small
by Gail Cohen
Short shots about pets I should never have let into my life—okay, maybe some of them.
The Romanov Family Rules My Home
When my children became downright obnoxious on the subject of getting a pet, I did one better. I marched to the pet shop and brought home the entire Romanov family. You history buffs will be a bit disconcerted about this statement because you know that the last members of Russia’s proud dynasty took a load of bullets in a quiet forest back in the early twentieth century. The Bolsheviks decided the royal family had squandered one too many rubles on Fabergé eggs and crazy, bearded mad men named Rasputin.
Not meaning to right that tragic wrong all by myself, it dawned on me when I reached the pet shop door—perhaps my young’uns might like a bunch of pets rather than the pedestrian dogs owned by the other kids on the block. I selected Nicholas, Alexandra, Alexei, Anastasia, Olga and Tatiana from the turtle display, grabbed a big, plastic bowl with a huge palm tree jammed into the center, and headed for the cash register.
Caren and David were delighted. The turtles did well. But as the novelty wore off, I found myself dealing with yet one more thing on my perpetual list. Clean the damn turtles. A nasty job. We’re talking six amphibians that swim around in their own waste.
Over time, the kids had to be reminded they had turtles. I used this disinterest as my excuse to stretch their cleaning days a bit further than the pet shop owner recommended. We coexisted, until my daughter, Caren, got seriously sick. The doctor became so alarmed, he checked her into the local hospital. Visitors were required to don surgical gowns and facemasks so the room’s antiseptic environment was not compromised.
After days of tests, the doctors concluded my daughter was suffering from salmonella. I blamed myself. Obviously, I was a crappy housekeeper or cook. Not sure which. Guilt is guilt. After one particularly difficult visit, I raced home, determined to scrub the entire place until it was cleaner than the hospital. I dragged in the next day. The nurse had taken off her facemask so I could see the grin on her face.
“Caren’s doing great.” She smiled. “Doc says she’ll probably go home tomorrow.”
“That’s terrific,” I replied, “and believe me, the house is pristine.”
That’s when the nurse turned to me. “And the doctor reminded me to ask you about another potential salmonella source I forgot to ask you about. You don’t have turtles, do you?”
Caren came home. I told her that the Romanovs had to go back to Russia because their subjects missed them. She cried a little. I prayed that they wouldn’t turn up in our yard since the canal into which I repatriated them was just across the street. Happily, they remained in exile.
* * * *
When Karl Marx Met Max Weber
I’m not a card-carrying Communist, in case you are wondering why I’m moving from the sad tale of the Romanovs to a founding father of the Russian revolution. It just fits here. Marx and Weber met in a cage—a birdcage. The parakeets lived with us as we were began an odyssey that defies rationality. We were about to drag two birds and two preteens through four years of married student housing at the University of Georgia, then followed by the University of Illinois, where husband Michael and I pursued tandem master’s degrees.
The birds argued constantly, as was to be expected when an extreme left-wing creature is housed in close proximity to a more centrist budgie with nothing but a cuttlebone to deflect ideological conflict within the cage. Feathers flew on occasion. It became commonplace to find Marx and Weber thrashing about on the floor. We figured that Marx was recruiting for the party and Weber wasn’t having any dictatorship by the proletariat mumbo-jumbo.
When we found Weber perched on one foot in sick bird mode, we figured we’d get a respite from the revolution, but two days later, the bird, excuse the pun, hadn’t budged. A visit to the vet yielded nothing but a one hundred dollar bill to examine a sixteen-dollar bird and obtain a referral to an avian specialist.
“The bird needs dialysis,” Dr. LeFevre proclaimed.
“Dialysis.” I couldn’t wrap my mind around a budgie on dialysis. My mind flashed to an image of folks suffering from kidney failure recumbent on reclining chairs at a dialysis center. Weber, hooked up to a kidney-flushing machine, looking jaundiced. But wait. He was a yellow bird. How would I know?
Husband Michael, wildly attached to both birds, nearly passed out at the mention of dialysis. We had no money. Michael asked the question that trumped sentiment. “How much?”
“Seventy dollars a treatment,” the vet said. “He’ll need at least six.”
We mourned the bird after he had been put down. Marx could barely stand the loneliness. The kids sulked and begged for more birds. We had Weber cremated and put the ashes in the kids’ room. The procession of friends coming and going to see the kids’ pet seemed a bit ghoulish to both of us, but since no other child in the area had pet ashes, Caren and David remained celebrities until the novelty wore off.
* * * *
The Bird Who Ate My Window
Speaking of birds, my son David was about to return from a four-year stint in the Navy during the Gulf War conflict. I was so relieved to have him out of harm’s way, I foolishly abandoned a big mommy rule and invited him to move back home.
Relieved that no young, pregnant woman named Lee-Mei Sung had followed him to the U.S. after his world tour, I was nonplussed when he arrived with a huge white cockatoo named Kong. I should add, the bird didn’t like to be caged. He spent his days on a thick perch, looming large over the living room. His squawk could halt a pacemaker and there was no predicting when it would sound, but I did conclude that most of the time, he began bobbing up and down furiously just before that beak let loose, so I took to throwing a dishtowel over his head, just in case.
Having a dishtowel thrown over his head with no advance notice made the bird a bit neurotic, but David didn’t notice a change in his behavior. He was too busy playing returned-from-the-war veteran as deftly as John McCain did during the 2008 presidential campaign. He needed time to re-find his civilian groove. Among the grooves he failed to find—even after six months—were making a bed, getting a job, staying sober, and paying attention to Kong.
On the day I found Kong lunching on my window frame and saw the extent to which the piles of paint-coated sawdust chunks had multiplied, I had my epiphany. It was time to throw both the bird and the kid out.
David rolled in about one a.m. the night I declared my emancipation proclamation. Early night.
“You and the bird have to go,” I announced, holding out my hand, which was brimming with window frame shards. “Time to find a place of your own. You and the woodpecker.” He patted my head with a “good dog” gesture, removed the bird from the half-eaten window frame, and headed for the sack.
That night, I dreamed about the bird going into a seizure from lead paint poisoning. It was strange to feel so good about the fantasy, since I’m an animal rights advocate, but nocturnal vision gave me a clarity that morphed into pure joy. I was going to get my life back.
Days passed. Nobody moved. Window frames continued to take on the distressed look trendy TV decorators were working so hard to achieve on client’s furniture. Extreme measures were called for. I drafted a formal eviction notice and placed one copy on David’s pillow and another on the bird’s cage. He had a move out date. After a few days of huffing and puffing, he knew July 1st was sacrosanct, so he grudgingly began packing.
At first, David loved his new digs and even invited me over for dinner. When I got there, the bird was gone. Noticing the chunks of missing wood on David’s new dining room furniture, I figured I had my answer. This may have been the beginning of the phrase, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
* * * *
A Dog Named Windsor
One year before Michael, the kids, and I headed off on our graduate school odyssey—please see the bird story—a dog came into our life. Windsor, the old English sheep dog, was being left behind in Miami when his owner moved out of town. We quickly learned these shaggy dogs came with a unique set of owner requirements. For instance, even if all four of us stripped down nude and tossed the dog into the bathtub, there was no guarantee he would come out clean.
“This dog needs serious help,” the groomer said. We translated that into please give me more money.
We were desperate. “Go to it,” we agreed, handing over the tangled, matted albeit clean dog.
Michael met me at the groomer’s after work. While waiting for the receptionist to return to her desk, we uttered some really unkind words about the ugly—albeit overly happy—tail-wagging dog in a huge cage that took up an entire corner of the reception area. The grotesque dog turned out to be Windsor re-dux. No fur anywhere except a little on his face.
Ever seen a shaved old English sheep dog? You don’t want to be seen with him in public. Picture a greyhound with a mop on its head. The family fought for nighttime walking rights because we were all too ashamed to be seen with him in his present condition.
“Whatever happened to that dog you just got?” the neighbors had taken to asking. We said he was away at obedience school and continued to lie about his whereabouts, while taking stealth night walks until a miracle happened. His hair grew out and the dog turned into a stunner. No longer embarrassed by Windsor, he quickly returned from training and became a neighborhood star once more. We loved him despite his low IQ and propensity for being the only dog on the block who couldn’t find his way home when he got lost, which he did. Often.
Our days of wine and noses came to a sad end when we sold the house and couldn’t take the dog. We had to find a new family for Windsor. He wound up on a farm where they let his hair grow out so he could look just like he was supposed to as he launched a new career chasing chickens.
* * * *
I Hate Cats More Than Most
Divorcing Michael and marrying David meant I was leaving birds and dogs behind and entering the world of cats. David was a cat zealot—he loved them unconditionally. I, on the other hand, had been raised to abhor cats. You’re probably thinking, these two people should have discussed their disparate views on children—make that pets—before they married. But we didn’t.
Months into the marriage, David’s feline clock kicked in. He began reading aloud from the Sunday paper while I slept. “I’m a tiny little kitten faced with death if someone doesn’t adopt me in two days,” the falsetto voice awakened me. “I have a brother and a sister and we will worship you if you adopt us together. If you don’t, we’ll be killed.”
My response? “No cats.”
His. “Bitch.”
Sunday entreaties began to take on the flavor of Save the Children campaigns. Each week, gruesome details about atrocities awaiting the cats I wouldn’t adopt were described. Each week, I held my ground. I felt particularly relieved when a writer’s conference took me away for a long weekend. No cat talk this Sunday. I smirked.
David used the occasion of my absence to start trolling feline halfway houses and searching pets for sale ads. By the time I returned, he met me at the door to tell me he had located an entire family of stray cats at a pet foster home. A mom and seven kittens, he added. I waited for him to notify me that the entire family would be put into a crematorium within the hour, but he wasn’t taking any chances. I took about six steps into the living room and realized why he wasn’t going to push me. Somebody had dumped the entire pet section of a local Walmart onto the carpet.
Honestly, my children didn’t require this much stuff when they were little. Obviously, the scenario was in play and it was too late to back out. Kittens awaited us at the foster home. Inside, I found one smug looking adult cat (that wanton hussy of a mother) and seven—count ’em, seven—offspring. She was a poster child for sterilization.
The kittens all looked the same, collectively cute. One in particular decided he was sleepy and, without so much as an invite, crawled onto my lap and went to sleep. Auxiliary to this cat’s PR campaign, David began talking about how I wouldn’t have to do a thing in terms of cat care.
Knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, I agreed to the conditions and chose the little body curled up in my lap. David asked what I would call him and I already knew. A former work colleague had a cat and I could recall saying, “If I am ever forced to have one, I’m stealing your cat’s name.” That’s how Tuna came into my life, and things have never been the same.
As the only cat on the planet incapable of breaking a fall from a closet shelf, Tuna ran up a three-thousand dollar vet bill, insisted on sleeping on a pillow in the middle of the bed every night, and required insulin shots for his diabetes twice a day. Our social schedule became nonexistent. Tuna’s biggest indignity may have come the day our alpha male waited at home while we picked up his meds.
“Tina Dodge, come to the pharmacy window for your prescription.” Oh, the indignity of it all. On behalf of Tuna, I delivered a stern lecture to the smart-ass pharmacist who couldn’t seem to get a simple cat’s name right.
As fate would have it, David and I got divorced and he got custody of Tuna. I was given frequent visitation rights, but never exercised one of the invitations. It had taken me a lifetime to fall in love with cats and I wasn’t up for sharing. Soon as I could manage it, two more cats came into my life. I’m now the object of every crazy single cat lady stereotype on the planet.
Happily, it fits.
…
by William D. Hicks
Gary made his way into the living room, full of the large flea-like creatures that inhabited it. Every so often one would lunge at his throat, trying to tear it open with its long, sharp fangs.
Some time back, one creature managed to get at his throat, but Gary had been too quick and flung it to the floor, leaving a single tooth still clinging to his flesh. Gary still had the scar from where Depression had caught him off guard.
Janet walked past, seemingly undaunted by the creatures in her living room, making her way into the kitchen. Neither Janet nor the creatures seemed to notice one another, though she had to sidestep Want and Need.
Gary followed her into the kitchen. There, several ant-like creatures, with pincher jaws and bulbous bodies, sat at the oak kitchen table. Janet winced upon seeing them. She moved to the fridge, took out a bottle of water and sipped its contents.
“Breakfast?” Gary asked.
“Shhhhhh,” Janet hushed, angling her head toward the creatures at the table. “You know how they get.”
“Sorry. Okay, so is that the only nourishment for this morning’s meal?” Gary stared at the water bottle in her hands.
“Yes. I’m in no mood to C.” They both knew C meant cook.
“I understand. Some days are harder than others. I’ve been trying to figure out how to go outside, to get away from these things. To shake my depression. But I’m hungry.”
The kitchen creatures let out a loud hissing noise.
“Damn, I hope they haven’t learned all of our codes. If they’re starting to read minds I’m not sure what we will do. How did they know I was considering cooking?”
A louder hissing sound echoed in the room. It sounded like buzzing cicadas. The creatures pushed back in their chairs.
“Is that what you call it?” Gary laughed.
Janet growled. She wasn’t amused.
Trying to get her off the subject, he suggested, “Didn’t you mean think? Not the C word.”
People had always told Janet she was terrible in the kitchen. Cooking angered her, so Gary tried to replace the word with one that held less emotional impact.
Janet growled louder.
“Calm down Janet.”
“Yes, that’s what I call it!”
“I didn’t mean…stop it…you know that’s not what I meant. This is no good.” Gary knew his words held no meaning. Janet couldn’t control her anger.
“Damn you, I can cook better than most people can sleep!”
The raised voices caused one of the large ants, Anger, to lift one of its bony, bristly-haired front legs and slam it into Janet’s mouth. She fell to the floor writhing in pain. Inadequacy was now at the ready if she should decide to utter the word cook again.
“Janet, don’t. Your demons will tear…”
* * * *
The gentle idling of the car beneath her body awoke Janet. Her head swam and crusty blood cracked away from her lips as she opened her mouth to speak. “Ow. What’s that noise?”
“They tried to kill you last night.” Gary attempted to wipe the caked blood from her lip. “I held them back by throwing kitchen utensils and the blender at them. They still gave you a few good whacks.”
“Where…?”
“Away, we have to get away.”
Before Gary knew what was happening, Janet threw the car door open and was sprinting back toward the house.
“You can’t,” Gary yelled from the window, “they’ll kill you.”
Janet turned her head. “No. They won’t. Not if I go back. I’m going to beat them even if it kills me.”
That’s when the front door exploded. The kitchen fears and the house emotions came bounding out, searching for their prey, moving fast.
“Go,” Janet screamed, as she ran into one creature’s outspread claws. “If I stay, maybe they won’t come after you. Maybe I can give you a chance to get away.” The ant punched Janet in the stomach with such power she fell to the porch floor.
Gary had no choice. He stomped on the gas pedal. A toothy flea hit the car, splattering on the windshield. Gary watched Indecision die as he sped away. In his rearview mirror, he spied swarms of creatures tearing after him. Part of him understood that some of these creatures were tied to the house. They wouldn’t follow long. He wasn’t sure if Janet would be okay. Would she live longer or die sooner in the house? He tried to save her, but in the end, it had been her decision to return. Indecision had never been a problem for her. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a problem for him from now on. All Gary knew was that he needed some time and distance away from his emotions, even if they eventually caught up with him.
…
by Sue O’Brien
Six more mouths to feed. Just days before, I took on my sister’s five; that’s a total of twenty-one. How was I going care for all of them? I had run out of space and out of patience. I was college educated and capable of understanding the nuances of reproduction, but unprepared for this. I wanted to thump the guy who started it; he should have been more careful. He should have known the difference between a male and female. In April, the idiot had sold me a pair of rodents—gerbils to be exact—whose only talents were being cute and replicating the species. Now it was June, and I was overrun with small, four-legged, beady-eyed critters.
The only way out of this was to get the store to rectify its mistake by assuming ownership of nineteen sunflower-munching rodents and reimbursing me for the second ten-gallon aquarium gerbil house I had to buy. However, the immediate solution to the furry-tailed population explosion was to separate mine and my sister’s sex maniacs.
Not everyone in my family was as upset as I was with the extra mouths to feed. My parents laughed, knowing revenge was at hand for all the furry creatures I had brought home as a child. The stray cats I fed had left mice on the front steps as their way of saying thank you. The scraggly pooch who defaced the basement floor several times with you know what that my mother unwittingly stepped in. The classroom gerbils I brought home in fifth grade because Sister Catherine insisted they could not spend the summer at the convent. The baby bird I rescued whose chirping kept everyone up for three days until my bleary-eyed mom subtly moved it to the garage, informing me the animal sanctuary was closed until further notice.
“See,” my dad smirked, “as we told you, it all comes back to you, ten-fold.” Ten-fold? I stopped counting after the second round of gerbils.
My daughter and her friends thought this was a game, as most nine-year-old children would. “Baby gerbils are so cute,” they squealed.
Gerbils are born red and hairless in groups of six or more. That is not cute. Being overrun with rodents whose greatest pleasure was annoying me with their horizontal mambo was a nightmare. The other nightmare was my stupidity in thinking it would take eighteen years for gerbil mates to raise their brood. In fact, after six weeks they had abandoned one brood and were making way for the next. And the adolescents in the first brood were already making eyes at each other. This was becoming a den of iniquity. All this went on under my roof and I remained oblivious until my daughter mentioned how they liked to play by jumping on each other. I realized this may be a good time discuss the birds and bees (and rodents) with her, but first things first. My sister, Mary, and I had a trip to make.
Back to the pet store we ventured, with nineteen rodents in tow, each in their own section of one of my sister’s plastic bead craft containers. We spilled our story to the storeowner.