Pathos

In my vast and varied life-spanning all of these 23 years thus far-I feel that I have grown both as an individual and as a contributing member to society. Many things that I once saw in black and white are now metaphorical shades of gray--topics of interest in life that can be molded and sculpted to fit different situations and people as the circumstances change. One thing, however, has remained a deeply-rooted conviction in my mind and heart--possibly even growing stronger as time goes by.

Don't.

Fuck.

With.

My.

Animals.


Or any animals, really. There are few things with intentions so honest or typically well meaning in this life than that of an animal's mind and heart. Sure, you get your crazy asshole poodle once in a while, and it seems to me that I heard once that dolphins fuck up sharks just "for the helluvit" (actual dolphin quote), but for the most part--in my opinion--even the most brutal acts from an animal have some underlying, logical reason. Take, for instance, my dogs. Both sweet, both pretty starkly different personalities, but if they feel I'm threatened in any way? Yeah, that's 20 lbs of furry fury I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of. Like, seriously, these dogs are kind of pathetic. I was out of town for a couple of days and one of them barely ate. This dog was the runt of the litter-wouldn't even fight for his food-and he eats everything.
  It's partially because of these reasons that I think most of us develop a sense of righteous anger when we see an abused animal on television, a kid kicking a cat on the street, or a dog in a sweater. It's not right, they don't know why it's happening to them, and they couldn't stop it if they tried. I had one such run-in about a year and a half ago...

  It's mid-to-late summer (I don't really remember which, actually) and my roommate had just moved out with a week's notice. Desperately needing a replacement party to fill the empty room, my other roommate suggests one of his friends-a rather odd (and by "odd" I mean bat shit crazy) fellow by the name of-let's call him Thes. Everything went fine for the first day or so, and then he revealed his inner alcoholic artistic genius nutcase side. One such example was when he brought home a young woman he met on the MAX that he knew from high school...supposedly.. Anyways, I get woken up at 1:30 in the morning with her shrieking and bawling at the bottom of the stairs about the injustices of kennel training-which is, for those of you who might not know, the practice of teaching a dog to sleep/stay in a comfortably-sized kennel when you're, say, in bed or out of the house. It really helps you avoid stepping on candy-bar-sized puppies in the middle of the night and keeps them from pooping and or chewing on everything in sight. But nooooo, this was an injustice! This was "sick", "cruel" and "fucked up!" As the poor dear collapsed in a miserable heap in the entryway-weak from the sight of it all-and probably from the alcohol and whatever else she was on-I told my roommates to take her to bed, let her crash on the couch-whatever, just shut her up and let me sleep for 4 more hours until I had to go to work.

It lasted for about an hour.

2 AM, both me and the boyfriend are woken up by the most gut-wrenching, ear-piercing shriek we've ever experienced. Honestly, we thought someone must have been stabbed. Throwing open the bedroom door, we're greeted by one of the puppies-the runt-my dog-crying in pain, unable to use one leg and trying desperately to just get closer to us-to come and greet us like he does every time anyone walks in the door. Now, as I mentioned before, our dogs are crate-trained. He should be downstairs, in a closed kennel, sleeping on his brother, sister and mom. Instead, something has happened that has managed to both terrify and injure him, and the only thing he could think to do was to crawl his way painstakingly across an entire house and up two flights of stairs to us. Picture this:

with the worst case of puppy-eyes imaginable and in pain. And you don't know how to fix it, or even to what extent he's been hurt. Yeah, me too. After passing Runt to the boyfriend, I ran downstairs to see the girl-alone-with the kennel open, cradling one of the puppies and murmuring various drunken promises to it. Another puppy was wandering the living room, exploring various nooks and crannies, while their mom looked nervously back and forth between the two. She was a good mom, just not aggressive.

 Now, I tend to get rather irritated with people sometimes. Heck, at my job, I even get downright pissed. But I usually tend to keep a pretty even keel, and I never yell. I yelled. I yelled at her to put the dog down. I yelled at her to go upstairs and crash. I yelled at her to get out of my sight and to sleep off whatever she was on. She slunk upstairs, I checked the puppies, took them and their mom to my room, then I, too, went upstairs. Where I yelled some more. At some point I seem to remember her rolling her eyes and trying to deny doing anything, but this did not bode well for her. I believe were my exact words were
"NO. You're going to shut up, you're going to take it, or you're going to get the fuck out of my house."

I never laid a hand on her-I don't think I had to. The puppies were fine, and aside from being shaken up, Runt was able to walk fine in an hour or two. The girl left the next day (the only reason I hadn't kicked her out that night was because we lived in a sketchy part of town), and that also ended up being the day Thes was asked to move out. All in all, everything worked out pretty well, but I stand by my statement: Don't fuck with animals. Especially mine. Because I will find you.