Her Menagerie

She walked over to the sink, kettle in hand, slid on a bit of spilled water from one of the dogs' drinking bowls, and caught herself just in time. Last time that happened she fell and split her lip. Could have been worse, much worse. The bruise on her elbow and her hip where she hit the corner of a cupboard took a long time to heal. It had turned amazing colours; purple and black and light red. Her lip still held a scar. She had to be more diligent about taking care.

There was always so much to do, so much that held her attention. She tended to forget things, tried to steel her mind to recall because there was always a nagging doubt back there, that she had forgotten something important. Sometimes she was able to recall whatever it was, and it turned out it wasn't important after all, and wouldn't have mattered if she had neglected to attend to it.

It was like that with her when the children were small, always yowling for attention, driving her to distraction, never knowing where to turn first. She tried to be a good mother. She was careful, before, to read all she could about what she would need to know for the care of babies and infants and young children. Trouble was, when you're in the midst of diapering, feeding, bathing, nursing everything was chaos.

Having two babies following so closely one on the other was a disaster for her. Her husband was always criticizing, always telling her how she should be doing things differently than she did. Impatient with her, insistent, blaming. She knew he wanted more than two children. She did not. Emphatically, did she not want any more than the two she was already incapable of adequately caring for.

When she was really young she was like all the other young girls. No thought to a future other than as a young married woman, capably caring for children, doing the housework, greeting her husband at the door with a breezy welcoming kiss, the children all neat and clean, the house tidy, and dinner prepared. Not her fault that wasn't the way it turned out. She had tried.

Not even her older sister who actually was capable of doing all those things could claim she hadn't tried. She had tried to model herself after Heidi, did everything she saw Heidi do, but it just didn't work for her. Later, when she simply gave up, decided to leave Henry and his three brawling brats, Heidi commiserated with her. Heidi never gave up on her. When no one else would speak to her, have anything to do with her, Heidi persisted.

She's long dead. Afterward, when her own children would never acknowledge her as their mother, Heidi's children would call, ask after her health, call her auntie. Even they no longer call, although one of Heidi's grandchildren did, for a long time, before she too faded away. Now no one calls. But she has her animals, her dogs, her cats and her rabbits. And they love her. They are wholly dependent on her. She never disappoints them.

They're fed only the best, all of them, and it's costly. Just as well her own living needs are modest, her little house long paid for, her ability to stretch her finances sound. She might skimp on her own food, but never theirs. They were all she had. Without them there would be no reason to bother about anything. As it was, she scarcely bothered to put food on the table for herself.

Perhaps it was guilt that motivated her. No, she felt no guilt about leaving Henry, and their three children. He was a better father than she was a mother to them. It took him little time before he re-married, had more children. And his new wife was a good manager, a lover of children, even those that were not her own. It was the little dog. They'd had a lovely little miniature pinscher.

It had been so used to being coddled by her that when the children came it silently, agonizingly fumed with jealousy. She did her best, tried to give it attention, took it with for walks when she aired the children, but nothing seemed to work there, too. The rebellious little thing began soiling its own bed, the household carpeting, leaving sordid little messes for her to clean up, hiding them from Henry who had no use for the dog.

There was a time when she bordered on the cusp of utter despair; the new-born third and the previous two, still infants, all in diapers. And the little dog's excrement to be cleaned up as well. She spanked the oldest child, furious that he resisted toilet training, and she began to physically abuse the little dog. Threw it once down the stairs. The memory of that, though it happened a lifetime ago, haunts her yet.

In her dreams, dreams not of her past life with a young family, but of the time before when she nurtured and loved the little dog, she tried to erase the reality of her later abuse of the creature. But she could not, and in an effort to reclaim some vestige of self-esteem she began to adopt abused animals. She now had nine dogs, three cats and five rabbits. Their care exhausted her.

She lived rurally, but with no fencing, was fearful of allowing the animals to be outdoors without her. Her days were punctuated with regular excursions with the dogs, to give them adequate exercise. Otherwise they tore the house apart in their frustration. On rainy days, on snowbound, icy days, she could not cope and locked them away in their wire crates, moaning in agony at the cruelty she was imposing on them.

Some of them had been badly abused, and it had taken her long patient months of careful observation and remedial work to calm them and finally impress them with the comfort that they were safe with her. Oddly enough the older rescue dogs were calmer, more biddable. It was the really young ones, their suffering had made them wildly ungovernable. Her greatest fear was that they would attack one another.

They did play-fight together, and as long as matters did not get out of hand, she allowed that. But occasionally the activity ratcheted up and before she could separate a group of snarling dogs, one or several would be bitten or badly scratched. She had herself often suffered the same, and had taken to having thick padded gloves around, in easy reach. The cats were no problem, nor the rabbits.

When all was calm, she was able to let the rabbits out, two by two, to hop about and explore the interior of the house, the dogs merely sniffing, posing no threat to them or to the cats. It would be different, she knew, if they were outside. The dogs would pursue the cats and the rabbits, and the larger ones, the mixed German-shepherd malamutes would tear the rabbits apart, in all likelihood. The cats were never allowed out, other than on a lead, or in a large crate.

The constant cage-cleaning for the rabbits, the continual picking-up after the dogs, left her little time for anything else. She had once loved to garden, and the remnants of her once-loved and well-tended garden still remained, with a skeleton crew of persistent perennials overrun with weeds. She grew herbs, though, and clover, for her rabbits. She was hardly aware of the overpowering stench left in her house with the presence of her menagerie.

Postal delivery was at a rural mailbox located on the other side of the road. No one would now deliver straight to the house. The presence of a stranger at the door would result in an unbelievable tumult of hysteria as all the dogs, large and small, would bark, yelp, snarl and leap toward the presumed intruder. The cacophony of sound an assault that no one wanted to have repeated.

She was quite elderly, hair wispy grey, body a thin column of sinew and muscle. Her mental faculties ... almost sound, given her growing propensity to ... forget the most current and common things, frustrating her beyond belief. She could herself fell trees on her property that had succumbed to weather. She was independent, and proud of it.

She knew, because there were instances reported in the media, that there were others like her, people devoted to the welfare of animals who amassed a houseful of dogs, cats and other small creatures whom careless owners had abused or neglected or disowned, and who, in their zeal to save and protect, over-reached themselves. Finding, with their own ageing and ill-health that they were unable to care for their too-numerous charges.

That would never happen with her, she vowed. She was different. She may not have been a capable mother, but she was more than capable of caring for her dependent-animals. Her companions. Who cared for her when no one else did. Who depended on her. And upon whom she depended.

And she forgot, entirely, that the kettle was still on the stove, and it had already dried out and the stove was still lit. Forgot, after feeding her brood, that she had not herself eaten. Couldn't, in any event, she was simply too tired, worn out, needing sleep.

And sleep she did.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld