Page 98 of Hold the Pickle
“Jolly, I brought you a new banana. Don’t destroy it for at least five minutes.” I give a jumbo orange cat the fabric banana stuffed with catnip.
Harold, an elderly Siamese, jumps onto my lap.
“I didn’t forget,” I tell him, pulling out a small mouse with rubber ears, his favorite.
He snaps his teeth around the colorful ear and takes off for a quiet corner.
The others are far less particular. I dump the rest of the toys on the floor. The cats are an undulating clump of fur, some choosing an item and dashing off with it, others turning up their noses and returning to their spots in the sun.
Pearl, a shiny white Persian with blue eyes, makes a bed out of the remaining pile and spreads out over it.
I stroke her long fur for a moment. “Time to visit the dogs,” I tell her.
Several cats fix beady glares at me at that, as if they understand the word.
“Don’t worry, you’re all still my favorites.”
I slide carefully through the door to make sure nobody escapes and head to the noisier end of the rescue building. I hear the yips and barks of the dogs before I reach the room. It’s feeding time, so everyone is in their kennels for the moment.
Kendall, the primary caretaker of the dogs, will feed them and then release them back out to the yards, where they spend most of their day. They have several outdoor play areas. One for big dogs, one for small ones, one for puppies and injured dogs, and another for shy dogs who are too afraid to engage with the energetic ones.
I’m here to feed a new litter that was dumped near a campground and found by some hikers. They are little, and like my cat family at home, the mom was overburdened trying to keep them alive when already starving herself.
Kendall is busily measuring out bowls of food at the long counter on the side wall. She has her baseball cap on backward, and her jeans are muddy as usual. She likes to play with the dogs in the yards. “Heyo, Nadia,” she says. “The formula’s already in the warmer.”
“Thank you!” I call. I collect the first bottle and head to the sick bay where the mom and her puppies are living until they are better. It’s a warm, cozy crate set on a counter, so it’s easy for us to access the doggies who are in recovery.
Mom is a dachshund and Yorkshire terrier mix with a curly gold coat. There’s no telling what the father was, but the babies are all over the place. One is a curly haired dachshund like mom.Two are more traditional dachshunds with long bodies and short brown hair. The fourth is hard to characterize. It’s gray and chubby, with the same long nose as its siblings but a short body with more normal sized legs.
Kendall peers around me. “I still say the gray one is a totally different litter.”
“Might be. At least the mom accepted it.” I pull one brown puppy out and sit on a stool to feed it the bottle. It pulls hungrily at the formula.
“We should name them soon. Get them on the website.” Kendall expertly fills an arm with six bowls of kibble, like a server at a high-end restaurant.
“I call this one Brownie in my head,” I tell her.
“We could name them all after cookies,” she says. “Clever names get them adopted fast.” Then she’s off to slide the bowls into the kennels.
Brownie finishes his bottle off quickly and drops off to sleep. I carefully set him in with the others and pull out the curly-haired one.
“Who should you be?” I ask her, taking a second bottle out of the warmer. “Blondie? Gingersnap?”
Ginger-Blondie snaps at the bottle like it’s an enemy before finally settling down to drink. She’s feisty, wriggling and squirming and getting formula everywhere.
“Good thing you’re cute,” I tell her, then feel the familiar warm wetness on my leg that means she peed on me, too. Rescue work is never glamorous.
I reach for a towel and tuck it under her to limit the fluids all over me until we’re done. By the time I get her fed, then her two siblings, I’m overdue to work in the office.
Kendall is ushering the big dogs out to the play yard as I pass.
“You need help?” I ask her.
“Nah, Jake and Elmer are on the way for their shifts. I’ll wait on them to let out the others.”
I nod and head into the administrative part of the building.
I’m glad for all the work. Since I started helping, I’ve worked ten-hour days, five or six days a week. It’s been good to keep my mind off Dalton and LA.
