When I come home, she wags her tail, jumps higher than she assumes she can, and manages to lick my nose. Only when I pet her a hundred times, ruffle her white hair and give her something to eat, does she feel contended and settles down. She is Sweetie, my bitch. I don’t like to call her that. If ‘Cumberbitch’ sounds bad, so does just ‘bitch’. I would rather call her a ‘dogess’. That is also how I think of her. Sweetie, my dogess.
People tell me what a crappy name it is. But I think it fits perfectly. My dogess is 11 years old, which will be 77 in human years. She still has the warm brown eyes, feet that tap when she moves around, fox-like ears, and a wet, cool nose. She was the same when she was 13 days old, and sometimes I wonder how she has managed to never change. She has sat there, on the balcony, under my bed, but mostly on the kitchen threshold. Waiting and watching our uniforms grow shorter until we could no longer fit ourselves into them.
Sometimes when I’m reading and she’s sitting, I put down my book and watch her. She always faces the kitchen as if it is there her promised land is. Her eyes are closed in meditation, her ears perked up and her nose twitching occasionally. She looks like a sage who has redeemed all worldly pleasures, except food. In her red sweater (which was mine, long ago) she looks like a grandma, serene and clad in a shawl, making up tales she will have to narrate to some younger being. Incidentally, she engages in looking at an ant crossing the path under her nose. And when the tiny creature has travelled safely across, she puts her head down on the cold floor and dozes off. I return to my book as she begins to snore.
Dogs hardly live up to 15, the females of the species live even less. I recollect the year she was a year old and a mad dog had nearly killed her. I remember the plastic bats in different colours that we bought her and how she chewed them to shreds. I remember all those kites she ruthlessly caught and tore, the bright paper sticking to her moustache. Amongst all these, I am reminded of a doctor friend who says Sweetie will live long because she feeds on carrots and tomatoes and rarely touches milk. On that happy note, I cease to think of names for the new dog we will have to bring.
She shoos a tiny fly away with a twitch of her ear, and I know it’s not time yet.
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