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Soon after we got married, my husband enrolled in 21 units of graduate
study at Stanford. He was so busy with his class work, labs, and problem
sets that he was never available to talk to. On the advice of some of
my colleagues at work, I decided to get a cat for company. We had very
little money, so I went to the Palo Alto pound and chose a seven year-old
cat. I chose to adopt an older pet partly because I thought it would be
a good deed to adopt a pet that was harder to place. Also, I wanted to
get a pet that didn't require a lot of training and attention, which had
its personality already fully formed. A final advantage to adopting an
older pet was that it would already have a name-I have never been good
at naming things! Unfortunately, this strategy didn't work out with the
cat I adopted, a cross-eyed seal point Siamese. His given name was "Thai-Thai"
and we disliked that name. We called him "Cat." A beautiful
and quite talkative pet, he was good company for me while my husband was
immersed in his schoolwork. What we did not expect was that an older pet
will often have a secret that will surprise you when you learn it.
We soon discovered that Cat was very fussy about what he ate and drank.
He would only eat dry Purina cat chow and only drink water. No table scraps
for him and no milk-he would turn his nose up at anything except the plain
Purina. This surprising idiosyncrasy eventually got us evicted from our
apartment.
We lived in half of the upstairs of a house at the front of a small complex.
Behind us on the same property were several small apartments, occupied
by single retired ladies. Sometimes when we would let Cat out to roam
and relieve himself, he wouldn't return when we called him. He would reappear
several days later, meowing loudly at our back door and ravenously hungry.
We eventually learned that some of our retired neighbors had decided that
he was a stray cat without a home. They would take him into their apartments
and try to adopt him. But, no matter how much they tempted him with canned
cat food, or even tuna fish intended for human consumption, he wouldn't
eat. Nor would he drink the milk and cream they offered him. Eventually
they would get so worried about his health that they would let him out
to find his own food. He would then make a beeline for our apartment,
gobble up some Purina chow and consume a full bowl of water.
We thought the situation was satisfactory since he always returned eventually.
However, our neighbor ladies mentioned their concern for Cat's health
to the apartment manager, who called us in and pointed out to us that
our lease had a clause forbidding us to have pets. Either Cat or his owners
would have to find a new home. We moved the next month to a place that
permitted pets and that had no close neighbors.
The next time we adopted an older pet, I was prepared for a surprise,
but was still shocked by it. We were living on a 120-acre farm, which
had unreliable phone service and frequent power outages. For protection
and company, we adopted a two-year-old lab-shepherd-cross named Natasha.
This big black gentle dog was making a nuisance of herself by her antagonism
to a Saint Bernard that lived near her owners. Since her owner was running
for political office, he felt that having an aggressive pet would be a
political liability. But he couldn't bring himself to put the dog to sleep,
because otherwise she was a terrific pet. Tasha got along well in her
new home with us. There was lots of room for her to run on the farm and
no dogs nearby. She maintained her strange antipathy to St. Bernard dogs,
though. Once when we were out of town visiting family, she even tried
to go through a closed window to attack a strange St. Bernard she spotted
passing by the house.
About a year after we adopted Natasha, we received a surprise phone call
from her former owner asking if we would consider giving her back to them.
The St. Bernard that Tasha had disliked so much had attacked some children
at the school bus stop. Apparently, Tasha's antipathy to that dog stemmed
from her protectiveness of children. She must have sensed that the dog
was not to be trusted with the children. In the meantime, Tasha's former
owner had been elected mayor and no longer felt the dog was a political
liability! We declined to give her up and she lived with us until she
died of natural causes at age thirteen.
When Tasha died, we adopted a 7-year-old Samoyed from the Samoyed Rescue
Society. Yuri was a stray who had apparently been living on his own for
a year or more, judging by the number of burrs in his coat. Although he
walked well on a leash, he never responded to common commands like "Sit,"
and "Lie down." He seemed unable to learn them, either, though
he seemed like an intelligent dog in most ways. Yuri had one bad habit---he
loved to eat paper money, and preferred twenties to smaller denominations.
His big surprise for us came one day when I got mad at him for eating
a $20 bill and started to yell at him. To my astonishment, he suddenly
sat, offered a paw, then sat up and begged with both paws, and finally
lay down. I was so fascinated by his sudden demonstration that I continued
to yell at him and discovered that he had also been trained to roll over.
I figured if I kept on yelling, he would show me how he could differentiate
$20 bills from $1's, $5's and $10's--if I could only understand him.
Two years ago, I returned to the Palo Alto pound to adopt another adult
pet. The dog I finally chose after a number of visits had a most unprepossessing
appearance, though he has proved to be a great companion. Buddy is a 45-pound
brown dog whose previous owner had clipped him to resemble Simba, the
Lion King. He loves to ride in the car. He is very patient with my problems
walking and comes to check on me whenever I fall down. He has even inspired
an interest in literature. When I have described his bark as like that
of the Hound of the Baskervilles, several people have been led to read
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the
Baskervilles.
Since I am not particularly adept with clippers, I decided to let Buddy's
coat grow out. I figured he could not be any uglier with a full coat than
he was clipped. To my surprise, one day when I was taking him for a walk,
a passerby commented that he was a beautiful dog. The compliment made
me really look at him for the first time since his coat had grown. He
has become a beautiful dog indeed, with a gray ruff to go with his Chow's
black tongue and bearing lovely long tail and leg plumes, inherited from
his golden retriever parent.
Adopting an adult dog or cat may save the life of an unfortunate pet and
may make the process of training a new pet easier, but its most delightful
aspect is discovering the secret surprise that the pet will bring with
him. The four pets that I have adopted as adults have all surprised me
with secrets that make owning them a special adventure.
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