Out on the Limb

In the cat obit below, I mentioned that our dog tried to prevent the burial. When I tried to cover the cat's body with a cloth, she nosed it aside every time. So I just sat back and watched her. Whisper (our dog) placed her chin ever so gently on the body and looked up at me with huge sad doggie eyes. Finally, I had to insist she let us proceed. She watched the hole being filled in with dirt, and kept looking up at my husband in confusion. When the burial was complete, she pawed at the ground, but didn't dig.

Butcher was Whisper's surrogate mother when we brought the pup home at 10 weeks old. When Whisper matured, one of her favorite games was "cat rolling". Whisper would lie in wait for Butcher to be exposed in the middle of the yard, with no place to run to safety in time. Then Whisper would bolt out of her hiding place doing mach 5. When she reached Butcher, she would take her nose and roll the cat who had invariably braced for the impact by crunching herself into a ball. When the cat got too old to play, Whisper stopped. What a pair!

Ever since Butcher's death, Whisper has taken a dump in the house at night. She never used to do-do this. Are the two events related? Does she think we killed her surrogate mother? Are the dumps her method of mourning? Does she simply have an intestinal disturbance, and this is a coincidence?

I keep looking for the plug-in that allows a window of communication to occur between us. Then I remember it hasn't been invented yet. (Ponder the implications.) I have long believed communication between humans and other animals to be a possibility; but I don't know that I'll still be alive when this potential is realized. You heard it here first, folks!