So – let me tell you a tale of three mammals.
There was Jessie, the bad, bad beagle; there was Abby, the good dog; and then there was Bella, the Canine Catholic.
Jessie was the (somehow) endearing embodiment of all that was smelly and fuzzy and gluttonous and self-serving. She would would eat unendingly, only pausing if someone was willing to scratch her ears, and then again only if she wanted to be scratched. She was smelly and sniffly and would eat almost anything, with only the foulest findings exempt. These she would roll in.
Abby, on the other hand, was tragic. She saw Jessie eating her food, the choicest morsels first… she saw Jessie jumping up on people’s beds and rolling her freshly soiled flesh all over freshly clean sheets. Abby stood with her regal ears pulled back, simply looking on and mourning Jessie’s lack of decorum. She stood with sad eyes as she watched her food vanish into the never-filling beagle, and would turn away and shake her head, knowing that at least, though thinner, she was a Good Dog.
And then there was Bella. Overwhelmed with guilt and frozen into immobility with the overwhelming pain of Life. The weight of the world was too much sometimes and she would just stop, causing pile-ups and human traffic jams behind her. Upon the departure of people from her sight she whimpered and whined, sure that they would never grace her with their presence again. And upon their inevitable reappearance, she would get underfoot. And apologize. And get underfoot. And apologize. And get underfoot…
At night the three mammals dream.
Jessie dreams wolf dreams it seems. She howls in the night at phantasm moons, filling 3am with startling half-realized cries and frantic scrabblings. She’s probably hunting people… and then rolling in them.
Abby has silent dreams of private pain and it’s hard for an outsider to comprehend what goes on behind her crinkled brow. She whimpers occassionally, but usually her rest is merely disturbed by a great heaving sigh. No doubt she’s dreaming that she’s found a full food bowl, with both the kibbles AND the bits untouched by the ever-hungering beagle. She settles down for a meal and then realizes… it’s only a dream. (Sigh)
Bella doesn’t sleep at night. She sits up worrying. And worrying makes her thirsty. In the dead of night she bypasses Jessie’s thrashing, questing paws, and she sidesteps Abby’s slumber, and she makes her way on quivering legs to the water dish which she proceeds to empty in spectacular sloshing fashion. She knows it’s bad… she knows she’s sinning, but in the dead of night she hopes her doggy dieties can’t see her coveting heart and she eats and drinks her fill before she collapses into fitful slumber, dreaming perhaps of final canine judgement.
It’s 3am, post the Rusty Nail – and Jessie’s STILL hungry.
