At one point we lived in a western suburb of Chicago. That was where we found George. George would be lurking around the neighborhood, in the bushes and very friendly. With his big wild eyed expression and longish snarley fur, George was a grizzly bear version of a cat. I watched him track an opossum along the fence between the back yards once. George's hair was dirty grey and matted. He could have been mistaken for the opossum in a line up if you just saw their backs. After I saw that I knew George's character was excellent. He had imagination and was fearless. When we took him in permanently, George became very devoted and loyal and he proved an excellent watch cat, making his territory our yard and keeping every dog in the neighborhood at bay, and fearful of walking past our house. We absolutely adored him.
When we moved to Minnesota, we took George. We put him in a huge cage in the back of the Mazda Navajo. And so we left Chicago, dragging a trailer; which had nothing to do with George, but was just really hard for me to maneuver, and I hated it. We landed in the rural backwaters of Minnesota, pretty milktoast as backwaters go and at some point must have realized something was missing. Ah, that was it, a dog! Hello Mudflap, a blue healer/ Australian sheep dog mix, who killed and masticated every free ranging rodent in a 1 acre radius from our house, and would have killed George too, but George steered clear of him. Mudflap didn't last, for shame, tragically lost in a dogs at play incident. Over the course of the next year we adopted an Alaskan husky named Skylar who had a tendency to run long distances (and got hit by a car on the highway), and finally a 2 year old yellow lab, the discard of a messy divorce, from a guy I knew at work. The yellow lab's name was Buster, and Buster was perfect for our family in his own confidant, sloppy, happy, self determined, disobedient way.
When my son was about four he introduced us to Little Black Kitty. I still remember the evening. It was just turning dark, and I remember seeing my son out in the yard in silouette. He was trying to catch hold the cat, who I think was trying to be caught. She was a little black female kitten cat, that eventually came to reside on a shelf in our garage because George wouldn't let her in the house. My son, over the course of a year called her by a lot of different names, but not being able to keep up with his changes we finally just referred to her as Little black kitty and it stuck. We thought Little black kitty was pregnant for at least 6 months, till we moved to Maryland, and the vet told us she'd been spayed, and showed us the scar to prove it. We also had a big furry George like Hamster, can't recall the breed, but it looked like a pale dust mop.
So when we moved to Maryland, we had two cats, a dog, and a hamster, in the Mazda Navajo, and I was trailing another big pain- in -the- ass trailer full of pet supplies among other things. I soon discovered that Buster was my best traveling companion, because he didn't complain, and he didn't need bathroom breaks. I felt like I was traveling in the dryer's lint cage, or that hairy feeling you have after a Veterinary clinic appointment with your pet. You need a shower, and a lint brush for your tongue, if you made the mistake of consulting with the vet in the room, or whatever. I can't imagine what the Vet must feel like after a day at the office.
The great thing about Maryland was that the house was neutral ground. When we landed, George immediately moved to the heating ducts. We knew this about him because he did it the first couple of weeks in Minnesota. We would hear his plaintive calls muffled reverberating through the walls of the house, particularly in the basement. When he finally appeared at the end of a couple of weeks, he really did look like a dust mop. I introduced Little Black Kitty to the house, and she and George eventually, through her female persistence and attention, became fast friends. She was constantly grooming him, and eventually, he was hooked. Trucker 1 became Trucker 2, this time a Golden Hamster, and somehow we acquired a gecko lizard named Lizzy.
When we moved back to Minnesota for a second time, we traded the Mazda Navajo for a Jeep Cherokee something or other in Chicago, but we had Buster, George, Little Black Kitty, Lizzy, and well we lost Trucker 2. While we were packing, actually the day that we were moving, Harry took me into to his room to show me Trucker. Something was terribly wrong. Trucker was curled in a ball and breathing hard. Mommy, what are we going to do? When I looked at the heartbreak in my son's expression, well, I called the Vet. I swear to god the Vet had the biggest Shit eating grin you'll ever see, as he placed the stethoscope on that little hamster's chest and listened, and then explained to me the diagnosis. Trucker had an upper respiratory condition. He was three years old but that equated to 70 years in hamster life. He was an old man hamster. Here was the dilemma. He needed antibiotics. We could drive to Catonsville and get the proper dosage, or the vet could mix something for us. He warned me that an improper dosage could ruin the rodent's kidneys, and that he had never done this before. Since we were moving that day and the truck was loaded, i opted for the vet to mix it there. The vet also advised us that Trucker needed fluids every three hours, and medicine every six. Harry and i nodded. We understood, and i paid the forty dollar bill for a seven dollar hamster. No wonder the Vet could barely contain his mirth. Sadly, Trucker didn't make it very far, barely to Pennsylvania, two hours into our trip. We knew when he died because we smelled this brief foul odor ...a death fart. Even sadder, we had a stop in Ohio, at my mother's, and she wouldn't let me put the corpse in her freezer for the night. We had planned to bury him when we reached our Minnesota destination.
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