My Own Series

Tonight I was engaged in my usual Saturday night occupation, lying on the sofa watching PBS. I was enjoying the last minutes of American Masters, the subject of which was Garrison Keillor, when I realized that, although I was not wearing red shoes, I was being enveloped in a Lake Woebegon monologue on my own couch. There is a need for a bit of back story here. I am dog sitting for my daughter. She and her boyfriend have a JackRat terrier and a shaggy mini-dachshund who are both very well behaved. So is the boy friend, I might add, giving you some indication of just who is doing the training. While this evening it seemed that there was the need to fly out the front door barking with untempered ferocity at least seven times, there wasn't really anything unusual going on, other than the addition of the two dogs. One dog and one cat plus two dogs does not equal three dogs and one cat. It is a geometric increase that is hard to describe unless you are fully involved in the resulting product. Nonetheless, things had at last quieted down.

It began rather simply: Nick WhiteCat took his accustomed 10:37PM place on the end of the lounge section of the couch. Nick's ascent to the sofa apparently upset the animal aura, and order, in the room. I became vaguely aware of the thump-thump-thumping of the tail of a small dog against the leg of the coffee table. Fearing the worst, I looked down to see the shiny black button doll eyes of Ziggy Flash, the dachshund, staring expectantly from me, to the other end of the sofa, and back to me again. My response was a clear and decisive, "No!" immediately following which the other small dog, Holly Berry, jumped up to take the spot Ziggy was coveting. "No. Off!" No response except the continued thumping of a feathery mahogany tail against a thrift store table. "Holly, off!" Her undershot jaw created a smile. "I said, 'OFF!'"

The thumping stopped and somehow the 8" tall dog managed a sideways and upward leap of 18" in the blink of an eye. Holly curled up against me, Ziggy found his place against the far arm of the sofa, and suddenly the cushions wobbled precipitously as Diego planted all 72 pounds of his jealous self between me and the cat.

"No! Get down!" It was as though my ordinarily excellent oral communication skills were suddenly replaced by unintelligible squeals and grunts that, when interpreted by canines, became something like, "I wish you would join me up here on this already small apartment-sized sofa. I really love it when I'm surrounded by a shedding long haired cat, a dog with weapons-grade halitosis, a dog whose desire to romance the red sofa pillow is seemingly insatiable, and a dog who regularly belches like a fifth grade boy."

I was shocked at how quickly I had become one of those middle-aged women on some bizarre TV series on TLC: supine in flannel pajamas, a wayward piece of popcorn in my cleavage, unable to find the remote, my glasses, or my cell phone. Memories whipped through my mind of having been college educated, having raised wonderful children, having sophisticated and intelligent friends, owning several cocktail dresses, but it all seemed so distant now that I was trapped on a cheap microfiber sectional in my own home. I tried to move, but I was stopped in my tracks by a huge discharge of static electricity triggered by my poly-cotton-spandex granny jammies, the breathing pelts, and all those yards of microfiber. Usually when I yell at animals they DO something, at least look at me, but it had become very clear that I was no longer in control of the situation. Even the sofa was in on it.

A buzzing reminder timer went off on my cell somewhere nearby. The cat looked startled , letting me know that I had located one of the missing devices. Using this momentary distraction, I reached over Diego, grabbed the phone from underneath Nick, and moved one dog off my leg. The swift movement created the few seconds that I needed to regain my composure, break the horrifying image of myself that had rapidly developed in my mind's eye, and roll free of what had become quite literally a dog pile.

Working my way to a sitting position on the outermost edge of the sofa, I grabbed the remote from under the letter from the sanitation department announcing the rate increase for flushing, and I shut off the TV. All animal heads became attentive, focused on the now-blackened wall-mounted rectangle. EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THAT MEANS. IT MEANS IT'S BED TIME. It means time to get off the sofa. It means time to wait at the bottom of the stairs until I set the alarm: beep-beeeeeeeeeep. It means saying, "Goodnight, boys," and hearing the cat yowl his feline blessings. It means following me up the stairs, circling four times beside the bed, and then harumphing down onto the floor. Holly went to her dog bed. Ziggy was supposed to be in his bed downstairs, but instead raced ahead of me up the stairs and was looking at me with a guilty stare, like some Beanie Baby come to life and feeling rather badly about it. It was time for me to complete my part of the ritual, to climb into the double bed, to take my proper place after the television is shut off for the night, but I could not.

It is possible that I am in my proper place, sitting at the computer writing some nonsense yet again. Stories sometimes need to be spilled out when they are fresh, then rearranged and remixed to create the image that exists so vividly in my mind, wherever that is. And now we will all be in our proper places. Now that the words are on cyber paper, I can sleep. And when I am asleep, Diego will make his way back downstairs and onto the sofa where the little doggies will probably join him. He thinks I don't know, but Nick told me. OH, DAMMIT. See? There I go again: I'm only a few more cat conversations away from my own series on TLC.