Reverb 2. Stupid

Dear Kittens,

This Reverb prompt is: What is the stupidest thing you did this year? What about in your whole life? You can take stupid to mean: embarrassing, dangerous, funny, lame, whatever you consider “stupid.

This is super hard for me because I’m one of those people that thinks even the bad things that happen to her are good because I learned me a lesson. Oh, okay. I’ve got one. Not about this year, but three years ago.

Three years ago in November my old cat, Roo, died while I was on a trip to Europe with Andy and my parents. He died exactly 18 years to the day that he came home to live with us. He was old and sick and exceptionally grouchy and while we were sad about this death, we were not surprised and there was more than just a small amount of relief that we didn’t need to care for an ailing, grouchy cat anymore. 11 days after Roo died, the kitty love of my life, Petey Pete Peter von Fluffenberg was killed by a car. This sounds dramatic, but I assure that it’s true, when I realized that Petey was dead (a neighbor found him in the street and kindly put him in a box on our porch with a note) my heart felt like someone had punched it. I sank to my knees and howled from the pain of that loss. I have lost people that I loved and it didn’t hurt as badly as losing that cat. I was a mess for weeks after his death.

And then I thinked up something super great. LET’S GET A PUPPY. Oh yes, while I was still waist deep in grief, I thought, “the best thing for me right now is to get an impossibly cute, stubborn, smart, sharp toothed ball of pee and poop.” THAT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

There is not enough HA’s in the world to express how incredibly stupid that decision was. I researched breeds. I thought about what I wanted in a dog. I thought about the sort of dog owner I wanted to be. I bought dog training books. I sought out advice from friends and the Internet. I watched TV shows about dogs. I started talking to dog owners in our neighborhood. I was prepared. Instead 5 million haha’s right here. Through the advice of an aquaintence, I chose a breeder and ordered me a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. I wish I could remember the name the breeder gave him, it might have been Oscar. Anyway, I saw photos of him and I was smitten. Then he arrived. And I took one look at that leggy puppy and I thought, “oh my God. What the hell have I done?”

Getting a dog was not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but getting a dog a mere 3 months after I experienced such a huge loss, was. I did not have the emotional reserves to deal with such a challenging dog. This puppy marched into the house and looked around and said to himself, “yes, this will do. I will ruin these peoples lives and it will be AWESOME.” You guys, I truly believed that because I had once owned 3 cats at the same time that I was prepared for a puppy. A puppy! Maybe you don’t know this, but dogs are a tremendous amount of work. I tried very hard to do things on my own, but at some point I started to second guess myself and Murray saw that oportunity and asserted himself. I cried every single day for a month because dealing with a puppy was too much for me. I was lucky to have an extremely patient and supportive friend at the time who encouraged me, but man, that was hard. Finally, I called a dog trainer and the second he walked through our front door, things got better and I felt way smarter.

Love, Catie

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