What not to say...

This afternoon, Myrtle awoke to find that I had pressed my forehead against hers on the pillow, my curls tangled with her own locks.  I thought she would find it comforting, especially since my puppy momma (for no reason I can fathom) just loves my snoring.  However, the FIRST words out of her mouth were: "Your breath stinks!"

Without even giving me a kiss or thanking me for snuggling with her or showing the slightest bit of attention to me, Myrtle rolled over, reached for her computer, and logged on to Amazon.com, muttering about ordering toothpaste and a toothbrush for me.

SIGH.

You know, Myrtle has terrible nightmares, and I work real hard to give her lots and lots and lots of different kinds of comfort in bed.  I chew bones on her belly, I press my back against hers, I curl up at her feet, I hold onto her arm with my paws, I sleep with my face in the palm of her outstretched hand, and I serve as a pillow for her.  And, yet, after working that hard and even thinking up a brand new way to comfort her, my reward was an insult!
 
I do not feel much loved today.


This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off.

Wordsworth is right...

In his poem "Michael," Wordsworth has a bit that reads:
 
There is a comfort in the strength of love;
’Twill make a thing endurable, which else

Would overset the brain, or break the heart: 

(450-452)

Love for my puppy momma Myrtle is all that got me through the recent trip we took.  That's me there, on the far bed, loving Myrtle with my whole being so as not to end up with an overset brain when she returned.

What you cannot see is this very-nice-but-still-terrifying woman who came to stay with me in the hotel room whilst my puppy momma went to her father's funeral.  The woman was kind and quiet.  In fact, when she came into the room, she immediately sat down on the floor, put out some treats, and turned her face away from me.  Like I said, nice woman.  But she was also a stranger.  And from all the time Myrtle spent in front of a mirror prior to the woman arriving, I knew my puppy momma was going to be leaving me.  These days, Myrtle is rarely in front of a mirror.

I don't remember my birth father or birth mother.  I don't remember my brothers and sister either, but Myrtle says I do.  She says I remember them each time I drape myself atop her.  Draping really is comfortable.  I am not sure why she thinks I learned that from my siblings, but I try not to argue much with Myrtle.  It upsets her so.

As you can see on the bed in the photo above and the one here, Myrtle brought lots of pillows and blankets from home so that we would both be comfortable in a strange bed.  The woman who came to stay with me was willing to play with me, but it was all I could do to wait for Myrtle's return.  I had my pillows and blankets and my babies, but I didn't have Myrtle.  I prefer her to all the rest.  I definitely prefer her to being alone, especially being alone with strangers, even if the stranger is a nice person who knew better than to stick her hand in my face and scare me more.  

Seriously, why do folk think I want them sticking their hands in my face when we meet?  Everyone does it.  Most do it even after my puppy momma explains that I do not like it.  I guess it is some sort of weird human ritual I will never be able to understand.  Frankly, it is one I think ought to be discarded.

To go to Myrtle's father's funeral, we ended up driving in the car for four days.  I had not been in the car in just over a year.  So, I found that part of the trip a tad discombobulating.  For a long while, Myrtle and I had a disagreement over where I would be sitting.  I am sure you can guess who proved the wiser head.  Sometimes I wonder just how much longer it is going to take to properly train my puppy momma.

Two of the four days were spent riding in the car with my beloved Aunt Bettina.  I've known her almost as long as I have known Myrtle, even though I do not get to see her all that often.  This is a photo of when we first met.  Isn't she beautiful?  Am I not just the most adorable little fellow on the planet?  

Pretty much, Aunt Bettina is perfect.  She loves me and lets me give her kisses and is a great snuggler.  Really, she only has two small flaws.  For one, she is a bit parsimonious about her food.  [Notice I did not use the word greedy.  Frugality is the kindest construction I can think of to explain why she would not want to share freely with me.]  As for the second flaw, Aunt Bettina had absolutely no desire to have me in her lap whilst she was driving us in the car.  Given that it was mighty cold outside, I am just plain flummoxed as to why it is that she would not want a lap warmer or a fluffy pillow rest for her hands.  I tried very hard to convince her of my value, but my Aunt Bettina can be rather firm in her opinions.  I, on the other hand, am the epitome of flexibility!

This was me loving Myrtle some more.  Perhaps, this was harder than loving her in the hotel room.  My, are gas stations terrifying places!  

Veritable hoards of terrifying people walk right past the car, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  For some reason, my puppy momma did not want me to pump gas with her or go inside to fetch tasty tidbits to keep her and Aunt Bettina sated whilst traveling down the road.  I had yet another opportunity to gird my loins and stifle my fear.

Sadly, gas stations are all about about people and not puppies.  At least, as far as I can tell.  After all, Myrtle did not bring any tasty tidbits for me when she came back to the car.  She also was disinclined to share her tasty tidbits.

I will say that what I disliked most about the trip were the terrifying folk who forced my puppy momma to hand over money in order to drive on their roads.  They were entirely too close to us for my comfort.  I tried really hard to defend and to protect Myrtle for them, but for some reason she did not care for my loving attention.  In fact, on the way home, Myrtle trussed me up like a chicken for the oven so that I could not get near those folk.  I cannot fathom how this could be so, but one big, burly man took exception to my loving defense of my puppy momma and switched sides of the road with a small woman.

Mostly, I will say that funeral trips are about hours traveling, hours being alone, and hours and hours of weeping.  Actually, Myrtle has been wailing as well as weeping.  Her whole body shakes with her tears and she sometimes has difficulty breathing.  Hours will go by, sometimes even days now, where she is my normal puppy momma, and then the crying starts up again.  When she cries, Myrtle also does a lot of squeezing me tight. 

I will say that I have found loving someone is hard, very hard, because it means a lot of worrying.  I worry about Myrtle so much that I need extra naps just to recover.  I worry about her when she is in the shower.  Sometimes she falls in there, but often I worry because I know she is crying in there.  We both pretend, when she gets out, that there is only water on her face.  I worried at the toll booths and at the gas station.  I worried with her driving so much.  And I most definitely worried about her when she was at the funeral.  I was nearly overset with worry then.

But, like Wordsworth wrote, love is a powerful thing.  It can help you do more than you thought could do, be more than you thought you were.  If you had told me that I would stay with a stranger in a strange room in a strange city for hours on end, I would have told you that you were just plain nuts.  But it happened.  I did.  And I survived.

Life with my puppy momma has changed.  She is more tired.  She is weaker. And she is more ... fragile.  She often clings to me as if she things I am going to disappear right before her eyes.  Of course, I supposed I should admit that were she not clinging to me so fiercely, I would be holding on to her.  Living in this world is hard.  There are Fearsome Beasts and GREEN grass and now road trips and funerals.

I have asked and asked and asked her to write, but always she would say that another time would be a better one.  I told her today that perhaps there will be no better times, since they never seem to come. I told her that perhaps we need to get better at living in the not-so-much-better times.  And I told her that I wanted to start writing down our days together again.

The more I think on it, I believe it was love that made my puppy momma able to keep that pit bull from killing me.  I believe it is love that got us back on the streets when she could still walk.  I know it was love that made me face my fear long enough for her to go to the funeral.  And I am certain it is love that made Myrtle give me my first taste of bacon today.

Without love, this would world would be too hard.  Our minds and bodies would be too broken to get through a single day, much less than the now two years I have lived with my puppy momma.  

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!