***
I park the car -- sloppily, I suck at parking -- near the far end of the lot, because all these ijjits in big SUVs take up so damn much room. Phone in my pocket, it reads 2:15. I need to remember to keep checking it, 'cuz I hafta be back home before six.
I go through the automatic doors and stroll directly through the store to the back, and there's the familiar chaos: dogs barking, people chatting, volunteers standing around waiting for something to do.
The two folding tables first, closest to the door, holding Judy's laptop and all the paperwork and stuff. A few chairs behind it for the volunteers, and some chairs on the other side for people to sit while the adoption papers are filled out.
Judy's got the mop, cleaning up Brad's latest slug-trail. When he whizzes and craps, he leaves them behind like a snail's slime trail. That beagle is such an attention junkie, and he's a pig -- he's so fat! Not surprising, since he can't use his back legs. Got hit by a car, messed up his back. He could walk after the accident, but he jumped off the roof of the doghouse in his run, and now he has his own doggy wheelchair. Judy made a plywood cover for the chair, and Bradley the beagle has a sleigh for the holidays. Cute.
Judy looks up as I approach and smiles, her round face creasing around her eyes, peering through shaggy sandy-blonde bangs. "Hey there, Ann!" she greets me, cheerful as always.
I grin back. "Hey Judy. Hey Brad," I add, leaning down to scratch the beagle's liver-and-white head. He's out of his chair for the moment, dragging his fat self along by his front paws. He does the greatest sea lion impression -- all I have to do is scratch under his chin, and Brad points his nose up at the ceiling.
There are two crates closest to the tables. One is empty, the other has a reddish lab-mix curled up in it, and a black and white Jack Russel terrier. "Handsome," reads the lab's papers, and "Ted" is the Jack. As I pass, I poke my hand into the crate.
"Hey Teddy!" I croon at the Jack, smiling at Ted's enthusiastically wagging stub-tail. "What's up wit'chew, little spaz?" Teddy licks my fingers and wiggles, his brown eyes bright.
"Ann!" calls the volunteer in the big pen. One side of the big pen is attached to the two crates up front, and the opposite side similarly clipped onto two more crates.
"Hey Sydney! Long time no see," I tell the volunteer, smiling at the lanky girl. "I see you have a lapful," I observe wryly, looking at the black and tan knot on her folded legs.
Sydney rolls her eyes. "Yep. Gabby wouldn't leave me alone until I let her get up here." She strokes the back of the dog in her lap. Another beagle -- Tri County was originally a beagle rescue, so there's a lot of beagles and small dogs.
Except for the bony, rail thin lab-boxer mix in one of the far crates. His name is Romo, and as big as he is, that mutt should be sixty or seventy pounds. He's likely closer to forty, because he's emaciated. He eats like a horse, but getting him back to fighting weight is a long process.
Speaking of fighting -- the tiny, dark scars on his face and legs make me think his former owner fought him. Romo is certainly agressive enough to have been fought, though only in certain circumstances. He doesn't like men on the other side of the fence from him. Other than that, Romo is a sweetheart.
The rattling of the big pen's fence wakes me up, and a smile comes to my lips. "Hello Tracy," I croon, stepping up to the fence to pet the blue heeler mix about to turn herself inside out in excitement. Her head is mostly black, but the rest of her has the heeler's salt-and-pepper mix of black, gray and white hairs. Her fur is so thick and soft. Tracy seems about to knock the fence over, so I unhook the gate and slip inside so she can claw me and not the fence.
As soon as I'm inside, predictably half the dogs in the pen come to say hello. I sink into a crouch to let them investigate, and Tracy promptly tackles me, making me overbalance and fall onto my back. Tracy sits on my chest and covers my face with saliva.
Sydney laughs and tries to pull the enthusiastic mutt from me. "Tracy, c'mere, silly girl. Let Ann breathe."
"Naw, it's okay. Yes, I love you too, Tracy. Yes. Lick lick lick, liiiiick lick lick, wag tail tail. Tail wag, wag tail. Tail. Lick lick, yes. Lick." My monologue only seems to encourage Tracy. It takes a few moments for her to stop licking every inch of my face she can reach. Finally, I can sit up, and I use my shirt sleeve to remove the worst of the slobber.
***
"Hey Aaaann, guess whaaaat?" Judy says in a sing-song voice, grinning hopefully at me with the cat keys in hand.
With a sigh of mock long-suffering, I remove Gabby the beagle from my lap and stand up. "You need me to clean the cat cages," I respond, smiling. Cat duty has been my job since about the time I started volunteering.
Judy hands me the keys, and I make my way through the store toward the cat room, swerving around Petsmart shoppers. The thing in my hand is actually a collection of about five keys -- only three of which work on the padlocks on the cat cages -- attached to what I suspect used to be one of the toys like you'd hang in a parrot cage. It's several loops of thick rope, with square blocks seeming embedded in the rope, and someone has written the letters T-C-A-R on those blocks. "TCAR" is the initials of the shelter: Tri-County Animal Rescue. Also attached to the rope keychain is one of those gray, shapeless plastic things that makes the detectors at the front of the store squeal in case someone tries to steal the keys, though why someone would steal the cat keys is beyond me.
The cat room is a small closet-like space set into one wall of the store. The wall that faces the store is glass, so that people can look in and see the cats. There are ten cages stacked up in two rows against the far wall, and a space between the cages and the glass wall that is barely wide enough for two people to walk. This makes more than two people standing in the cat room a bit awkward, even though the room is ten feet or so long.
As soon as I enter, the stuffy climate of the room makes me wince inwardly. There's poor ventilation, and the only way to keep the cat room from getting unbearably close (and smelly) is to keep the door open. Here's the rub: you have to keep the door closed while you're cleaning the cages, or else a cat might get out into the store. The Airwick puffer-dispenser thing perched on top of the cages does nothing to mask the scent of feline bodily waste.
The first thing I do is to unlock all the cages, checking the bowls of food and water on the cage doors to see if anyone needs a refill. One of the cats is a young adult black DSH male named Sammy Lee. Sammy kicks up a racket when I walk in, meowing and begging to be paid attention to. Sammy is an attention junkie, just like Brad. Sammy Lee doesn't like other cats, but he loves people. He won't shut up if someone's in the room until he gets petted.
Because Sammy is so sweet and loveable, I open up his cage and sit in it (it's on the bottom row) and let Sammy climb into my lap. He starts purring as soon as I open the cage door, and immediately stops meowing. He has what he wants. I sit there for a few minutes, loving on Sammy. He sprawls out on my lap, happy as a clam, his eyes narrowed to slits and purring like a motor. Happy Sammy.
But I have a job to do, so eventually I have to peel the cat off my lap and get to work. Sam yowls again when I close the cage door. I ignore him and start cleaning -- getting the crap and wee out of the litterboxes and putting more litter in there if needs be, exchanging dirty laundry (the cats have beds in each cage and a blanket between them and the metal floor) for clean laundry, sweeping the grit off of the cage floor if I need to; general maintainence. I sweep the cat room floor, put the dirty laundry into a black trash bag I got from Judy and double-bag the dirty litter in the flimsy white trash bags that are the only kind I could find in the cat room, and I'm done cleaning. Now it's time to play with the kitties.
I take Sammy Lee out of his cage and hold his black, purring, fat self in my arms for a while. Sammy just chills; he'll sit in your arms for as long as you're willing to hold him. But since Sammy is a little fat, my arms get tired before Sam is ready to go back. He meows accusingly at me when I put him back in his cage.
"Get over yourself, Sammy, you've had your turn," I tell him sternly. He just keeps meowing.
Next, I play for a little bit with a lanky several-week-old black DSH kitten named Bunker. Bunker is a spaz. He has more personality and energy in his little toe than a dog Romo's size has in his whole body. I love Bunker.
I take Bunker out of his cage and put him on the floor, and play with the feather-toy that all the cats salivate over. They adore the feather toys, and rip them up. Bunker has a blast chasing the feather toy around in circles and figure-eights. I laugh hysterically at his antics. Bunker's legs are too long, so he sometimes trips over them. His kitten-ness is adorable.
When it looks like Bunker is a bit pooped, I pick him up again. Bunker is very affectionate; he starts purring when I hold him. He lets me cradle him on his back. Bunker also likes it when I let him hang out on my head. I lift him up there and he chills out, his chest resting on the top of my head. I cup my hand behind his bum to keep him up there. His front paws hang in my eyes, and I blow my breath on them to tease him. I can see his little chin just above my brow. It's too cute. Bunker tries to eat my hair while he's parked out on my head.
***
When I get back to the dog pen, Matt, one of the younger volunteers, is tormenting Pepper with a lazer-pointer. Pepper is a six-month-old border collie owned by Anne, one of the adult volunteers. Being a border collie, Pepper has strong chase-and-herd instincts. She is fixated on the spot of red on the floor, and Matt makes her spin in circles trying to eat that damn redbug. Anne watches in amusement. "If you ever wondered how to drive a border collie crazy...," she remarks wryly.
Matt has two lazer-pointers. He tosses me the other one, and between the two of us we drive poor Pepper to distraction, because now there's two redbugs. She can't figure out which one to chase. Eventually Anne takes pity on her dog and tells us to stop making Pepper nuts. Matt goes to answer the phone. Sydney has left by this time, so I'm on my own in the dog pen.
It's the after-lunch-and-bathroom-break naptime for the dogs. I managed to escape the extra chaos of feeding time when I was cleaning cats. Lunchtime for TCAR's dogs at Petsmart is always eventful for the volunteers, because about ten minutes after the food is put down the inevitable flood of excrement is unleashed. What goes in must come out....
But by now the food bowls have already been mostly taken up and the food knocked onto the floor by klutzy dogs swept up, so now everyone is dozing. And all the volunteers breathe a sigh of relief at the calm and quiet. Because all is peaceful in the big pen, I decide to spend some quality time with Romo.
For all his bark, Romo is a big softie. He wags his tail as I crawl into the crate with him, and I see in his dark eyes how happy he is that someone decided to make him not so lonely. We have to keep Romo in a crate because it's easy for him to climb out of the big pen.
Romo's bony self is a bit sharp. His hipbones, hocks and elbows are pointy and hurt if they dig into you. His tail is long and whip-like. Some of the younger volunteers who are familiar with him joke that Romo's tail is a deadly weapon that could slice things. It hurts to be hit by Romo's tail.
Despite this, I pull Romo into my lap when I'm comfortably seated in the crate. He's a pushover, so he lets me shove him around and pull on him without batting an eye. But when a man strolls around the big pen, a growl rumbles from Romo's muzzle, puffing out his tawny jowls.
I wrap my hand around his muzzle and pull Romo's face against my own to look sternly into his eyes. "Hush, Romo," I tell him. There's no problem with me putting my hands around Romo's face and mouth, because I know Romo won't hurt me. If I didn't trust him, I wouldn't be in the crate. But despite the bite-scars on his face and legs -- the usual places dogs are bitten in illegal dogfights -- and the warning growls that bubble up from his chest when men walk by, I trust Romo.
When Judy notices Romo's growling, she sighs and remarks that Romo would be a perfect dog for a single woman who wants a living security system. And she's right, that would be Romo's perfect home. Judy sees how I can pull Romo all over the place and shakes her head, smiling. "Look at that! He's putty in your hands, Ann," Judy says. And he is.
I check my phone regularly, and sigh with regret when it tells me the time is 5:30. Time to head home. I worm my way out of Romo's cage, pulling his head to me to plant a last fond kiss on the knob on his skull that some dogs have. "Bye Romo," I say, scratching the tan mutt's ears one last time before I leave. Romo wags his tail, looking at me with wide eyes that seem to say, "I don't want you to leave."
I wave to Judy and Anne and Sandy as I stroll toward the doors. "Bye everybody!"
"See ya, Ann! Thanks for coming!" Judy says, grinning at me.
I walk through the now-dark parking lot and find my car, the little blue Prius looking small and dapper next to the huge Ford truck parked next to it. I slide into the driver's seat and punch the "on" button, and hum to the Sugar Ray CD playing instead of the Christmas tunes that took over my favorite radio station.
