February 8, 2014

From Jim McGuiggan... ETHEL & CASSIE

ETHEL & CASSIE   

Some of you might know that I live with a little Yorkie called Cassie. She’s maybe seven inches tall, eighteen inches long and weighs about seven pounds. I bought her for my Ethel something over seven years ago and the two of them finally got along famously until Ethel went away. She didn’t want to go; she just couldn’t stay. Cassie—we called her after my mother—well, actually, my mother’s name was Catherine and only her peers called her “Cassie”. We called her nothing but “mother”. Well, that’s not exactly what we called her. Our working class speech conventions helped, no doubt, by phonetic laziness, had shortened it to “mor”. Fathers were called “far”. (As in, "Where duz your far work?" or, "I saw your mor at the shop a wee while ago.")
In any case my little dog Cassie—I call her “my” little dog not in the sense of  “ownership” for if either of us owns the other she owns me. She’s bi-lingual, fluent in Dogese and English. Her proficiency in English has grown exponentially in the last four years; her vocabulary is massive and she has mastered the idioms while I’m still a complete dunce in Dogese, despite Cassie’s patient instruction, which I notice has fallen off over this past year and more. I can speak a few Dogese words that I can’t spell—that’s it. Of course I don’t even know if Dogese has an alphabet. As best I can determine, Dogese is only a spoken language. I don't know, maybe that’s a good thing.
I need hardly tell you that it gobsmacked me when I first heard her speak to me. “Do you think we’ll be eating any time soon?” the voice said, “I’m close to starvin’. My ribs are starin’ at each other.” It was a small voice, clear enough but anything but booming and since I don't hear very well I often doubt what I hear or think I hear. In any case, I looked around (I live with our daughter Linda and her family in their basement—she calls it the “first floor,” her husband, Stan, calls it “the dungeon”)—as I said, I looked around and there was no one but Cassie and me. I stared at her for a minute and she finally nodded, “Yes, I know, a bit of a shock. It’s me. So now you know.”
I sat down stunned, she let me chew on it even while I spluttered things like “but…” or “This must be a…” But just then my mind leaped back several years to puzzling experiences that might have made me suspicious if the truth hadn’t seemed so preposterous. Like several times when I walked into the bedroom and Ethel was talking earnestly to Cassie. (Ethel had to spend a lot of time in bed in the last years.) I thought I’d heard two voices and once when I was opening the door I was close to convinced that I heard Ethel say, “Shush, here’s Jim.” Then there was the time when I heard the two of them laughing (I now know it must have been the two of them) at the antics of some characters on the Andy Griffiths Show. By the time I got the door open, though Ethel was still laughing, Cassie had burrowed under the blanket. I ran over, pulled back the blanket and Cassie had that happy but ordinary dog look—you know, tongue out, bright eyes, button black nose and…ordinary.
I looked at the two of them, they glanced at each other, Ethel giggled and Cassie buried her head under Ethel’s arms, her wee body shaking. I now know it wasn’t from effort at snuggling in close to Ethel—the little rascal was muffling her laughter. What a dope I was. As soon as I left the room Ethel began to squeal with laughter, I ducked my head back in and she pointed at the TV—or was it at me since the TV sat right inside beside the door? But how could I have known? As the days went by they must have taken more care and, anyway, the months became more sobering and it was getting near time for Ethel to leave.
The last time I caught a glimpse of anything of that sort was one day I came home, Ethel was in the wheelchair and tearful, Cassie was up on her hind legs on the wee tabletop, front paws on Ethel’s shoulders with her head snuggled into her neck. Perhaps I should have known there was something between them that was beyond special.
It took me several months to come to terms with Cassie’s giftedness that was way beyond just being able to speak, and speak English. To do that she must be able to—well, never mind—there’s more to speaking English than speaking English.
I tried to tell Linda and our younger son George that Cassie spoke English but how can you get people to take you seriously when you say things like that? I brought them in to see Cassie and I asked her to say something, anything, but she’d just put on that ordinary-dog act and scratch her ear or jump up on to their laps, some such thing. Linda and George were only there because I insisted that they come down and listen to her but the humor soon wore off—In her silence Cassie triumphed.
 
Maybe I'll continue this. I'm not sure.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com

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