Pets

Lately I have been using the Everyday Matters drawing challenges to practice with watercolors. Colored pencil works will return soon, I promise! The Everyday Matters challenge this week is to draw a cat. I don't have a cat but I used to. Her name was Esther and she was all white with green eyes. I did this sketch from an old photo taken of her sometime between Nov. 1990 and March 1991, while she was playing with a catnip mouse. It is in my small hand.book journal.

I got Esther when I was still in college, after I had moved into my first apartment. She endured several moves from one apartment to another, a summer boarding with a friend while I went off to New York, and moving with me to North Carolina for graduate school, back to Cincinnati, and back again to North Carolina. In spite of all that she hated change and was a cat with quite an attitude.

When hubby and I bought our first house it wasn't long before we got a dog. Henry was a brown and white (they are really called 'liver and white') English Springer Spaniel. Esther maintained an attitude of total disdain for Henry. If he so much as looked at her she would hiss and swat his nose. He soon learned not to look at her, even though he developed a strong loyalty towards Esther. He would ease along beside her, all the while not looking directly at her, and manage to settle down right beside her. We often found them together sleeping butt-to-butt on the sofa. When Henry was about two years old we had to have Esther put to sleep due to health problems. I don't think her ever forgot her. Soon after, there was a white cat from the neighborhood that enjoyed sitting on our fence. Henry would cry and whimper whenever he saw that cat.

Henry was the best dog. He had two lives, his life before Kiddo was born, when he was our baby, and his life after her arrival in which he graciously gave over his role as our baby to become Kiddo's protector. He had his eyes poked, ears pulled and was even used as a step stool by a climbing toddler trying to scale the couch, all without one complaint.

When Henry was twelve and beginning to show signs of slowing down we got a new puppy, Sara, a Welsh Corgie. Sara was a spitfire as a puppy. She had had a difficult time at birth, had to be bottle fed, and as a result didn't get her tail docked as they usually do. Well, we weren't going to do that. So she sports a big fluffy tail along with her over-sized ears and ridiculously short legs. She looks like a dog designed by a committee that ran out of funds.
Henry stepped right in and taught Sara the routine of life with us. We believe that having her around gave him a sense of purpose and extended his life by a couple of years. Towards the end, when Henry could barely see and was deaf as a post, it was Sara that looked after him. Henry lived to be 15, quite a long time for a dog that size. The sketch above is Sara napping by the back door, done in my watercolor Moleskine journal.

Now Sara has always been kind of prissy. We believe she thinks of herself as a cat as much as a dog. We call her 'The Princess', deservedly so. When Henry was no longer with us all the spark left Sara. She wouldn't be engaged in play and grumbled, stomping away most times we tried to pet her. We also missed Henry terribly. So we got Sam, another Springer, but black and white this time. Here is one of two pen and ink sketch I did of Sam sleeping the other evening. In addition to watercolor I have been trying to get in practice sketching in ink.
Sara soon perked up after the arrival of Sam, who at first was smaller than she is but soon grew to over twice her size. Sara treated Sam as her own puppy and quickly taught him the ropes. Although she sometimes fusses at him, and he teases her, they are terribly devoted to one another. Sam is big for a Springer, big and goofy and sweet as can be. We took him to obedience school last summer where he was the star pupil. Kiddo took responsibility for much of his care when he was still a puppy and they are now inseparable. Sammie has been very good for our little family.

One of the things that amuses me is the little tidbits of knowledge that seems to get passed from one pet to the next. For example, none of our dogs have ever been feed canned dog food. Esther the cat was at times fed canned cat food. She would come running whenever she heard a can being opened. So Henry dog learned to come running whenever he heard one of us opening a can. Sara scurries into the kitchen at the sound of a can opener, and so now does Sam. So I wonder, what other secrets have been passed down from one pet to the next?