The Adventures of Zoe, the Wonder Dog
Loosey
Chapter 21
The story so far: James Dunning lost his job at the Record, and he and his wife had to rent their home out and move in with her mother, who was allergic to dogs. So James had to give up Zoe, his 12-year-old mostly blind lhasa apso. James left her, in the middle of the night, at the Pike County shelter. Kaja, a big red dog, came along, and together, the new friends set out to find James. Along the way, they met Loosey, a cat whose elderly owner had to go into a nursing home. They’ve made their way to Otisville, and have spent the night in a barn at the Piersons’ farm.
Frost rims the fallen leaves and field grass this November morning, as the three friends wake in their warm corner of the barn. Zoe loves the smell of the barn, the scents of hay and oats, horses and cows and old dry wood and night-cold air warming in the dawn.
Inside the barn, Kaja hears scrabbling in a corner, and a moment later, sees Loosey carrying a mouse in her jaws. Just as Loosey emerges from the dark back of the barn, the girl who let them in last night pulls the big barn door open and walks in carrying a bag of food.
“Oooh, kitty, good work!” she says, and takes the dead mouse by the tail and puts it in a trash barrel. “I feel bad for the mouse,” the girl says, “but they’ve been eating the horses’ food and just getting into everything. You’re a good barn cat, kitty girl. A couple days of you out here and we’d have no mouse problem at all.”
She reaches down to pat Loosey, and the big cat stretches and rubs against the girl’s legs, and begins purring, a loud tiny motor. It’s been a long time since any human had time for her, or words. Her woman had loved her, but she was sick for so long, and she was so sick and so weak that she could barely breathe, let alone pet Loosey. The daughter who finally came to help her didn’t like Loosey at all. The first thing she did was to banish her from her woman’s bedroom, even though the woman and Loosey both loved it when she curled up on the old woman’s bed.
So Loosey rubs now against the girl’s legs, and purrs and purrs and then, when the girl picks her up, Loosey rubs her face all over the girl’s neck and cheek. The girl holds her close, and whispers to her, and Loosey can smell her scent and hear her heart beating, and she knows this girl is young and healthy and maybe a little sad, and she decides that she will stay, if the girl will let her.
The three friends eat, and drink clear, clean water from a bowl the girl fills fresh for them, and then the dogs look down the driveway. The sun is just breaking over the tops of the trees, and it warms the dirt and the air in front of the barn. The girl stands in the doorway, and Loosey sits beside her. The cat’s white fur gleams in the sun.
Kaja noses the cat’s fur, and Loosey rubs against the dogs, Kaja first and then little Zoe. This is a good place for Loosey to stay, and the girl picks her up and strokes her fur as Zoe and Kaja trot away down the drive.
Little Zoe feels sad. It’s been a time of losses and leavings, and she’s just a little blind dog, tired and small and wanting to be home. The days are colder and colder, and the ground beneath her feet is harder and harder. The wind blows the smell of snow, and ice and winter, and though her coat has thickened, she can feel the cold against her skin.
Alone together, Kaja and Zoe trot along the edge of the road. On the other side of the road, horses gather along a fence, waiting for a person to come and feed them. Cars go by, and overhead, Canada geese fly together, honking at the wind. The sun begins to warm the air, and the frost vanishes, and then, all of a sudden, a huge, snarling dog lunges off the front porch of a small house and races toward them, barking and gnashing his teeth, and Zoe runs, runs into the road –
and into the path of a car, coming around the bend.
The dog lunges and jumps and growls and barks. The brakes on the car squeal. Kaja begins barking, and the car hits Zoe and the little dog drops to the pavement.
The door of the car opens, and a woman jumps out, shrieking and crying. She runs to Zoe and picks her up and holds her close. The little dog isn’t moving. The woman puts her head against Zoe’s chest, and cries and cries.
A car coming from the other direction stops, and a man gets out. A woman comes running from the house with the big mean dog, and she takes Zoe while the drivers pull their cars over, off the road. Kaja watches, nudging her way in, and sniffing at Zoe, and the woman from the house listens at Zoe’s chest, and pets her side and turns away.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
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