He Cooked

My dad cooked everyday.

And when he wasn't cooking for his heathen children, he was cooking for his other beastly creatures: the dogs.

Who cooks for their dogs?  Not as uncommon as you'd think, but Lord have mercy on me if I ever thought about cooking for my cats.

Spoiled enough, indeed.  The cats eat as often as Hobbits and have bellies and shiny coats to prove it.  They laze around like they live at the Chateau Marmont and yet they still have the audacity to ignore me when I could use a good cat-hug. 

And here I am now, drenched in the stench of a home-cooked meal.... for my dog.

Oy yes.  I need to back-track....

We kept the dog.

You knew we would, didn't you?  Go on, say it.  "I told you so..."

Well what no one told me was that I would no longer enjoy sleeping in quite as late as I'd like.  Penny Gwen, our poochy pooch, who sleeps beside us, is sure to paw at my face and dig her wet nose into my dry face as a way of saying "woman, I need to pee" in the wee hours of the morn.  And off we trot, us two, to the cold wet grasses of the morning so she can do her bi'ness. 

At least she does it outside.  What a good girl.  Now if I can only train her to enjoy sleeping in as much as I do.  Hmmmm.....

And she is also a finicky eater. 

But only the best for my spoiled-rotten pets.  I tried the first bag of expensive stuff and she turned her nose in disgust.  I told myself "I will not give in."  I decided to be the parent that my dad was when I was a child sitting sadly over a bowl of Corn Flakes (which I still have a strong disdain for...) and say "If you're hungry, you'll eat it."

And she did-  very reluctantly and with the saddest eyes.

And over the last weekI had to pretend not to see her anxiously wagging her tail and following me down the stairs into the kitchen.  And if the guilt overcame me, I would sprinkle some cheese over her food, and she was pleased.

And after the second "highly recommended by the experts" bag of dog chow didn't seem to please Penny, I resorted to mixing it with cheese, and then I got to thinking about the recipes my father would concoct for Bam-Bam, Lobo, Philly and the other large dogs we had in our youth.  (The names, by the by, were chosen by us kids...). And in this corner, weighing in at a mere 10 and a halfer, I decided to put some of the my dad's work to the test.

An egg (free-range and organic, of course), dry food, sprinkled cheese, a splash of olive oil and leftover carrots...

And in the end it smelled like death.  A slow, painful death that is bestowed upon only the unholiest of vagrants of the world.  And here I was, wincing as I stirred it in the pot that can no longer be used for people.  As it bubbled over the stove, I shot her the meanest of mean looks, and she...  she just wagged.  Blissfully.  The nerve of some animals.

And as I put it down, she backed away. 

And I scolded myself for a brief moment for not taking heed to watch my dad cook up a hearty meal for the dogs.  Too much carrot?  More cow-bell?

But she must have just been taking a moment to say Grace.  To give thanks for the meal, perhaps thanks to us who took her in, perhaps thanks to whomever invented cheese and organic eggs.

Because then she leaned in.  And she ate.

All of it.