How I Watch the News

This is how I watch the news these days. First, the cat, the dog, and I jockey for position on the loveseat. Guess who always wins...

Then the daily blend of despair-inducing catastrophes, outrages, and cataclysms assaults my ears and threatens my sanity:

But when it's over, I put my arms around my comfort critters and things don't look so dark.

Attachment

For years I laughed at people who insisted on having their emotional support animals with them on the plane. I’m not laughing any longer. 

I have come to admit that I too have animal-related attachment issues. As a child, I had a teddy bear that kept me company; now, a couple of centuries later, I have two living beings, a red dog and a gray cat, that sustain my mental health.

I find it reassuring to have my steps dogged by Bisou and catted by Telemann as I move around the house. It feels disorienting to go for a walk without a leash in my left hand, a poop bag at the ready, and Bisou stopping at every sacred sniffing spot on the way. At night, watching cataclysms unfold on TV, I keep one hand on short gray fur and the other on long red fur, and life on this mournful planet seems more bearable.

In December, as we prepared to go on our Christmas travels, I lived in a state of anxiety. I had all the usual worries—packing, parking, getting on the right train. But most of my fretting was focused on the animals. Would there be a snow storm on the day when I was supposed to drive Bisou to her B&B in southern Vermont? (There wasn’t.) Would Telemann, alone except for twice-daily visits from a cat sitter, stop using the litter box in the quintessential mode of feline revenge? (He didn’t.) Would he tear up the house? (He tried.)

Day after day I told myself that, really, there was nothing for a rational person to worry about. Of course, this sort of thought never helps. It simply makes the worrier feel stupid, which gives her one more thing to worry about.

I tried to comfort myself by imagining the peace and contentment that would descend upon me once the trip was over and I could again take naps with Bisou against my right leg and Telemann on my stomach. Surely the happiness of having them with me again would match in strength and duration the anxiety that now had me so cruelly by the throat.

But for me, and I suspect for many others, our joys never feel commensurate with our sorrows. I knew from experience that the anxiety that had haunted me for weeks would not be replaced by an equivalent period of happiness after the trip. We somehow manage to sustain negative emotional states much longer than positive ones.

And that’s how it happened. After the ecstatic reunion (I spent the first night sleeping on the love seat, so Telemann could knead and purr to his heart’s content) things became, if not exactly humdrum, less than constantly joyous. Tiny worries—about laundry, groceries, the meaning of life--began to cloud my emotional skies.

But this time, with my former anxieties well fixed in my memory, I am attempting to hang onto a proportional level of happiness. As I go about my routines I occasionally stop and say to myself, wow, what gorgeous long ears Bisou has. Or I watch Telemann watching the winter-drab (but still adorable) finches at the feeder, and give thanks that his litter box habits have remained intact.

I was mistaken when I hoped that my happiness at being back would go on and on of its own accord. Spontaneous joy is something that we humans evolved to experience only in short bursts, lest we become complacent and stop scanning the horizon for lions on the prowl. Maybe happiness has to be cultivated, in the full botanical sense. The seed needs the right soil, water, and light. Above all, it needs attention.

And then it may, with luck, take root and flourish.

Bisou's TV Interview

I never knew she was such a publicity hound, but she sure did like the camera: https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Dog-walking-group-at-Wake-Robin-gets-more-seniors-outside-509741431.html

Dogs In The House

Here is one of my favorite passages from Colette, in which she describes, on her first visit to Paris, "...the surprise and melancholy aversion aroused in me by what I called houses without animals--mere cubes without gardens, flowerless abodes where no cat mews behind the dining-room door, where one never treads near the fireside on some part of a dog sprawling like a rug; rooms devoid of familiar spirits, wherein the hand seeking a friendly caress encounters only inanimate wood, or marble, or velvet..." (Colette, My Mother's House, translated by Una Troubridge and Enid McLeod, 1953)

I grew up in one of those cubes--in Barcelona, not Paris--a vast, echoing, turn-of-the-century apartment with tiled floors. My mother, having grown up on a farm, was a firm believer in keeping all non-human living things outdoors. A French couple lived in the apartment above us--he played the cello--with a pair of German Shepherds whom they transported in the elevator, and whose fleas feasted on me. That was the extent of my contact with the animal world during the school year.

In the summer, at my grandparents' farm, there were plenty of animals--horses in the stable, pigs in the sty, chickens in the chicken house, rabbits in hutches, the hunting dog chained in the courtyard, and the semi-feral cats wherever there were mice. But my grandmother would have fainted at the thought of my bringing the dog, or one of the kittens that periodically tottered out of the hayloft, into the house.

It wasn't until after my children were born that I had a house dog. Since that time I have never been without one, or two, and now three dogs, plus the occasional cat, under my roof.

It's a pain, believe me, having dogs in the house. They have to be house-trained, which requires the patience of a saint and the focus and strategy of a guerrilla fighter. They shed amazing quantities of hair; they gouge the floor with their nails; they occasionally throw up, or worse; they are forever stretching out across doorways; they run and skid and wrinkle the rugs; they knock wine glasses over with their tails; they snore at night; and they wake you up in the morning. Who would ever want to deal with all that?

I would. In my experience, all warm-blooded animals, all creatures capable of inspiring and returning affection--including children--have their inconvenient aspects: they poop, they pee, they spit up, they wake you up when you're asleep, they have to be brushed and thought about and talked to.

But think what you get in return: a pair of eyes that follows your every move; a set of feet that trots after you from room to room; melancholy partings and ecstatic reunions at the front door; something warm under your hand, at your side, or on your lap whenever you want it; a steadying rhythm to your days (wake up, go outside, eat breakfast, nap, go outside, wait for dinner....); a good-humored, all-forgiving presence, and more.

For myself, I cannot think how I ever took a nap or read a book without an animal beside or on me, or fell asleep without the comforting sound of a dog turning around three times and then flopping down like a sack of potatoes. I spent half my life in clean, orderly rooms "devoid of familiar spirits." But I'm making up for it now.

Oxytocin

I thought I knew all the basic stuff about oxytocin and its role in human sex, parturition, lactation, and pair bonding. But I have just found out that you can raise your oxytocin levels by interacting with your dog--especially by gazing into your dog's eyes lovingly and lingeringly . Patricia McConnell, who wrote The Other End of the Leash does a good job of summarizing the research here .

Last night I was watching one of those Nature shows about how wolves evolved into pugs and borzois, all in the service of man, and it was stated that the repeated stroking of a dog raises the dog's oxytocin, as well as the owner's. I'm sure the same principle applies to cats, and probably ferrets, but I'm not so sure about turtles and snakes.

Aren't we lucky to live in a scientific age? For eons we've known that hugging babies makes us and the babies happy, that petting dogs makes us feel calm and contented. And now, thanks to scientific research, we are reassured that those warm and fuzzy feelings were real, after all, since they are caused by the rising levels of a certain hormone.

It's good to know that all this time we haven't just been imagining things.