Early Critters

It may have been my mother's mother, the one who brought me a lame chick to keep me company after my tonsillectomy, who ignited my passion for animals. Or it may have been that, as the only child in an extended family, for me a dog or a cat, a rabbit or a hen was the closest I could get to a playmate, a sibling, someone who did not tower above me and talk about things I did not understand.

I grew up in a vast turn-of-the-century apartment in Barcelona. My mother, having been raised on a farm, believed that animals should not live under the same roof as humans. No dog claws skittered on the hard tile floors. No cat left a drift of fur on my pillow.  I hungered for a friendly, silent presence at my side, but had to make do with watching the pigeons who perched on our balcony.

But summers were different. We spent them at my grandparents' farm, in a fertile valley south of the Pyrenees, where an endless procession of animals amazed and delighted me. Horses and donkeys munched and snuffled in the stable; a sow the size of a bus fed twelve of her children in the sty. My grandmother let me throw corn to the hens who scratched the dirt in the courtyard, giving wide berth to the hunting dog, an Irish Setter who lived chained to his straw-bedded house. She would lift the cover of the nest box in the rabbit hutch and hoist me up to see the hairless litter moving feebly in a cozy cloud of  fur. And when one of the semi-feral cats who lived on mice and bread crusts gave birth, she would take me up to the hayloft and move aside the hay so I could see the still-blind kittens sleep entwined like the fingers of two clasped hands.

My grandmother and I feeding the chickens

One summer, she arranged for a goat kid to arrive in time to be my companion. Another year, it was a lamb. I tried my best to get these creatures to follow me around, but they seemed mostly intent on pursuing their own goals, the goat leaping up to reach the branches of the pear trees, the lamb on getting away from me.

The lamb and I

When one of the sows farrowed, my grandfather would detach a warm, pristine piglet from one of her teats and place it in my arms. Many years later, when the nurse handed me my first-born I inhaled the same clean, slightly oily smell from her scalp that I had smelled on the little pig.

The horses, donkeys and mules were my favorites, both the ones that belonged to my grandparents and those that were brought to be treated by my veterinarian grandfather. I would watch out the dining room window as some poor mule was brought limping into the farmyard by a couple of peasants wearing standard Catalan country attire: black beret, blue shirt, a black sash around the waist, black corduroy trousers, and dusty espadrilles. A hand-rolled cigarette hung perennially from their lips. 

My grandfather would appear and confer with the men, run his hand over the mule's back and lift one of its hooves. The mule would shy and roll its eyes; the men would admonish it in low, soothing tones, and my grandfather would do his work. I paid special attention to his technique for giving injections. After rubbing the area vigorously with a swab of cotton dipped in alcohol, he would drop the cotton on the ground, bring out an enormous syringe and plunge the needle in. When the men and the mule were gone, I would take my toy horse out to the yard, disinfect its hind leg with a bit of rag, fling the rag to the ground, pierce its thigh with a nail, retrieve the rag, rub the other leg, give another shot, and so on until I was called inside because the sun was too hot. 

I spent hours skulking around the farm, watching the creatures, absorbing their smells, wondering what they were thinking, and how it would feel to touch one. But I was constantly warned against getting too close to them--the sows had been known to eat children, the horses could bash your head in with a kick--and my grandmother would have fainted at the thought of bringing the dog, or one of the kittens that periodically tottered to the back door, its finger-long tail held high, into the house.

Back in Barcelona, in early December my mother would take me to the Christmas fair that was held next to the cathedral, to get supplies for our Nativity scene. But first we would go into the cathedral, to see the geese. Barcelona's Cathedral of Saint Eulalia may be the only church in the world to harbor geese--thirteen large white birds said to be the descendants of a gaggle first put there in Roman times.

It would have been bad spiritual manners to go straight to the geese, so first we used to stop before the main altar to pray. Already as I knelt there, with the grit on the kneeler digging into my bare knees, I could hear them, their cries echoing against the stones. I would say a quick prayer and whisper, “Can we go now?” My mother would answer by closing her eyes and praying some more. She knew the art of sharpening anticipation.

Eventually we would rise, make the sign of the cross, brush the grit from our knees, genuflect as we passed the altar, proceed in a dignified manner to the holy water basin, make another sign of the cross...and emerge into the cloister.

The cloister was like no other place I knew—a space that was both indoors and outdoors, where light and sound bounced oddly among the stones and the palms and the orange trees, a space that spoke to me of beauty for its own sake in the midst of the serious business of religion. A space inhabited by geese.

In the center of the courtyard was a raised stone platform, surrounded by an iron grille, where a moss-covered fountain trickled water into a spacious basin. There the geese, with majestic disregard for the holiness of the place, honked and waddled on the flagstones, making the most amazing green droppings and then casually gliding into the water and floating about, looking
pleased with themselves. Warm, alive and untamed in the midst of the stone and cement of the city, those geese seemed like a miracle to me.

Hoping that that goose will let me pet her

Not long after the visit to the geese, it was time for the Christmas capons. They came by train from my grandparents’ farm, in a large wicker basket cushioned with straw and covered with a piece of burlap. When the birds, annoyed but alive, arrived at our apartment, my mother would  put them in the cement tub in the laundry room. There I would sit until bedtime, watching the way their red combs shook as they cocked their heads to look at me with one eye and then the other, stretching out a finger to touch their feathers, inhaling their hot poultry smell and feeding them crusts of bread. 

The next morning, inevitably, the empty laundry tub was scrubbed clean and the apartment became, once again, devoid of animal life. I don’t remember making any connection between the succulent birds at the center of the Christmas feast and my temporary pets.

After the capons were gone, I hibernated for six long months until the train and then my grandfather's horse and buggy conveyed me back to my real home, the farmyard and the dusty summer roads and my animal brothers and sisters--the horses and the rabbits and the chickens that made my life feel real again.

My Mother Says...(continued)

They wanted me to sew! my mother says, but all I wanted to do was read novels.  I hid them under my mattress, and I read them at night.

Didn't your parents see the light in your room?

No, because I didn't turn it on.  I used to kneel by the window, with the book propped on the sill, and read by the street light.  I read many novels that way, and that is why I went to law school.

Because of the novels?

Because of the novels.  I read about lawyers defending poor people against injustice, and I decided I wanted to be like them.  So I went to the University of Valencia to learn to be a lawyer.  Valencia was only a four-hour drive away, but in those days--before the Civil War--it was like going to America.

I still cannot believe that my mother let me go.  I was seventeen, and girls from my village did not leave home except to be married.  But as I've told you, my mother was different.  She was not afraid of what people would say, and even though like most girls of her generation she had no more than a grammar-school education, she was smart.

My mother's mother, my mother says, referring to her grandmother, died young, and left four children behind.  Her husband worried that a new wife would make the children unhappy, so he never married again.  Instead, my mother, who was the oldest girl--about twelve when her mother died--took care of the family.  At one point, when she was about fourteen, she did go away to school, but she cried because she was homesick, and her brothers and sisters cried because they missed her, so finally her father hitched up the wagon and went to fetch her home.

When she was eighteen, a spirited, pretty girl, she met my father, who was from a different village and  had just finished veterinary school in Zaragoza.  This seemed very exotic to her, plus he was handsome, so she married him.  When they came back from the honeymoon to their new house, they found her little brother and sisters already installed there.

 My father was a wonderful veterinarian, very progressive, and the peasants trusted him and loved him.  But he was terrible with money.  He couldn't bear to ask people for what they owed him.  In addition to his practice, my parents owned quite a bit of land which was farmed by sharecroppers, so we should have been well off.  But everybody, the peasants whose mules he cured and the sharecroppers who farmed his land, found it easy to get around Senyor Boque.  They were very good at finding excuses--a child was sick, the harvest had been poor--and he always said "Fine, fine.  Don't worry about it."

I'll explain later how this soft-heartedness of my father's may have saved us all in the worst days of the Civil War, my mother continues, but in the meantime there he was, with a wife and four children and a couple of maids to take care of, and perennially short of cash.  And that is when my mother--remember, she had very little education--decided to take things into her own hands.

She became his administrator, secretary and accountant, keeping track of visits paid and medications administered, payments received and monies owed.  When people didn't pay, she told him not to treat their animals, but, my mother says, softening her voice, he used to sneak out and take care of them anyway. 

She was fair but tough on the sharecroppers, too.  On the day when the wheat was put into sacks and weighed, she was there, making sure everything was fair and square...while my father took off  on a on a pretense to look at the fields, but really so he could avoid any disagreements that might arise.

And so, because of her work and determination, we began to have more money.  But she paid the price.  Everybody in the village said that Senyor Boque was a saint.  "La Senyora Boque, on the other hand...."  Still, she did what she had to do.

(To be continued)

Poor Wolfie

Nobody can figure out what's wrong with him. 

It started slowly, four years ago, when I noticed that Wolfie had lost some stamina.  He still ran flat out, stretching his long legs as far as they would go, covering amazing amounts of ground in a few seconds.  But he didn't do it for quite as long as before.

The vet diagnosed anaplasmosis, a tick-borne disease, and treated him with antibiotics, which are normally quite effective.  In Wolfie's case, however, they weren't, so we treated him again.  Nothing much changed, but he was fine in all other respects--shiny black coat, good appetite, a friend to all.

Time passed and--so gradually that I often wondered if I was imagining it--Wolfie's energy continued to  decrease.  He was, after all, five years old--not a puppy anymore.  Still, he should have been in his prime, so I had him checked again.  All tests came back clear but, just in case, the vet prescribed a third course of antibiotics.

Then about a year ago, one day when he had stopped to feast on some deer poop in the field, I called him and as he ran towards me I noticed a slight limp on his right foreleg.  The next day, it was gone.  I had forgotten all about it when, a week later, the limp came back, and this time it was more pronounced.

In the following weeks I paid close attention to that foreleg, trying to figure out what triggered the limp.  Often, he'd be fine at the start of a walk but limping at the end, but other days he would start off limping and improve by the time we got back home.  Cold weather, warm weather, shifts in barometric pressure--none of it seemed linked to the limp, which came and went according to its own mysterious rhythms.

One thing was certain:  it was getting worse.  On the day when I saw Wolfie holding up his big paw and hobbling on three legs, I rushed him to the vet.  She noticed considerable muscle loss on his right side, and I made an appointment to have him sedated and x-rayed.  While he was under, the vet also drew blood for more tests.

The good news was that his skeleton was in perfect order for a seven-year-old dog, and his blood tests showed no indication of disease.  The bad news:  we still had no explanation for the limp.  The vet consulted various specialists, who were as baffled as she and could only recommend cat-scans and sonograms as the next step.  She put him on a drug for nerve pain, and when he showed no improvement, on an anti-inflammatory.  Nothing changed, except that the limp got worse.

Now, on good days he puts weight on all four legs, though with a noticeable limp.  And by the end of the walk he's lagging behind--a new experience for me (all my dogs, without exception, have been forgers).  On bad days he hops pathetically on three legs, coming down heavily on his good side--thump, thump, thump--so that it hurts to watch him and I take him home after a few minutes and make him lie down and, just to make myself feel better, give him a massage.

Our walks have not only grown shorter, but I've also relaxed all my obedience-school notions about  not allowing the dog to sniff, etc.  Now, as we amble out of the cottage, I indicate the general direction for the day--into the woods and towards the open field, or towards the beehives, or on the paved road--and then give Wolfie free rein, so to speak, to stop and sniff and mark (without lifting his leg, which he can't do these days) to his heart's content, and then go on until a new smell catches his attention.

He's still big and black and shiny-coated.  If you come to the house he will hop over to you and greet you like a long-lost friend and lash you with his wagging tail.  He still hasn't given up hopes, despite their mutual neutered status, of having children with Bisou.

We've had to find a new vet since our move, and we're going to him for a second opinion next week.  I'm hoping that, when I report back to you, I'll have a different story to tell.

Wolfie And Bisou Go To The Vet

Bisou was due for a rabies shot,  Wolfie for his distemper booster.  But instead of automatically giving Wolfie a possibly unnecessary vaccination, I had him titer-tested--an expensive way to determine his immunity.  Both dogs needed their heart-worm tests before I could start them on heart-worm meds in May.  As long as we were drawing blood, both were also tested for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

Both were praised for their just-right weights, shiny coats, friendly attitudes.  It is not often, these days, that I get such positive reinforcement.

Alas, Bisou tested positive for Lyme, and Wolfie for Anaplasmosis, another tick-borne disease, despite faithfully-administered tick repellents.  So far, both are asymptomatic, but will need antibiotics if they become listless, have painful joints, lose their appetites, have vomiting or diarrhea, and so on.   Bisou got some homeopathic  pellets to help with post-rabies-shot discomfort.

During the visits, they made me proud.  Bisou greeted everyone effusively, sat to be petted and abstained from jumping up, perhaps because the experienced staff dropped to a crouch the minute they saw her.  She submitted patiently to fruitless efforts by the vet-tech to pierce a vein.  She was stroked and cooed over and smiled at, but when it was over she barked urgently at the door of the exam room to be taken back to the truck.

Wolfie was serious and inquisitive.  He sang a dirge while we held him and the vet drew blood.  He wasn't too happy about having his hindquarters palpated, but dealt with it o.k.  Unlike harmless Bisou, he got a bunch of treats from the vet.  Everyone was relieved that this big black dog had proved so mild.

During the half-hour drive over hill and dale to the vet's, both dogs had been upright and alert, looking out the window at the teeming rain.  On the drive back, even though it was past their dinner time, they both collapsed in a heap.  Emotional strain tells on all of us, but dogs really know how to deal with it.

I am glad that my husband and I worked hard for many years so that now we can pay for vet bills.  I wonder how less fortunate families deal with the spiraling costs of veterinary care--today's bill was almost equal to our individual medical deductible.  People are already having fewer children because of the costs of caring for them.   I hate to think of those kids being deprived of dogs and cats because their parents cannot afford veterinary care.

How My Veterinarian Grandfather Saved My Life

Here's the story as my mother tells it. I was born at home because my parents were, as she puts it, so romantic that they didn't want the event to happen in a sterile hospital. My father's friend, an obstetrician, was in attendance, as were a midwife and my paternal grandmother. After everything was cleaned up and I was dressed in hand-made laces and laid in my organdy-trimmed, beribonned cradle, they broke out a bottle of champagne and my father, exhausted and probably freaked-out by the proceedings, fell asleep in an arm chair, while my mother, fired up with oxytocin and champagne, chattered away the rest of the night.

The euphoria soon died down, however. In the following days my mother developed cracked nipples. They were so painful that she had to bite down on a lace-edged handkerchief in order to nurse me. I'm guessing that she was never able to relax enough to get a decent milk flow. In any case, it seems that I cried constantly.

To make matters worse, my mother had read the latest baby care books, which advised that babies should only be nursed every four hours. This applied to fat babies, thin babies, calm babies and fretful ones. Nor were parents allowed to pick up a baby for any reason except at the allotted four-hour intervals. As I writhed purple-faced amongst my embroidered sheets, my weeping mother would helplessly stroke my fists with one finger. When the four hours were up, the lace handkerchief would come out and the next torture session would begin.

My mother's father was a large-animal vet, just a little older than James Herriott, and like him the last of his kind to treat animals that worked the land. I was his first grandchild, and apparently he found the idea of being a grandfather appalling. Whereas my grandmother had rushed from their farm to Barcelona by train as soon as I was born, bearing baskets of eggs and garden produce, my grandfather stayed behind, mourning the passage of youth (he must have been in his fifties at the time).

Eventually, by the time I was a month old, my grandmother shamed him into coming to see me. He was let into the apartment by my hollow-eyed parents, and followed the sound of my cries into their bedroom. He picked me up, parted the lacy garments, took one look at my heaving ribs, my skinny legs, and announced "This child is starving!" A lifetime of looking at foals and calves had given him a sense of which young were thriving and which were not, and now his youngest descendant was in the latter category.

But what, and how, to feed me? Although the Spanish Civil War had been over for years, the country was still feeling its ravages, and items like infant formula were not available. Fortunately, my other grandfather had a friend who had a powdered milk factory, and this person was persuaded to let my parents buy some of this milk at reduced prices. With my veterinarian grandfather supervising, I was put on a diet of powdered milk thickened with cereal.

This was fed to me by spoonfuls and, as my mother tells it, required two people at each meal. I was so ravenous that in the time it took to refill the spoon I would go into a rage, choke and turn blue, so one of my maiden aunts was recruited to stick a full spoon in my mouth while my mother refilled hers.

I soon put on weight, and everybody got some sleep, and when my grandfather could no longer see my ribs poking through my skin, he got on the train and went back to birthing donkeys and vaccinating horses.

I have always liked this story with all its drama--the home birth, the champagne, the ribbons and embroideries, the pain (my mother's) and starvation (mine) and my vet grandfather rushing in to save the day. And I like the happy ending--not only my survival, but the transformation in my grandfather, who from the day he saved my life became a storybook grandfather, crouching in the dirt to build mud farmyards with me, taking me along to pick the ripest melons for dinner, making sure there was a lamb or a kid or a clutch of baby chicks ready for my arrival every year on summer vacation.

Do you have a birth story that is dramatic, funny, or amazing (and what birth story isn't)?