Bobbin

I am a dog lover. I was given my first dog when I was one year old, for my birthday, by my father. I watched him come into the living room with his arms behind his back. I knew at once that something was up because he never walked with his arms behind his back. When he saw me looking at him with great curiosity he took his arms from their unusual position and in one hand he held something that looked a bit like the fur collar of my mother's overcoat (it was winter at the time but I didn't know what the white stuff was that was lying on the ground outside our house.)

The mop of fur fell or sprang from my father's hand and made a direct line for me, propped up on the couch at the side of the room. It leaped up at me, knocking me over, at which point I let out a scream and my mother came running to inspect for injuries and other fatal signs. None were apparent and I remember no more of that first meeting with my dog, with whom I lived happily, yes, even blissfully, for the next fifteen years until he had to be put away from causes stemming from old age. I was broken hearted and cried for the last time until I went to a movie in which an equally wonderful dog was killed in the course of the action.

I think animals are often among the most beautiful things that exist. I have always loved to share my dogs with my favorite friends with whom I feel I must share the best things in life. Dogs and canaries are about the tops. In fact I still have the same conviction that I grew to believe in profoundly, that the reason people are as frequently really human is due to the fact that so many families have dogs as close friends of the family. Learning the abc's of human decency is simple when you have the constant presence of a dog about as an example of complete, unconditional love and faithfulness.

My dog, Denny ((a thoroughbred Scotch collie) was automatically recognized wherever we lived as the king of the town and respected and loved by all. He also I have to add was a superb fighter and was never known to have been bested, even when protecting me against heavy odds, which could happen on occasion, as my own temperament was not very carefully attuned to running around in harmless surroundings, but more to the natural haunts of my Indian (red skin) and sheep herder friends who lived nearby.

But this is not the story of Denny, but rather of my cat Bobbin, whom I inherited to my astonishment and trepidation, when I was rapidly approaching my thirties, a frightful age I had always felt. He was one of two cats - half-brothers - left homeless when their mistress, one of my most loved friends, died of cancer and had no immediate family left to care for them except for aged mother, who would have been hard put to care for a canary. So Tuffy, the younger, and a real tough, was put away by common consent and I took Bobbin home to a house he knew already but in which he had never lived. He was a very wise animal; even I, a non-cat-lover, could see and grant that. And he had seen so much coming and going of nurses and doctors during the time of my friend's illness and death to know that life was probably due for more unexplained circumstances.

I took Bobbin the short distance to his new home and showed him where he was expected to sleep, put a dish of milk for him and then some water and all this beside a basket with an old piece of blanket which I had rescued from his previous abode. He seemed to sense what was expected and after a brief wander in the garden, came back and curled up as if he had always lived there.

Next morning as I was starting my scales on my piano in the living room, I noticed that Bobbin looked up from his half-curled position on the living room rug and showed modest surprise at my antics and the noise I was creating. Not much later I felt Bobbin jump up onto the end of the piano bench seat on which I was sitting and he looked carefully at what I was doing. He offered no comment. Just deeply interested and concentrated.

As I continued playing the scales rapidly and then the Isidore Philippe exercises which were my great technical mainstay, I noted Bobbin begin to steel himself for action. I was deeply interested in his next move. Slowly he lifted his left paw over onto my right leg and very gently dug his claws ever so tenderly into the skin of my upper hip region. I knew what he wanted at once. I stopped playing and folded my hands on my lap. Then he took the same left paw and placed it on a note in front of him. Slowly he pressed down on the key. When he heard the note sound he looked thoughtfully pleased. Then he did it again, and again, all very deliberately All very assured and thoughtful.

Then he did something totally unexpected. He gracefully jumped onto the keyboard at about middle C and quickly and assuredly ran up and down the keyboard two or three times, rarely playing two notes with the same paw. I am tempted to read some sort of new animal crackers piano prodigy as having been performed, but I have to be honest. Without ado after this brief command appearance he jumped gracefully back down onto the bench beside me and without casting the slightest glance in my direction jumped from there to the floor, proceeded out the open front door and into the garden. Neither of us ever referred to his musical venture. As if in so many words, he let me know that he had mastered the playing of the piano and had no further interest in it.
Soon after this artistic event Bobbin and I moved several miles into a new bay-front property. He took to hunting in the fields behind the row of houses that lined the bay at that point, and one day he did not return from his afternoon hunt. I regretted his going but always felt it was thoughtful of him not to have put me into the position of having to choose between cats and dogs as my favorites in the sub-human species.