A Memoir by William Mann
I bought Maggie from a local breeder when she was eight weeks old. She was a German Shepherd, and for the first year she chewed through two leashes and a section of baseboard in the upstairs hallway. Then one evening a man came to the door selling something, and she stepped in front of me, head low, hackles raised, and stood there without making a sound. He left. After that I stopped worrying.
In 1982, we bought a small house, generously termed a “fixer-upper,” in Lakeport, New York on the east end of Oneida Lake. Close enough to the water that breeze from the lake moved the curtains. Max was eight and Tony was five, and they were a handful. The turtle had been my idea. Something low-maintenance, easy to care for. The boys pressed their faces to the glass of the aquarium for about a week before they lost interest entirely. So when a co-worker mentioned that someone at the warehouse was giving away a litter of kittens, I drove over on my lunch break. I came home with a cardboard box full of orange tabby, and the moment I set the box down on the kitchen floor, he came out snarling. A scrap of a thing, maybe two pounds, stripes down his sides and a white patch at his throat. Ears flat, mouth open, every claw he had flashing. He backed against the cabinet and hissed at the room and took a swipe at my hand. We named him Jake. Maggie was about two by then.
Maggie met Jake later that day. She walked straight over to him and got a swipe at her nose. Jake had left four little trails of red blood, easily recognized against her black nose. She didn’t even flinch. She just lowered herself down and wrapped both front paws around him, ignoring his struggles, and pulled him to her chest. He went after her with everything he had, clawing at her face, biting her ears, hissing. She tucked her chin over the top of his head and licked him. I stood there with my hand on her collar in case. After a while, the hissing stopped. Then the clawing. Then there was just Maggie, licking the top of Jake’s orange head, and Jake, purring. I let go.
After that, Jake slept curled against Maggie’s chest every night, and she cleaned behind his ears the same way she would have cleaned a puppy. If he wandered to another room, she’d get up and follow.
He figured out the household on his own terms. He’d ambush the boys from the top of the refrigerator. He’d wind between Chris’s ankles while she stood near the stove. At night, he’d jump up onto the back of the couch while I watched TV and set his chin on my shoulder. I’d feel the slight vibration of his purring against my neck. I never changed the channel without wondering if I was interrupting something for him.
As Jake got older, he started marking the furniture. I scheduled him to be neutered and didn’t think much more about it. The night before the appointment, I let him out before bed. An hour passed. I checked the door. Maggie was already there, sitting next to it as she always did when he was outside. I told myself he’d found a female somewhere, or gotten into it with another tom. I went to bed. In the morning I came downstairs and Maggie hadn’t moved. I called the vet and told them we wouldn’t be coming in.
Later that afternoon, a neighbor came to the door. She said she’d found a cat on the side of the road. Orange tabby. I walked the road twice, calling his name. The second time I came back, Max was standing on the front porch watching me come up the driveway. I shook my head and he went inside. I could hear Chris in there, and then Tony starting to cry.
When I went in, Maggie was at the door. Not lying down, not pacing—just sitting there square on her haunches, ears up, nose an inch from the gap at the bottom. I put my hand on her back and she leaned into the door a little harder. I stayed there with her for a minute, then went and sat down in the kitchen. Around midnight, I moved her blanket over from the living room and set it next to her. She didn’t look at it. I turned off the lights and went upstairs. At three in the morning I came back down for a glass of water. She hadn’t moved an inch.
She stayed like that through the next morning, then the next. When I came downstairs she’d turn and look at me, then turn back. I filled her bowl and set it next to her. I put fresh water down. Neither moved. One morning I fried bacon and stood at the stove waiting. She didn’t come. I walked the plate past her on my way to the table. She didn’t lift her nose. Chris watched me scrape the extra strips into the trash and said to give her time.
By day four, Max rolled a tennis ball across the kitchen floor toward her. It bumped against her front paw and stopped there. She didn’t look down. That evening, I clipped her leash on. I tried to do our usual loop around the block, but she kept pulling back toward the house, checking over her shoulder the whole way. When I unclipped her at the door she went straight back to her spot. I moved her food bowl next to her before bed. In the morning it was right where I’d left it.
I fried chicken thighs and held one close enough that the grease left a mark on her snout. She turned her head. I cupped water in my palm and held it under her mouth. She licked my hand once, then looked back at the door. The next day I drove to the grocery store and bought sirloin tips. I cut one into cubes at the kitchen counter and carried the cutting board over to her. She turned away, flattened her ears and looked at the floor.
That night after Chris and the kids went to bed, I sat down next to her on the rug with the bowl between us. I picked up a cube and ate it. She looked at me, then back at the door. I ate another one. The clock over the stove moved. Her ribcage rose and fell. I sat there until my back stiffened and the kitchen got cold.
On the seventh morning I sat down next to her and didn’t say anything. I picked up a cube and ate it. Then I picked up another one and held it out. She looked at my hand. She looked at the door. She looked at my hand again. Then she leaned forward and took it off my fingers, so carefully I barely felt it go. I held out another one, and she took that too. I kept my hand low and steady. She kept eating until the bowl was empty. When it was gone she stood, drank from her water bowl in long slow pulls, then walked a few feet from the door and lay down. Not at the door. I didn’t move for a while. Eventually I reached over and put my hand on her side and felt her breathing slow.
After that, when someone came to the door, Maggie would stand up and walk over, but she’d stop a few feet short and just look at them. She’d hold still while they reached down to pet her. Her tail hung.
A few years later we sold the house and moved to Cicero, on the other end of Oneida Lake. The new place had a fenced yard. I picked up a beagle puppy from a hunting buddy and brought him home. We named him Jake. No one in the house asked why and no one explained it.
Maggie wanted nothing to do with him at first. He’d bite at her back legs when he wanted her attention, or grab her tail and pull until she learned to sit on it when he was nearby. But after a few weeks she started following him around the yard. In the afternoons, when he’d finally worn himself out and gone still, she’d put her head down on his side. She was gentle with him the same way she’d been gentle with her Jake.
When he was asleep she’d get up and go to the back door. She’d stand there with her nose to the glass until her breath fogged it over.
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William is a novelist and essayist whose work explores memory, landscape, and the quiet bonds that shape a life. Born in upstate New York, he now travels full‐time with his wife and their dogs, writing from the road and gathering the stories that become his work.
