Spider

Spider died Thursday night. I found her on the railroad tracks Friday morning. She seemed intact, looked like she could have been sleeping. One momentarily thinks that. Then I saw the telltale pool of blood behind her, so the evidence mounted.

Now come the self-recriminations. The day before she came up to me at the computer as usual, pushing her needle nose under my elbow (she's a greyhound). She looked up at my eyes, mute, those crescent whites exposed under the upraised irises, asking to be stroked. I usually oblige but didn't this time. Too busy. She stood there for a good 10 minutes, then gave up and moseyed back to her cage. It was the last time.

I mention all this just because it might sound funny if she suddenly disappears from my columns without explanation. The nasty thing is that her cage is still here behind me, her coat and leash are hanging by the door, and her food and water dish are on the kitchen floor. Is it best to deal with that business right away or to wait? C.S. Lewis, addressing the perennial question of whether people love their animals too much, said something I hadn't thought of: It's not that we love our pets too much, it's that we don't love people enough. Do not quash the one, just beef up the other.

I wish I had petted her Thursday. I wish I could pet her now. One gets sentimental when these things happen. It would be so much better to love God's creatures when we have the chance, in those finite days under the sun.

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