She came to us on Christmas eve six years ago, a living gift from our three children as the youngest prepared to leave home for nursing college. She sat on the mat by the door, a tiny fluffy creature, quiet and calm and adorned with a big red ribbon, and looked around her surroundings as if thinking, so this is my house.
Now she’s seventy-five pounds of blond fur with silky ears prone to matts, a feathered tail that oscillates with great vigour when she’s happy and tucks between her legs when she’s scared. Her eyes are the colour of dark chocolate chips. The top of her head smells like freshly turned earth and the smell of the pads of her paws make me think of popcorn. She likes dinnertime and treat time and go-to-the-park time; she likes socks and underwear and isn’t particularly fussy whether they’re clean or not – the laundry hamper is exactly the right height for rummaging.
She has a younger brother named Riley who quickly overtook her in height and speed, who charges through life with rambunctious energy and immeasurable confidence. It is his unquestioning belief – and rightly so – that people and other canines will love him at first sight, in absolute juxtaposition to Catie’s assumption that the world is just a little bit dangerous and strangers are not to be trusted. Her mistrustful timidity has made Catie’s life a lot more difficult than Riley’s.
And now, today, a second biopsy of a suspicious growth on her humerus showed definitively positive for cancer and she is booked for amputation of her right foreleg on Wednesday, January 13.