Close Encounters of the Furry Kind

How Grandma’s knees and a mother’s betrayal shattered my hopes of having a pet

I was eight years old when I got my heart broken for the first time, thanks to Grandma Forbes’s knees.

(Later, I would get my heart broken, splintered, torn asunder, and dragged through the mud while tied to the back of a lorry, thanks to the carelessness of callow youth, but you never forget your first heartbreak.)

I blamed Grandma’s swollen, arthritic joints, in collusion with her frazzled nerves, for everything wrong in my life. Which was a lot, and included being forbidden from running, making noise, playing loud music, and having friends over to play.

But my biggest grievance was not being allowed a pet, especially of the large, four-legged variety, because “they jump up on grandma’s knees/get on her nerves.” Take your pick. Grandma’s knees and nerves had a lot to answer for, it seemed to me.

Our nuclear family had lived with Grandpa and Grandma Forbes in their house in Aberdeen, Scotland my entire life. And while I’d had umpteen tadpoles and hamsters, it wasn’t the same as having a dog. Or a cat.

This was not fair considering that even at age eight, I knew our family’s history with animals. I knew how Grandpa Forbes had bred chickens, greyhound dogs, Scottie dogs, Shetland ponies, and, recently, chinchillas. I also knew it had been Grandma’s lot in life to stay up all night nursing sick puppies/ponies, etc., and clean up their messes.

I knew how Grandpa had made Mum, 11, carry boxes of wriggling puppies on the tram down to the train station, where they would be dispatched south to be sold to buyers.

I knew how these puppies had widdled down Mum’s legs while she sat on the tram.

I knew how Grandpa made his three kids—my mother, May; Aunty Hetty; and Uncle Arthur—ride the ponies bareback.

And I knew that Grandpa still liked animals because part of his job as a bookie was going to the dog and horse races.

All this I knew that fateful day during the summer holidays when I visited a country fair with two friends, Elaine and Kathleen, and their mother, the designated chauffeur and chaperone.

At the fair, one stand displayed raffle prizes — a food hamper, fruit basket, bottle of whisky — and, to one side, a pen full of squirming black and white mongrel — puppies. (Yes, apparently, they raffled puppies back then.)

A plan festered in my head. One puppy had a black patch over one eye. We gazed at each other, and something like communion passed between us. I had to have him. I called him Patch. I entered the raffle and pictured our life together: long walks down to the beach and endless days of fun-filled playtime in the back garden.

When my name was announced as a winner, I wasn’t surprised.

Somehow, I’d known.

My new pet, delirious at his prospective freedom, strained and struggled at the end of a rope. He lunged forward and licked my face. He was the most irresistible, desirable creature on earth.

Our small troupe arrived home after the best day of my life. As rehearsed, Elaine was dispatched up the front steps to ring the doorbell and ask for my mother.

“Ann’s got something to show you in the back of the car,” she said when Mum opened the door.

To my mother, such words signaled that I’d either vomited or worse in the back seat of someone else’s car.

Mum flew down the garden path toward the waiting car and stopped short at the vision in the back seat.

“Woof, woof,” yelped Patch.

He struggled like a thing demented in my arms, desperate to escape the restraints and taste freedom.

“I won him in a raffle,” I said.

Mum’s face fell. Far.

“Can I keep him? Please, please, please?”

I was convinced Mum would fall in love with him as I had, and persuade Grandma to do the same.

“You know we can’t keep him,” snapped Mum.

Not the response I’d been hoping for.

“I‘ll look after him, I promise. I’ll walk him. We can pay for it out of my pocket money…”

Maybe, if I kept talking long enough, I could get Mum on my side, and everything would be alright.

All eyes rested on Mum, who held the power.

“Let the dog out,” ordered my mother. Patch exploded onto the pavement, ran yapping in circles, and peed up against a nearby lamppost.

“The dog will jump up on Grandma’s knees,” said Mum. “Did you forget?”

How could I possibly forget Grandma’s knees; how rheuma-something arthritis caused her stiffness, pain, and swelling, and resulted in her not so much walking as lurching from one bowed leg to the other.

How could I forget the weekly visits from the nurse to change Grandma’s kaolin poultice, the pungent, earthy smell which permeated the house.

Such details were seared in my consciousness.

“Grandma’s nerves won’t stand the barking,” added Mum.

The entire world had heard about Grandma’s nerves. I wasn’t exactly sure why they were so famous but every time there was thunder and lightning, Grandma closed the curtains, covered all the mirrors in the house with towels and hid in the walk-in larder in the kitchen or under the bed in the back bedroom until the danger had passed.

Grandma’s nerves meant she was scared of authority, especially the police, who sometimes turned up at the door looking for Grandpa. Exactly why, the grown-ups declined to explain. Other men, who Uncle Arthur called “The heavies,” also turned up at the door looking for Grandpa. Sometimes, it seemed everyone was looking for Grandpa except Grandma.

We all trooped inside.

Inside Grandma’s lair, the giant, downstairs communal kitchen where we all cooked, ate, bickered, and fell over each other, the matriarch hovered over the sink, drying dishes.

At the commotion, Grandma turned and examined the quivering mound of dog, followed by the quivering mound of me.

“Oh me, you’ll be the death of me, Ann,” she said, as she often said to me.

At five feet tall and almost as wide, Grandma’s death, whether because of me or not, seemed remote. Forever clad in a wraparound pinny, she was rarely without a dishtowel in her hand, based on the understanding that there were always dishes waiting somewhere to be dried.

“Ann won a dog in a raffle,” explained Mum.

“He’s called Patch,” I said, as Patch yapped dementedly, which I knew was not helping his cause.

“Ann, I’ve telt ye before, there’s nae dogs coming into this hoose,” said Grandma, waving her dishtowel at me.

“It’s not fair,” I blubbered, an art I’d perfected. Snot streamed from my pug nose.

“Oh, you poor hard-done-by soul,” said Mum.

Not the reaction I was hoping for. Mum was usually the soothing balm on the cankerous carbuncle of Life with Grandma.

If my mother loved me at all, which she didn’t, she’d be on my side.

“Everyone in the world has a dog but me,” I whined, citing friends, cousins, neighbors, and anyone I could think of.

Patch yelped and strained at the leash, eager to explore this new world of potential mischief, which included, you could just see it coming, jumping up on Grandma’s knees.

“It’s not fair,” I wailed. “You had dogs before. You never let me do anything.”

“Dinna be cheeky,” said Grandma.

I stuck my tongue at her.

“Ann!” said Mum.

Patch’s end was nigh. My wailing was for naught, and when combined with the dog’s nonstop barking, only made things worse.

The kitchen door opened and in swung Grandpa. He assessed the situation: a dog, my tears, Mum, and Grandma.

“Aye, aye,” he said, and swung back out again. He knew better than to interfere when it came to pets; Grandma was the boss.

Mum sighed. She dragged Patch and me back outside. We didn’t have a car, so she borrowed Grandpa’s red and black Ford Zephyr to return the dog to the fair.

Patch’s fate was never discussed.

My feud with Grandma continued until our family left their home a couple of years later and moved into our own house. There, at last, I got a pet, an inky black cat I called Sooty.

Sadly, I only had Sooty for just over a year, before he, too, went back to whence he came. And here’s a link to that story…

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I recommend Chaotically Lottie’s “A Tale of Two Strays,” it’s both shocking and heartwarming. A tale of true redemption.

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