The Dog Who Healed A Family. Jo Coudert
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her into it. “It’s just temporary until I find a home for you.”
In the night it wasn’t the sound of the rabbit butting off the roof of the cottage that awakened Jane. She slept through that. It was the crash of the ficus tree going over when Sweet Elizabeth, having nibbled away the tasty lower leaves, went after the higher ones. The next day Jane bought a latch for the cottage. That night Elizabeth worked it loose and ate the begonias on the windowsill. The following day Jane bought a lock. That night Elizabeth gnawed a new front door in her cottage.
It was not hunger or boredom that fueled Elizabeth’s determination to get loose; it was her passion for Robert. The minute Jane let her out, she hopped to him and flung herself down between his paws. He, of course, boxed her soundly for her impertinence, but her adoration wore him down, and one day he pretended to be asleep when she lay down near enough to touch him with one tiny white paw. Soon, as though absentmindedly, he was including her in his washups, with particular attention paid to the floppy ear where it had dusted along the floor.
All of this made marvelous stories for Jane to tell in the office, and she discovered it wasn’t so hard to make friends after all. She even began to gain something of a reputation for wit when she described how Robert, finding that Elizabeth did not understand games involving catnip mice, invented a new one for the two of them.
Since Elizabeth followed him about as tenaciously as a pesky kid sister, he could easily lure her out onto Jane’s tiny terrace. Then he dashed back inside and hid behind a wastebasket. Slowly Elizabeth would hop to the doorway and peer cautiously about. Not seeing the cat anywhere, she’d jump down the single step, whereupon Robert would pounce, rolling them both over and over across the living room rug until Elizabeth kicked free with her strong hind legs. Punch-drunk from the tumbling about, she’d stagger to her feet, shake herself so that her tipsy ear whirled about her head, then scramble off and happily follow the cat outside again.
This game was not all that Elizabeth learned from Robert. He taught her something far more important, at least from Jane’s point of view. Out on the terrace were flower boxes that were much more to Robert’s liking than his indoor litter box. Time after time, while Robert scratched in the dirt, Elizabeth watched, her head cocked, her ear swinging gently. She was not a swift thinker, but one day light dawned. Robert stepped out of the flower box and she climbed in, which is how Elizabeth, with a little help from her friend, came to be housebroken.
With that problematic matter taken care of and all the plants eaten to nubbins anyway, Jane gave up trying to confine Elizabeth to her cottage and let her stay free. She met Jane at the door in the evening, just as Robert did, and sat up to have her head patted. She learned her name; she learned what “no” meant if said loudly and accompanied by a finger shaken under her nose; she learned what time meals were served and that food arrived at the apartment in paper bags. When Jane came home with groceries and set a bag even momentarily on the floor, Elizabeth’s strong teeth quickly ripped a hole in it. That is, unless she smelled carrots, in which case she tugged the bag onto its side and scrambled into it. If Jane got to the carrots before Elizabeth did and put them away on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, the rabbit bided her time until Jane opened the door again, then she stood up on her hind legs and yanked the carrots back out. It got so that Jane never dared slam the refrigerator door without first making sure Elizabeth’s head was not inside it.
But then dinner would be over, the food put away, and Jane settled down to read in her easy chair. First Robert would come, big and purring and kneading with his paws to make a satisfactory spot for himself in her lap. Then Elizabeth would amble over, sit up on her haunches, her little paws folded primly on her chest, and study the situation to decide where there was room for her. With a flying leap, she’d land on top of Robert, throw herself over and push with her hind legs until she’d managed to wedge herself in between the cat and Jane. Soon the twitching of her nose would slow, then cease, and she would be asleep.
At such times, it was easy for Jane to let her hand stray over the soft fur, to call her Sweet Elizabeth, to forgive her all her many transgressions—the sock chewed into fragments, the gnawed handle on a pocketbook, the magazine torn into scraps. But one day Elizabeth went too far; she chewed the heels off Jane’s best pair of shoes. Jane decided she had to go. And she had a prospective family to adopt her: a young couple with three small children. She invited the parents, along with two other couples, to dinner.
All that rolling around on the rug with Robert had turned the white rabbit rather gray, and, wanting Elizabeth to look her most beguiling, Jane decided to give her a bath. She filled a dishpan with warm water and plopped Elizabeth into it. The rabbit sprang out. Jane hustled her back in and this time got a firm grip on her ears. Elizabeth kicked and Jane let go. On the third try, Jane got her thoroughly soaped on the back but Elizabeth’s powerful hind legs would not let her near her stomach. Persuading herself that no one would look at the rabbit’s underside, Jane rinsed her off as best she could and tried to dry her with a towel. Wet, the rabbit’s silky fur matted into intricate knots. Jane brushed; Elizabeth licked. Jane combed; Elizabeth licked. Hours later, Elizabeth’s fur was still sticking out in every direction and it was obvious that a soggy mass on her stomach was never going to dry. Afraid Elizabeth would get pneumonia, Jane decided to cut out the worst of the knots. With manicure scissors, she began carefully to snip. To her horror, a hole suddenly appeared. Elizabeth’s skin was as thin as tissue paper and the scissors had cut right through it. Jane rushed to get Mercurochrome and dab it on the spot. In the rabbit’s wet fur, the Mercurochrome spread like ink on blotting paper. Now Jane had a damp rabbit with a dirty-gray stomach dyed red.
The sight of her sitting up at the door to greet each new arrival sent Jane’s guests into gales of laughter, which Elizabeth seemed to enjoy. She hopped busily about to have her ears scratched. Jane was keeping a wary eye on her, of course, and saw the moment Elizabeth spotted the stuffed celery on the hors d’oeuvres tray. But Jane wasn’t quite quick enough. Elizabeth leaped and landed in the middle of the tray. Even that simply occasioned more laughter, and there were cries of protest when Jane banished Elizabeth to her cottage.
After dinner, Jane yielded and released her. Quite as though Elizabeth had used the time in her cottage to think up what she might do to entertain the party, she hopped into the exact center of the living room floor and gazed seriously around the circle of faces. When silence had fallen and she had everyone’s full attention, she leaped straight into the air, whirled like a dervish and crash-landed in a sprawl of legs and flying ears. The applause was prolonged. Peeping shyly from behind her ear, Elizabeth accepted it, looking quite pleased with herself.
The children’s father adored her, and when in the course of the evening he saw that Elizabeth went to the terrace door and scratched to be let out, he couldn’t wait to take her home. “She’s housebroken,” he reminded his wife, who was hesitating, “and the kids’ll love her.” Elizabeth, returning, climbed into his lap, and it was settled: Elizabeth was to go to her new family. Until the end of the evening. “What have you spilled on yourself?” the man’s wife asked. The edge of his suit jacket, from lapel to bottom button, was white. Elizabeth had nibbled it down to the backing.
“You rat,” Jane scolded her when the guests had gone. “I found a good home for you, and you blew it.” Elizabeth shook her head remorsefully, beating herself with her floppy ear, and wandered away. After Jane had cleaned up the kitchen and was ready for bed, she went looking for Elizabeth to put her in her cottage. She hunted high, low and in between. Where was she? Beginning to be frantic, she went through the apartment a second time. She even looked over the terrace railing, wondering for one wild moment if Elizabeth had been so contrite she’d thrown herself off. Only because there was nowhere else to search did Jane open the refrigerator door. There Elizabeth was, on the bottom shelf, having a late-night snack of carrot sticks and parsley.
For quite a while after that, nothing untoward happened, and Elizabeth, Robert and Jane settled into a peaceful and loving coexistence. When Jane watched Elizabeth sunbathing on the terrace beside Robert or sitting on her haunches to wash her face with her dainty paws or jumping into her lap to be petted, she found herself wondering how she could have imagined giving Elizabeth up. Until the day she did a thorough housecleaning and moved the couch. The rug had been grazed down to the backing.