May 2020
Hey Clyde,
Who’s a good boy? It’s you! Yes it is!
I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been staying home a lot. And you seem to like it. Don’t think I didn’t notice you raising hell that one time I left for an hour to go grocery shopping. I had to spend half-an-hour readying the house for the outing. Remember that time you Papier Mache’d your own whiskers by pawing through that 5-pound bag of flour my mother left on the counter? You probably don’t, but I sure do.
Maybe you’re wondering what’s going on – or maybe not. You don’t seem the wondering type. Mom used to joke that Skeeter would say, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” I think you, and Skeeter, too, for that matter, mostly just sits. And that’s okay. During this whole thing, I’ve often wished I could just sits – it’s a shame the human brain doesn’t work that way.
But if you are wondering what’s going on, well, I’ll try to tell you. There’s this virus that hurts humans. A virus is a thing that requires a living organism to reproduce, so it gets inside living things and steals their cells (you know, the things that make a living organism a living organism) to create more of itself. It’s a pretty nasty concept, actually. You know how upset you get whenever Peanut crawls into my lap? It’s a lot like that – Peanut’s the virus, and I’m the cell. The difference is that when Peanut jumps into my lap, she just sits for a minute, purrs, and then goes about her business, and I can go on doing what I normally do, like pet you and feed you and give you treats. But when a virus gets inside a cell, it stops the cell doing what it would normally do, and instead forces the cell to make more of the virus. Imagine if when Peanut jumped into my lap, I could no longer pet you or feed you or give you treats? That’s basically what a virus does – it stops cells from feeding the living organism. And the more virus there is in the living organism, the more cells that are forced to stop doing what they would normally be doing and instead make more virus.
When this particular nasty virus gets inside a human, it can cause a lot of problems – well, technically the human body creates the problems, called symptoms, in an effort to drive the virus out of the body or kill it off before it can damage too many cells. But you don’t need to worry about those technicalities. Just know that when humans get this virus, they start having a hard time breathing, their body temperatures get dangerously high, and they get chills, shivers, and aches. A lot of the time, those humans need help from other humans, specially trained humans, to get better. In really bad cases, the humans need help from machines just to breathe.
The worst part about this virus is not what it does to individual humans, but how easily it gets from one human to another. Pretty much all viruses cause problems for humans, and all of them can get from one human to another. But there’s something about this virus that helps it move from one human to the next easily and quickly – perhaps because humans don’t realize they have this virus inside them until long after it gets in them, meaning they can unknowingly give it to others just in the course of their daily life.
The virus infected a bunch of humans in this country in just a matter of weeks, so governors in many states started encouraging humans to stay in their homes and limit their contact with other humans. (Imagine states are like houses that have a lot of different humans, dogs, and cats living in them, like how you, Peanut, and I all live here, and governors are like the heads of those houses, making important decisions for the humans, dogs, and cats who live there, like how I make important decisions for you and Peanut.)
It’s been hard on a lot of humans. Many of them are a lot like you – you know how you love to go to the dog park and run around and visit with the other dogs? Well, there are many humans who like going out and visiting with other humans. But right now, they can’t. They have to stay at least 6 feet, the whole length of your leash, from other humans, and even from the dogs and cats that belong to other humans. That’s why when we go on our daily walks, the humans we see can’t stop and pet you like they normally would. It’s why I have to shorten your leash and even sometimes pull you off the sidewalk into the street when other humans are passing – we have to stay your leash-length away from them. It’s why you didn’t get to see Melanie and Ron in April. They were supposed to visit, but didn’t for their safety.
This hasn’t been as hard on me as maybe it should have been. I somehow accidentally managed to align a big change in my life with the governor’s stay-at-home order. I decided to stop working at Epic, the place I would go every day from early until late. I wanted to do something different, partly so I could stay home with you more. I decided that earlier this year – you know, when it was still really, really cold, and the sun wasn’t out for as much of the day. It was right around the time of my last day going to Epic that the governor asked everyone to stay in. So right around the time I’d been planning to stay in, the governor asked everyone to do so.
That said…well, I’d been planning to desert you every so often. You’re my sweet darling, but you can sure be distracting. I thought I’d go to a coffee shop (those are like dog parks for humans, except we sit in comfy chairs and drink coffee, rather than run around trees and drink muddy water). I thought I’d go to the library (a place like my living room, but with a lot more shelves). I thought I’d still have one of the dog walkers from Out-U-Go! come by to take you for a walk once or twice a week, just to keep up our relationship with them, and to give me several hours to work uninterrupted.
But because of the virus, none of that can happen. Because of the virus, I have to stay in. Because of the virus, I have to stay home with you all day every day.
And that’s not the worst thing. I love being home with you. I love that you’re never more than a few feet from me. I love that I get to take you out several times a day, rain or shine. I love that we go for long walks together. I’m so grateful you’re here. You and Peanut make staying in easy.
But I do wish I could go visit my human friends. You know how much you like seeing Ron and Melanie or Aunt Rosemary or Maureen? Well, I can’t see them now either, and that makes me sad.
And we don’t know when this can end. That’s the worst of it. We don’t know when things can go back to normal, or if normal will be normal after all this, or if we’ll have to make a new normal. We just don’t know.
Humans really don’t like not knowing.
Love you always,
Natasha
This is a work of creative non-fiction. The names mentioned refer to real people (and pets!), businesses, and places I know and care about. As we’re all painfully aware, this story refers to a very real pandemic we’re all currently living through. The perception and experiences described are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or perceptions of any real person or business mentioned here.