Les mésaventures de Mlle Fia Lux de la Pellousery

Fia Lux, 9 weeks, 6 days

You might think that on puppy number two, you've got it all down. Everything is going to be just perfect, according to the books this time. Of course, you would be wrong, the books don't even agree, but you have learned and you are, most importantly, vastly more patient and serene, arguably the two most important qualities to possess when teaching a new puppy.

You discover just how lame you are when you take your little one out to relieve herself, being very certain to practice "the tree" when she tugs at her leash and twists like the Black Stallion on the other end, which she does just past the corner of the France Telecom utility building, while you bend down and use your goofiest voice to get her to take a step towards you and release the tension on the leash so you can praise her "enthusiastically" -- even, and especially, if she is in the middle of doing what you don't want her to do, but she wants to do; the smallest move in the direction of your will is to be recognized with gusto and rewarded --, when her attention is captured by an unseen object or occurrence around the corner.

"Fia, viens ici, Fia! Fia, Fia, Fia, viens! Viens, ma petite, allez, viens, Fia! Allez, allez -- Fia? Hunh?" Even more suddenly than she stopped looking at you, she is suddenly no longer on her leash, and you are staring at the clasp where your puppy was a heartbeat before. Unbelievable, you think, I attached that. I am certain I did. You spring from where you are crouched to make certain she doesn't dash off in front of the one car per hour that passes at that time of the day, and you see a man running off, holding something in his arms.

Your puppy!

I ran after him, just about to call out, and thinking he looked an awful lot like the cantonnier, or the village caretaker, when the man whirled around to face me, barely controlling his urge to laugh out loud, a smile from ear to ear.

"Mais tu m'as fait peur!" I said, stopped in my tracks and feeling like a bit of an idiot, when he should have been feeling like a much greater one, a positive lout for playing such a trick on me -- and teaching me unintentionally how easy it is to steal a valuable and beloved pet. Suddenly, I felt like one of those parents in China, who watch their little boys swept away by desperate parents, unable to produce anything but worthless girls, or the despicable people who take them to sell to those desperate parents. Fia sat cuddled in his arms, perfectly at ease. She had met him the day before, and he had been entirely charmed by her warm tummy, soft fur and puppy eyes, and there he was, laughing like he had executed the perfect plaisanterie.

"Ah, c'est trop drôle!" he crowed, "C'était tout ce que je pouvait faire de ne pas rire tellement ça a marché! Tu ne te doutais de rien!"

"Et oui, mais on a peur quand on vois quelqu'un en train de se sauver avec son chiot, tu sais. Et puis, je n'ai pas pu comprendre pourquoi sa laisse avait lâché comme ça."

I didn't have the heart to tell him how truly rotten that was of him, when Fia was well and he was having such a jolly time of my vulnerability. There was no pretending. I had been scared, and who on earth wouldn't have been, but how could I hurt him by making him know that his trick was just a little bit appalling, when he had never intended to do anything that wasn't perfectly innocent? Ah la-la la-la.

He placed the warm bundle of puppy in my arms, and crossed the street back to the old school they have converted into apartments that still haven't rented, these 3 or 4 months later, to finish repainting the wall the adjoint mayor, who showed up for job meetings in our tiny village in the middle of the countryside, with not even a street light or a boulangerie and no regular bus service, in her fur coat, made up and in heels, said was still not the right color, infuriating François, who had been assigned the job of the repaints, when the painting contractor had probably informed her that the consequences of her indécision was not included in the contract. Au revoir, et merci.

I had listened to him grumble yesterday and was up to date on relations at the mairie, and the opposition ticket forming for the 2014 elections in our village of under 400 residents. He does not appreciate this new adjoint mayor, nor the fact that under the leadership of the present maire and his équipe à la mairie, "il y a plus de bruit au cimitière que dans le village." Asked what constitutes his idea of pleasant village animation, and he answered "Plus de fêtes à la salle des fêtes."

Sigh. And here I was, thinking there were more than enough fêtes at the village salle des fêtes. And that is what passes for important political decision-making in this village, where gay rights have already been established as a matter of course by the government's provision since years gone by for gay couples to "se déclarer en couple reconnu à la mairie" and receive the benefits married couples do, while leaving the matter of gay marriage as hotly debated here as in, oh, say, Western Texas, and the general knowledge that our cantonnier does not live with his nephew, the ghost of which pretext he has finally given up understanding that no one whatsoever has the least problem with this.

Now, my husband and I, at least, thought that the 1 am rollerblading in his ex-wife's collants and débardeur -- sans pantalons -- engaged in by our neighbor further up the street, the one who befriended Baccarat in the early days of her life here and prepared a pheasant a hunter had presented to my husband and I for being nice people one Sunday when we were out walking the dogs (Stéphane said he had been a chef and restaurant owner, in addition to an accomplished golfer, an expert in detecting counterfeit bills for the Bank of France -- sort of a money spy, he liked to imply --, so who better to prepare the pheasant? He insisted I join him for lunch the mets fins he prepared of it, and where I learned he was also an aspiring composer with a Mylène Farmer fétiche and his own boots to complete the image.), was bizarre, and I am nearly certain there was peau léopard involved in his outfit as my husband described it when he came back inside from whatever he had been doing outside on the sidewalk at 1 am, arriving just in time to see Stéphane sail up the street and fall flat on his face in his remarkable get-up. Acting for all the world as though this was perfectly ordinary in the life of a minuscule village, pommé dans la campagne, he stood up to chat
with my husband, checking his collants for damage, blithely unaware that his credibility had taken a sharp downward turn.

I wondered at the cantonnier's want of greater animation in the village, except it was true that Stéphane was finally gone, and no one was mourning his ignominious departure. This was, after all, the same Stéphane my husband chided me for no longer stopping by to visit with the dogs and failing to return his hospitality by inviting him to dinner. Stéphane had also distinguished himself in the first weeks he lived in the house he rented by serving free cocktails from his kitchen window, complete with hors d'oeuvres, or amuses bouches, if you like, and music. Often enough, l'heure d'apéro coincided with the hour of walking the dogs, and since Baccarat and he were such great friends, I had to stop by. I am not sure this did my image with my husband's colleagues next door to Stéphane any good, but I hoped my dignity and status held me in good (enough) stead and listened to Stéphane's stories, while Robert and another neighbor, sometimes the cantonnier or his "copain" joined the little group at the window.

It was rather sympathique in its intimacy, a candle burning on the counter behind him and music wafting out into the dark fall evening air, and his amuse bouches were phénoménales.

One evening, I had gone to fetch mon mari and bring him for a finger of Scotch. I was feeling guilty, knowing that he was sitting in front of the TV, while I was having a drink up the street with my dogs, Robert and l'homme aux collants. God only knows why, but he joined us, and in a moment when the conversation was at its merriest, Stéphane leaned toward me over Baccarat and said, "Tu sais, j'aimerais coucher avec toi si jamais tu veux."

And then, he smiled and winked at me, like we were in on something together (as if!), his round belly protruding over his jeans (I had checked his attire before going to get my husband; it could have been his hot pants and bare hairy legs).

I am sure I involuntarily tightened my L.L. Bean anorak around me and looked terribly confuse, while trying to maintain my polite social smile.

I did not hear you, I did not hear you, I DID NOT HEAR YOU.

Of course, it is perfectly clear now that I should have said, "Chéri, tu sais ce que Stéphane vient de me proposer?"

"Non? Encore un délicieux plat au faisan, ma chérie?"

"Mais non! Il vient de me faire une proposition indécente! Ce n'est pas gentil?"

And, then, my husband would have knocked him out, just as he has longed to all these months since I finally caved to his chiding that I had been unkind to Stéphane and really ought to invite him for dinner, the fateful evening we proposed that he buy our old Volvo, the cadeau empoisonné given to us along with a 1991 Chrysler Voyager by one of the midwives at the hospital when her father died, as a gesture of her gratitude for his medical services that resulted in her children, because he had no car to get to the train to get to work, and he accepted. We even lent him our other car until the Volvo underwent a few necessary repairs and agreed that he could pay us at the end of March. It was early December.

Had it ended there, my husband would have felt no real urge to violence, but there was the day long after late March, when we still had not received un centime for the car, when I ran into Stéphane outside the bar across the street from the house, where he was accustomed to run up the bill that prevented him, apparently, from paying for the car, and he told me that he had accumulated 94 parking tickets since he had been driving our cars, but don't worry, he said, brandishing a photocopy of an article from Le Journal des Yvelines that reported that the Tribunal de Versailles had decided in favor of a plaintiff who argued that the law does not actually require one to put the proof of payment for parking on the dashboard, and so you don't have to pay for parking after all, we'd never have to pay!

I had turned as white as the Volvo and felt like decking him on the spot, but I got back in the Fiat, rolled up to my parking spot and showed my husband the copy of the article Stéphane had provided me. He had many ready, one for each batch of tickets he returned unpaid to the Trésor Publique. His argument was made of concrete.

Since then, there was the speeding ticket, the chickens he kept dying of starvation in the entry to his house behind the closed gate when he failed to ever return again, he had another gullible woman to take him in, while he emptied her bank account, and drover her daughter's car, while she was away in South America, or somewhere, the rooster that finally flew out over the gate in his search for food and landed at our neighbor's feet while he washed his car, giving him a fright, and the dog, the poor Brittany Spaniel Nuts, who he had left for months already and then all the following winter alone in a cave behind his house with nothing but a bit of straw on which to sleep and someone to come and fill his food bowl. He barked long into the frigid nights, and we cursed Stéphane out loud.

Eventually, Nuts found a way to escape, like the rooster before him, and the cantonnier took him to the animal refuge. I called the woman there to tell her what I knew. She asked if we knew how to reach the owner, and I gave her the number we had for him. She thanked me, furious with Stéphane for his neglect and abuse of this poor dog. I thought a moment after I set the phone down and called her right back.

"Madame, quoi que vous faites, il ne faut surtout pas lui rendre son chien. Il va l'abondonner à nouveau. C'est un homme sans scrupules qui ne vie que pour lui."

"Le chien a déjà 16 ans," she told me. I knew what that meant. A 16-year-old dog is impossible to adopt out.

"Il vaut mieux le faire piquer," I told her. Putting him to sleep would be a mercy next to what he had lived through.

And so, the police canceled the parking tickets and fined him. The owner of the house he rented, and for which he never paid, involved the authorities, and his belongings were seized and taken away in two trucks a month ago. We had already, with the permission of the police, entered his property and removed our poor car, its front seat broken, the battery dead, and had it taken to the dump. As for Stéphane, he'll be lucky if he only spends 3 months in jail when they get their hands on him, and he is even more fortunate still that the police will and my husband didn't.

This is not enough animation for one small village?

But, I began with Fia's misadventures, which might be better called my own.

This morning, I had taken her out to relieve herself and all was well when I heard noises in the kitchen behind me. I went to look and find her dragging her soaking wet nylon rope -- she learned to ignore the string yesterday, and has progressed to trailing a 1/4" rope from her collar as part of her leash training -- away from a large puddle of pipi. From the pattern on the floor, it was clear the rope was sodden from pipi.

"Fia! Mauvais pipi!" I said in my sternest, most displeased voice, grasping her and showing her the puddle before carrying her out to where she may relieve herself, which she did, just a little bit, before trotting over to the bit of gravel and dirt at the hedge along the sidewalk to do a popo, and stepped directly into the one she had left an hour before.

And Stéphane will never be Mylène Farmer, no matter how hard he tries.

"J'aimerais le voir essayer ça en prison," chuckles my husband.


....

The beginning of it all

Rest time

It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call it naptime. It lasted about 5 minutes and the Energizer Bunny was up and toddling about again, worrying me that she'll nibble on a succulent edge of gypsum board or faire un p'tit pipi là où il ne le faut pas.

I have been up since before the first light, and have had two brief walks (this produced two pipis, but did not prevent a popo là où il ne le faut pas), fed the dogs (the plural is so nice), made my breakfast, done some laundry, had a cup of tea and another of coffee, done my toenails, found some kind of a lump under the skin on Rapide's neck (we have an appointment at the vet Tuesday) and made a fire in the fireplace, watched Tony Elias become the world champion in the category Moto 2, and it's only 9:18 am.

Had I known how productive I can be with a puppy -- had I remembered, that is -- I might have gotten one every year!

Today, we are meeting the parents of our eldest son's girlfriend, who are visiting from Numea before traveling on to NYC. Monsieur is a vétérinaire and, I am assured, will be enchanté if we bring along the petite Fia. We are expected for a drink before lunch , and then we have reservations on the terrasse of Les Fables de la Fontaine. Another wonderful restaurant by Christian Constant in a row of them along the rue Saint Dominique. You only meet your child's "in-laws" for the first time once, best to do it in style.

And, my philosophy for eating out? It had better be an awful lot better than what I can do at home, and that is worth paying something for.

Time to get Sam up and do his grocery shopping before I dress to go.
....

Fiat Fia

Fia comes home, Bliss

She is sleeping at my feet, a fire burns in the wood stove, Rapide is snoring gently from her bed and the cats are napping or on the prowl, Sam is up in his room, preparing work for school. If Hunka Munka lived here and did my housework, all would be perfect. As it is, the scenery makers could have worked just a little harder to make the "cadre" a bit more idyllic, but Fia doesn't notice. She only has eyes for me, and Sam.

It is an amazing thing how quickly they adopt us. All those days that I worried, mostly because my husband worried, but he is such a worry wort, that she would receive a chill welcome from Rapide, Shadow and Wisp, who would feel that she is quite unnecessary to their happiness; worried that she would cry, missing her brothers and her sisters, her mother. No, none of that. Oh, yes, Shadow has let her know that she would do well to keep her distance with a hiss and a threatening paw in the air, but Fia is hale and heartier than that, apparently. Sam chuckled, too, watching Fia crouch to pounce, thinking perhaps the best answer was to invite Shadow to play. Catching a glimpse of her tail in the corner of her eye as she turned and turned on her rear paws, she began to play with that. Shadow walked away.

She would have shrugged were cats to do this.

Rapide welcomed her with a sniff and an invitation to play, let her join her in her bed and curl up at her hind quarters, just like Baccarat did when she was a baby, and hasn't uttered a syllable of complaint. She seems to find it perfectly natural that this baby, like so many she had, should appear and join the household.

Wisp, well, as I thought, she has missed Baccarat, and, here, she is superior enough in intelligence to find a new playmate and patient enough to wait for her to grow big enough to cuddle with, since she has been made to understand by Rapide that she is not welcome to snuggle with her, ever. Shadow, yes.

I am rediscovering the constant vigilance that is required to guard against threat to household objects, inappropriate toileting, and the attention that is needed to make the bond you appreciate forever. The first poohs were out of doors (Bravo, ma Fia!), a first pipi occurred indoors, but I took her out for a first very brief walk in leash, which she sort of understood, and she stopped and did her first big girl pipi on the sidewalk at 10 pm.

In the car, she settled at my feet while Sam drove. She looked at me, and she looked at Sam. After awhile, while we were crossing the forêt d'Anet, I broke down and picked her up. Sam had asked me more than once why I didn't hold her.

"I want her to know her place and be happy to occupy it."

But, her place is also snuggling with us. Sam was right.

She leaned her chin on my arm, or my shoulder, and looked out the window, calm, content. For a moment, as we drove through the same villages I rode up in the cabin of the tow truck to cross yesterday, returning from my failed attempt to go get first Sam in Chartres and then Fia together, Sam moved his elbow closer to mine, and she stretched her chin out to lay her neck across my arm and her chin on his. How can one risk missing these moments?

Madame Sivadier said, "Elle est bien dans ses baskets," which she means she is at ease in the world, confident, and self-possessed. She is also sweet, playful, outgoing, and gentle.

She is all these things.

She just moved a little closer to Rapide's bed to nap. I am waiting for her to climb in next to her and find the companionship Baccarat and Rapide enjoyed those too few years they had together. I knew Rapide would accept her. She was a good mother.

All in good time.

My husband called from the hospital, where he is on duty, to ask how the welcome went.

"Tu avais l'aire si heureuse avec elle," he said to me. "J'ai été content de te voir comme ça."

I am happy to have little Fia with us. Sam came back down to get a drink, as a pretext, I am sure, to see what she was up to, and stroked her head.

"It's funny to see how small she is," he said. "Compared to Rapide, she is like a little doll."



Ca il y est, Fia is in Rapide's bed, and Rapide is grunting, unsure what to do. Now, she has gone to see her and is wagging her tail. Now, Fia's out and Rapide just got back in. Fia has approached to sit closer.

It's like a dance of acquaintanceship.

We're all happy, I think, to rediscover the joy of discovering a very small being, watching it grow and starting a new bond all over again. I think like with all second children, we'll all relax and enjoy it more this time. Baccarat taught us nearly everything we need to know.

And when you look at this picture, and remember a certain one of Baccarat, taken in exactly the same place in almost exactly the same position just months ago, you can only know that you did the exact right thing.

"And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make."
....

Murphy's Law

19th breakdown

At least the countryside is lovely here, just outside Gilles, but, as the saying goes, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and today was one of those days when at least the breeder and I should just not have gotten out of bed.

Oh, and the pregnant woman at Truffaut who cut her foot open with God knows what putting her shopping cart away and wound up with a shoe full of blood.

The best was when I told the employee who thought first aid amounted to standing next to her with her hand on the woman's shoulder that she really should be lying down with her feet elevated above her head, and the employee turned to glare at me and said, "I called the rescue squad. She doesn't want to lie down, what do you want me to do? Throw her on the floor?"

My, that was defensive and uncalled for now, wasn't it? It is also, I thought rather sadly, fairly French. Perhaps those of you reading over in the States will tell me that, even sadder, it is this way everywhere now that stupid and uneducated is in.

I suggested that she was responsible for providing proper first aid care and assuming the consequences, not the pregnant woman standing there bleeding all over the store's linoleum flooring saying she's fine, really. She wasn't fine, really. You treat for shock, débile. Alright, so I didn't say she was "débile", but I hoped she understood it, and I left. I had a puppy to pick up. I had stopped at Truffaut for puppy food and a toy for the car ride home, since the order for her holistic, non-grain, super-duper premium, this-has-better-not-give-her-cancer dog food hasn't arrived yet, and I was on my way to go get her. The sun was shining, the fields were glowing, I had escaped the heavy Friday afternoon traffic for the country roads, and I was still playing over and over in my head what I ought to have said to that unpleasant woman.

No, you oughtn't have, my better self told me. I obviously wasn't listening because the sentences I could have pronounced in return kept running through my head. I was even saying them in an undertone.

"Stop," I told myself, not my best self, but the other one who does go on. "You left. It's over."

The sentences I did not utter continued to repeat for a few more minutes, and then, mercifully, I found that I had listened. I had actually seen a horrendously ugly and out of place wood house that looked like a cross between a log cabin, a chalet and a contemporary developer house, and my mind had a new bone to chew.

That's what happens when they tell you wood houses like in the US are in, and you refuse to design them. That's what you get. See? Myself was at it again. If my husband feels he is an unfair recipient of this editorializing, well, what about me?

I drove on through the villages, Menerville, Perdreauville, Bréval and Neauphlette, and then --

What was that? asked myself, alarmed.

I listened. There was a clanking noise, like something metallic was bouncing and banging along on the pavement under the car. The window was down and I leaned my head toward the outside to see if it were perhaps coming from the field or the railroad track to my left. It sounded like it was coming from under the car. I slowed. I listened. It slowed. I passed under the railroad trestle and the noise grew louder. I slowed to a stop and opened the door, leaning out to look under the car, and that's when I saw the steam and cut off the engine. The heat gage did not appear to be elevated, but there was definitely steam or smoke whistling out from under the hood of the car, and radiator fluid spreading into a thick green puddle under the front end.

"Tu l'as peut-être foutu," said my husband, reassuringly, when I got him tracked down at the hospital, while waiting for the tow truck I'd called. The dealership was expecting us.

"Je ne pense pourtant pas," I said. I know when you have to pull over and how not to blow the head gasket, merci beaucoup. "Et Monsieur Lecorre ne le pense pas non plus. Il sait qu'elle a fait ce bruit, et il pense que c'est plutôt la pompe à eau."

So there. And then, my cell phone battery went dead.

I had been on the phone with the breeder, who told me that when she thought that all the remaining puppies were out of the woods, a black female had died, one of the two that were chosen before I got there and reserved the remaining one. She had called the new owners and announced the sad news, offering them the remaining little chocolate female, at no additional cost, but her losses were mounting fast for one day. Strangely, my little girl had been the smallest of the three black females, and she hadn't been chosen, but now, the breeder told me, she is one of the biggest and strongest, growing fast and one of the ones to escape all misfortune.

"Oui, c'est nous qui sommes en train de vivre tous ses malheurs à sa place!"

Anyway, it just goes to show you how little you can tell at 4 weeks. Perhaps this one is blessed, if Baccarat was not.

But, as far as the car goes, we had just had the radiator replaced in May, but not the water pump, and when I finally opened the hood, preferring not to scald my hands, since this had been such a banner day already, I saw the ventilator blades at a rogue angle. The guy from the tow truck looked at it when he arrived.

"Et oui, c'est bien probablement la pompe à eau. Voyez comment c'est de travers?" Yes, I nodded, I had seen how it was crooked, and I felt very much relieved and vindicated. "Elle démarre?" he asked.

I looked through the window of the car and considered how best to reply. I had not actually tried to start the car again, since I hadn't seen any earthly purpose and several risks in doing that.

"Je pense, oui, je veux dire, pourquoi pas?" He nodded and turned the key, and she started right up, clanging away like an old jalopy. He put her in reverse and drove it back to the truck bed and then hit the accelerator to take it back up the 10% slope, if it weren't more, radiator fluid flowing freely from the front end and more steam starting to waft up past the radiator grill.

"He has to know what he's doing," I told myself, and myself nodded weakly, feeling a little bit not so good.

We drove back the exact route I had come, Truffaut being practically next to the BMW dealership, where the arrival of our old wagon on the tow truck certainly made a "tache" compared to all those newer vehicles the owners of which were actually able to drive into the parking lot. I reflected on the likelihood that we would never be able to afford anything in the used car building they had recently completed, especially if I keep on buying dogs, hoping we would not be in any great need any too soon.

Monsieur Lecorre greated me, warmly as usual, despite the fact that we have not made a recent purchase of a newer car, and I asked him to call me a taxi.

"Bien sur, je le ferai tout de suite, comme ça, vous perdrez un minimum de temps." But I was thinking of Frédéric, who I had seen putting the motorcycles away next door and getting ready to close up shop and head home, to Moosesucks.

"Savez, je me demande si je ne ferais pas mieux de demander à Fred s'il ne pourrait pas me ramener à la maison," I said.

"Mais bien sur,"said Monsieur Lecorre.

"Mais bien sur!"said Fred.

And 3 hours after leaving the house, I was home. Tomorrow, I will get Fia in the Fiat.

"Ha!" laughed the breeder, "the Fiat. C'est plutôt parfait ça!"

"Et oui," I laughed with her, "sauf que c'est beaucoup moins adapté sans arrière."

"Oh, vous la mettrez aux pieds du passager, et quand elle essayera de bouger, vous lui direz 'non', et elle va finir par comprendre et s'endormir."

I'm not so certain, but who knows. She's survived the weaning crisis, and she's growing faster than the others, maybe she'll be a quick study, too.

Sam's got the PSG soccer ball all ready.
....

And baby makes...

Home, sweet home

Well, that depends on the day. If it's during the week, but not on a Thursday, it makes 6 (if you don't count the fish, which are really hard to count, and the frogs, which are worse, not even considering the even more elusive toads). If you count Thursdays, well that would make 7, and if you count the weekends, then it would be 7, also, except the first and the third, and eventually the fifth, if there is a fifth weekend in the month, in which case, depending on the hour of the day, it could get to as many as 9.

In any event, today Fia comes home. Her bed is ready, the gate is reinstalled, except for the hook, which I can't find, but I'll throw something together to keep it closed and her in there. I think Rapide might be suspecting something is up; the gate appears to evoke an association in the fog of her memory. Not to mention the washing of the various dog cushions and their placement behind the gate. She watched with especial interest as I took Baccarat's food bowl out of the pots and pans cupboard, filled it with water and placed it in the furthest corner from the smallest cushion. She was not present when I scattered some "cookies" in the other corner, hoping to associate it with feeding and not with the relieving of one's tiny, unprincipled little bladder.

Fia nearly didn't come home today. The breeder called this morning, sounding very upset. She told me that several of the puppies were sick in response to their weaning, and Fia was one of them. I knew she fears this because she talked to me about it early on, and it's what she is firm in not releasing puppies to their new homes until they are at least 2 months old -- to the day, and not one before. But, it doesn't always happen.

Today, it did.

There was worse: one of the black males had died. Fia had lost a brother, and this was what explained her sounding so particularly distraught. I felt so badly for her. Who says breeder's don't feel for their animals? She told me that she would call as soon as she thought Fia was out of danger, as soon as she was eating properly again, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. I told her there was no rush. The important thing was that she felt reassured and safe releasing her puppies to their mistresses and to their masters. We could certainly wait. I sent a text message to Sam and consoled myself in The Mill on the Floss.

The phone rang again. It was the breeder a second time. She still sounded frazzled and upset, but she said that it turned out Fia was not affected. She was fine, and we could come and get her as planned. It was, she explained, the upset over the little boy puppy that had thrown her off, but with more time, she could better tell who was at risk, and who was not. Fia was alright.

I felt a little surge of pride in her. Absurd, but it's true, I did, and I threw down my book, put my cup of coffee, grown cold beside me, aside and headed to the kitchen to prepare my scrambled eggs and the only thing for which I had all the ingredients after the two eggs for my breakfast: more raspberry financiers. Then, I went and retrieved the garden gate I bought for Baccarat to make a little fenced-off corner in the otherwise open ground floor of the house for Fia, plugged in the power drill and screwed the hinges back into their old places and discovered the hooks I had bought would not work. Tant pis, I thought, I can use what I have and tie it shut until I find the right thing again. The guy over at the nearest Bricomarché had been particularly and singularly ignorant and unhelpful when I went for new hooks the day before yesterday.

"Er, vous les avez achetez ici la dernière fois?" he had asked, looking at his offerings like he had no idea what was in front of him even, let alone what I was describing.

"Oui. Je les ai acheté chez Bricomarché." As if that mattered. It is only about the most basic thing in the world, but this is only the worst Bricomarché I have ever seen. They carry only the most obvious basics, terrified of stocking what might not sell and going out of business. Merci beaucoup.

Now, the financiers are packed and ready to go, the sun has come out after a gloomy morning, Sam will be heading out to meet me now that his classes are over for the week, and perhaps Fia will be relieved and grateful to be here after the trauma of the morning. I expect her to cry this night, alone for the first time behind her garden gate.

Perhaps I will paint it this time and see if that cheers her up if she is sad.

I really do need to get that old door out and get the new kitchen entry built, too, not to mention change the cabinetry and refinish the table, and get something to put on the floor under it and refinish the walls and take the bottles to the glass recycling.

Note the empty Lillet bottle, those of you to whom this might mean something.
....

Vigil

Another water lily flower

The vigil for Bandit goes on. I know I will not see him again, but I know I will keep on looking for him.

Wisp stayed outside last night, all night long. I like to think she was guarding the fish in the old fountain. I don't know what she likes to think.

If curiosity killed the cat, it may also be said of the fish the cat killed.

It's hard to stop hoping.
....

El Bandito perdido

Bandit, September 30

It's always like that. You spot a fish, get to know it a little, and then you are attached to it. It was particularly true with the fish we started to call "Bandit", because of its black mask. It could just as easily have been "Zorro" or "The Lone Ranger", but "Bandit" it was, or "El Bandito".

Bandit appeared over the summer, one of this year's babies, and he -- please forgive me if you are actually a female -- made an immediate impression. First, we had never had a fish like this one, mostly orange, partly pink with black spots, one being located right across his eyes and stopping just shy of his nose. Then, we noticed his particular manner of swimming. Bandit always seemed to be in a hurry, eager, darting about with twitches of his tail. And then, there was how outgoing he was. This was a fish who did not seem to notice that he was one of the little ones. He jumped right into the pack and was eager to do everything with everyone else: play with his elders, feed when I showed up, swim right over to greet anyone approaching the old fountain, and -- well, that's about what the fish do.

What's more, Sam and my husband felt exactly the same way about Bandit. Bandit stood out in a school of fish. We looked forward to watching this fish grow up, discover if he was really a she, and see how many more sort of like him we would have.

Then, a little more than a week ago, I was watching the fish (I do this way too much), and I noticed several new ones. I had thought we had fewer fry survive this year, and here was a whole new batch. One that was mostly very light with an orange sherbet head, several little dark gray and black ones, and -- I blinked -- another Bandit, taille petite! El Bandito had a hermano or a hermana! There was El Grande and there was El Pequeno.

"Mom," said Sam, "wouldn't that be 'poquito'?" I thought about it, and I felt confused. Spanish was a long time ago for me, just two months ago for Sam, who aced it on his bac.

"Ah, maybe."

Looking for both of the the other day, I realized it would not be "poquito". That means "a little", or "un peu".

Every morning I go out to feed and greet the fish, who swim up as fast as they can, word traveling somehow to those hanging out under the old stone sink covered with vegetation that the non-fish had shown up with the food, and on this morning, September 1, I noticed that Bandit was absent. I hand fed the most prolific egg producer first, as I always do, and then began to distribute pinches of food, looking out for Bandit. He did not appear. Not even by the time the last flake and dried shrimp had been eaten.

I went out several times that day in the rain, donning my old L.L. Bean anorak, but Bandit never appeared. He didn't the next day or today. And I looked for Little Bandit, too, but he didn't appear, either, until today. I shared the sad news with my husband, who would have noticed and ask me soon enough.

"Je ne vois plus Bandit depuis deux jours," I told him, hating to make the announcement because that probably sealed Bandit's fate.

"Ah ben?" He said. He knew. I wouldn't have brought it up if I thought Bandit was doing something important but secretive and just failing to show; I suspected the worst, and he guess it, "C'est probablement ce chat. Il faut qu'on fasse quelque chose." He meant the neighbors' cat, a big old black and white male about as ugly as they get. He compares him to Shadow, confusing them sometimes. I take issue.

"Comme quoi?" What, I asked, did he have in mind for us to do to protect the fish?

"Ben, il est normalement conseillé de garder l'eau plus bas encore du bord, mais on ne peut pas --" He fell off to reflecting on the problem. Normally, he had said, it is advised that you keep the water level further below the edge of the fish basin than we can because of the depth of the old fountain, but he didn't have another idea. Later, he proposed using cat and dog repellent.

"Mais, on a des chats et des chiens qui ne posent aucun problème et qui aime venir boire ou regarder, on ne veut pas les punir, et de toute manière, je ne pense pas que ces produits marchent."

"C'est peut-être mieux que de perdre des poissons," he said. I thought about it. It is a natural ecosystem, however, and ecosystems do have predators. This is a natural part of life. I shared my point of view with him, but he didn't seem convinced. He liked Bandit.

So did I.

"On pourrait peut-être juste mettre plus d'objets sur le bord du bassin chaque nuit avant d'aller se coucher. Comme ça, le chat ne pourrait pas monter dessus pour faire de la pêche." He didn't seem enthused by my idea. I didn't like it much more, having to go out every night to add flower pots and other bulky objects to fill up every opening around the edge of the old fountain so the cat would be blocked from fishing.

Maybe we will have to let nature go its course.



But today, watching the fish and hoping to see Bandit swim up, I started to form this crazy hope: Bandit was hurt or scared by the big old lout of a cat, and he was down under the old stone sink, recovering. He'd show up in a day or two just as good as new.

I know he won't, though.
....