When I first met John, he had two collies, Skye and Suya. I’d never been around collies, but I immediately discovered that they are the sweetest, most helpful, most trusting creatures imaginable. When you walk two collies in Manhattan, you immediately become a parade float. As strangers would glimpse the dogs, each and every one of them would say the same thing: “Lassie!” It never seemed to occur to anyone that this might not be an original thought, and that it was like approaching every caucasian male in Connecticut and saying, “Tad!” One day, as a guy came near, I was shocked and surprised when he saw the dogs and said, “Fluffy!” But maybe he meant me.
Skye and Suya were gorgeous and sometimes they’d graciously pose, as if there might be a photographer nearby. At that time John was living on the pre-gentrified Bowery, so many of the pedestrians were alcoholics and drug addicts living in the local shelters and flophouses. There was one elderly heroin addict who loved seeing the dogs, and they’d wait patiently as this man took a very, very long time to gradually bend down to pet them.
John also had two cats, Shadow and Grace. Shadow was the gleeful alpha-male, who loved attention and would leap across a room to investigate a stranger; he also enjoyed tormenting his sister. Once Shadow was gone, Grace eventually stopped living in terror. To this day, she has only one drawback, at least from my point of view: she pretty much hates me, although at least she’s stopped hissing whenever I come within a few yards. She doesn’t like most people, but she understandably worships John, and will happily spend the day in his lap, gazing up at him. When John leaves on a trip, she blames me, and refuses to glance at me or acknowledge me in any way, until John’s return. I’ve only once had my revenge. John had just left, and Grace mistakenly jumped into my lap, thinking I was John. As I petted her, she realized her terrible mistake, and slunk off, mortified.
The collies pictured above aren’t John’s dogs: the first collie is one of the many Lassies, and I added the collie puppies because I’ve never seen collie puppies.
