The Family Pet

The black dog was the family pet.

Big and boundless, each of us never failed to find its fur caught in our clothing, at times making its way into our noses, clogging, choking, taking days of discomfort to dislodge.

Having agreed to put it on a diet, we each continued to feed it under the table. And so bigger it grew, and no person was absolved from the blame. It was mom and dad’s first pet together. She, with her cold cuts of revenge and bitterness fed it the most when dad was at work, too distracted to remember until it came home. At birth, I was introduced to it, even in the hospital room, its presence made me cry longer than the average child. We were a ragtag bunch of three, cutting scraps of ourselves to feed the family pet.

The black dog seemed omnipresent, he could be with all of us at once. Nose pushing into our hands, eyes asking for his pound of flesh. We never gave him a name or a leash, or rules. And so, badly behaved, he made his way to my school, to dad’s work and was never late for lunch with mom back home. I began to hate him, how big he was, how loud he would bark at the table making us all drown in silence. But I needed his comfort, without him to sleep with at night, I was empty. Better the thoughts he provided me than the nothingness without them.

The black dog reached its peak after the death of dad’s mom. The sight of its fur, the sound of its bark made me sick. I spend days in dread waiting to hear the crack of a firearm, and to find the black dog licking delightedly at dad’s remains. After three months, by which the black dog was then obese, dad gave it a name. Its demeanour shifted completely, its fur stood on edge, its ears and mouth pulled back to expose a snarl. It growled at dad. He began taking medicine to stave it off. The medicine made it so that my dad didn’t feel compelled to feed it. Starved of attention from him it rounded on my mother and me.

Late one evening, I received a sandwich from my mother, the black dog contentedly bounding up to me. She had had hers first, and she fell before I could finish it. I had barely enough time to phone for help.

It’s been three months since I saw our family pet, six years since mom poisoned herself. Just this morning I got myself a kitten from the shelter. With its mangled eye and ratted fur, it seemed to have met both real and metaphorical black dogs in its time. It would need a lot of loving, but knowing the journey, providing that care suited me just fine.