Uncle Puppy's Death (4)

Uncle Puppy's Death (4)

From 1989 to 1990, our family experienced a big trouble. Our father's parents died of cancer within a half year. Our parents, together with the father's sister (then in Tokyo), took turns to visit father's hometown (in Shikoku Island) in order to take care of their parents. Of course, I did not know this (I was not born yet); and I am merely repeating what I have heard later. In this experience, our father had bitter feelings against doctors. You see, there are wide differences among hospitals, especially as regards the treatment of cancer and other difficult disease. And there were little practice of "informed consent" in those days, especially in most hospitals far away from the Metropolitan area or from Kansai area.

Although I agree that human hospitals are often bad in many respects, animal hospitals are much worse than that! I would like to claim, "Rights for animals, rights for proper medical care!" But we are going too afield. What I was going to say was that our parents' concern was detracted from Puppy; and that's the reason why we have very few pictures during this period. Eventually, our father's mother died at the end of August 1989, and her husband died in February 1990. By this time, our father was scheduled to move to a famous university in Kyoto, and he canceled twice his visit to the University of Pittsburgh, because of his parents' illness. And finally, in 1991, he managed to visit Pittsburgh, together with his family.

Now, what do you think happened with Uncle Puppy? The family could not take him with them, so that they decided to ask our mother's parents to take care of him for several months. Poor Uncle Puppy! He had to move, with his disease, to a new environment in Shikoku Island, far away from Nara. I have heard Puppy was quite silent during this stay, but to our parents' surprise, his epileptic fit stopped after this stay! During and after this stay, Puppy experienced no more fit. You can imagine how much he was delighted when he saw the family again!

And now I finally came to the scene where I can begin to play a role. Maybe you already know that I was a stray cat during the autum of 1993; I was adopted by our family in late October. Uncle Puppy immediately accepted me, and we became good friends, although he was sometimes envious of my priviledge to live within the house. But he was allowed more often into the rooms, after my arrival. Do you want to see our good friendship?

[Puppy and Momo, 1993-94]

Oh, I have forgotten to tell you about Uncle Puppy's love affairs. I believe he had a couple of love affairs before I was born, and that is quite understandable, because he was still quite attractive (even to us cats!) when I first met him. Sometime between 1990 and 1991 (I am relying on our parents' memory, and theirs is not clear), a female stray dog fell in love with Puppy. She was attractive, and children soon named her "Komachi". Do you know one of the famous Japanese beauties in the history? Her name is "Ono no Komachi"; and "Komachi" soon became a pronoun for a beauty! Since she was a stray dog, she was quite free and she managed to get into our family's garden. The family witnessed one of her love affairs with Puppy, and later heard that she got pregnant. In the meantime, she was adopted by a family in the same residential area (several hundred meters away from our home). Now, several months later, Komachi appeared to our family's garden again, and moreover with three little puppies! Our parents were struck; they thought that she came in order to show Puppy his children---that was their intuition. I think their intuition was correct. We animals have feelings, thoughts, and wills, I assure you! These mental states are not peculiar to humans, as some arrogant philosophers want to claim.