I’d originally started off thinking this post was going to be about the Muppets — those furry critters that have been near and dear to my heard from the moment I first saw Kermit The Frog do a breaking news report from Sesame Street. To say I had simply grown up with them would infer that I’d somehow grown out of liking them, which as my wife would quickly attest to, is something that has yet to happen. (I know that she loves me deeply for she continues to follow me into MuppetVision*3D every time we go to Walt Disney World despite having seen the show something like a million times. True love is the fact that she can quote the lines right back to me.)
While I was perusing my photos for something I could use for this very topic, I quickly became distracted by a tranche of snapshots featuring the various cats and dogs we’ve adopted over the years. Several recent updates to macOS have added a touch of artificial intelligence to my photo library, making it quite easy to group similar subjects together; in this case, a ton of photos of Rocket, our Shar-Pei mix appeared front and center, including a number from the week where the two of us were playing bachelor while my wife was back east. You can tell from the photo that he is a handsome young man who had a bit of a rough life before he joined our family; we don’t know any of the details other than what the Humane Society was able to tell based on the medical examination they did upon intake.
Looking at the photo, I remembered the day we went to visit him three years ago, the day when we decided he was the one. I think he would have followed us right back to the car that very afternoon were it not for the fact that papers needed to be signed before he’d be able to be sprung; we took him home the next day, and I will never forget how he proudly hopped out of the backseat of our car and marched right up to the front door of our house as though he’d always lived there. We’ve never been away from him for more than a week since — he has a severe case of separation anxiety, which isn’t surprising given how he was found; when the pandemic hit a few months later, taking care of him injected a sense of normalcy into an otherwise dystopian period.
These days, when I work from home (one of the few positives that came out of the pandemic is a hybrid schedule), Rocket tends to take up position on his dog bed just behind me, positioned perfectly so he’ll always be on camera during my Zoom meetings. (I feel obligated to point out that I didn’t place his bed there — he did, almost as if he knew the proper angle for exposure.) When I’m working on my writing, he splits his time between me in the den and whatever my wife is doing, eternally vexed by trying to keep both of us in view. The best days for him are when we are together so he doesn’t have to choose, though I know Rocket well enough now to know that when push comes to shove, he’ll seek out my wife and settle in. I’m okay with that, if not a tiny bit jealous.
Maybe I’ll write about the Muppets in a future post, but for now, I’m going to reach over and give Rocket a good scratch between the ears and see if it’s time for another stroll around the neighborhood.