Love Hurts

“Momma … Momma Mia.”

The Tenor, from Godfather II           

            Next to me singing, the most painful sound heard in the universe is the shrieking cry of an animal that misses its mother. The first few nights after we got Vito -- after we ripped him right off the loving teats of his mother -- he screamed like a carload of Toyota passengers on a mountain curve.

            When I went downstairs to comfort him at 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-o’clock in the morning, he calmed down, but it was from exhaustion more than anything else.

             After a few nights of this, I remembered that Christina had a stuffed Siberian Husky, which looked real. I also had a free sample of a Comfort Zone Wipe with Dog Appeasing Pheromones. First the Pee Post had pheromones, and now this wipe. I am beginning to think “pheromone” is a code word for Doggie Crack. The Comfort Zone Wipe looked like a Wet Ones, and the package claimed it mimicked pheromones released by mother dogs to help calm and comfort their puppies. I wiped it all over the toy Husky. Vito snuggled with it and finally relaxed.

             I stumbled to bed and my mind began to wander back to 1976 when I was in college and a member of Greenpeace, an organization that protected imperiled wildlife, such as white, baby harp seals.

            Greenpeace showed us this movie where fur traders on pirate-type ships, bearing scythes and looking like Grim Reapers, clubbed snow-white baby seals and scalped them. The baby seal pups were too slow to get away. For days, the Mamma Seals would lie on top of their baby’s bloody carcass and wail.

             “Save the Seals! Save the Seals,” we’d chant during the movie. Afterward, I felt so bad for the seals that I gave Greenpeace 10 bucks of my parent’s money.

            As I sunk into slumber, I thought about me, and Vito’s real mother, a gorgeous Siberian Husky named Emme. How different was I from those horrible fur mongers? I took Vito from the only life he knew, for my own selfish purposes. And what about poor Emme? Had she even eaten since he left? Had she cried herself to sleep every night, longing for her baby pup, like the mother harp seals? Even an Emme look-alike stuffed animal gave him more comfort in the night than I.

            Last night, as we horsed around with Vito, he ran around the recliner in the family room. We lost sight of him for a second, and then we heard a hard bang.

            He spun like an Olympic Ice Skater, and he screamed like the Russian judges had cheated him out of The Gold. Vito hurt his foot badly. He limped and howled. Brian and I felt useless. We didn’t know how to help him. Finally, I reached for the toy Husky bathed with the Dog Appeasing Pheromones, in hope he would think it was his mother Emme, and it would bring him comfort.

            He looked right past the toy Husky smeared with pheromones, and he limped, whimpering, into my lap. He picked me over the fake Emme!

            I gave him my best hug and told him it was from his first mother, the real Emme.