A few days ago, Josh told me about a co-worker whose cat was mauled by a pit bull in their neighborhood. The woman came home to find a note on her door. Apparently, her neighbor chased away the pit bull, rescued the cat, and took it to the vet. The note had the number of the vet but when the neighbor called the cat was in bad shape. She ended up putting the cat down. I was impressed with the quality of this woman’s neighbors and horrified by the story. I thought of my crotchety old kitty, Hobbes, and how sad it would be if she died. And then I recalled a few weeks ago when I somehow ended up watching ‘Animal Rescue:Miami’ on Animal Planet for hours and hours. Some woman called in to report someone dumping ‘boxes and boxes filled with cats’ out of a van. The visual image this conjured was both hilarious and terrifying. Tragically, a bunch of stray dogs stumbled onto the multiple boxes of cats and went nuts. One of the cats died, but in typical Animal Planet fashion, many of the cats survived and went up for adoption. I ended up balling the whole time, caught up in all the random stories of emaciated horses, puppy farms, and trapped crocodiles. Finally, I turned the TV off.

The day Josh told me the pit bull story was the same day I picked up my sister to help me paint the spare room/baby’s future room. It was also the third day of a string of nice sunny days. Our neighbors have taken it upon themselves to fix up a beat up old car on the sidewalk across the street. These self-proclaimed mechanics enjoy loud music and beer while tinkering with this car. After a full weekend of this, my nerves were shot and images of ditching this neighborhood for good danced in my head. I was complaining to my sister about this when I pulled up to the parking pad of my house. That’s when we noticed a pit bull standing on our back porch, ghostly and illuminated by our porch light. She was saggy and baggy, no collar, udders hanging down from her body, a look of expectation on her face. “What..?” I said. And my sister laughed at the audacity of it. The dog stared us down, not barking or wagging her tail, simply waiting by the door. While I dialed Josh’s cell phone number, the dog suddenly hopped down the porch stairs and disappeared down the alley way. She was casual and efficient, disappearing into the night as randomly as she came. By the time Josh came outside, she was completely gone. He roamed around with a flash light to make sure she hadn’t left behind a litter of puppies but found nothing.

With the pit bull mauling story fresh in my head, the entire scene really creeped me out. My sister ardently defended the mama pit bull but images of my cat stumbling outside at dusk into the waiting jaws of a dog on the back porch haunted me. “There was no aggression and we all know pit bulls have bad reputations,” Gina reminded me. The only comfort I took was the eerie feeling of camaraderie: this pit bull was pregnant or maybe just had her litter. I could vouch for that. Maybe she just went to the wrong back door, expectant and hopeful that her family was there. Perhaps she had been turned out, collar-less into the world, and all she needed was a hand out for her puppies. Or maybe she had been accidentally let out, wandered a long way from home, and instinctively sniffed out a house where someone else was pregnant too. At any rate, I half expect to see her every time I open the back door. But, as it stands, I haven’t seen the mama pit bull since…