I sit on the couch in the living room, tapping out today’s quota of words on the laptop. For two days now, Chelsea has taken this as an invitation to scramble up the cushions, wriggle between my neck and the back of the couch, and take an extended nap.
It’s a bit like wearing a fox stole — except fox stoles don’t tremble, sigh, or wiggle into more comfortable positions every half-hour or so.
When awake, Chelsea moves through a world that, for her, is one continuous parade of newness. Something as commonplace as the appearance of a Diet Coke can on a tabletop merits thorough investigation. She creeps, catlike, toward the can. Will it move? Does it bark? Does it have an odor? If tackled, will it tip over? And what will happen if you tackle it twice? Three times? A fourth?
Outside, she bounds through the monkey grass like a honey-colored jack rabbit. Plants must be sampled — the leaves of each receive at least a cursory munch. Sticks must be dragged from here to there. Pine cones must be wedged into wide-open jaws and carried from one end of the yard to the other. Every inch of patio and garden must be sniffed thoroughly; with each trip outside, she adds two or three new square yards to what must be an obsessively detailed olfactory map.
How strange we must seem to her: two loud, clumsy, towering beings, mostly unaware of our own odors, spending much of our day pawing at keyboard and staring into little lighted boxes. Yet, strange as we are, she is already attached. She shadows our every step … and, as her eyes start to droop with exhaustion, as they do about once every two hours, she wants nothing more than to nestle against us.
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