Last week, Rachelle and I took our dog to the Bathurst Dupont Animal Hospital in order to get her flea medication. It’s a utilitarian place, with humid and stale air hanging in a waiting room that’s modestly decorated by a couple of photographs of Meerkats. It stands in stark contrast to the nearby Yorkville clinics, where you might get served some green tea and sushi and feel very stylish, but which, of course, costs so much money you’ll throw up in the parking lot once you receive the bill.
Before we saw the vet-, who was a puffy-eyed and joyless East European woman, ( “your dog is leetle fat, but she look healthy.”)– we sat in the waiting room with all the other animals and their owners. A woman who imagined herself quite fashionable, sat across from us with her trembling Chihuahua. She was an A-type, and immediately, in the familiar manner of somebody hoping to be disarming, began to tell us what she thought about all sorts of things. She spoke to us without eye contact, while sending a text message, interrupting herself to speak to her dog, who ignored her command, and continued to lick himself. At this moment, as she furiously texted and yanked on her dog’s leash, her life seemed very lonely.
On the other bench sat an elderly couple. Between them was a traveling crate that contained their cat, Charlie. The old man looked over at us, and our young dog, and smiled, “ “Charlie here hasn’t been feeling so good lately,” he said, and then he squeezed his wife’s hand. After exchanging tender looks with one another, they leaned down and peered into the cage, murmuring gently, lovingly, to the cat in a familiar east European tongue.