In the early summer Krishna had her second litter of kittens. She was showing considerable promise in the cat-producing department. One was black with medium long hair like her. Another was an orange tabby. There was a pretty little striped kitten, and one that might be called a “tortoise shell” by some, but Marty thought it looked more like a collage that had been put together by a kindergarten art class. The one he decided to keep was the handsomest. He had a long, gray, striped coat, and poufy white tips on his cheeks and tail, like Sylvester in the Loony Tunes cartoons. The black markings around his head gave him a goatee and spectacles. His legs had small, tight stripes fading out to fluffy white paws. To complete his silly character, he sat around contentedly with his tongue slightly sticking out. Marty thought he was not the sharpest claw in the paw, but he was a love bug, and had a built in switch so that made him purr loudly whenever someone picked him up. So, the family called him “Sly” (because he wasn’t).
Krishna was the model mother cat. She was either pregnant, nursing, or in heat… all the time. When she wasn’t prowling around the neighborhood looking to get laid by anything with fur, she was admirably devoted to her progeny. Her purpose in life was to raise exquisitely beautiful cats to enrich the lives of the lucky pet store customers who gave them homes. But she was flighty and mean when she was in heat, and escaped from the house as soon as she could. She would be gone for a day or two, and sometimes Marty could hear her guttural yowling outside, in the low tones of Lauren Bacall, after far too many martinis. It was painfully obvious which part of the reproductive process was her favorite. Eventually she would get hungry and dash back inside, leaving the tomcats spitting and howling in a fury of unrequited lust.
Meanwhile, Jimbo and Otter were close to finishing the storage shed. The doors hung sliding-style, like a barn or stable. The slanted roof was made of green corrugated fiberglass sheets, with the interior divided into two small rooms for storage or tack. It was a welcome sight, too! The “can’t-throw-it-away” clutter of years of wanton consumerism was currently making a landfill out of their living room. Marty helped the men put up the exterior tar paper and shingles, and cleaned up the construction debris. Then everyone made like ants at a picnic, and conveyed the assorted boxes, furniture, decorations, tools, knickknacks, etc. from the house to their final resting place. When finished, there was barely enough room to wriggle inside the shed, and excavate something if it was needed later. After all that work, Otter announced it was time for a vacation, so he and Rabbit went “beaver hunting.” Or at least, that’s all he’d say when asked.
Julie’s horse, Manuka, finally got a permanent home, too. She and Ron fixed up the corral, and that saved her the expense of boarding. Marty had ridden horses at summer camp before, but never his sister’s mare. Julie was the only one who rode Manuka. She took very good care of her mount, with the same obsession by which she cared for her stable of plastic horse statues as a young girl. Her dreams of equestrian triumph had since faded to trotting back and forth on the railroad bed. Still, she paid to have a vet and farrier come out to minister to Manuka’s needs, which included a new set of shoes, and half a man’s arm up her ass. Understandably frisky after that ordeal, she galloped in circles around her sunny new corral, surrounded by redwood trees and bordered by a pretty creek, and whinnied with delight. Ron built a trough from an old oil barrel, and she had fresh hay and oats from the shed, so she was one happy horsey!
It was becoming natural for the White family to coexist with many different animals, as an inevitable side effect of working in a pet store. They always had various unwanted critters convalescing, in between homes, or just plain washed up at their place. Marty drew a cartoon about “the island of misfit pets,” which included a dog with a duck’s head sewn on it. Marge adopted a pair of chickens from Dr. Killdeer, who found them in a cardboard box left on his doorstep. They were the oddest looking birds anyone had ever seen. The vet said they were Japanese Silkies, but they just looked bizarre. One was like a white pompom with a yellow beak and legs sticking out. The other one resembled a stringy, chewed-up afghan blanket. Only Susie could tell which end was the head, by deducing it was opposite where the eggs came out. Jimbo rigged up a coop by simply wrapping a roll of chicken wire around a circle of 5 redwoods. All they needed was a pig and a couple of goats to be The Rusty Bucket Farm.
The exuberance of living on such a picturesque piece of property was really going to their heads. Instead of cows, they got a couple of dogs to replace Heidi. One was a big Rhodesian ridgeback whose owner had died, and the other was a pathetic Dalmatian that was rescued from an abusive home. Rhodie was a great companion who fit right in with their lives, and made them all feel safer after the psycho school bus killer. He fiercely defended his family’s boundaries against the occasional bicyclists on the railroad bed, or inebriated, naked hippies wading upstream from the Inkwells. Dolly was another story. Dr. Killdeer rescued her from her sadistic owners, and the spotted cur came to them emaciated, with all her ribs showing, and her tail between her legs. The poor thing recoiled in terror at any sudden movement. She calmed down after she realized she wasn’t going to be beaten anymore, and Rhodie assumed a big brother role to shepherd her recovery. He would stand guard until the nervous Dalmatian fell asleep, then lay himself between her and any danger.
Sadly, the two dogs came to heartbreaking ends. Some lives are just a tragedy looking for a place to happen. Dolly gained weight but never got over her former mistreatment, and wound up barking and snapping at people. Marty figured she was pissed off at those two-legged bastards who beat her. I would have been, too, he griped to himself. Dolly eventually found a home in Dr. Kildeer’s sanitarium for wayward animals, which was essentially his back yard. When Jimbo and Marty dropped her off and said farewell, she had for company a three-legged sheep, a floppy goose that laid on its side, and several patchy rabbits that were nearly bald. Not to mention the usual assortment of unwanted dogs and cats, into whose tolerant ward the paranoid Dalmatian was accepted as kin.
Rhodie was terribly saddened by the loss of Dolly, and anxiously searched for her everywhere. He, who had such a well-defined sense of boundaries, took to roaming the entire neighborhood, presumably trying to find his “little sister” and bring her back. Jimbo tied him up, but the brave soul looked so sad he couldn’t bear it, and so he let the dog loose. Immediately he took off, and was never seen again. He may have been hit by a car, or taken in by some other family. Marty sometimes fantasized that he was out there still, searching for his charge to protect and serve. He never even sent a postcard.
With all the junk gone from the main room, it was time to turn their little rustic cabin into a home. Non-stop Jimbo removed the huge oil tank from the front side of the house, graded the driveway, and finished the propane hookup. Marge and Julie arranged the furniture, and sadly decided it was time for the U-shaped booth to go. The fireplace wasn’t needed as a life support system in the summer, and the booth was in the way.
One day, a short, muscular young man arrived in a huge flatbed truck with a new refrigerator tied on the back. Marge had bought this appliance at Sears, but the delivery truck took one look at our road and went back to the warehouse. They called for her to come pick it up. Joe was a burly friend she had met through the pet store, and he had a monster 4-wheel drive Ford. He was an extroverted weightlifter from Brooklyn, with an unruly mop of curly brown hair, through which he could barely see. Jimbo wasn’t around to help, so he strapped that refrigerator to his back, and carried it down the stony path all by himself – as a mighty ant carries a seed – all the way up the stairs and through the house into the kitchen. It was an amazing feat of power and dexterity. Joe had the arms of a gorilla and legs of an elephant. Marty couldn’t wait to see how he was going to carry up the booth when he left.
But he wasn’t leaving. “Joe’s gonna stay here for a few days until he finds a job,” Marge announced at dinner, and suddenly the old vinyl diner booth didn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. Joe used it for a bed, but Marty had a feeling he didn’t stay there the entire night.
“I sure ‘preciate it,” Joe said loudly, which was remarkable because he had an entire hamburger in his mouth at the time (his third one). He was an extremely likable guy, and was in constant motion around the Rusty Bucket Ranch for three days, as one cumbersome piece of junk after another got cleaned, moved, dismantled, or just plain disappeared. He rolled the huge oil tank up the hill by himself (where was Jimbo, by the way?), loaded it on the back of his flatbed, and sold it for salvage. Soon the ol’ homestead was transformed into a picturesque cabin in the redwoods. He even showed Marty how to safely sweep the redwood needles off the roof, which were piled up like a cinnamon bank of snow. He ate so much that the new refrigerator rarely had anything in it, but Marge got the better end of the bargain in the long run.
When Otter came back from his “beaver hunting trip,” he inspected, with growing appreciation, all the work Jimbo and Joe had done, and tipped his cowboy hat back in recognition. “See the shed I built?” he said proudly, as if he had meant all along to move that junk but just hadn’t gotten around to it. Towards nightfall he, Joe, and Marty maneuvered the cumbersome old diner booth up the path to the driveway, and Joe hauled it away on his flatbed, waving goodbye with one thick gorilla arm out the window. He eventually found a job in a local lumberyard, and put three forklift drivers out of work.