Where the Sidewalk Bends
Only in Texas will you see where the sidewalk bends and adapts.
Sidewalks are supposed to be the straight-A students of infrastructure. When one doodles a question mark around a pole, it feels like the city itself just shrugged and said, “Eh, we’ll get there.”
I’ve been accused of anthropomorphizing all my animal companions, but I’m starting to think we may have over-domesticated them. Everything grows and learns, and we’d be remiss if we left out our furry companions.
Sam has figured out in his head what it will take to make it acceptable for him to charge the cats because he’s jealous. I don’t care what animal experts say—I sit and watch him sometimes for quite a while and I can see the wheels turning. He’s figured out that protecting his “resources” shouldn’t get him in trouble. It’s a dog’s natural instinct, right?
I live with him though, and I know he has enough dog biscuits stashed somewhere that he won’t starve for a day or two if I collapsed and no one came right away. No need to start munching on mom. I’m also pretty confident in saying he hasn’t lost a lot of sleep worrying about where his next meal is coming from.
Sam has lawyered up.
Clause 3(b): Resource Guarding shall not be construed as Premeditated Cat Assault.
The same goes for George.
I started pondering this the other day when I heard Elon Musk point out that FSD cars will not be running over cats in the street. As someone who prefers the company of animals most of the time, this was great news.
My mind went back down the years to all the wonderful animals I have known whose lives were cut short by the highway I lived on in the country.
🐾 Ianto
Ianto was the hardest to get over. He was a wiry, scrappy little thing that I had to cough up $75 for an airplane ticket so he could come home with my youngest daughter after a visit to her sister’s. When she brought him out of the carrier they had decorated with rhinestones and glitter, I thought he was the goofiest dog I had ever seen.
He grew out of it though, thriving on the country air and becoming one of the funniest dogs I had ever known. A short-legged, wire-haired Jack Russell, he never got tired of the zoomies and would race through the house, up and down the beds. I took him everywhere while the girls were at school and made sure his bowls stayed full. He was a joy to be around.
One night it snowed and iced over, as it will occasionally do in the South. We stepped outside and for once I didn’t hold him back or make him put on the leash. We lived in a very small town on the old highway, and I assumed—wrongly—that no one would be on the road.
One lone car.
The screech of tires.
I froze and prayed he was just hurt.
God, please don’t take this dog.
It was the first time I knew your knees can actually buckle.
I refused help burying him. He had come into my life and saved me from the everyday horror I was living—and now he was gone. I was furious with God that day, thinking, What else could He punish me with?
🐾 Cowboy, Jake, Titan
Cowboy was the first one I lost, back when I followed my mother trying to force her to mother when she clearly was through with it. He was a black and white border collie. Mom took off with the alcoholic husband we all hated and was living in a shack in Arkansas. I forced her to come back and get me in Texas by crying and begging to go to school. The first of many trips I made trying to figure out where I was supposed to be.
No one wanted to deal with the feral teenager they helped create.
Later, after I moved back to Texas and then back to the country, Jake was my sidekick. A funny-looking guy whose nose seemed too long for a lab but who grew into quite a magnificent animal. He stayed glued to the baby, and between the two of us we kept her safe.
Every time I turned my back, that child took her clothes off. I’d fight with her in the winter and make her bundle up, only to have her start her strip tease the moment I turned my back outside. Jake would stand in the ditch in front of our house and watch to make sure she didn’t go too close to the road.
That almost cost him his life.
I carried him to the vet knowing we couldn’t afford whatever it would cost. I had to try though, and tried not to curse the vet when he sent us home to wait for Jake to die. I was too exhausted and too heartbroken.
Day after day I nursed him, carrying him outside to lay in the sun on a bed of hay, then back in at night. He lay there still, watching the baby, and she’d sit by him and play. One day he got up and followed us into the woods behind the house. His hip dangling as if by a thread—until finally, as if by miracle, he healed.
Titan the Pomeranian choked when an evil visitor left a box of small pecans on the floor. That same visitor from hell carried death into the house. First Titan, then all six chickens, my beloved rooster HENry, and four parakeets found dead when we woke up one morning.
The beginning of the end of a nightmare allowed to loom too long.
Too many hard lives for too many of God’s creatures.
Then I thought: Who is going to feed all these cats? What about dogs?
I checked the numbers. On the optimistic side, it’s about 500,000 a year. Older estimates from the early 1990s (e.g., by animal welfare researcher Merritt Clifton) estimated 5.4 million cats a year. MILLIONS of cats.
Even on the lower end, that’s a lot of cats.
Divide it equally between all fifty-two states, and that’s still 103,846.15 cats.
Now add to that the dogs that will survive when we all have FSD vehicles, and I think we will,that’s roughly 1.2 million—and that includes strays and free-roaming pets.
That’s a lot of dogs.
Elon’s voice floated through the podcast like a cheerful ghost:
“FSD won’t squash cats.”
It’s fine by me.
And I’d be happy to travel around making sure all the cats and dogs were fed.
If that job ever pops up—count me in.
Thank you @elonmusk Your technology will change lives.
