Another Saturday Morning

It seems to be another Saturday morning.  But I don't hear any of the kookaburras singing their signature songs.  The railtracks have been quiet although the coal trains probably roared throught the night unheeded by my sleepy ears.  In the summer heat, the whirring of the electric fan becomes a tolerable noise in exchange for a cool electric breeze generated by the dusty blades.  A bald man on the street carries a sack in royal blue but my curiosity remains feeble as my fingers prefer to poke at the keyboard albeit at a snail's pace.  I wait till the henna-amla on my head has done its quiet process of tinting my hair to a reasonable dark hue to make me pass for a younger person as the natural grey can shock the senses, not much mine but everybody else's:  it pronounces age without equivocation and even less hesitation.  Anyway as long as somebody tells me that I should be doing this, I can only surmise that I would keep the henna-amla routine part of the monthly ritual.

My kids'  recent fascination with dogs have brought distant memories of the pets we have kept in the family when I was younger.  I remember as a kid myself when were living in the tenements, we had a cat which my Dad lovingly called Dolores.  Now that's a mouthful to call a pet with such name - three syllables.  I have this belief that pet names should ideally have 1 syllable only, two at the most but three is too much.  Dolores was a real house cat.  She trained herself how to go to the bathroom and relieve herself.  The drain in the shower only had a hole with no cover.  Dolores would position herself  on top of the hole.  I thought this was clever that I used to pee in there myself instead of using the toilet bowl.  I thought that it was a way to conserve water.

We had various dogs when we lived in Novaliches.  We had a small short-legged dog whose name I cannot now recall.  She was some half-breed of some sort.  Anyway she was too pretty one day she was just gone dognapped by some evil neighbours.  Some friends from down the valley gave us a runt who we named Mimi.  She was the sweetest dog I have ever known.  From the little runt that she was, she grew to be a normal-sized mongrel although with a pointy muzzle and that eternal cute-puppy gaze.  She had a few litter over the years, most of them were given away to neighbours and friends.  The only one I remember of her brood was a male dog we called Ali short for Aligabok (dust) because his hide was dusty grey.  He was a wild one so he was always tied.  He was a good guard dog and one of the terrorist dogs in the neighbourhood.  I remember seeing him humping his mother one day so he also had some incestuous puppies out of that encounter.  One night Mimi came looking real sick, vomiting and all that.  She was probably poisoned.  We tried to save her by giving her milk and encouraged her to vomit some more.  But alas she died.  She was buried in the front lawn.

We also had a crazy dog called Purog if my memory serves me well.  He was crazy 'cause he liked biting.  He would bite me from time to time although not seriously.  One day he killed the neighbour's turkey.  We had to do what the unwritten rule expected.  We killed him and cooked him, sharing sumptuous meal with the disgruntled neighbours and with a few friends over some Tanduay rum or jungle juice.

This is just another Saturday but it is a Saturday to remember some of the good things we have shared with animal companions.  Sometimes they can be better friends than the human kind.  I wish I could have a pet but the current living conditions will not permit the luxury.  So I will just enjoy my kids'  pets whenever I get the chance to see them again, perhaps one Saturday.