Revenge is a dish best served cold: a eulogy

The other day I had a few guests over to my Omaha abode for a short-order breakfast. I sat them all in my dining room and cooked at the speed of light: eggs, bacon, french toast, all in mere seconds. It was one of those Sunday morning stomach-saving breakfasts. You know the kind I'm talking about.

I was moving so fast between the eggs and the pots and the pans and the bread that I accidentally knocked the plastic bread bag onto my bacon skillet, where it melted and smoked, triggering the smoke alarm, and the whole kitchen grew so hot that I tore off my sweater and threw it on the ground-- I didn't have enough time to stow it properly, not like a sensible person.

The dining room was shouting orders to the kitchen and orange juice was poured in every cup and people were raving mad with hungover punch-drunk tomfoolery and toast crumbs on their lips so that when I finally took my seat at the end of the table I was exhausted. We all sat and I wiped sweat from my brow, and there was a brief lull, but I saw that in the kitchen my dog Coco was squatting herself in just that sort of way over my sweater so that I raced from my seat, but only too late. She had peed all over it.


This demon-eyed imp is Coco. She is a long-haired chihuahua (chihuahuas are the only dogs my sister's allergies can tolerate), and she is somewhere in her mid-teens. For years she was the toast of dog-town, garnering "oohs" and "aahs" at every public event we brought her to. Here's my own cute Coco memory: at Walk for the Animals she laid down next to a giant St. Bernard, and the contrast in size was downright adorable.

But then she expanded to a hefty 1.5 pounds overweight-- and when you only weigh 5 pounds, that's about 30% of your total body weight. The 1.5 pounds were killing her back. So we made her lose the weight. But her skeletal frame revealed a hideous lump on her hip. Turns out this lump was a part of her intestines which had escaped the normal casings of her body. Then all of her teeth fell out. Then she grew a cyst on her face. Then she developed congenitive heart failure and cancer.

Then she peed on my sweater.

But my parents had her put down this morning. So I'd say the score is about even, wouldn't you?