It's been a long two weeks since I arrived in Florida, and I've been missing Jex a lot. She's the bestest dog I could ever hope for, and always makes me happy, even when I'm down. At any rate, I'm sad she's not here with me. There are, however, other critters here to keep me company. There's Savannah's dog Jill, as well as Pappy, who has now become the family dog. Jill tolerates me, and is only attentive whenever I happen to have food in my hands. Pappy, on the other hand, is super happy clappy all the time and loves being around me, but he'll never settle down enough to actually let you pet him, and is altogether a different dog ever since he drank a big bowl of bleach water a number of years ago and nearly died. Although he has since healed a little, his demeanor is not what it used to be and it's sad. At any rate, neither dog is a good substitute for Jex. Then, a more recent addition to the animals around the house, are two cats, as well as a kitten. Now I'm not much of a cat person, as some of you may know or at least suspect, and to me they're tolerable at best and incorrigible at worst. Firefly is a good example of the former. She doesn't do much, isn't very pretty, and fairly easily is stirred up to wrath and lashes out or runs off and pouts or sulks. Other times she simply walks about fairly aimlessly completely ignoring everybody and is never excited about being petted. Firefly's kitten hasn't had time to learn these traits yet, so we'll have to suspend judgment on him till a later date. He is kinda cute though, but in all likelihood he'll grow out of it. I don't know, we'll see. Selkie, on the other hand, is a good example of the latter. She is an entirely miserable cat, who never purrs, claws you just for walking within a three-foot radius of her, and would hiss just as soon as breathe. If you like artsy red lines up and down your hands with a possible side of infection, try giving her a pet. She'll slice your hands up like a professional butcher does a raw slab of meat, which is exactly what your arm will be by the time she's through with it.
As you can see, there' no suitable replacement for Jex here. Jex is far too sweet, pretty, obedient, and loving and perfect to be matched, especially by the likes of any mere cat. So here I wait, looking forward to seeing her again in a couple weeks. But then, it happened. I don't know why, but all of a sudden, Selkie decided she liked me. Still not quite sure why, but here's my working theory: Selkie is now in heat. Normally this makes cats incorrigible, as in the case of Firefly, but the truth of the matter is that it makes the cat the opposite or near opposite of what they are at the core of their being. Hence, Firefly becomes more annoying but not enough that normal people can't handle for a couple days. Likewise, since Selkie is normally demon-spawn, she is now almost angelic in her demeanor. She lets anyone pet her, and can even be found purring on occasion. And, for some reason, she now likes me. Whenever I sit down in this one particular chair in the Grand Hall (That's our name for this one room in our house. It's kind of funny because this room is neither grand nor is it a hall. If you want to here about the glorious history of how this room came to have such a name, ask me sometime and I'll tell you.), Selkie always runs up and jumps in my lap and sits down. She thinks it's the best thing in the world. Now, as you already know, I'm not much of a cat person. But at the same time, I am not so cold-hearted as to return evil for good. Here was a cat actually being nice for once in my life, and the little pity I didn't know I possessed in my heart for cats was stirred up. I allowed her to remain on my lap whenever she jumped up, and even petted her from time to time.
A brief hiatus: (this connects back to what we were talking about, so don't worry) A couple months ago Caleb, Brooke, Anna, Lucy and Sarah made a fake instagram account for me. They thought it was hilarious. Sarah convinced me to make my own instagram account because she "thought it would be cool" and that I should just do it, so I suspiciously played along, expecting an ambuscade of some sort. A couple days after making the account and finding nothing had happened, I forgot all about it and moved on with my life. All the while though, they had been posting random pictures of me from a variety of places, and including tons of weird outlandish hashtags. Each one, whether or not she was even in the picture, included #jex. I thought this was funny once they finally got around to showing me the fake account. I was blown away when they did; I'd never suspected them of making a fake account for me. The kicker though is that people actually thought it was me and that I had suddenly taken up a career in instagramming! This made me laugh. Apparently this whole idea was payback for the other day when I scared them half to death, so fair enough, I guess I deserved it. But the point though is how often Jex came up in all the crazy hashtags. This is further evidence (as if yall needed more!) of how much I adore her.
But then, jumping back to the present, my mamma came in with her phone and took a picture of Selkie on my lap and started laughing/giggling uncontrollably at the scheme she had in mind. Sure enough, not two minutes later, there was a new post on my wall with the very same picture along with the provocative caption: #jex. I immediately sprung to action and informed the world that it was not my doing and that Selkie had just jumped up there by herself, and I further said how great Jex is and how no mere cat could ever take her place.
Anyways, several of my friends have been tagging me in dog memes such as "I wish I could text my dog", among others. These all make me long to see her again all the sooner. To top it off, Caleb and Brooke and I did a video call today to catch up, and Brooke went outside and showed me Jex. There she was, happily wagging her tail, then sitting down and hugging Brooke, and occasionally trying to lick her face. I tried to call out to her, as I'd done many times over Freshman year before she was in Idaho with me, but still she couldn't recognize my voice through the speaker, nor could she notice me on the screen. It was a one-way glass window through which I could see, but not touch, hear, but not be heard, knowing the whole time that Jex would never know I was even there, and would in fact be wondering when I was ever coming back. When I left for my first year of college, she got really depressed and would barely eat anything. Her grief could not be quelled, and she would run from one end of the house to my old room and back again. At night she would scratch my parents' door and cry and cry. It was very sad, and there was nothing I could do about it.
At any rate, it's just two more weeks till I go back and see her. I suppose in my fervor to avoid writing a sappy end/start of the year blogpost I've managed instead to write a sappy blogpost about my dog and how great she is... but oh well. That's life I guess.
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