DO PIGS BLEED?

The pre-schooler had gone to bed perhaps 30 minutes prior to yelling, “Dada? DADA?”

She has a habit of making bedtime as long an experience as possible (like most her age) and it is no surprise to step in, hear some insignificant, time-wasting little tale of a missplaced stuffed toy which happens to be below her chin and deliver a slightly volumous edict that if she does not go to sleep, there will be consequences.

But this was different. Because when I went into her room and sighed, “What do you want?” she was sitting upright, a book in her lap, and she asked, “Dada, do pigs bleed?”

It’s fair to say I was stunned. I mean, the question is one thing. Kids will ask these things at variously odd times, but she had never, ever shown the slightest sign that blood and life had anything to do with each other. She knew a bit about blood, such as from when you scrape your knee, or cut your finger. But in terms of it being a lifeforce which runs through all mammals? Got to say, not exactly the sort of thing we discuss at dinner, especially when we’re trying to get her to move beyond wheat pasta, yoghurt, a bit of chicken, peas and corn.

“Do pigs bleed?”

“Yeah…do they?”

“Yes. Yes they do. So do cows.”

“And sheep?”

“Yes, sheep do too.”

“They bleed too? They all bleed?”

“Yes because they’re all living things.”

“Do kitties bleed?”

This was a tough one to answer. Of course they bleed, but our beloved Fluffy, a 17 year old lion and family member, had stopped eating two days earlier, stopped drinking water, stopped using the bathroom and was wandering off to corners of the garden and house to be left alone. He was dying and my wife and I had just made the decision to bring a vet to the house so as he could be put to sleep. We were, to understate the situation, very sad. And now these questions.

She’s always been a perceptive little girl, emotionally tuned, perhaps too much so at times. I worry occasionally about her acute ability to pick up on an atmosphere or mood (it’s one of the reasons I’m very quick to make sure that if I’m in a bad mood of my own accord, I let her know it has nothing to do with her at all) and as I stood there beside her bed hearing these questions, I realized that she must’ve picked up on the dip in mood within the house. To think that such ‘vibes’ could unlock her mind into considering such matters as she tried to go to sleep!  

I looked at the book in her lap. It had a cow on the front and was obviously one of the many books she has about farm animals. Cows. Pigs. Chickens. Sheep…and lambs…and…

“Did you say ‘bleed’ or ‘bleaT’ as in ‘when sheep make noise they BLEAT!?’

“Yeah. Bleat. Do pigs bleat?”

“No but sheep do. And lambs. They bleat, that’s the noise they make, pigs go ‘oink’ and cows go ‘moo.’ Now go to sleep.”

“OK Dada…”

…Having found great relief that I was not, in fact, the father of a Midwich Cuckoo, I had to laugh. It’s how wars are started. But still the shadow of Fluffy hung heavily, and the next day, as we prepared for him to be put to sleep, the pre-schooler saw us both in various states of misery and gloom. The day after the night before, she and I found ourselves alone at the table. The teenager was at work, my wife was at work. It was late afternoon.

“Dada, I love you and Mama and Zsa Zsa and Fluffy…I want to always be with everyone.”

Fluffy – RIP 5/26/09…the tweetest liddle puddy in the whole wide world

“You know that Fluffy has gone, like we talked about, that he was old and got ill so he went to sleep forever and isn’t coming back, because he died?”

“He isn’t here?”

“No, he went to sleep forever. Because he was very old and very ill, so he’s gone forever but there’s still some of him around, in the sky, in the air…”

She looked up at the ceiling.

“Where? I don’t see any of him?”

I laughed.

“It’s not ACTUAL bits of him, it’s his spirit, his personality, his ‘air’ which is always going to be here.”

“Oh…he was broken!!! Hee hee hee, Fluffy was broken and is up there, hee hee hee!”

“Yes, in a way you’re right. He was broken. His lungs stopped working properly and he wasn’t breathing properly.”

“What are lungs?”

“They’re the two organs behind your chest which allow you to breathe, and if you don’t breathe, then you’ll die, go go to sleep forever…”

“Oh. OK. I love Fluffy.”

“So do we all, and we can always love him…want to look at some photos?”

“YEAH!”

Soo we looked at photos of Fluffy, talked about him, sang the songs we’d made up about him, giggled about him and enjoyed him.

Last night I’d seen a cat who I wanted to get in a few weeks when we’re back from travels. Earlier my wife had said that she felt the right cat would come to us, make itself apparent. And having replied to a craigslist posting, I found out that that person who had fostered ‘Led’, an 11 month old medium-haired tabby/maine-coon who’s personality sounded perfect, was someone I knew. He had, indeed, found a way to come to us. And when we showed the pre-schooler, she squealed and declared she liked him. 

“What would you call him?” my wife asked.

“I would call him BUBBLES!” she yelled, laughing long and loud as she did so.

 Bubbles will be with us in late June…and Fluffy, I know, would approve…