When Mom gave birth to my brother Dennis at Georgetown Hospital, Dad ran all the way up 37th Street to tell Connie, their two-year old Scottie. Connie was named after the baseball player, Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, who had played for the Washington Nationals in the late 1800s and was a manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Dad had not always felt so kindly about sharing his home with a four-legged beast. As my parents got ready for bed on Connie’s first night in their Glover Park apartment, Dad opened the backdoor to let her out in the yard. “What are you doing?” Mom asked. “Why, I’m letting Connie out into the yard. She’s not going to stay in the house — is she?” he asked incredulously. “Of course, she is.”
Years later when we lost Mike, an adorable Kerry Blue Terrier puppy, to a bad case of heart worm, we were all devastated. Each time Mike’s name came up, one of us would begin to cry, with each of my siblings — and Mom — following suit. After a week of this, Dad turned to Mom and said, “Well, that’s it. No more pets. We can’t take any more of this God-damned grief.”
Mom didn’t attack that issue directly. She waited about a month, and one evening after dinner, she sat Kevin, Brian, and me down in the kitchen. Kevin was seven; Brian, five; and I was nearly four. She said, “Your father doesn’t want another dog. But we do, don’t we?” We all nodded. “Let’s tell Dad how much we would like another dog.” “Okay.”
She told the three of us to go into the living room where Dad was reading the Evening Star. We should tell Dad how much we wanted a dog. Impress upon him that he would not have to take care of anything, that this was the best way to end the crying over Mike. “And it won’t hurt if you could summon up a few tears,” she said. Dad was a goner.
Maggie, our next Kerry Blue, arrived on a Thursday afternoon in August. I was only four, but I remember that day clearly. I was upstairs in the room I shared with Kevin and Brian. Mom came through the front door and there erupted a loud chorus of cries, “Awwww.” “A puppy!” “He’s adorable!” “Can I hold him?” I ran down the stairs and joined the fracas.
This sweet mass of black fur soon became my sister Maureen’s dog. She took Maggie to obedience school in Rock Creek Park across from St. John’s where Dennis and Joe went to high school. Maureen worked with Maggie each day, teaching her to sit quietly, heel on a walk, wait for the dinner set before her until Maureen gave the sign. Maureen had that dog beautifully trained before she was a year old.
A couple of years later, Joe and his friend Larry decided to ride their bikes to Glen Echo, an amusement park just up the Potomac River from D.C. Mom thought Maggie might have tried to follow them. If so, they were unaware of her presence. Joe thinks maybe Maggie just wandered off on that particular day. Whatever happened, Maggie disappeared.
When Joe got home from Glen Echo, Mom looked into the backyard behind him and asked, “Have you seen Maggie? She hasn’t been home all day” Everyone sat down for dinner at 6:30 and still no Maggie. It was unusual for her to miss a meal, so Mom began to worry in earnest.
After dinner, she and Joe jumped in the pale blue convertible Lincoln Premiere Mom used to pick up groceries and kids at school. They drove back and forth through the neighborhoods of northwest Washington, up streets, down alleys, behind the Drug Fair, in the parking lot of the Safeway. No Maggie. Mom did the same thing the next day and the day after that. No luck.
On the third day, Maggie came bounding through the Millers’ backyard and into ours. She was hungry, but no worse for the wear. I have no idea where she had been for those three days or what she ate while on her summer vacation. She was a sweet girl and, like Blanche Dubois, she had probably relied on the kindness of strangers.
Growing up at Jocelyn Street, we lived with myriad representatives of the animal kingdom: dogs, birds, gerbils, hamsters, mice, boa constrictors, pythons, and one very memorable crocodile (see this post). A beautiful white rabbit named Wigglenose was my first pet.
The only animals that were not welcomed in the ark helmed by my mother were cats. She said they walked on the counters where food was prepared, and they peed in the sandbox. She would have none of it.
When I was sixteen, I had back surgery. My sweet sister-in-law Geraldine had a friend who bred Russian Blue cats. This friend said she would give me a Russian Blue from her most recent litter. This one didn’t conform to the breed’s characteristics and, therefore, wasn’t a show cat. My mom tried, but she could not muster the will to say no. While I was still in the hospital, Geraldine brought the cat to Jocelyn Street. I was unaware of these events.
Brian suggested he and Mom bring the kitten to the hospital to surprise me. Mom, again without the will to say no, agreed. It was late October. Brian put the kitten inside his jacket and zipped it up. As they rode the elevator to the fourth floor with several other people, the kitty began to mewl. Brian and Mom looked straight ahead, seemingly oblivious. I was delighted.
Early on, my tiny niece Gigi said, “The kitty says, Meemow,” and that would forever be his name. Later I tried to rename him Bruce after my very cool math teacher, but it just didn’t take. Meemow went on to be Mom’s constant companion when her children had flown the coop. She loved that cat.
As adults, three of my brothers went through a Rottweiler phase. Joe had a rotty named Tusca who was too aggressive to be socialized and went to live in the country — not a euphemism, in this case. Kevin had Rosa, the sweetest animal alive, who was so protective that Joe once fed her an entire bucket of fried chicken in order to cross the threshold at Kevin’s house. And Brian had Molly, also a sweetheart, who loved to pick up small boulders with her nose and throw them across the yard.
Brian also had Shane, a very large, goofball of a Sheepdog, who loved to get loose and roam the neighborhood. At the time, Brian and his family lived about a mile from Holy Cross Hospital. Shane would regularly make his way down Forest Glen Road, across the six lanes of Georgia Avenue, and through the automatic doors of the hospital emergency room. The ER staff fell in love with Shane, but they would eventually call Brian to come pick him up. “Shane was not the brightest animal,” Brian explains.
John and I have had three dogs, so far. The last of these was a Kerry Blue like Maggie and Mike. This one was named by Maeve’s friend Fiona, who said, “He looks so much like a Murphy!” Murphy spent most of his life standing before our front windows barking at whatever came along. I joked that he barked at falling leaves, but it wasn’t, in fact, a joke. As the guy who owned the local pet shop said, “That’s not a dog; that’s a terrier.”
Murphy and I went to two years of six-week-long obedience classes. Finally, the trainer told our class that she was teaching a Canine Good Citizen class. If the dog passed the test at the end—a series of difficult obedience hurdles—he would receive a certificate from the American Kennel Club. When I told the trainer that I wanted to sign up Murphy, she laughed. “Kate, this is hard for any dog. But Murphy? Don’t get your hopes up.”
Murphy and I worked every day, at every opportunity to prepare for the test. When the day came, I left work early. I called John on the way home. “Please come home and run Murphy for a couple of miles. He’s got to be exhausted for this test.” “Kate, it’s 95 degrees out.” “Good,” I replied.
John made it just over a mile, but he and Murphy were both exhausted when they got home. I put Murphy in the car and drove to the test site. He aced every aspect of the test: walk by another dog without being distracted; sit quietly while I walk out of his sight; move politely through a crowd; greet a stranger politely. When we finished, the trainer said, “What did you do to him?” I smiled proudly. “He’s a good boy, isn’t he?”
Most of us Reillys grew up to be animal lovers. Maureen said she wanted to go to vet school but, instead, gave birth to a flock of beautiful boys. Missy had a son and named him Reilly, who talked of vet school, too. But he’s a nursing home administrator who cares for two-legged beings, and he is raising a flock of children himself. Reilly takes his dogs to work. It’s a much less wonderful life without them.
Life of Reillys 