This car ride is not glorious. It is stuffy and windless and full of the sound of tires moaning across roads.
We—the Colonel and Alex and Micah and me—pull into the parking lot of the shelter. I knew we’d come here, but I didn’t fully think this through when I failed the test. The toy lightning cages. The cardboard dry food. The heavy smell of dog fear.
My leash jangles like a mourning bell.
My tail tucks, my head hangs as we approach the door.
Until . . .
That scent!
My head snaps up. I flare my nostrils and suck in the smells, trying to separate the taste of each.
It is! It has to be!
I start yanking the leash, my toenails skidding and scratching the pavement like tiny, galloping music notes. Let’s go! We have to get in there!
“Whoa!” the Colonel says. “Easy there, Miss Daisy!”
The bell over the Good Side door dings green.
Janie looks up from her always desk. “Oh! Well, hello again.”
But I’m pulling and jerking and tugging and skidding and whining and crying because—
KATIMA! I yell. I heave toward a row of cages, wrenching the Colonel behind me. She’s in the middle one, too high for me to see.
I hear her stand, tiny flecks of lightning sparking off her cage like fireworks. She’s penned up, but she’s HERE. SHE’S HERE!
Is it you? Katima cries. Is it really you?
We’re both whining and crying and pawing and scratching and OH! KATIMA’S HERE!
“Do these two know each other?” Micah asks. He looks at Janie.
She blinks like a possum. “It looks that way.”
The Colonel’s heart races. “Can you get the other dog down, please?”
Janie unlocks the door with a tiny click that sounds like a whole song. Before she can even reach into the cage, Katima jumps down to me.
I pull the leash out of the Colonel’s hand. Katima and I wriggle and writhe and sniff and whine like a pile of pigs. I get us tangled together with the leash and we laugh and lick and cry.
Micah laughs. The Colonel laughs. Even Alex, who I’d forgotten exists on this day, laughs.
“Looks like they’re old buddies,” the Colonel says. By the way he says buddies, I know it’s a word full of music to him. It’s a word with weight and worth.
But we’re more than buddies.
We’re family. I sigh.
Mama, Katima says, licking my face. Mama.