The Uninvited Visitor

I love cats; I have a dog.
He is in no legal sense my dog. He just visits our home every day, sleeps here in the afternoon, we feed him, we bathe him once in a while, we take him to the vet when needed, but he is NOT OUR DOG.

My big hearted, dog loving brother had started feeding the stray dogs a few months back as his passion project, like the time he opened up our old CPU to build something. After a month or so, I just ended up pushing it under his side table as I do not know how to assemble it. The dog who is now in my home sometimes, is just a stray dog who was taken far away from his pack when he was as tiny as a bean but disposed off after a week or two at the same spot from where he was abducted. His parents had happily moved on like the fathers I have seen on those American sitcoms, and failed to recognise their own pup.

It was the new year’s eve when he was dropped back and I had requested my brother to go out and get some onions for my friends, whom we were hosting. After an hour of him leaving, my pal who was to come for dinner, entered with the bag of onions. I was clearly running behind schedule in the kitchen. I was almost done with the dish which my brother was to make, when I heard him enter the main gate, followed by whimpering of a dog.

The first time I picked the dog up was when he had forced his way inside the house and I wanted him out. I had lived with cats for a year before coming back home and I was used to tossing them out of my room from the height of a couple of feet. I picked up the dog to toss him out but he was heavier than I expected and he didn’t drape over my arm like the cats did. But I flung the door open and dropped him from a foot height. To my surprise he didn’t land on his feet, but his all fours were spread out on the tiled floor. He did get up instantly, and rushed out of the main gate. I made a mental note to not throw dogs even from a foot height.

Now he knocks on the door as if it is his right to enter the house and my mother finds him cute. Once when my brother was not in town and the dog was sick, my mother let him stay in one of the rooms in the house and in the evening she demanded we take him to the vet. I didn’t know how to pick him up off the floor as he was sprawled out on the floor. My mother got annoyed with my failed attempts and stretched out her arms, and said “come, let’s go. I’ll take you”. For a second I believed the dog would stretch out his arms and accept the invite to be picked up by her like a baby. He didn’t.

Last week she touched him for the first time.
He comes and stands in front of me or follows me around for scratches, as now he is too big for me to pick him up let alone drop him.