LETTERS FROM HOME: A POCKET FULL OF KIBBLE, A GENTLEMAN OF LETTERS

Nov. 16, 1995

Dear Pat,

The first snow to stick around fell early yesterday, covering the ground but only wetting the streets. The kind of snow that could make a schoolchild cry.

DC turned on the TV early, just as we always did as children, and was disappointed when the local news anchor didn't even mention a single school closing. She was rooting for the kids and for sleds and hot chocolate.

She is happier to be back in Missouri day by day, I think. She is in love with our new house, although with each passing month the word new becomes more of an excuse for the disarray than an accurate description of our term of ownership.

Friends from St. Louis are coming for the weekend, so we've transferred the wall sander and the paint buckets to the basement temporarily. The extension ladder stays, if only because we now consider it part of the decor.

We're also trying to speed house-train the puppies so our guests don't have to spend the weekend walking about the house with downcast eyes. That's why I'm walking around with my coat pocket full of kibble.

The current thinking on house training is that you don't scold puppies for doing what comes naturally. Instead, you reward them for doing it where and when you want them to. Theoretically, puppies are capable of doing this given a certain regularity of feeding and walking.

But until our vet suggested giving them a small treat for complying with our druthers, Hank and Lucy seemed to think that coming back inside was their cue to let fly. Now, quite often, they perform as desired for the guy with his hand in the munchies pocket.

They have very different personalities. Lucy is adventurous, took the steep back stairs in leaps even after flopping down them on her back a few times. Hank is shy and must be carried up and down the stairs. He is a prisoner of his own timidity.

So I hold Hank extra close walking up and down the stairs.

Many years ago, a friend entrusted her cat Frijoles to me while she took a six-month journey to Kathmandu. I must not have cared for Frijoles well enough, because one day she disappeared.

I was sick to think I was going to be welcoming my friend home with the news that her beloved cat was gone.

I searched the neighborhood and posted lookouts, but as months went by gave up hope. Then one day a distinguished-looking gentleman appeared on my doorstep with a cat he called Norma.

It was Frijoles. They were living together in the apartment house across the street.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude, and I think he was nearly heartbroken.

Then he told me stories about Frijoles/Norma's adventures over the past few months, how he'd simply started feeding her -- ah, kibble -- and she'd decided this was home.

Then he very politely said goodbye.

His name was Dr. Harold O. Grauel, one of the town's great men, an English professor and man of letters. They'd named the language arts building for him at the university.

The snow had melted almost completely by noon yesterday, the day Dr. Grauel died. I fed the puppies, filled my pocket as full as could be with kibble, and we scrambled outside to play in the soggy yard.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.