Bella

The funny thing is that I was a cat person growing up.

Really. When I was seven, we had a black and white cat named Casper who roamed around our little apartment and the New Hampshire forest nearby. Then here in Sabah, a mother cat chose our house to smuggle her kittens into barely a week or two after our arrival. The dynasty was born. We must have had twenty cats over the years, an entire swarm of kittens at one point that would stampede when called. I liked cats, and still do. I only tolerated dogs.

All this to say that out of the many, many events of 2020, I did not expect to fall in love with a puppy.

This was Bella when we first got her. We had no idea what her breed was. Some strain of terrier? Collie? Obviously mixed, anyway. From the day my aunty brought her home in May, a tiny white bundle of fur, she grew on me.

We tried leaving her by herself at night, but she barked and whined the house down. So I took her up to my bedroom where she’d have some company. Maybe so that I would too. She’d flop on the wooden floor under the fan and go to sleep, safe and content.

She was horribly messy, as puppies always are. Poop and puddles everywhere. Eventually, we trained her to use mats near the bathroom. So much energy, this dog. Always running around the house. She was wary of the staircase at first, but soon learned to bound up and down with ease. When I left for work she’d jump up to the window to watch me leave; when I got back she’d hear the car and hop onto the couch to see me come in, her fluffy tail wagging like crazy. She loved to play and bit as many things as a teething puppy could. The house was livelier.

And then my mom passed away, and we just didn’t have time for a puppy. A wonderful family friend took Bella in for the next two months. We grieved and adjusted. Life went on.

Last month we bought Bella a shiny new cage and went to pick her up. She’d gotten longer, stockier. She’d made new doggy friends where she was staying. But her tail still wagged like crazy seeing us.

Now that she was bigger, I took her on long walks in the evenings. We visited my mom’s grave. She would stop and sniff the grass along the way, and happily roll around in the dirt. She was a little too popular with all the neighbouring dogs, most of them larger. I’d gather her up in my arms until we were somewhere safer. She was ever willing to be carried, and always happy to run off again when set down.

Until one day last week when she stopped eating. The next morning, she was vomiting and lying forlornly at the back of her cage. We brought her to the vet and learned about an illness called parvo, dubbed the puppy killer.

Highly contagious, it spreads from other dogs or their faeces and can be fatal for dogs under one year old. There is no cure. Treatment is limited to managing symptoms so that the dog can pull through on their own. Prevention is the best policy; the virus is covered in the normal vaccine cocktail that puppies are supposed to receive. Bella was only ten months old, and with my mom’s cancer growing worse, her passing, and the aftermath, we forgot all about vaccination.

Last week, Bella tested positive for the parvovirus. Suddenly she was fighting for her life.

Life is so fragile, isn’t it? Someone or something comes into our lives that we never expected and come to care for very much. But you never know when they’ll be taken from you. In this year of loss and grim prospects amid the pandemic, it seems more important than ever to remember that there’s a last time for everything. The last appointment my mom and me went for at the Oncology department before she was referred to Palliative. The last time she was able to walk down the stairs. The last birthday of hers we celebrated, a few days early, the night before she died.

Sometimes all the signs are there. You can see it coming. And other times death comes out of nowhere, reminding us of how fleeting our existence is.

Death doesn’t always come to take life away, though. My mom pulled through her emergency operation back in 2017, even with the complications that put her in the ICU. She did very well with the chemo that followed. We had another three years together after the cancer diagnosis. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Sometimes death only brushes our loved ones, reminding us not to take them for granted.

Thankfully, Bella’s illness was one of those times.

It took a few nights’ stay at the veterinary clinic, where she was put on a drip and antibiotics and liquid food. She grew noticeably thinner. But after a few days, she got her appetite back. We were able to take her home. With the virus defeated, all her boisterous energy returned. We'll get her vaccinated soon. She’s back to barking the house down and running around and wagging her fluffy white tail like crazy when I get back from work.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.