Chapter 1: What themes about pet ownership are explored in this episode?
Hey, it's Chloe Salmon from The Moth. As a story director, I talk to a lot of people who say they want to tell a story but don't know where to start. A tip I give them? Get specific. What's a moment that meant something to you? Your first home run? That road trip with your dad? The time you bombed at the talent show? Start there, then build on that foundation.
You can find tips to help you identify those moments along with prompts to inspire them in The Moth's new guided journal, My Life and Stories. Whether you want to find your own story, reflect on your life, or even give it as a gift, you can order your copy at themoth.org forward slash my life and stories. That's themoth.org forward slash my life and stories.
This is a Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Alistair Bain. In this episode, we'll be celebrating the bonds between people and animals. I live in Colorado with an assorted pack of dogs and foster dogs, including two formerly feral dogs and a pit bull that carries his teddy bear with him wherever he goes.
I've learned so much from my own pets about courage, resilience, loyalty, and I even developed some fairly advanced reupholstering skills because sometimes a sofa will be mistaken for a rather large chew toy. In this hour, we will hear seven storytellers share stories about themselves and their relationship to the animal kingdom.
Catherine Palmer told this first story at an open mic story slam we produced in Pittsburgh, where we partner with public radio station WESA. Live from the Rex Theater, here's Catherine Palmer.
I'm a city person. I wasn't born in the city. I moved to the city, to the south side of Pittsburgh, as an adult. Now, city people expect a couple things. light and noise. And we get pretty nervous if it gets too dark or too quiet. Now, we're the only people in our family that live in the city. My husband's four sisters live in dark, quiet places.
And the darkest, quietest home is my sister-in-law, who runs a hostel with her husband and her two little girls. in the middle of nowhere. Now, this kind of nowhere is where there's no cell service, no internet access. And I found myself there one night after having been in a meeting in Philly, which is a very nice, noisy, bright city.
And we had a lovely dinner, and we were waiting to check in the next hostel guest, and it was getting later. And that was a problem because my niece was going to have a performance that night, and somebody was going to have to stay behind. So I volunteered. What could go wrong? I would be in a very dark, quiet place with no cell reception letting strangers into the house. Perfect.
So I waved them off and I went to the living room to read a book. Turns out I can't read if it's completely quiet. I need a little bit of noise. So I headed to the kitchen to get a drink because you can do that in the dark and quiet. And I stopped in my tracks because there was a snake in front of me.
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Chapter 2: How does Catherine Palmer's story reflect city versus country living?
My last relationship with the dog was when it had its teeth in my butt cheeks. I was nine years old in India and was dancing in front of the stray dog that often rested outside my grandma's home. To think that she still continued to feed him, pained me in my heart and my ass. So I asked my wife, how about we get a foster dog instead? Meaning,
We get to host the dog for a few days temporarily until someone else can adopt them permanently. The foster agency heard our request and my wife came home with coconut. A Shih Tzu mix with a silky black coat covering entire body. It looked like my wife brought home a bunch of synthetic wigs. Coconut had a cone around her neck reminiscent of one of the characters from The Handmaid's Tale.
That was because she got spayed that morning. She was 10 years old, she is 10 years old, and to think that she hadn't been spayed until now, painted us a grim picture of her past. I work from home, by the way. So from the next morning, Coconut and I became involuntary housemates. On day one, I learned that she doesn't really make eye contact and stays hidden under a table all day long.
On day two, I realized she doesn't even respond to her name. So I figured maybe the foster agency just assigned the name Coconut to her and I started to try a hundred different names the same day. All day I went, Olive? Cheddar? Buttercup? Todd? I knew her hearing was intact because she leaped at me when she heard me open a Kit Kat. So I figured it out. She just didn't care.
And so I just sat next to her throughout the day. At one time, she protruded her little head from under the table, rested it on my lap and slept. I couldn't help but notice that she snores. Like she had a Harley Davidson engine in her diaphragm. On day three, she gets called in for an extensive knee surgery.
I had just started to be less queasy about her space car, so I just reminded myself that I was just a temporary host and she was going to go to another foster home soon anyway. But that night, Coconut came back home from the wet, crying, and continued to cry into the night. She had 12 staples on her leg that was cut from her thigh all the way down to her foot.
Combined with the space car, almost a quarter of her little body was in stitches. I had asked for an easy dog because of my inexperience. But this dog needed to be consoled around the clock. And I couldn't even bring myself to look at her staple leg. So my wife took care of her, and I watched them both from a distance, too weak-hearted to even come close.
I have seen animals suffering, but never one that was under my care. This felt personal, like I was responsible to put her in her misery. And unexpectedly, this same line of thinking brought me the solution. I reminded myself of all the stray dogs back in India, including the ones that bit me, how many of them often had open wounds with no shelter to recover in.
Coconut at least had healthy food, meds, and a loving home. As bad as it was, I had to remind myself that she was in safe hands. So the next morning I woke up and I approached her, gently but firmly, lifted her in my arms as she looked me in the eyes for the first time, and in our own little way I let her know that she was gonna be fine, that this was gonna pass. It was like both of us had
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Jitesh Jaggi face with dog adoption?
She was with me the whole time, just pretending to scratch the furniture and throwing up on it. It worked out really well. But eventually, it was her time. And I was in a much better place. And so I did have to make the decision to put her down after reaching 25. I mean, that's 630 in human years I would want to go to. But she did teach me a number of lessons.
One is that if anybody ever tells you, can you take my cat for a few days, you own a cat. The second is if someone wants to feel dangerous, just let them. And the third is if you are going to feel like a badass and throw up, be a lady and warn people about it. Thank you.
That was Patrick Cleary. Patrick is a cat owner, playwright, and storyteller from Boston, Massachusetts. Since Rita, Patrick has been the proud parent of four other cats, some of whom were actually adopted on purpose. Thank you, Patrick, for the wisdom that there is no such thing as a temporary cat.
Our final story is told by Linda Torres at a slam we produced in Seattle, which is supported by public radio station KUOW. Live from the Fremont Abbey Arts Center, here's Linda Torres.
The happiest moment in my life was when I jumped into my husband's arms and I got back home from Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah. So he picked me up from Fort Benning, Georgia, if you know where that is, and we drove to D.C. where I was stationed. I was so excited to see Gina. She hadn't seen me in like six or seven months. And she came home, and it would always be an empty house.
And she saw me, and she was just like, oh, oh, that's my person. So she came up to me and ran up to me. And she had her tail wagging just enthusiastically. And she came up to me and kissed me and circled me. So that was wonderful. So the next day, Adam, my husband, went to work. He was really busy and had a lot of work to do. I, on the other hand, had a lot of days off.
I was really lonely and alienated, and I found out that I had a back injury, so I couldn't run or do yoga or do any of those things that I like to do for stress relief. But what I did was I walked Gina a ton, and I played fetch with her, and I read books about war stories because I felt connected to the people in the books and stuff. But Adam was acting a little strange.
He would come home late, and he would be really withdrawn and quiet and stuff. So I sat him down, and I was just like, what is up? And he said, you are gone. And I liked it. I never wanted to be married to you. So yeah. So it didn't work out. So, yeah. But divorce was still really hard for me. I mean, I thought I was going to be with him for the rest of my life.
So I remember deciding to buy a nice purple climbing rope from REI. And I was... going to logistically figure out, I was going to go on a walk with Gina, and logistically I was going to figure out which tree to hang myself on. So I finally found a tree, and then Gina found the stick. And usually that means that you got to stop whatever you're doing because you got to throw the stick.
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