yo momma's a good lookin' babe

did i ever tell you that my dog kitty's favorite song is "summertime" by the gershwins? when she was just a handful of dirty fur with the uncanny ability to bite with deadly accuracy, i discovered that singing (or in my case, caterwauling) that song a la janis joplin on crystal meth calmed her down.

she would lie on the floor ("summertime-tahm-tahm eh-hend thuh livin's eee-hee-zzeh...") belly up ("fish are jumpin' naaaaa-hoooowww...") and i'd rub her tummy ("and thuh cowwwtuhnoohown... cotton's haaaa-aah-high... oh so ha-ah-hay..."). by the time i sing about singing ("one aawf deez maw-nins... yo gawnnuh raaa-highs up seee-hee-ngin'...") my little dog is snoring like a middle-aged man in grave danger of dying from a bangungot.

i never thought i'd actually wake up at 3 or 4 AM desperately straining to hear her snore. you see, i was supposed to go drinking with a friend last night but right after dinner, when we were about to hie off and guzzle the first of many bottles, my dad called to ask how she was. we'd been on pregnancy labor alert for the past few nights now because as of last night, little kitty was beginning to look like a white hairy dirty watermelon with teeth, tail, legs and who knows how many nipples.

so i called kuya at home who said i'd better skeddadle back from wherever i was because she'd been hiding under beds all afternoon yesterday and asked to be put in her whelping box several times. she looked just about ready to burst. eek. very scary thought. so we rescheduled the boozefest to wednesday next week and i took a cab home.

when i got there, true enough, she was in her box whimpering and heaving. definitely the beginnings of labor. so i packed some bags and with the help of kuya, brought her to a 24-hour animal clinic on kalayaan ave. to make a long sad story short, she gave birth to 4 puppies, one of which died because it came out breech. they had to cut her open because even after 2 hours of heaving and straining, she couldn't make those damn puppies pop out. good thing we decided to operate because the vet discovered that her uterus was just about ready to rupture from all that straining.

in short, my baby could have died. am so thankful for the skill of the vet and the prayers of those who didn't think praying for a dog was a stupid idea. when we got home, kitty was still groggy and shivering from all the drugs they pumped into her. she was so doped up she didn't snore at all last night. all i could hear were the thin wails from the three puppies pushing against her wet dirty fur. i was so afraid the little buggers would mess up the stitching on her belly.

so it looks like kitty and i will have to wait a few weeks before we can sing/snore to that gershwin song again. she hasn't had a bath in since last week and her tail-end is still a bloody mess. still, this momma dawg is one good lookin' babe, mainly because she's still breathing. yay! ptl!