ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190024
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY REED
The tyrant has been deposed.
The lengthy sentence of hard time as a servant to an alien creature is at an end at our house.
The feline reign of terror is over.
Rose has been put in her place.
Never did we dare dream that the white and gray stub-tailed Siamese who has ruled our fair section of the Old Dominion would receive her comeuppance, but she did.
For an entire year now, she has cold-heartedly ambushed innocent and unsuspecting residents of our house from dark hiding spaces beneath the stairs. She has awakened small children in the night, pouncing on them, claws spread wide, as they turn in their sleep. Weeping with fright and anger they have pitched her into the hall and locked and double-locked their doors behind her.
Whole families of garden rodents and other small beasts she has cruelly exterminated and left, execution style, all over the grounds. The grotesque and horrified expressions on their deceased faces testify to the horror of their final moments.
Now the fiend has met her earthly match.
Her conqueror has coat and eyes to match Rose's heart: black as the inside of a tomb. He is the mongoose to her cobra. She is quick as frontier justice; he is quicker. She has outsmarted all her rivals but him. Peering serenely from beneath his beetling brow and sniffing through his well-manicured goatee, he does not appear at first glance to be a formidable rival.
But he is.
And Rose knows it.
She is in full retreat now as Winston, the new tenant, makes himself comfortable in quarters that she once enjoyed as her exclusive domain. Should she intrude on his serenity, he speaks sharply to her and puts her to flight with a swift nip to the flanks.
Rose looks on in perplexed resignation. She never in her most hideous feline nightmares fathomed the power and self-confidence of a 12-week-old miniature schnauzer, particularly one of Winston's aristocratic lineage.
As for Rose, her bloodlines are of a considerably less vivid hue of blue. In fact, we know that her mother exercised a depressingly minimal amount of moral restraint and, in fact, was none too particular about the late-night company she kept.
This may trouble Rose to know that she must bow before a housemate of higher rank in the animal kingdom. That is difficult to determine for sure, though, because she lately makes herself as scarce as intellectuals at a monster truck show.
The only nonhuman member of the household not greatly troubled by Winston is Emmett, the Pulaski County-born golden retriever. Emmett is elderly now and has taken to conducting himself in a stately manner. Either that, or he's deaf as one of Metallica's roadies.
In any event, Winston's juvenile yapping and jumping has little influence on Emmett as the smaller dog bounces off his 80-pound elder like a pygmy colliding with a body builder.
Emmett is so cold and aloof that Winston will do almost anything to gain his attention. Emmett is oblivious, although it did seem he smiled when Winston almost knocked himself out when colliding full force with a dogwood stump as he raced about trying to gain the larger dog's favor one morning this week.
Rose wasn't around to enjoy Winston taking momentary leave of his senses. She was in hiding.
We suspect she is preparing for a life in exile.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB