On Saturday, a dog went missing. This wasn’t the dog of a friend of mine. It was the dog of friends of a friend of mine. I had hung out a few times with the owners and with Meatball, their big, sweet, nervous boy.
Meatball wouldn’t let strangers touch him. He was so scared of them. The one time I went to his house—the first time I met him—I fell in love with him, naturally, and spent 45 minutes on the kitchen floor, inching myself closer, not looking him in the eye. Eventually, he let me stroke his chest, and I just stayed there on the tile, petting him, for the rest of the party.
My friend sent me a text saying he was missing on Saturday. I don’t know how it happened. On Sunday night, I posted on Facebook for Durhamites to keep an eye out for him, and a friend that I was IMing with said somebody else had just posted that he was hit by a car.
And I fucking fell apart. I sat down on the couch between Violet and Redford and just sobbed. I thought about how scared he must have been when he was lost and how sad his owners must be, and I cried and cried.
I don’t know if this is normal. I don’t know if normal people get this torn up about other people’s dogs.
I guess that doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and I’m sad.
