Rivkah's Rambles

She was born on January 19, 2000 and we adopted her when she was 18 months old. We knew that racing was not her strong suit because she raced a total of 4 times, coming in last or almost last each time. It wasn't until a few months later that I found the day of her birth on some papers and realized that January 19 is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday. Had we known, we might have stuck her with the name Annabelle Lee. Lacking this information we named her Cleo because Abe didn't like my first choice, Lizzie, short for Miss Elizabeth Bennet, one of my favorite characters in literature. He said the name reminded him of Lizzie Borden and the connotation was just too unpleasant. We thought of Cleo because her eyes were lined in black like Cleopatra's. I know greyhounds are a very special breed but Cleo really was extraordinary. She actually learned to walk off leash because she had no prey drive and chasing small creatures was not to her taste (pun intended). She actually learned things like "shake a paw" (taught by our friend Eva), to sit like a sphinx, to bark when she was hungry (and that was about the only time she did), and to poop and pee on command. She was mellow, perfect and she was my girl.

We still don't know what happened, but in the early evening of April 22 she vomited and started showing signs of distress. By noon the next day she was dead, literally minutes before the vet was going to do exploratory surgery. Remember that line from the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes?" Cicely Tyson says, "...a lady always knows when to leave. " That's how Cleo was. She just went. The hardest thing for me was not being with her when it happened. I literally arrived at the vet's office 5 minutes too late.

So there it is. Our beautiful pooch came in with Edgar Allan Poe and departed with William Shakespeare. Hard as it still is to think about, there's a lovely literary symmetry to it all, don't you think? And I'm so glad I took her to see Henry V at Shakespeare in the Park last summer. She got to hear Henry shout, "I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game's afoot."

So, prey drive or not, I hope she's curled up next to Poe and Shakespeare listening to them debate their literary styles, and once in awhile thinking of me.