Free Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin

stay home. As Dan did not want to go without Noah, and Jennifer felt uncomfortable leaving them both alone, I went by myself.
    My folks had bought the place back in the mid-1960s. It is a three-bedroom cottage, the smallest house on our end of the island and one of only two houses on the block that remain from the day they moved in. Since they had sold the house I grew up in thirty-five years ago, the shore house had become the repository of a lot of memories. I started spending time there as a junior in high school, and the summer freedom it represented had always been an integral part of my life.
    Now I was uncomfortable being there alone.
    Closing down the shore house always causes me to wonder about what will have happened in my life before we reopen it for the next summer. Seeing one of Oogy’s chew toys in the living room made palpable the tenuous hold we have on what is dear to us. This was the start of the boys’ final year at home, and image after image of them kaleidoscoped before me: running, laughing, standing on the rock jetty as the surf exploded around them, digging holes in the sand, making sand castles, cavorting in the surf with Jennifer. I remembered putting them in the car when they were toddlers and driving around so they would fall asleep. I saw them on the jetty as a storm rolled in, each wearing one of my hooded sweatshirts that reached to their ankles. I could see and hear them playing outside as they showered off the sand before coming into the house. I recalled my mom making us dinner, remembered putting them to sleep on the sofa bed, relived the smell of the clean sheets and the scent of their skin. I could see their sun blond hair, feel the heat of their bodies. They appeared before me, utterly exhausted, suspended in the sleep of the pure.
    I had been part of an instrument of joy for them, and it made me feel complete. Laughter resounded within these walls, like distant thunder. It was still so odd for me to contemplate, after all that had happened in my life: How lucky was I?

CHAPTER 4
    Doors

    t wo months after the boys turned twelve, in January 2002, Buzzy, our black-and-white cat, began dying, an irreversible decline. It was like watching a slow-motion movie of a car crash without the power to alter the ending.
    I had worked hard his entire life at keeping him alive. We had rescued Buzz when he was only five weeks old, and at the time no one thought he would survive. He had infections in both eyes and was so flea-ridden that we ended up having to hire an exterminator to bomb the house to get rid of the infestation. He weighed so little that we could have mailed him with a first-class stamp. He was not even the cat I had wanted. I had envisioned a white cat with black spots, and Buzz was the inverse of that. The first time I picked him up at the animal rescue, he climbed onto my shoulder and went to sleep, purring away as if he were being paid to be cute. To this day I do not know why, but I decided, He’s not exactly what I want, but if he’s here tomorrow, I’ll take him . I came back to the shelter the next day, he was, and I did. He filled the house with his appreciation. He had been a loving friend, a boon companion, as they say. Buzzy never met a lap he did not like. The boys’ great-aunts and -uncles would become electrified whenever Buzz jumped onto their laps, curled up, and started purring. He would ride around the house on my shoulder.
    But now he was fourteen, and the end was facing us. When I came home from work one Friday, he was lying in his own waste underneath the dining room table. He had lost the power to move. A small hole opened in my heart. I cleaned him off with a warm, damp cloth and some pet shampoo. I wadded up a blanket from our bed that had our scent and placed Buzz on it in the dining room next to the radiator. Jennifer and the boys and I had made plans earlier in the week to go to a movie that evening, but about halfway through the film, I realized there was