Conversations

After protesting about PEPFAR cuts outside Tesla, I had to pick Connor up from the vet, where he'd been sine his biopsy yesterday. My vet has his own practice, and he accepts walk-in emergencies, so there is sometimes a long wait. On the bench across from me was a gray-haired woman in jeans, flip flops and starfish earrings. Neither she or I actually had an animal with us. "It’s so hard when they’re getting older," she said, telling me about her Bosston Terrier. "She can’t see and her liver enzymes are high so she has medication for that. At first it was a pill, but she doesn't have a snout so I couldn't really hold her closed, so instead I take chewable pills and I dissolve them with a little water and squirt them in." I told her abpout Yuki and his amazing ability to eat a whole meal and still somehow be holding the pill in his mouth so he can drop it somewhere. "We had put a deposit down on a Boston terrier with a woman in New England, she breeds them. The puppies were due in the summer but then one day I was in a pet store and I saw this little Boston and she was crying and looked scared. When I picked her up she just melted so I went home and I told my husband I found our dog. 'But we paid a deposit...' he said. I called the lady and she said 'as long as somebody else takes the puppy I will give you your money back,' so she did. Right about then my husband went into the hospital and he never came home so that dog was my....I have kids but they’re grown and they have their own life and you dont want to be a pain in the butt to them. If everyone was like animals, it would be a better world. They don’t care what you look like or smell like." She went up to the counter to inquire about the wait. Sitting back down, she told me she had to get to Staten Island. "I'm in a garden club and we're having a plant show. I entered two plants, a Crown of Thorns and a Snake Plant. I brought them there this morning and then you have to leave while the judges decide." Curious, I asked what the prizes were. "There are some medals and, if you do really well, a plaque. I'm 70 years old but I feel like I'm back in school, I want the star." Just then her dog's medications were ready, so she took them and headed off to Staten Island to collect her plants and hopefully, a plaque. By then another person had arrived, a man in his 30s with a cat in one of those backback carriers with the clear window. We sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the peaceful zen-like music. I haven't quite recovered from being up for 20 hrs straight yesterday, and I was hit by yawn after yawn. By the time I got to the fifth yawn, I noticed he was looking at me with a bit of concern. "I wore myself out protesting," I said. "We were at Tesla protesting the cuts to global AIDS funding." Saying anything political in Bay Ridge is risky because of the number of right wingers, but this guy seemed like the right age and general aesthetic to be one of the more liberal newcomers. "Thank you for fighting the good fight." he said, confirming my guess. "There are people protesting at Federal Plaza today too," I told him. "They're holding all the people they arrested at their checkins in bad conditions in the basement." "Did you see what happened in CA with the flash bangs?" he asked me. "Yes," I said "and they used pepper spray in front of USCIS last week." "I heard about that," he said, so I told him about Son's arrest. "I'm a public school teacher and I am afraid of what budget cuts will do to schools," he said. "What level?" "Elementary school. The kids keep asking questions about what's going on." "So do my LGBTQ homeless youth clients, they're terrified.". "I hate what it's doing to families and that bill..," he said. "There's a big march on June 14th, against Trump and all of this." "Where?" he asked so I gave him the details, which he wrote down. I heard an angry meow and recognized Connor's outraged I'm-in-a-carrier voice, and then they brought him out from the back and handed me three medications and a page of instructions. "He's a little damp, we gave him a bath" she said over the meows. "come back in two weeks to have the stitches out." We headed home, still meowing as loudly as he could manage.