SCRUGGS and SAMANTHA CHAPTER ONE THE DECISION--LOOKING FOR LOVE (6TH installment of Scruggs and Samantha, by Mary de la Pena)

SCRUGGS and SAMANTHA

CHAPTER ONE

THE DECISION--LOOKING FOR LOVE

(6^TH installment of Scruggs and Samantha, by Mary de la Pena)

In the beginning, it was not love at first sight—not at that place and definitely not “him.”  The hole in my heart and in my life had grown larger than the Grand Canyon.  My marriage was stagnant; my love for practicing law had waned; and my home felt empty, even unsafe.  In my mind, God had deserted me, and I needed to fill the void in my heart and find the peace I needed.  But I was not looking for “him.”

Death hung over my house for too long, and grief was beyond me.  I could not cry over the loss of my family or my animals.  I was too afraid to let the tears roll, too afraid to allow myself to feel and find all the cracks in my armor. 

With all the emptiness in my life I developed a crazy idea that if I saved the life of an animal I might save my own, too.  My hemorrhaging heart needed something to stop the bleeding.  However, with the death of our eleven-year-old Rottweiler, Alice, Prince Charming and I had promised ourselves no more dogs.  Losing them was too hard and too painful, leaving us feeling too empty.  Even our two remaining large dogs, the full-blooded Rottweiler named Tara, and the Rottweiler mix we called Fina, were grieving.  Alice had been their pack leader, and Cosmo had been Fina’s special companion; thus, their absence disrupted even our animals’ lives.  It was for them, as much as it was for myself, that I was set out on my quest to find a companion cat to complete my dog’s life.  Besides, one cat was just not enough in our large house.

I made the rounds of cat adoptions at PetSmart and PetCo.  There were plenty of beautiful, well-socialized cats, but my timing was never right to find the appropriate cat for my household of dogs.  The rescue organizations were reluctant to allow their cats to go to a home with the two big dogs, and they turned a deaf ear to my protestations that my dogs were raised with cats.  Tara, at 116 pounds, was an intimidating force, but her heart was gentle and her demeanor loving.  Our eleven-year-old cat, Caesar, had raised her, teaching her the rhythms of our household.  Even when I explained that Fina, a rescue from the streets, was mourning the loss of her companion cat, the presence of the two large dogs, Rottweilers at that, was enough to send shudders of fear through the volunteers.  No cat was allowed to go home with Tara and Fina in our house.

That was how I ended up at the Pomona Valley Humane Society on a hot summer day. I forced myself to walk through the aisles of cages.   This was the last place I wanted to be.

The Pomona Valley Humane Society in Pomona, California, was located at the base of a large hill, known in town as “Elephant Hill.”  The facility was tucked in an old industrial area, fronted by the wreckage of the former General Dynamics Plant, with the Pomona Police Department’s firing range hovering over it.  During the Cold War Pomona had grown prosperous with the munitions and missile manufacturing plants centralized in the city.  People had come from all over the country to settle in the city with its postwar housing.  But with glasnost came the closure of the plants and the buildings.  In its wake were neighborhoods known for Mexican gang activity.  Up the road from the shelter and down the highway was “Sin Town,” the first area built just after World War II.  The name “Sin Town” was the nomenclature given to it by the local police agencies patrolling the area because of its drug dealers, semi-retired prostitutes, and black gang members.  Across Highway 71 was an area heavily populated with recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, both legal and illegal.  Signage in the surrounding area was rendered predominantly in Spanish.  It seemed to be expected that the current residents prefer Spanish and that the rest of us are semi-fluent.  In other words, the Pomona Valley Humane Society was not one of the better addresses in the city.

Worse yet, the animals coming to the shelter have suffered as much as their prior owners.  They suffer from malnutrition, lack of medical care and, more importantly, have little or no hope of leaving their environment alive.  Disease, neglect, and abandonment come in large helpings to these animals.  Happy endings are few and far between.  The only saving grace is a large staff of volunteers who try as hard as they can to make the final days of these discarded animals as pleasant as possible.  The cages are cleaned several times a day and food from local donations are plentiful. The animals have fresh water and clean bedding. Unfortunately, there are just too many animals and too few people who want them.