Dogs Fall in Love at First Sight, You Know

Shadow lay dead in the kitchen, curled inside Ghost. Veronica’s par­ents spilled cof­fee on their slip­pers, mur­mured Jesus Christ. They pulled the dead cat from the ter­rier and buried her in the back­yard. Wrapped in a brown and white blan­ket, Veronica watched from her bed­room win­dow, her hair turn­ing pink at the sight. 

Later, while Veronica was draw­ing por­traits of Shadow and splat­ter­ing the paper with tears, Ghost dug up the dead cat and car­ried her gen­tly in his mouth to the door, scratch­ing with one paw to come in. Shadow’s head and legs poked out stiffly from Ghost’s jaws, and when Veronica opened the door she backed away scream­ing. She ran and hid in the closet when the dog came inside, squeez­ing her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of Ghost’s pant­ing and Shadow’s rigor-mortis limbs tap-tapping on the closet door.

Veronica’s dad tried to retrieve Shadow from the devoted clamp of Ghost’s jaws by dan­gling toys but Ghost would not let go. That night, Veronica’s par­ents crept down to the kitchen while Ghost slept and care­fully pried Shadow from the dog’s paws. Veronica’s mom held the flash­light while her hus­band shov­elled, deeper this time. 

The next day Ghost dug up Shadow again. 

Veronica’s dad placed boul­ders on top of Shadow’s grave but Ghost dug around them to get to Shadow. Veronica’s dad hid Shadow in a new grave behind a shrub, but Ghost sniffed out the dead cat and lifted her from the earth again, drool­ing a lit­tle, triumphantly. 

Veronica hid behind a tree, peer­ing around the bark to watch Ghost play with Shadow on the porch as he bat­ted at her gen­tly with his paws, or propped her against the wall with his nose, lick­ing what was left of her face. 

Veronica felt guilty for being afraid of Shadow, espe­cially next to the devo­tion of Ghost. After all, it wasn’t Shadow’s fault that she was dead, that her fur was mat­ted and miss­ing in some places, that her moon bones were show­ing through. “Sorry, Shadow,” she whis­pered into the bark as she pinched her nose against the smell. 

Veronica’s par­ents wanted to keep Shadow in their back­yard so Veronica could offer pop­pies and prayers. But Ghost wouldn’t stop dig­ging up the cat. Neighbours began treat­ing the fam­ily coolly, per­turbed by Shadow’s reap­pear­ing and rapidly dete­ri­o­rat­ing corpse and the lit­tle open graves dot­ting the yard. They were weary of Ghost too, some mis­un­der­stand­ing his loy­alty, sus­pect­ing he’d dug up Shadow to fin­ish off what was left of her remains. 

Two weeks after Shadow’s first res­ur­rec­tion, Veronica’s dad laid the dead cat in the car. Ghost pressed his nose against the glass as Veronica slipped into the back seat. In the heart of the woods, they buried Shadow’s fur-tufted skele­ton deep in the soil, amongst indif­fer­ent trees. The lit­tle cat was still sticky with Ghost’s saliva when Veronica placed her, for the last time, in the grave.