Day 60: Monday, May 9, 2011

While I was writing in the morning, there was a knock on the door. Ian and I both got up and answered it. A young housewife about 30-35 years old, who lived somewhere nearby, greeted us with a smile, but, at the same time, looked rather disconcerted. I began to worry if it had something to do with me taking pictures from my window everyday and if the neighbors were getting paranoid, but immediately she revealed why she came.

“Willy’s over at my house,” she said and then quickly iterated, “ but I didn’t feed her though!” She said that because we had written on Willy’s collar a message telling strangers not to feed her. I held back my surprise, yet this confirmed my suspicion that Willy had been hanging out at other people’s houses all along. She then continued, “We were just playing, and then suddenly she seemed sick.”

I asked her if she was dry heaving or vomiting because Willy often did that (because strangers kept feeding her hence the sign on her collar), but she shook her head and said Willy couldn’t walk, which was another surprise for Ian and I, and sounded rather serious. I wanted to run upstairs to get my camera, but there was no time. We hurried over to her house across the street where I had seen Willy hanging out on her stoop the week before.

We stood at her front entrance, and she brought Willy outside, who didn’t look quite right. Ian took her in his arms, and then set her down on the ground. Immediately she collapsed. We were all shocked. He picked her up again. The other neighbors who were also outside cutting branches from their tree came over to see what was wrong. And then an old lady from around the corner also wobbled over looking horribly concerned. I remembered that there was an animal hospital nearby and told Ian about it, but while I was mentioning this, I noticed something strange... Willy’s left leg was caught inside her pink collar, so I pointed it out to everyone. Ian undid the collar and we put Willy back on the ground and she walked- actually more like skulked- over to the alley and hid in the shadows as if embarrassed. Everyone let out a sigh of relief. The young lady apologized for the trouble; the old lady from around the corner said she almost had a heart attack because she admitted that she too had been feeding Willy; and the men, who had been cutting the tree, kept making poses as if their hands were caught in a collar… Willy then disappeared further down the alley and then we went home.

A minute later, I went out on the balcony with my camera to see if I could capture anything left from that incident, but the only people who were still outside were the two old men cutting the tree... They looked up at me, smiled, and then made the paw-caught-in-the-collar pose. I smiled back, and when they were not looking, took their picture and then went inside.