I am so hungry.
My belly aches in the hollow way it does when Mama is late with breakfast. I lick my lips and nose, but there’s nothing there, just the stale taste of last night’s water. The bowl is dry. The air is dry. My tongue feels like old leather.
“Mama?” I whine.
She is in the bed where she always sleeps, the big soft hill in the middle of the room. I jump off the couch and trot over, nails clicking on the wood. I wag my tail out of habit, hopeful. Maybe she was just sleeping late. Maybe she’ll sit up and smile and say, “Hello, Zeus,” and my name will sound like love, and then there will be food.
But Mama does not move.
I stand at the side of the bed and bark. Not playful bark. A sharp, worried one.
“Mama! Mama, wake up! I’m hungry, Mama!”
Her face is turned toward the window, where the morning light is creeping in. Her mouth hangs slightly open. I pant harder, listening to the hiss of her breath, but all I hear is the quiet hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
Sometimes, when she is very tired, I climb up beside her and lick her cheek and she laughs and pushes me away and says, “Too much, Zeus. That’s too much.” So, I jump up now. My paws land near her legs. I step carefully, not wanting to hurt her, and nuzzle her arm.
Her skin is cool.
I lick her face. Once. Twice. A dozen times. My tongue is rough from thirst. “Wake up,” I plead, in my dog way, with whines and nudges. “Please, Mama. I don’t like this game. Wake up now. I’ll be good. I promise.”
She does not laugh. She does not move at all.
The house grows longer and longer and longer around us. The light shifts from gold to white to dim. My stomach growls. I drink from the toilet, because Mama is not here to tell me no, and then I feel bad because I know she doesn’t like that, and I come back to her side and curl against her leg. It smells faintly of lavender soap. It smells faintly of her.
I don’t know how long I sleep.
When the sound wakes me, it’s dark again. A sharp, hard knocking that vibrates through the floor. My head snaps up. My hackles rise.
“Police wellness check!” a voice calls through the door. I don’t know what that means. But I know strangers. I jump off the bed and run to the door, barking as loud as I can.
“Mama! Mama, there’s somebody here! Mama!”
She doesn’t come.
The door opens with a crack and a rush of cold air. Two shadows step inside, bringing with them the smell of rain and wet leather and something sharp and clean that stings my nose.
They flick a switch and the room fills with light. I squint and back away, then bark again, hoarse.
“Easy, buddy,” one of the men says. He’s wearing a dark uniform, and there’s a shiny thing at his waist that smells like metal and oil and danger. He keeps his hands low, open. “Hey there, little guy.”
Little? I am not that little. I’m just… older. My legs ache in the morning, and I can’t jump as high as I used to, but I can still bark, and I do, over and over, until my throat burns.
The other man speaks into the box on his shoulder. “Central, we are at the location. No response from the resident. Entered the premises. Can confirm: we’ve got a deceased female in the bedroom. Appears to have passed in her sleep.”
I don’t understand most of the sounds. I just hear the tone: flat, heavy. Final.
They walk into the bedroom. I race ahead and leap back onto the bed, standing guard. I bare my teeth, a low growl squeezing out of my chest. No one touches my Mama.
The first man looks at me. His face softens. “Easy, boy. We’re not gonna hurt her.”
He steps closer. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fight him. I growl louder, desperate. Then he stops and kneels so his eyes are level with mine.
“She’s gone, pal,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Gone? She’s right here. I can see her. I can smell her. I lean against her side, pressing my body into hers. “She’s sleeping,” I whine. “She just needs medicine. Or food. Or water. Or— or—”
He reaches out and scratches gently behind my ear. His touch is careful, almost reverent. It’s the kind of touch people use when they’re around small puppies or very fragile things.
“Poor old guy,” he murmurs. “How long you been here alone?”
The other man returns, carrying a black bag that smells like plastic and something I don’t want to name. “No sign of anyone else,” he says. “We’ll need to call animal control for the dog.”
“I know,” the first man says. He strokes my head once, then stands up. “You hang in there, buddy. Okay? Hang in there.”
They talk in low voices. They write things on paper. They touch Mama, gently, gently, and then not gently at all. They lift her from the bed and put her in a bag that zips. I bark. I claw at the mattress. I jump down and follow them as far as I can, but the door closes before I reach it.
I slam into the wood and howl.
“Mama! Mama, come back! Don’t go! I don’t like it here alone!”
The howls rip my throat, but I cannot stop. The house echoes with my grief.
After a while—I don’t know if it’s minutes or hours—another stranger comes. He smells like other dogs and like fear and like something I recognize from the park: the scent of cages.
“Hey, boy,” he says softly. He has a loop of rope in his hand. “My name’s Frank. I’m gonna take you somewhere safe, okay?”
Safe. Mama used that word when thunder shook the windows. “You’re safe with me, Zeus,” she would say, holding me while the sky growled. But Mama is gone.
Frank steps closer. I back away. He talks in a stream of soft noise, like one of those radios Mama used to listen to in the kitchen. I don’t know the words, but I know the tone, and it’s not angry.
He slips the loop over my head.
I flinch. It tightens around my neck. Not painful, but present. A circle I didn’t choose.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he says, as he leads me to the door. “I know you don’t understand. I know.”
Outside, the air is wet and cold. The sky is gray. The car he puts me in smells of fear, too, and urine, and bleach. I sit shivering on the hard plastic floor and look out the little window in the back. I can just see the corner of our house disappearing as we turn.
We drive for a long time. My head grows heavy. My eyes sting. Every bump in the road makes my joints ache a little more.
Finally, we stop. New smells rush in: dog, dog, dog, cat, dog, stress, cleaner, food, metal, rubber.
The place is loud. So many voices crying at once. Barking, whining, yipping. Each one saying the same thing in its own language: “Let me out. Take me home. Don’t leave me here.”
Frank guides me down a row of barred doors. Dogs press their noses against the metal as we pass. Some bark. Some wag. Some lie still, their eyes hollow.
A woman in a blue shirt meets us. “Is this the one from Maple Street?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Frank says. “Old guy. Found him in bed with the body. Looks like he skipped a few meals.”
The woman kneels. She smells like soap and the faint trace of peanut butter. “Hey, sweetheart,” she says, scratching my chest. “What’s your name?”
I don’t know if she can hear the way my heart answers: Zeus. My name is Zeus. Mama gave it to me when I was little and wobbly and chewed her slippers. She laughed and said, “You think you’re a god, don’t you?” and so I was.
“Nothing on his collar,” Frank says. “No tag. Maybe the owners couldn’t afford it. Or maybe it fell off.”
“We’ll call him Zeus,” the woman says. “He looks like a Zeus.”
She leads me into a small, concrete room with bars on one side. There is a blanket on the floor, and a metal bowl in the corner with water that smells sharp and clean. She removes the rope and closes the door with a clang.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We’ll take good care of you.”
Her voice is kind. But when she walks away, the emptiness rushes in to fill the room. It smells like hundreds of dogs before me, each one leaving a little of their fear behind.
The first night, I don’t sleep much. Dogs bark at every footstep, every movement, every shift of light. The lights never go completely off; there’s always a glow, a hum.
My throat is sore but I still whine, quietly, to myself.
Where is my Mama? Why did she leave? Why am I here?
The days blur.
I learn the rhythms: food in the morning, food in the evening. Sometimes the blue-shirt woman—her name is Carol, I pick it up from the others—takes me out into a yard where I can stretch my legs. The grass is thin, but it feels good under my paws. I sniff everything. It all smells of longing.
“Good boy, Zeus,” Carol says once, when I sit without being told. She gives me a treat. My tail thumps despite myself. A good boy. It’s been so long since I heard that.
Sometimes people come down the row of cages. They stop to look at some of us. They “ooh” and “aah” at puppies, and at dogs with bright eyes and shiny coats. “So cute!” they say. “So playful! So young!”
They pass by my cage more quickly.
“He’s sweet,” Carol will say. “A little older, but very gentle.”
“Oh,” the people say. “We’re really looking for a younger dog. For the kids.” And they move on.
At night, when the barking finally settles into tired whimpers, the dogs talk quietly to each other in our own way, through smells and the soft chuffing sounds we make when humans aren’t around.
“What happened to you?” a young shepherd in the next cage asks me once, nose pressed through the bars.
“My Mama went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” I say. “Then men came and took her away. Now I am here.”
He sniffs, sympathetic. “My people moved and didn’t take me. They said they’d come back. It’s been a long time.”
“Do they ever come back?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
One afternoon, Carol is talking to another worker near my cage. I lie with my head on my paws, pretending to sleep, but my ears tilt toward them.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the old guy,” the other worker says. “His days are numbered. He’s been here a while now.”
“He’s such a loving dog,” Carol says quietly. “I wish people saw what we see.”
I don’t know what “days are numbered” means. But the way she says it makes my heart twist.
That night, I dream of Mama again. She is younger in the dream, her hair dark and thick, laughter spilling out of her like sunshine. She sits on the floor with me when I am just a floppy pup, and I climb all over her, licking her face until she falls backward, breathless, saying, “Okay, okay, Zeus, you win!”
I wake with my muzzle wet.
The next day smells different.
It’s subtle at first. A faint trace of excitement and something like fresh air clinging to clothes that have been recently outside these walls. Voices at the front desk. Footsteps that are not Carol’s or the others’—lighter, tentative.
“Hello,” a man’s voice says. “We’re here to look for a dog. Do you have a Jack Russell Terrier? Our dog Benji needs a friend.”
Jack Russell Terrier. That’s a string of sounds I’ve heard humans say when they look at me. I don’t really know what it means. I only know it’s part of me, like my short legs and my speckled fur.
“We do,” Carol says. “Follow me and I’ll introduce you.”
My heart begins to beat faster. I stand up and put my paws against the bars, peering down the row.
They come into view: a woman with kind eyes and a tired smile, a man with gentle hands, and a big dog with a sleek coat and a goofy wag. The big dog walks with his head held high, curious but not afraid. He smells of home and grass and couch cushions and warm laps.
“This is Benji,” the woman says. “We adopted him last year. He’s wonderful, but he gets lonely when we’re at work. We were hoping to find him a companion.”
“Here we are,” Carol says, stopping in front of my cage. “This is Zeus.”
I don’t know what to do. My tail wags on its own, unsure, then faster when the woman kneels and presses her fingers through the bars. Her hand is warm, soft. She smells like something floral and something like bread, and underneath, the faintest trace of dog shampoo.
“Oh,” she says. “Look at him. He’s beautiful.”
Beautiful. No one has called me that in a long time. My ears tilt in disbelief.
Benji steps forward and sniffs me thoroughly. I stand still, trying not to shake, letting him take in the story of my last few weeks through my fur: the fear, the loss, the steel bars, the stale air. When he’s done, he licks my nose once and gives a short, friendly woof.
“He seems to like him,” the man says. “Don’t you, Benji?”
The woman laughs, a soft sound. She reaches through and scratches my chest, then under my chin. I close my eyes. For a moment, I am back in my old living room, Mama’s hands on me, her voice singing my name.
“We’re interested in adopting him,” the woman says.
I don’t understand the word, but I understand the tone. Hope, bright and clear as a bell.
Carol smiles, though there’s a little wetness at the corner of her eye. “I’m so glad,” she says. “I’m really glad. He was getting close to the end of his time here. We were afraid he wouldn’t get a home.”
Home.
The next part is a blur of new smells and touches. Carol opens my cage. For a second I hesitate, not quite believing the door can be open, that I am allowed to step out. Then Benji nudges my side with his nose.
“Come on,” he seems to say. “This way is better.”
We go into a room where the woman and man sit on the floor with us. They stroke my back, my ears, my paws. They look in my eyes. I look back, trying to see what they want from me. All I see is warmth.
“We’ll take him,” the man says finally. “If that’s okay with you,” he adds, looking at me.
It is more than okay.
The car ride is different this time. I am not in a cage in the back of a cold van. I am in a soft seat between the woman and Benji. The window is cracked open, and the wind rushes in, bringing with it the scent of trees and other cars and a world I thought I might never see again.
“You’re Zeus,” the woman says, rubbing my neck. “Do you like that name? We can keep it. It’s part of your story.”
I lick her hand. She laughs.
Benji nudges me. “They’re good,” he says, in the way dogs say things to each other without words. “They give you treats when you sit. They let you on the couch when they think no one is looking. They talk to you like you understand. You’re going to like it.”
We pull into a driveway. The house is small but bright, with flowers by the front steps and a squeaky gate. As soon as the door opens, smells wrap around me like a blanket: food, laundry, dust, lemon cleaner, the faint ghost of other dogs long gone, and underneath it all, the steady heartbeat of a place where people live and love and come home to each other.
“Come on, Zeus,” the woman says. “Let me show you your new home.”
New home.
The floors here are different, but my paws adjust quickly. There is a dog bed in the corner of the living room, soft and round. There are toys scattered around, chew bones and squeaky things and a rope knotted in the middle from many games of tug.
“You’ll share, right, Benji?” the man says.
Benji wags. “Mostly,” he says.
The woman kneels in front of me, bringing her face close to mine. Her eyes are wet. She smells a little like sadness and a lot like hope.
“Hello, little Zeus,” she says. “This is your new home. I am your new mama.”
The word hits me like a gentle thunderclap.
Mama.
It feels wrong, for a heartbeat, like a shoe on the wrong paw. There was only one Mama. The one who held me when I was trembling and old and who didn’t wake up. The one whose smell still lingers faintly in the far back corner of my mind.
I look into this woman’s face. She smiles at me, not expecting, not demanding. Just offering.
I step forward and lick her cheek, once. Her eyes close, and a tear slips down, salty on my tongue. I lean into her then, and she wraps her arms around me, burying her face in my fur.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. I don’t know if she’s talking to me or to herself. “You’re safe here. We’ve got you.”
Safe.
I breathe in, and for the first time in what feels like forever, the breath goes all the way down into my chest without catching.
I think of my first Mama, somewhere beyond where my nose can reach, beyond where my paws can run. I think of the warm bed we shared and the way her laughter sounded.
I think of this new Mama, her arms tight around me, her heartbeat against my ear.
I think of Benji’s friendly wag and the soft bed and the yard I haven’t yet explored.
I wag my tail.
I am Zeus. I had a Mama, and I have a Mama. My heart is big enough for both.
I curl up that night on my new bed, Benji snoring nearby, my new mama’s footsteps soft in the hallway. The house is quiet, but not empty.
I close my eyes and drift off, not with the tight, anxious sleep of the shelter, but with the heavy, loose-limbed sleep of a dog who knows that when he wakes, there will be food and water and hands that reach for him with joy.
I love this place.
She is Mama.