Sensitive

 

Nicholai cherishes big, soft, plush toys. He carries his prize stuffies around the house with his head held erect and tail high, demonstrating to all his pride of ownership.

The girls, Izzy and Kelley, are voracious murderers of toys, ripping off faces, shredding limbs, and eviscerating toys with alarming efficiency. I once purchased a heavy duty tennis ball with a squeaker inside, guaranteed to be indestructible. Izzy quaked with anticipation when I pulled it out of the bag. I tossed it onto the ground for her and she nabbed it up in frenzy. Holding it between front paws, head down and rump up, she began to work her jaws on it. I glanced at my cell phone for the time. In seven minutes of focused attention, she had punctured the ball, popped out the squeaker, and then for good measure, ripped the ball to pieces. So much for guaranteed.

Nicholai takes an opposite approach. He carries his "babies," as we call them, to his special sleeping spots – his hideout in the basement behind the washer and his bolster bed in a corner of the living room. There he curls up with a front leg around his furry crab or stretches his neck and gently lays his chin on his fuzzy green turtle, or his over-size brown teddy bear.

He has to protect his plush toys from the girls who are relentless. Most of the time, he stashes his treasures downstairs, where they do not tread. On occasion, though, we have had to rush to pick up a teddy bear, a turtle, or the precious crab he's left laying on the floor, before it dies a sudden and unceremonious death. Even our youngest son has been known to jump up from his Lego's, crying out "No, Izzy, no!"

It's a beautiful piece of complexity, this gentleness with toys. Nicholai hunts small animals, chases cats, and barks at strangers, wary and protective. But he has his sensitive side too. And, in the privacy of his own home, he's not afraid to show it.