Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Eyes Touch My Soul

Sometimes I look at my two animals and marvel at their beauty. Dakota looks at me with ice blue eyes, so clear they look like rare gems. There is a minute fleck of brown in the right eye that pulls your vision away from the translucent quality for a moment, as if it is a spot on a sheet of ice. The sky blueness of his eyes can make you smile or catch you in the throat with their acuity. They make me think he is always clear and razor concise in his thoughts. Indulge me with this illusion.

Singer’s liquid chocolate eyes, dark brown orbs that exude an ancient kindness bestowed by the animal kingdom fall on me. She holds her head at a perfect angle, so that her eyes match mine, though I am sitting higher than she. She is encapsulated in stillness, giving her an especially graceful look that is compounded by those eyes that I feel like I can fall into, and discover wonderful things about myself within their depths. You think I’m crazy? Just ask anyone who is in love with their pets. They’ll tell you it all begins with the eyes. What we see in those eyes, what we project, will transform our hearts and change us forever. And something magical happens, because they always show us we are right to feel this way.

But then Singer grabs a slipper, she doesn’t care whose it is, and romps with it around the house, her front legs springing forward like a young pony. She gives the slipper a shake, as if it’s a resistant muskrat she’s caught down river, and the playful gleam in her eye transmits across the room. I yell at her to drop it, but she doesn’t. She runs farther into the house, daring me to chase her. I oblige in her game and more sternly demand that she drop it, and she obeys. Her eyes are now dancing with a playful light and she looks quickly from my hand, which holds the slipper to my face, wondering what I will do next. I laugh at her and cannot help to pet her head. Satisfied, she trots away and finds one of her own toys to play with. Dakota is sitting like a sphinx in the corner of the room, watching. He observes without comment or preamble, and notices that I haven’t punished this unruly girl. He stretches for a second, then struts, and I mean struts like Saddam Hussein did in his palace, over to Singer and gives her a good swipe across her muzzle. And a snarly meow for good measure. I am astounded. This is the first time Dakota has exhibited any overt sign of aggression toward Singer, and it is so in line with what has just happened, it’s almost uncanny. I wonder, do animals really know more than we think they do?

I wanted to take a close up shot of both Dakota’s and Singer’s eyes for this post, but at the moment, Dakota is hiding under the couch. Maybe next time.


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