two dogs and a dirty stove

Last night, the oven reached that critical point of too many pizzas cooked directly on its racks. That is, when we pre-heated it for a Trader Joe’s chili relleno,the cheese bits adhering to the bottom of the oven started to smoke heavily. But it all began subtly, only growing eye-wateringly dense with smoke as the oven heated up. In the moments before we noticed anything amiss, Pearl ran to me—eyes wider than usual, ears pressed to her head, her whole body a curve of worry. “What is it, Pearl?” I, dull human, ask. I have seen and heard nothing to frighten her. She jumps up on me and paws me in a slightly fevered way, then turns around and runs. I watch her, puzzled by the extent of her fear, but unable to make out its cause. And given Pearl, it could be anything, really. She disappears, only emerging with prompting from under the bed in the front bedroom, her favorite place to escape a vast number of unsettling possibilities.

Pets have warned me about smoke before, most notably Gilly, kind-hearted tabby cat. I’m sorry to say that for a longish period of my life, I was afflicted by a pyromania solidly based in a lack of common sense. In other words, I regularly set fire to things through sheer stupidity (note: few actions put an end to a romantic moment as decisively as will setting the curtains ablaze). Gilly’s heroism occurred when I lit a candle too close to a lamp shade, and the shade, made of god-knows-what material, began to smolder. Seeing it—as I did not—Gilly ran back and forth crazily between me and it until, at last, I looked in the right direction just as the shade caught and produced a flame. Good Gilly!

But Pearl, it seems, is harder for me to read, her actions more ambiguous, and truth be told, I’d have trusted the 12-pound Gilly to pull my inert body from a flaming room, but very much doubt Pearl will find the self-possession to do so. Nonetheless, she was trying to tell me something, and what she was trying to tell me was worth saying.

Later, rellenos cooking happily while the ceiling and exhaust fans diffuse the smoke, we find Kosmo sleeping peacefully on the floor beneath the fan, its blades whirring gently overhead.