Kitchen Dog

He's the kitchen rug. He's always underfoot. He's a catch-all, he's gigantic, and he's exactly where my feet need to be. I have no complaints.

If I am cooking, which is much of the time, Murray is in the kitchen, too. He secures a convenient spot in the high-traffic zone between the sink and the stove, and he becomes an immense, furry obstacle. Most of the time, I don't mind, though. You see, I've spent my whole life wishing for a kitchen dog. Books and television and design magazines have always glamorized kitchen dogs, and I've just known that it was the one kitchen tool I've been missing all these years. And now I have him. I have the very best, and least useful, kitchen tool I've ever invested in.

He catches spills quite well, this dog of mine. He lays in the corner of the kitchen next to my feet and underneath the cutting board. Unflinching, he rests calmly while receiving accidentally-dropped bits of spinach, garlic, onions, coffee beans, broccoli, sprouts, carrots, jicama, milk, peppers, lime juice, corn, rice, cheese, nuts, and ham. Oh, and there's the time that Jimmy spilled coffee on him. And the time I spilled iced tea on him. Murray glanced up, and went back to sleep. His coat is insanely thick, you see, and he is undeniably tolerant. You could likely drop an entire set of encyclopedias on him and he'd really only look up slightly and lick your leg to say hello and confirm that he loves you. 

If Murray was the kind of dog who ate everything he found, or waited for scraps to fall, or wiggled desperately to remove cooking bits from his fur so that he could gobble them up, I'd be panicky and concerned. But we're lucky. He doesn't want to eat all the things that poison a dog: onions, garlic, chocolate, coffee. Fortunately, he really only likes a few foods, and he has extremely good manners in the kitchen.

When we're in the kitchen, and Murray is in the way and covered with vegetable scraps, and Andy is jumping around and playing us made-up songs on his ukulele, and the pots are boiling over, and I'm trying to cook and dance and maniacally pull everything together for dinner, that's when I am at my happiest. That's when I am absolutely, positively sure that I am completely alive. Everything is fast and loud and close, and, somehow, for a historically quiet, slow space-loving cook such as myself, this has become my safest, most glorious place. 

This is for Dawn, who reminded me that a jar full of moldy applesauce is not an appropriate greeting for all of my lovely readers to have to return to over and over for two months. Thank you for your patience, all of you.