Lobster_153
Legacy Name: Lobster_153

When she put her face against the cage her eyes widened and her mouth pulled up at the corners. She stuck a finger through and touched the wet black nose of the corgi inside the cage, laughing as he licked her hand with a rough tongue.

“John, look at this one! He’s so cute.” Her smile was wide and her eyes were bright and he couldn’t tell her no. He knelt in front of the cage and eyed the dog. After a minute of what seemed to be intense deliberation, he agreed wholeheartedly.

“He’s absolutely adorable. Look at that face.”

They had arrived at the pound in a car with an undisturbed, oddly clean back seat and they arrived at home with a back seat full of dog hair. It was lovely, she thought, in an odd way, to have someone to clean up after and care for. She was, as her mother would say, over the moon. She had wanted a dog as a girl and now she was finally getting one. So she had dreamed in sepia-tinged clichés of running through flower-filled meadows with the corgi that presently snoozed at the foot of her bed. She was in a state of ecstasy.

John stooped down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m heading to work. I’ll be back at three.” Then he paused in the doorway and frowned quizzically. “We didn’t even name him.”

“You’re right. Well, I know you’re terrible with names. I’ll have something by the time you get back from work,” she said. He looked at her and smiled, and thought of how lovely she looked in the mornings, with messy hair and sleepy eyes and red cheeks. He was happy, because he knew she was happy.

When John closed the front door the dog stirred, peering up at her with big brown eyes. Her heart melted in an instant and she leaned over and pressed her cheek against the top of his soft head. “Let’s see about getting you a name, huh?”

The day was cloudy and cool, and when they walked in the pet store the bell tinkled cheerily. She had him on a worn leash that they had gotten at the pound and she stopped in the aisle to grab a new leash. She shouldn’t have been surprised when he went bounding off towards the dog toys, dragging her along like some sort of oversized balloon. He came to a stop directly in front of an odd-looking plastic lobster painted an awfully bright shade of red and promptly began to chew on it.

“Hey, little guy,” she said, kneeling to wrestle the toy away. “Is this what you’d like?” Her question was answered as he barked loudly and jumped on her lap, licking the fake lobster in her hand.

“Well, I guess that’s that.”

When John got home she told him about the journey to the pet store and their little pilgrimage over to the beach after, where she had sat on a towel and experienced (for the first time) that little game called Fetch, which the corgi had apparently already mastered.

“So did you name him?” John asked, taking off his socks.

“Lobster.” And, of course, she had to explain why.

As the days passed, each a little bit brighter than the last, summer came to a close. She found her warmth in the company of John and Lobby (which they had coined as his nickname a couple of days after his christening). As they grew closer, she discovered that Lobster only liked the Blue Buffalo dog food brand, had a crazy penchant for Fetch, and was a pretty reliable alarm clock (he woke them both up on the weekends promptly at nine with a sniff on the forehead).

And everything was wonderful.

Until she lost the lobster toy.

She had been cleaning Lobby’s area in the garage when she realized that it was missing. She felt her stomach drop. Where could it have gone? She had no idea – she had seen him playing with it the other day, and she was quite sure that it had to be in the house somewhere. But after an exhausting search, enlisting the help of both John and their friendly neighbor, she came to the conclusion that it was lost forever.

The following days were punctuated by a dejected whimpering issuing from the mouth of the despondent dog at the foot of her bed. She began to get quite worried. He wouldn’t eat the treats that she offered him, he didn’t want to go to the beach, he wouldn’t run after sticks anymore, and she was stricken.

John offered a solution.

“Really?” she asked. “A lobster costume?”

“Yeah. Why not? I just thought of it. You know he loves lobsters. I mean, he is the Lobster. Let him be the lobster. I’ll bet you $50 that it will work.”

“Okay,” she’d said hesitantly. “But only for the $50.” She’d crossed her fingers behind her back. She hoped to goodness that it would work. She wanted her happy dog back. If he had to be the lobster, so be it.

It took her three days to find someone who had the creativity and willingness to hand-sew a custom lobster costume for a corgi. Most people thought she was joking and hung up immediately. When it was finished, she barely glanced at the bill and paid the lady before she could regret it (it was outrageous).

She sat down beside the sulking Lobster and patted his head. “Hey, buddy. I have something for you.” She wrangled him into the costume, and with a smug John watching, took him to the mirror. When he saw himself he began jumping and barking and licking her face. Beside her, John laughed. Once again her family (for John and Lobster were, and always would be, her family) was in the state that it should be – content. Lobster became a staple around the neighborhood, and she posted a few pictures of him on the internet that went viral. He wouldn’t even let her take the costume off to bathe him.

She’d see people around while walking him and they’d ask for the full story and she’d have to start at the very beginning with, “Well, when I put my face against the cage and touched his nose I just knew he was the one . . .”

And she would always end with, “And so that’s why we call him Lobster.”

♥️ by Adam
♥️ by Kajin
♥️ by Ankoku

Thank you Chen for letting me adopt Lobster. ♥️
Profile by hel
Overlay by Adam
Story idea by me
Story written by Europa
Photo by Donald Man at flickr