After the shock finally wore off, I began taking photos of them, then switched to a video when Milkshake squatted and his tail started twitching like it did when he pooped in his litter tray.
Just as Jackson turned to walk him back, though, this older couple stopped their small vehicle next to him.
“Son, you can’t leave your dog’s poop on the side of the road,” the man yelled out of his window, but not in an angry way, thankfully.
Jackson looked down at the obvious cat and back over at the couple. “Uh, you’re right. It’s the first time I’ve walked my cat outside, but I didn’t think about that side of it.”
The man looked down at Milkshake and squinted like he was trying to figure out what he was seeing.
“All I saw was the fur and leash. Didn’t think it’d be a cat.” Then he turned to the woman sitting next to him and held out a plastic bag.
“Wife says you’re free to have this. We always carry them in case we need to start piling garbage in while we drive.”
Jackson smiled and thanked them, but before he could walk over to where Milkshake had dropped his load, I heard the woman yell something to him. Shrugging, he picked my kitty up and passed him in through the open window, before heading over to clean up the mess.
There was no mistaking the shriek. “Randall, look at its eyes.”
Jackson was just straightening up from his squat when he heard it, and he looked straight at where I was still recording it all, his lips twitching as I snickered.
After thanking them, he took Milkshake back and adjusted the glasses on his head as he spoke to the couple, before laughing at something and eventually waving farewell.
It wasn’t until we’d set off again that he told me what they’d said.
“Seems the man grew up on a farm, and his puppy was kicked in the head by a horse and had eyes like this guy’s after it. He said his brother used to gently knock on the dog’s head, trying to get them to straighten out again.”
“Did it work?” I wasn’t sure about hitting the poor guy on the head, but maybe a vet would know about it.
“No, but the dog lived a full and happy life, so long as he wasn’t running through the dense woods that surrounded their farm.”
He sounded like he was holding back words that were choking him, but even though I stayed silent, he didn’t say a damn word.
“Spit it out already,” I finally yelled.
“Well, it wasn’t unusual to find the dog staggering around ‘cause he’d hit a tree hard when he’d run into it because his line of sight was all fucked up. So his—” he started laughing, —“his dad made him a damn helmet that they had to put on him as soon as he woke up each morning.” He was laughing so hard by the end of it that the words were all broken up and hard to decipher initially.
“Did you just say the dad made the dog a helmet that he wore every day?”
Jackson had his hand over his face as he laughed, and his big body was jerking Milkshake around with it.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. He—” laughter started bellowing out of him. “He carries a photograph of it in his wallet. It was the first thing he showed me when I got to the car to get Milkshake back.”
I sat silently, focusing on the road ahead for a moment. Then the best mental image of a dog with a helmet, smacking through trees, popped into my head, and I began laughing, too.
The bad thing was, at Christmas, Milkshake always ran straight into the bottom of the tree. It was a daily thing, and I’d been genuinely worried that he’d hurt himself or lose an eye.
Glancing down at where he was looking at me through his sunglasses, I winced and explained the issue to Jackson.
“Sorry, kiddo. It looks like you’re stuck wearing that this Christmas.”
Jackson, as always, took this in his stride and shrugged it off, not at all worried at the prospect of a cat running around for an entire holiday wearing a helmet and glasses inside the house.
Then again, he’d been the one to buy them for him and take him for a dump on the side of the road, I guess.
Those three days of our road trip were an adventure for sure, but I felt more relaxed in our relationship by the time we got home to Kissimmee.
We hadn’t had another accident since both of our mishaps, and now that we were past the getting to know you stage, it was like we just became stronger as a couple every day.
My dads had warned me that we’d probably fight like cats and dogs for the whole journey, but we hadn’t even argued once. We just laughed, played games, and enjoyed the adventure.