MY mother, during the 86 years of her sainted life, had eight dachshund dogs – and they were all called Otto.
As a pathological dog lover, she’d call all her dogs the same name so as to not disrespect her previous hound who had left for the pooch house in the sky.
My family still hasn’t gotten over the death of little Chen six Christmases ago, and that’s why, on the 13th floor of the Criminal Court building yesterday, the details in a cop’s statement about an incident that happened on May 26, 2002, were just too horrible to imagine.
The cop had told the DA’s office how Ribsy, a fluffy terrier, had barked and flailed his paws.
The reason the dog barked and flailed his paws was that he was plunging to his death from the 23rd floor of an apartment in TriBeCa.
A mongrel of another kind, called John Jefferson, had thrown Ribsy from the apartment of ex-girlfriend Eugenia Miller.
It is too horrific to imagine what was going through that little mutt’s mind as he saw nothing but thin air before his ugly death.
Since Jefferson had made drugs his favorite pet, Eugenia had little else except Ribsy – and Jefferson would deprive her of that with this shocking act of blind violence.
Judge James Yates gave Jefferson a 12-year sentence for a raft of offenses yesterday, including robbery, burglary, criminal contempt and stalking. But he took care to tell Jefferson that two years of that sentence was for the murder of the dog.
Eugenia told the court that Ribsy is “in a place where I’ll be someday” – which resonated with dog lovers like myself, who believe that dogs and cats and Mickey Mouse share the same nirvana as we all do.
Of course, if Ribsy had been a human being, Jefferson would have gotten the whole nine yards, and while I believe Judge Yates is a sincere animal lover, I just wish Mr. Jefferson could have gotten life for stopping the pulse of someone whose only purpose in life is to give unqualified love.
As for Jefferson, I know big, tough, mean prison inmates who are so desperate for love they have pet mice, pet cats . . . even pet cockroaches.
Perhaps Mr. Jefferson will one day treat one of these cherished pets the way he treated Ribsy – and his fellow inmate will introduce him to the same terror Ribsy felt as he made his final plunge.