Switching on the outside fluorescent light downstairs at night, as Maria had suggested, seemed to help and eventually the stomping ceased. It was later replaced by three knocks at the back door, until I started leaving the light on there as well. At the time I had written in my journal, "People do not like to visit. I want to know what it is and whatever it is, I don't want it here. I thought that it may have been some kind of 'energy imprint' from a previous occupant. Four nights ago there was one huge thump, then a smaller one and then one on the roof to follow."
The 'odd things' that had started to occur took a backseat in my mind as I raced Kindi into Parap Veterinary Hospital after she didn't want to get up that morning. The vets knew the two dogs well by now. This time the young male vet looked concerned. Kindi was taken in for an X-ray and it was found that she had an enlarged pancreas. Her blood pressure had dropped to a critical level and she was anemic. The vet told me that Kindi had appeared to have suffered a very bad reaction to tick poisoning. He pointed at the X-ray to the huge dark shadow that was her pancreas. He said, "I've never seen one so enlarged."
Kindi was only a little dog, a black and white border collie kelpie-cross. She had been the runt of the litter. She was going blind. Binda, a soft-eyed blue heeler cross, sat patiently next to her on the floor. He was going deaf. I never took one to the vet without the other being there for support. The three of us had barely been apart in the fourteen years since I'd adopted them in Adelaide. The vet gave Kindi an injection and prescribed her some antibiotics. He told me to take her home. Things weren't looking too good. Kindi lay semi-conscious on the back seat.
That night with the dogs and I back in the house on our own, I thought Binda and I were going to lose her. To think that there would be just the two of us was unbearable. I stayed awake with Kindi for the entire night in the study while she jerked and convulsed, drifting in and out of consciousness. I kept touching her body and stomach area over and over again, saying exactly what came into my head, "The healing touch, the healing touch." It was as if I was being guided to do so by an outside force greater than myself. I lay on the floor with her and said "You can go if you want to, Kindi." Binda's old grey face looked on. But as it turned out, Kindi made it through the night.
In the morning I continued to gently touch her in the loungeroom. As I did, the lamp flickered on and off next to us on the coffee table. I thought to myself, the angels must be watching over us. Kindi had survived the night but she was unable to move or eat on her own. After that night I hand fed her soy milk and sugar with a syringe and small amounts of arrowroot biscuit for many weeks. Amazingly, Kindi went on to fully recover from the tick poisoning. I then returned to Parap vet and got her onto some medication for her severe arthritis.
Soon Kindi was sticking out her chest and growling softly as she strutted around the house. She even bit into Binda's neck just like she had back in the good old days of her youth. She was eating her vegan dogfood like a little heavyweight champion. When I returned to Parap Vet, the young male surgeon who had taken a special interest in Kindi was stunned to see both dogs walk through the door. "She lived," I said.
"I know," he replied. "I've been told."
He paused, looking into her alert but foggy eyes.
"We're calling her the miracle dog."
He told me that he had given Kindi less than fifteen minutes to live. He then added, "When you left that day, I thought that she'd die on the backseat on your way home."
I was thoughtful. I knew that something had gone on that night between Kindi and myself and that a greater power than either of us seemed to have been at work. I then remembered, how, several years before, a dead lizard that had been mauled by a cat in Karama and how, after much stroking, coercing and moving of that lizard's limbs, it had also apparently come back to life.
