With Lacey no longer with us, we wanted her sister Silver to have a companion as a house dog and decided on Silver’s half-sister Belle. We figured that quiet, unassuming, unassertive Belle would be the perfect house-mate for our old lady.

We were wrong. Within days of coming into the house, Belle went completely off the rails: taking things off counters and out of containers, chasing Fluffy the cat (God, what a name!), taking over the only bed in the laundry room, sneaking through doors we opened a crack to get through, shoving her way into first place to lick off plates and pans, loudly reminding us at 8:00 PM sharp to start making her dinner and stomping her feet and tossed her head in anticipation of getting it. In short and in sum, she was displaying all the privileges regally assumed by her late half-sister. It’s as though even if Lacey was no longer with us in body, her spirit had been assumed by another.

Odd. Indeed, eerie.