TulsaPets Magazine September 2023

10 TulsaPets • September / October 2023 ty during the height of the pandemic in 2020. And she didn’t return. “It was such an unsure time, with no safety net,” Boss says. He had gotten Norah as a way to cope with the grief of losing his mother in 2016, but then COVID happened — another unsure thing. Suddenly “even my coping mecha- nism, Norah, is now nowhere to be found,” he says. “And I was freaking out.” Boss had adopted Norah when she was a month old. Someone had a litter of full- bred Pit Bull puppies they couldn’t afford, and Boss was charmed by the runt of the litter. Norah Jones’ music was playing in the car on the way home, and Boss named the puppy right then — his sweet little dog with a shiny black-and-white tuxedo coat and gentle manners. After Norah went missing, Boss searched for her nonstop for a month, but when weeks passed by without word, he as- sumed the worst. Norah was microchipped, yet no call came. The house was too quiet. “It had become such a vital part of my comfort as a human to have an animal around,” Boss says. One day, he came across a post about a kitten that needed a home, and Boss adopted him and named him Ramone. The chill tabby welcomes everyone to Art Home each week, whether he’s perched on the counter or being held like a baby (Ramone loves to be cradled). The Unexpected Art Home normally starts at 6 p.m., with no official end and an ever-evolving format. “I have no vision for it, really, besides just wanting people to have access,” Boss says. “If you kinda make it all really accessible, people will naturally gravitate to the mate- rials. They will create. That’s the fun thing to watch.” After a year and a half of creative play with Art Home, Boss knows to expect the unexpected. “People are so multifaceted that I have no idea what they’ll do,” he says. Like, say, find your dog nearly three years after she disappears. In June 2023, Boss got a call from the city of Tulsa, asking, “Do you have a dog named Norah?” “I HAD a dog Norah,” he responded. When he realized she was alive and found, “I was like, what?” he says. A couple had found Norah walking near 31st Street and Mingo Road without a collar. They had an inkling that the gentle dog belonged to somebody and had her microchip checked. When Boss went to pick her up, “She definitely recognized me right away,” he says. She paused, frozen. They looked at each other, a person and his dog, separated by nearly three years of time. Would she remember him? Yes. “She just started freaking out and going crazy, wagging her tail everywhere,” Boss says. But where had she been all that time? “I daily wonder where Norah went,” he says. “What was she doing for almost three years?” There isn’t much to go on. “Her skin looks like she’s been on the street but weight looks like she’s been eat- ing good, so I don’t know,” Boss says. Life Together Each day, Norah remembers more and more about her old life. Things are “the same but different,” Boss says, “the way time goes.” Dogs can remember sounds, sights, smells, and tastes through association, but humans remember things episodically. For Norah, “It seems like the smells are what really bring it back,” Boss says. Dogs can remember those kinds of associations indefinitely. Norah never forgot Boss. The smell of home…. And “she remembers the tricks I taught her,” he laughs. Norah still sits calmly when Boss puts treats on top of her paws. She waits to crunch until he tells her she can eat. “She’s gotten better every day that she’s been home,” he says. Once she’s settled in, Boss thinks she will “probably be out and about in Art Home,” he says. “She loves the people. But it might be a little too much right now.” For now, Ramone remains the sole host of Monday nights at the Art Home. The rest of the week, these new roommates are learning to live together. “When I got Norah home, I had the realization that now I had a cat AND a dog,” Boss laughs. “So that was a process. At first, Ramone was like, ‘I’m not even gonna be in the same room as Norah.’ ” But now Boss finds them sleeping on the same couch, sunbathing in the same patches of porch sun, hanging in the studio while he makes music. Every day, they are learning new associations for family, for home — Norah and Ramone and Boss. Norah is a gentle girl who went missing during the pandemic in 2020 and was presumed dead for nearly three years. She was recently reunited with her owner and is happy to be home. Ramone, the host of weekly Community Art Home events, re- laxes each day surrounded by the art painted and created every Monday night.