Since last March, Midge and I have been testing the bounds of what it means to live in my very small apartment together.

I ask her questions she doesn’t answer-if she’s my booboo (yes), if she’s a big girl (relatively speaking), if she has a kibble tummy (a little bit). Now almost five years old, she has grown to tolerate me. At 12 pounds, she is twice as big as the most desirable Chihuahuas, and she has a moderately bad personality, which is maybe why the puppy mill where she spent the first year of her life decided it didn’t want any more of her robust and extremely rude babies. She’s been my booboo since 2018, when I brought her home from a cat shelter, where she had been stashed by a Long Island dog rescue after her foster family gave her back-she didn’t like them, or anyone, and cats aren’t looking for new friends.

The question is never answered by Midge, my agoraphobic Chihuahua, but the answer is obvious. It’s come up time and again, day and night, as frequently in my post-vaccination spring and summer as it did in the dark moments of the pandemic’s first wave: Are you my booboo? S ince the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, I have asked one question more than any other. This article was published online on July 29, 2021.

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