Tag: pets

Farewell, Fido

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

“I don’t want to be buried in a pet sematary/I don’t want to live my life again!”

— “Pet Sematary,” the Ramones 

I once had a pet rat named Becky. After two and a half years of feisty play and impish scampering, tug of wars and belly tickles, she got terminal cancer and I had to put her down. I placed her remains in a decorated wooden box, dug a hole in the hard Texas dirt, and buried her in my backyard.

I repeated this ritual with three other pet rats — Phoebe, Tammy, LaShonda — and it shattered me every time. My yard became a veritable pet cemetery, a rodent resting place, and each grave should have cautioned me: Never again. I didn’t learn.

I also buried a blue betta fish named Alvy in the ad hoc graveyard. He thrived for four swishing years in a big sparkling bowl. I nestled the old man in a matchbox and set him in the ground, saluting him for his gratifying longevity. I miss the fish.

If you care one lick, laying your pet to rest is undiluted trauma. The platitude holds: pets are family, loving and adored, like hairy children who only live to their teens, if that. So integral are they to our lives, you swear they speak English and read minds. (I’m convinced Cubby the dog is really a tiny man in a dog suit. I keep looking for a zipper.) 

And so we honor them in death as in life, with a sentimental flourish and teary respect. Or at least we do in the modern age. There was a time when “people disposed of their dead pets in the river, or might have sold their bodies for meat and skin,” notes a CNN essayist. I know of modern folks subjecting their late Spots and Trixies to taxidermy, which is not only creepy, it’s selfish and disrespectful and twisted. 

Burial and cremation are popular send-offs. Barcelona, Spain, is set to open its first pet cemetery next year, with plans to carry out 7,000 animal cremations a year. Why? “Constant public demand,” they say. Barcelona is home to 180,000 dogs alone. Surely there’s just as many cats. (Rats? I bet.)

In 1983, Stephen King published the popular horror novel “Pet Sematary” about some macabre happenings surrounding a buried cat that is resurrected, or some such nonsense. The book spawned a 1989 movie (with “cemetery” also intentionally misspelled for plot purposes), which featured a cat-chy theme song by the Ramones.

The book and film helped spread the idea of the pet cemetery. And yet pet cemeteries are not some freaky esoteric brainchild of ghoul-meister King. There’s one in London’s Hyde Park, founded in 1881. New York’s legendary Hartsdale pet cemetery was founded in 1896, followed by Paris’ Cimetière des Chiens in 1899. 

About a hundred years later, I founded my own pet cemetery, at age 6, in my family’s pretty and serene Japanese-style garden in Santa Barbara. (This preceded the rat resting place by decades.) Surrounded by bamboo, moss and a statuary fountain, the graveyard contained goldfish, salamanders and other mostly water-bound critters. I’ve been at this a while.

On film, celebrated director Errol Morris made his debut with the acclaimed 1978 documentary “Gates of Heaven,” about the pet cemetery business and the souls who rely on it. It’s alive with vivid characters who are wrenchingly emotional about their dearly departed four-leggers.

Critic Roger Ebert, who named the film one of his 10 all-time favorites, wrote about “the woman who speaks of her dead pet and says, ‘There’s your dog, and your dog’s dead. But there has to be something that made it move. Isn’t there?’ 

“In those words,” Ebert writes, “is the central question of every religion.”

That pretty much says it all.

Becky the rat, at play.
Becky at rest.

I (sort of) like the cat

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

The cat wails plaintively, pathetically, for no known reason. It is high-pitched and high-decibel. It’s a distress signal, a siren from the depths of hell that is feline. 

Cats are OK. I like them well enough, about as much as I like, I dunno, pet pigs. I don’t like them as much as I love pet rats, that is certain. Pet rats and I go way back. It’s an intricate relationship.

In my life, I’ve had a half dozen rats: Phoebe, Becky, LaShonda, Tammy, etc. They are like mini dogs — affectionate, social, clean and wickedly intelligent. They play. They come when called. They like their bellies rubbed. They drink beer. Dogs are tops, but rats are little badasses.

Cats, well. 

I’ve had about five cats, including this wailer who indiscriminately cries, whines and yowls. It’s like living with a sickly crone, or a werewolf.

The cat, a rescue named Spicy by his prior owner, resides with his sister, Tiger-Lily. She rarely makes a peep, only the occasional textbook meow, the sound you hear when you look up “meow” in the dictionary. 

Tiger is sweet, gentle, svelte, independent. Spicy is pushy, needy, burly, noisy. Plus his eyes weep goop like the Exxon Valdez.

But Spicy is cherished. He’s an animal, after all, and animals tend to deserve unconditional love, spoiled as they are because they are cute and cuddly, fun and furry, smart and, in Spicy’s case, smart-alecky. 

Is he smarter than us? He slinks with an underplayed intelligence and studied detachment. His yellow eyes burn through you, laser beams of simmering condescension. When they’re not softening at half-mast during cuddle mode, those eyes are saying, “Screw you.” 

He nips with sharp teeth to prod you to stroke him, to demonstrably adore him. He climbs in your lap when there’s already a laptop there, plop. He claws at the carpet with violent resolve, sounding like someone’s hair is being ripped out. And, of course, he whines and caterwauls like an opera diva in grandiose agony. He thinks all of this is charming, and it is to a point. But he’s giving cats a bad rep.

Of course Spicy does not represent all cats. He isn’t even emblematic of truly bad felines, like those cringey manimals from “Cats.” No, he’s in-between, part cuddle kitty, part son of a bitch. Don’t get me wrong. I love him like a pet. Just not my pet. 

Tiger-Lily and Cubby the dog own more of my heart. Cubby may bark like a madman and scratch the paint off the door on occasion, but he’s all angel, whereas Spicy has a satanic streak. Sometimes you’ll try to pet him and he’ll arch his back and bristle his fur. Devil cat!

And those yowls he emits evoke “The Exorcist” more than “Puss in Boots.” As I said, though, I like him alright, even if he’s trouble. Meow? More like meh.

The cat, giving the evil eye. As usual.

Dog day

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“They’re nice to have. A dog.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Splayed on his back like an overturned tortoise, the dog snores in staccato grunts and fluttering wheezes that are violent enough to startle. Sounds of strangled kazoos, squashed whoopie cushions, warbling carnival organs. He’s a racket, a veritable Concerto for Broken Squeeze Toys, but who would interrupt these guttural snorts of puppy pleasure?  

I, for one, enjoy the cacophony. Let sleeping dogs lie, they say. And groan and grrr and croak and rasp. In a way, it’s like the gurgling of an infant, adorable, musical, slightly alarming. It shows the critter’s vim and vigor. And his ability to emit really strange sounds while passed out and dreaming untold tales of fleeing postmen and the earthy fragrance of his fellow hounds’ sphincters. 

Cubby the dog stirs. He stretches, this bushel of gray curlicues, letting go one big shuddering whine, as if the stretch pumps out a kind of yawning release. A gusty nostril exhalation and he is awake, eyes ajar, head up, tongue licking the air. 

And there, he sees it. His toy, his fresh bone from a Christmas lode of new chews, this one his favorite: a bully bone, which is, literally, a dried bull penis. It looks like a thick rod of beef jerky. It looks, happily, nothing like bovine genitals.

The brown stick is upright between the dog’s front paws, like a cocktail straw in Cabo, and he gnaws it with slobbery gusto. Cubby is a jealous owner. If one of the cats gets within six feet of an idle bully bone, the small dog pounces and chases off the feline, who has no idea what Cubs is on about. The cat’s thought bubble is clear: Good Christ. 

Soon, a human bleats the word “out” at Cubby, a word as magical as “open-sesame” or “Beetlejuice” for its causal powers. It means, of course: Let’s go for a walk. Once you say it, there’s no going back. The dog is leaping, yelping, scraping your legs, doing the famed doggie dance that only the coal-hearted can resist. 

The walk. An exasperating stop-start excursion, all sniffs and pees and poop, with little in the way of aerobic exercise for the human, making it that much more maddening and futile. But this is for the dog. It’s all for the dog. This doggie bag is not for restaurant leftovers. It’s for dookie, see. For the dog.

Fortunately, dogs snooze with comatose abandon. They’re shameless about it. Insomnia is not a thing with dogs. Cubby does not require my melatonin; he is naturally anesthetized. A soft surface will do. Give him two minutes and he’s out, limbs jerking, squiggly noises emitting from a twitching snout.     

He is rather musical in this state. If you press his belly just so, you’ll get a fine bagpipe rendition of “Free Bird” for your troubles.

And it’s always worth the trouble, dogs that is. Barking, scratching, on that rare occasion peeing on the carpet — I can’t think of many canine crimes. Cubby’s got it pretty much down, the dog thang. He might sleep like a rumbling volcano, but he also shows a quiet nobility — an aplomb befitting his rich, regal beard (really, it’s the beard of a meth-head, or Manson) — that makes you look on in adoring awe, and indisputable respect.     

Bird balm

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

My good friend Tiva just bought her young daughter a pet parakeet. It’s blue-green with a sloped yellow head and small enough to perch on the girl’s slight shoulder. Tiva texted a photo:

“You see a cute birdie,” I texted back. “I see dinner.”

This sentiment is more pressing when she tells me the tweetie thingy’s name: Pickles Billabong. (Pickles Billabong!) Naturally, I demanded to know who cursed the poor creature with this name, which is straight out of Dickens or Dr. Seuss at their most baroque, or most high. Her daughter, of course, is the culprit. 

“She came up with the name by looking at a list of bodies of water (river, brook, etc.) because the bird is a kind of aquamarine color and a billabong is a pond that is created when a river changes course. Pickles is because the bird is shaped like a pickle,” Tiva explains. I am impressed. 

“The bird is her best friend,” she adds, and I don’t know if I should smile or sob. 

She goes on to say that the daughter and her twin sister are having a turbulent time during Covid — they’re not sick, just bored and longing — and so Pickles serves as a kind of therapy animal. It’s the Prozac parakeet. 

Birds. Indeed. They’re the one pet, besides a rhino and a manatee, I never had growing up. I stuck to dogs, rats and cats, with the occasional fish, salamander and turtle thrown into the mix. 

No birds, and I can only guess we skipped them because our friends had parakeets and they were awful. They didn’t really do anything that’s anthropomorphically charming, like dogs, which are half-human anyway. There was no fetch or leg humping. I mean, really.

The birds seemed stuck in a poo-encrusted cage, bopping around, whistling occasionally, cocking their robotic heads. When they got out they flew all over the house, perching high up on the curtains to avoid human clutches, and were generally an avian pain in the ass. I desperately wanted to open a window and watch them flap away.

Not so now. I hope Pickles Billabong thrives as a bright, animated companion, although, according to experts, parakeets can live 10 to 20 years. On that note, I immediately start thinking about the best sauce for a tiny, braised bird. And what are the best sides — carrots, potatoes, pet rabbit? 

But this is somewhat serious. The girls are in a needy space. Covid has cut a hole in so many lives, and kids especially are confused and adrift. They wanted a friend, exotic, potentially chatty, therapeutic — some thera-keet. The bird then is a balm, sweet, attentive, pretty, and other things I’m sure. They do have a dog, but it’s more Tiva’s baby than the children’s. We’ll see how this whole thing flies.

Meanwhile, I wonder: Does the dog look up at old Pickles and go, “Yum, yum”? Good dog. 

The last Sea-Monkey post, I promise

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The Sea-Monkeys are doing swimmingly, thank you, flapping and flying through speckled salt water, pumping fleshy wings and wagging long pink tails like bitty aquatic dragons. Dozens of them flit and twirl about in a plastic tank that’s at best seven inches tall. (See some in action here. It’s totally worth it.)  

The last time I reported on Sea-Monkeys — here — I had just watched a memory-rattling short film about the fanciful water simians, which are actually simple but neato-to-watch brine shrimp. (But let’s pretend they’re actually otherworldly, kinda creepy alien demon creatures, the love-children of Poseidon and a mermaid — or of Aquaman and a king prawn. You pick.) 

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Watching the film, I was prepared to order the small Sea-Monkey tank that comes with Water Purifier, Instant-Life Crystals (eggs) and Growth Food packets lickety-split, I was so excited seeing again the novelty pets I had owned so many times over the decades. (I’m apeshit for these monkeys, you might say.) 

So I did. For $12.98 at Amazon, I got The Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys Ocean-Zoo, which the package promises “The World’s Only Instant Pets!”®. I filled the tank with tepid tap water, churned in the Water Purifier and waited the prescribed 24 hours before dumping in the Monkey eggs. I stirred them good and waited. 

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Within minutes pencil-dash creatures were zigzagging the water, itsy, white, herky-jerky things you might see under a microscope — autonomous amoebas swimming on their own and doing gleeful backflips. A month later, they are happy, confident, independent and plump — about the size of fingernail clippings — everything you want in healthy offspring. I asked my niece to name the critters. She named them all Charlie. 

The Sea-Monkey world is like an undersea ant farm, without the dirt and without, in my case when I tried to cultivate an ant farm, mass annihilation. Not that Sea-Monkeys don’t die. They do. But they also reproduce and replenish their populations in sly ways, such as lacing the Growth Food with fresh eggs that hatch instantly when I feed the creatures every five days or so. Smelly green powder goes in, and babies, mere monkey specks, promptly appear. 

It’s that kind of thing that keeps me in the strange thrall of Sea-Monkeys. They really are pets, even if they don’t bark at the mailman, play fetch or, like a certain cat, curl up on your face while you sleep. They don’t stain the carpet, rack up vet bills or, really, do much of anything.

They’re like fish — pretty, transfixing, calming things to look at — but you don’t have to clean the tank. Self-sufficient, save for periodic feedings by their benevolent master (me), Sea-Monkeys just do their thing, flip about, swim around, dance and jig with an alacrity we can only envy. 

Dog-doo afternoon

~ Chris ~ 8 Comments

Warning: This post discusses poop. Specifically dog poop.

The dog’s poop is marbled with blood. (I told you.) He relieved himself on the basement’s honey-hued carpet, which now bears permanent crimson splotches, some of them in the shape of small nations and rural flyover states. It’s a fecal atlas. 

Flippancy aside, recall: poo, blood, dog. This is eyebrow-raising on one hand, panic-time on the other. Bloody dookie is nothing to snicker, or snarl, at. It’s a call-the-vet-pronto affair, especially when said doggie, Cubby, is also behaving strangely and doing this regurgitation thing in which he chews and swallows whatever he’s just hacked up. It’s coming from both ends. It’s abnormal. We fear for the furball.

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Cubby in healthier days.

Should I worry if my dog’s stool has blood or mucus? That’s an actual question posted at Pet Health Network, a, well, pet health network that will either assuage your nerves or trigger the trots. 

If you, like me, are a hypochondriac, then you shouldn’t even be visiting sites like this or the human version, WebMD, where I often go to learn that my tennis elbow is likely an inoperable tumor and my heartburn is assuredly a minor stroke.

(Doctors hate sites like WebMD for spawning a nation of needlessly freaked out patients. I used to carry a sheaf of so-called diagnoses that I printed from the internet when I visited my doctor. He wanted to strangle me.)

The answer to the “my dog’s stool” query has several answers, making for something of a rollercoaster ride. Causes might be: an upset stomach from eating bad food (whew); inflammation of the colon (also, probably, whew); internal parasites (some antibiotics and we’re good, right?); cancer (Jesus!); allergies (we can deal); autoimmune disorders (egads). 

Cubby the über-hound is at the vet as I type. (No matter the diagnosis, I won’t let him read this.) The sun is dipping, kicking up skies of charcoal and embers. It’s 35-degrees out, just right, and somebody has to clean up the basement carpet. If Cubby’s OK, he can do it. 

And now a text arrives from Cubby’s mom at the vet: The doc can’t tell what the problem is but the bill, counting all manner of exams, including a stomach X-ray, is a soul-shriveling $901. Almost a thousand dollars in less than an hour. I’m gobsmacked until I remember how I once spent roughly $500 on an ailing pet rat. Animals will do that — break your heart while breaking the bank.

So it appears to be wait and see for schlubby Cubby, despite the red-streaked poop, which is actually the least of the vet’s concerns. The dog has a fever of 103, says the vet, who gave Cubs an antibiotic, anti-nausea meds and fluids for dehydration. The tummy X-ray was sent to a specialist, even though the vet saw nothing unusual in it like, say, a toothbrush or an iPhone.

This non-vet will tell you the animal has been unusually lethargic, and has picked up some odd habits over the days (he’s suddenly fond of karaoke and mojitos) and has dramatically altered his cravings (he wants nachos and Popeye’s). He isn’t chewing his beloved bully stick, which is, literally, a dried bull penis. He canceled his subscription to People and has gone to watching the dreadful third season of “True Detective.”

He’s one sick pup.

Radiance of the pet rat

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

If you want to see a rat drink beer, click HERE. I’ll wait.

That’s Becky, my long-ago pet rat, whose both alarming and comical omnivorousness knew no bounds. Seriously: zero. 

She’d chomp broccoli, rubber bands, towels, chickpeas, cheese, books, dog food, t-shirts, pizza, gecko lizards and crawly cockroaches. She’d guzzle wine and the above beer. 

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Becky shares pizza with a pal.

She once bit into a small tube of Super Glue. In a miraculous stroke, the glue was so old it had evaporated. The alternate results would have been grisly, even fatal, I’m certain.

Rats, like honey badgers, don’t give a crap.

But they are as smart, sweet, social, endlessly curious and affectionate as any animal, be it a dog, cat, piranha or wildebeest. 

They play and wrestle, come when called, chill on your shoulder, build crafty nests from newspapers and less innocuous sources (like the fluffy guts of your sofa or that pricey box of Q-Tips), play fetch, groom with OCD avidity, swim, delight in belly rubs lying on their back, and so much more. Oh, and hoard. How they hoard. Hide all small valuables. (Becky stole my watch once. It took days to find.)

They’re like super pets that delight, entertain and nourish the heart and soul. As I’ve quoted in these pages before, rats are “cleaner than cats, smarter than dogs.” Whoever said that is just about spot-on and probably lives with a thousand rats and the authorities are onto him or her. A reality TV show is coming soon.

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Becky going head-first into the glass, tippling a fine (cheap) cabernet.

Pets hold spiritual qualities with their power to elevate and expand one’s being. But, like dogs and cats, rats do it with a special, irresistible elan, magnetism and downright adorableness. Still, it’s different. For one, they don’t fart.

With their silky, curling pink paws (tiny starfish), twitching whiskers, itty-bitty tongue and translucent ears, gently nibbling buck teeth and enormous hearts, they’re lovable buggers.

Those thick wiry tails that whip around, made strictly for balance, are something else. The creatures squeak in pleasure and, science has proven, giggle like little girls. When treated right, Prozac they don’t need. (Though they’ll eat that as well.)

Like sharks, rats are exquisitely evolved specimens. Get this: They can collapse parts of their skeleton to squeeze under doors and through tight cracks. I’ve seen it. They are quicksilver with fur, superheroes with a super power, lacking only a cape and a ridiculous moniker.

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Still life: Becky

An image I cannot shake: Becky drinking wine by dipping a paw in the liquid and licking the paw, like a cowboy drinking from the Rio Grande after days without water. (Her boozing was judiciously supervised — I only let her get a nice taste.)

And yet … well, rats will obliterate you. With a life-span of an average of two and a half years, they desert you far too quickly. They become your best friend and then, like a relationship gone bad, they end it, they vanish. They die. Usually it’s a respiratory disease or, more likely, cancer. It rips you to shreds.

Becky’s death was excruciating. I spent a lot of time and money on her, all of it beautifully worth it. Still, she had to go. She’s probably tearing up heaven, nibbling angel tunics, nesting in holy beards, gulping sacred wine. Being a worthy rat, not giving a crap.

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RIP Becky

Cats and dog sweetly coexisting. Mostly.

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The dog pounces at the cat, stopping short, directly in her expressionless face. He thinks he’s fulfilling his role as a tough-guy mongrel, a canine Cagney, intimidating his housemate, the ice-cool kitty. They lock eyes and stand nose-to-nose. She doesn’t flinch, budge or blink. She has seen him coming, fast, and she holds her ground, not a single whisker aquiver.

The dog, Cubby, is small. The cat, witheringly, seems to be saying to him, “You’re too short for that gesture,” as George Saunders tells Anne Baxter when she swings open the door and tries to eject him from a room in “All About Eve.” In the end, the dog capitulates, and the cat sashays away.

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It’s really not like this, at all.

For the most part, the animals, including another cat, coexist impressively peaceably. They are very mature about their roommate situation. Drama is minimal, and, when it happens, laughable. No one gets hurt.

Poor Cubby. He’s all bark and no bite (except in play, when he nips fiendishly). He loves to hear himself yap, yelp and yowl when the mail carrier mounts the porch, producing a piercing cacophony and, somewhat comically, a rousing display of feckless theater. He growls, spins and crouches, a shrimp-size showman, his nails doing a fine tap dance on the wood floor.

Yet open the door when someone rings and he clams up, giddily sniffing the newcomer, tail wagging, a bundle of excited curiosity. The animal is operating on pure instinct, doggie DNA, so we try not to make fun.

The house cats, Tiger Lily and Spicy, tolerate Cubby, despite their frequent sighs. They mostly ignore him and his occasional manifestations of machismo. They are unflappable, standoffish. Basically, they don’t give a shit. And when they do, they swipe a samurai paw at his face. He recoils.

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Cubby: a badass in his own mind.

Yet sometimes he gets their goat. Periodically, he will chase one of them up the stairs and the cat will bolt, scramble, fly. But not without emitting a long hiss, like a leaky tire or a king cobra. Cubby doesn’t relish that sound, and he stands down and returns to worrying one of his irresistible bully sticks (which are actual 100% bull penises, dried and seasoned).

The whole cats and dogs as mortal foes narrative is a hoary myth. Of course some dogs antagoznie some cats. (As a kid, our otherwise dreamy black Lab tore apart the neighbor’s cat in a scene out of “Cujo.”) It’s nothing personal. It’s biology and psychology: genes and instincts run amok.

There’s a fluffy black cat in the neighborhood that ambles right up to Cubby when he’s on his walks, and the animals casually sniff each other out, the cat practically rubbing against the dog, purring. Cubby is mostly indifferent to this, and promptly moves on.

But he can’t help needle his pet-mates in the house. Close proximity, boredom, jealousy, general annoyance — many reasons spring to mind, all of them conjecture. Sometimes he gets feisty when a cat gets too close to his bully stick, as if they’ll snatch it. Other times he’s just asserting his virility, his wishful doggie dominance.

The cats and the dog are in many ways classic shotgun roommates: imperfect fits, possessive, a little irritable, eating each other’s food, each from different worlds. One roommate likes rap, the other likes Rachmaninoff. The cats want their space, Cubby wants to invade it. He wants to be the pack leader, the alpha male honcho. It’s sad yet funny.

Don’t tell Cubby, but it’s pretty clear: Tiger Lily could lick him.

A blog post that’s purely a pet project

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

Cubby is the family dog. He is small and Schnauzer-esque. A rescue mutt. His long tail curls into a small O, like a bagel. He barks sparingly, if piercingly. He cuddles greedily. He is overgrown with charcoal-colored fur, like a neglected shrub that needs to be desperately trimmed into a topiary. He smells faintly of turkey bacon. Bath — he could use a bath. Freshly trimmed and clean, he looks like this, a canine Cary Grant:

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Currently, he looks like a graying Ewok:

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How we adore our pets. That’s a cliche, and I’m sorry that occurred. Still, we do. They are little people, extra children, crucial on both sides of the love equation. So human is Cubby that we sometimes believe there is a little man inside him named, mystifyingly, Pasquale, who can unzip an invisible zipper down his neck and chest and pop out ever-so fleetingly, utter his name — Pasquale! — then zip back up and return to being a dog. It’s terrific. We all need medication.

I require animal companionship. When I left home, where we enjoyed a pair of heart-melting black Labs and a bevy of feral yard cats, I went small with pets, namely fish and rats. (Yes. Rats. Deal.) I didn’t want the steep, familial responsibilities of a dog or cat. My independence, especially as a budding world traveler, took primacy.

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Tammy as a tot.

Rats rule. If you know little about them, I repeat the slogan of rattie devotees: “Smarter than dogs, cleaner than cats.” They make magnificent pets — loving, social, funny, trainable. (And then they chew up half the house and all that goodwill curdles. For about a day.)

I have owned six rats, individually. The best were Phoebe, Becky and Tammy, who played and came when called and snuggled and loved to have their tummies rubbed and peed all over the place. And then, exactly at 2.5 years old, each got horribly sick and died. Rat life expectancy is ruthless and cancer or infection generally fells them. Each loss wrecked me completely.

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Cubby, cleaned up.

Dogs, natch, live much longer. Cubby’s about 3 or 4. He looks 65. I’d say he’s got a good 10 to 12 years left in him, wonder dog. I’d include a recent picture of him, but you’d have no idea what you we’re looking at, except maybe a miniature yak.

I didn’t mention the two cats here, Tiger Lily and Spicy. They’re brother and sister and they look about as much alike as Barack Obama and Donald Trump. They wrassle and hiss at each other and Spicy scampishly steals Tiger’s food.

Cats are weird company. Their independence is enviable and noble. They thrive on solitude and hiding places. Pet them at your risk. With an imperious air, they will come to you when they want attention, not the reverse.

Come to think of it, that sounds something like me. I am definitively a dog person over a cat person. I love dogs’ gregariousness, neediness, demonstrativeness — their licks, wags and yelps. But I am not a dog, per se. I’m more Tiger Lily than Cubby. Yet I like Cubby better than Tiger Lily. What that says about me just sent a shiver down my back.

Pets reveal stuff about us. Dog person, cat person, rat person, all of the above. Knowing these creatures, all my life, I’ve been aware how far my fondness can stretch for a non-human being. Blasphemy, you say, but sometimes I think I like the animals better than the people. Just sometimes. Call it a pet peeve. I call it sheer devotion, always returned, unreservedly.