PK: Hmm...we've not done a goofy animal interview lately. Time to annoy the whimsy-challenged. Serena, O culmination of seven generations of extraordinary cats, what should we tell our readers about the state of affairs at the Cat Sanctuary this week?
Serena: Do they want to know?
PK: They read my blog, so it must be assumed...
Serena: Well, it's very bad. We still have a Professional Bad Neighbor who sprays poison into the air just in the hope that that will make it possible for him or some sort of nephew of his to inherit the land. I've been spending almost all of the time indoors. Poor Pastel has those fine healthy kittens with whom you're so besotted, but those weak, watery eyes of hers, which always ruined her looks...
PK: The tear ducts were so badly irritated that blood started to come out. I've been making her stay indoors at night.
Serena: She doesn't like that.
PK: Why would she? I don't trust her to remember not to claw or climb on things, so when you're not supervising her, the alternatives are being locked in the box with her kittens or locked in a cage without them.
Pastel: I know you're doing it because you love me. I know I'm special. And pretty. I just don't see why I should have to spend the whole night indoors, when I could be out hunting and having fun.
PK: It's because the poison in the air is stronger outdoors, and the more hours we can spend indoors, the better. At least your eyes look normal after you've been indoors for eight hours.
Pastel: Well, yes. But it's still a bore, being kept indoors at night like a baby.
PK: We need a law. Oh how we need a law. Sunday, when the rain stopped, was a beautiful day. The white garden effect nearby hasn't been redone this year, but I still have white roses, white violets, and privet. Some of each one were blooming. The scent perfumed the whole house. And then, not because he was doing any particular work, but just because it was a young relative's birthday and the relative had invited friends up to their place further up the road, that evil chemical odor we associate with "Roundup" blew in, just for a moment stronger even than the privet.
Serena: All it takes to kill anything is a quick snapping blow to the back of the neck.
PK: Bayer has changed the formula of "Roundup" so that it's more likely to cause trees to snap and shed limbs onto the backs of people's necks. Heaven speed the day. It still contains glyphosate or that other chemical that's like it, glufosinate; it still makes me sick. But before that, some other chemical it contains irritates the tear ducts in my eyes. Then there's dicamba, the known carcinogen that makes my throat raspy and gives other people hayfever. All by itself that would at least be interesting, because so many things give me hayfever and dicamba gives other people their turn to be "Weepy Weeds." Unfortunately it's not all by itself. Also in the mix, I wonder if it's the 2,4-D--the chemical that's sometimes sprayed on road verges, that makes my heartbeat irregular. Also this poison in the air zaps everyone's energy. You should've heard the Old Grouch complaining, last week. Should've seen the way "New Roundup" affected even the horsetail rushes beside the railroad. This mix of chemicals is known to linger in the air longer and travel further than straight glyphosate did, so it's possible that even this neighborhood would have had been harmed by the spraying on the railroad...but once again, we have our own neighborhood sociopath deliberately spraying poison on land for which he has no other use, just to keep neighbors from enjoying the use of their own property. By making us all ill. Glyphosate makes only some people sick, but this combination makes everyone ill. It's like having measles and mono and food poisoning, all at once.
Serena: Doesn't it work on him, too?
PK: Something has certainly been working on him. His family inherit a good enough face, from our side, that even the crooked mouth they get from the other side can be seen as a cute lopsided smile when they're young, and they share our tendency to look young for a good long time...but his time is certainly over. He looks old, sick, fat, and as if he's had a couple of strokes, since his pathetic second wife left him.
Serena: Humans are silly about their wives and husbands. If you delight in their company, you stay with them. If not, as it might be because one of you wants to have sex again and the other is already pregnant, you seoarate, If you want to be together again, you just be together again.
PK: Well, although cats can get their own kind of immune deficiency syndrome, cats don't seem to get sexually transmitted diseases. Humans do. So we care very much about where our mates have been and what they might be bringing home. But I wasn't talking about anyone stroking this man, since he's lost so many of his close relatives and made himself so unhealthy and repulsive looking. When humans say that someone has had a stroke, we mean a kind of sudden damage to an older person's brain, often caused by cardiovascular disease. That interferes with their ability to use the muscles, often on only one side of the body. It doesn't usually happen before people reach age 70, but when people spray chemicals, who knows.
Serena: When someone is that determined to do harm to himself and everyone else, cats aren't silly and sentimental about killing him.
PK: Cats fight and quarrel a lot anyway, don't they?
Serena: It can look that way to humans but actually we almost never do one another any real harm. It's mostly just space and status--what humans call play-fighting. We take it seriously, but we do it to show each other who is stronger and faster, not to injure each other. I've heard of cats who injured other cats. They weren't really considered cats any more. They were predators to be feared. Or killed. My great-aunt Heather saw an animal like that once. While she and her sons were trying to think of a way to kill it, their human caught it and took it away.
PK: Yes. That was I. I wasn't a very young human even in Heather's time. Well, when a human turns against other humans, our instincts are more confusing for us. We have instincts for what we call blood feuds, between whole families, or wars, between larger groups of humans. We try to regulate those instincts by what we call the rule of law. Only our laws have lagged behind our technology. We don't have a law that recognizes spraying poison into the air as a violent crime committed with the intention to do physical harm to others, even though, right here in this neighborhood, that is unmistakably what it is. Too many of us still think of spraying poison as property maintenance, which is something humans recognize a right to do. But it's like the right to swing our arms. We have a right to swing our arms but it stops at the point where other people's noses begin.
Silver: Nobody's made any pretense of including me in this conversation. That's all right. I can take care of myself. I have a Job. I am the Possum Manager.
PK: You are an extraordinarily pretty, nice, and clever cat, even if part of your cleverness is the way you defer to Serena and don't call attention to yourself.
Serena: An example Pastel's kittens seem unlikely to have enough brains to follow! Get back, boy!
PK: His name is Diego, after Dora the Explorer's friend. Dora the Explorer was a cartoon some of The Nephews used to watch on television.
Dora: Me?
PK: You are a clever little explorer. You're a good-sized kitten for your age, but you look tiny because your siblings are so big for their age Diego looks like a giant monster, for his age, but he's a sweet, friendly little tomkitten, mostly pale orange above and white below. Then we have the big grey and white near-twins. From some angles I can tell them apart because Dilbert has a white collar all the way across its neck, and Drudge has a blue collar--bur of course, when their heads are high, their collars don't show. So it's hopeless. I often mix up their names and have little hope that they'll ever figure out which name properly refers to which cat. Anyway we might end up calling them Dilberta and Drue. They're friendly, fluffy little things too. All of you are. I've never seen kittens who seemed so matter-of-fact the first time they saw humans.
Dora: Our eyes started to open earlier than usual. The very first time we saw you, I think the others just shut their eyes and hoped you'd go away. I hissed before I shut my eyes. I heard you saying "Miss Hissy" before I got more use of my legs and showed you that I'm Dora the Explorer.
PK: Do you know who your father is, and whether he has anything to do with your super fluffy coats?
Diego: We do. You call him Borowiec because he's a big handsome lad with long ginger fur. I shall probably look like him when I grow up.
Dilbert: Everyone but he and that one other grown-up around here are motherly.
PK: Wait till The Nephews come in.
Drudge: The other cats are motherly animals but they don't like to baby-sit and play with us. Why not? They might even have some milk to spare. You're nice, but you don't seem to have any milk.
PK: Not cats' milk, anyway. Sometimes a friend of the Cat Sanctuary sends us a jug of cows' milk, but not too often. It can be hard for cats to digest.
Serena: Get back! Won't you keep those young ones away from Silver and me!
PK: Right. Sit up here on my shoulders, kittens, and when we get back to your corner of the porch you can practice climbing down this old coat.
Dilbert: Noooo! I want to tease my aunt and grandmother!
Serena: Be careful with my grandkitten, human!
PK: You see, your grandmother does care about you, even if she doesn't want you crowding under her feet. Don't annoy her. Most cats don't have grandmothers, but you have an especially wonderful one. Now it's past time for me to try to look at the computer screen and choose some dog pictures for our readers. I don't know that I can claim that they're contest winners. I'm not going to try flipping through lots of screens to find the very most appealing photos. These are just some dogs in search of good homes at shelters close to the zipcodes that are easy to remember and type...
Zipcode 10101: Connie from New York City
It's possible that this puppy, who weighed 18 pounds when she was five months old and is definitely still growing, may have fallen into the hands of control freaks. Be cautious; don't transmit enough information to identify any living person through the Internet. They can confirm that you're not a known animal abuser after you've decided you want the dog. They should do that in person, not online--checking the name you write down, on paper, against a database of people who have done something to deserve having their "wallet names" online.
But that's not the dog's fault. Thought to be mostly collie, Sunny is described as a friendly, cheerful, playful pup with the potential to be both a serious watchdog and a lovable companion. She will not look like Lassie, exactly. Nor will she look like Snoopy. She may always look as if Snoopy and Lassie had had a puppy together.
Anyway
Zipcode 20202: Sushi from D.C.
The price isn't even funny, but it might be negotiable. You have to understand the situation. Though tame, this little dog, believed to be more Chihuahua than anything else, was rescued from an abusive home and needed some rehabilitation. She needs a friend of her own size and species because other dogs haven't hurt her the way humans have done. So she's not for everyone. If she is for you, who knows.
Zipcode 30303: Theodore from Atlanta
Theodore's breed is known. He's a Mniature Poodle. He was a pet, was given fancy haircuts and some basic training, but his human realized person was spending too much time at work to take proper care of a clever poodle puppy. He is not quite a year old and weighs thirteen pounds. His adoption fee is unreasonable and, if they won't haggle down, maybe you should consider some of the other shelter dogs in Atlanta who were not well photogaphed but are probably more appealing in real life.
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