Category Archives: Fang & Claw

Piglet Love and the City Surf

I have needed the dogs nearer of late. To feel visible. Or, more accurately, I have needed to be nearer to them, though for the same reason.

They do not care my reasons, of course. All they know is I’m around. They see me.

And they’ve taught me. Man, they’re onto something with this whole backyard thing.

I used not to give it much thought, their everyday world. Hire a lawn guy. Install a dog door to kick them out and not feel guilty. Repair the fence when the Santa Anas show me she’s boss.

But there is more to it than that. So much.

Because of daylight savings time (come on, Indiana, pick a side), the sun sets on the yard around 6 p.m. And because that’s dinner time, that means unbolting the dog door, calling them in, pouring the dog food, preparing for the night.

But I walked out recently, apparently so quietly they didn’t hear me from the side door. And suddenly, I realized: Their world is kind of wonderful.

I could hear the train that bristles by at Balboa and Roscoe. I heard the rising traffic on Sherman Way as people began the buzz commute home. I smelled the Anheuser-Busch brewery two miles away (it’s the smell of grain after it’s been processed of its sugar and before it’s fed to cows). Planes droned the Van Nuys Airport, awaiting their turn.

It was…alive. Particularly when Teddy and Esme realized a real human being! was outside and sprinted around the corner to greet me as if I had been gone since Christmas.

But it was too late. I had felt it, the city surf, in its high tide. I would discover there are low tides as well. After 9:15 p.m., you can hear the gentle hum of the night owl traffic, though rarely a honk. The single prop plane — what do you think up there, at once above and below the heavens, alone and aloft? The train’s whistle now more a melancholy wail than a churn. Just as alive. Just in deeper breaths.

And so is borne tradition. If I’m home, I’m back there at 5:35 p.m. The dogs have learned there’s no need yet to lose their shit over kibble. They know; their landlord is going to want to be in that chair, which has to be positioned just off the porch, at cement’s edge, to catch the sun’s full and final rays, to tell it good night and see you tomorrow. And they must assume I’ll bring the Mellow Playlist. Because I will.

house

They still don’t care my reasons. I guess they don’t need to. All they need to know is that they have new company at the shore of the city surf, where you can smell summer on the way, feel a warmth that’s beginning to linger, hear a heightening hum and still curl into a lazy, sun-drenched ball of fur that says dinner maybeontheway but what’s…the….rush?

What better place to be sure?

 

More Human Than Human: Why Cats Get Nine Lives And Dogs An Eternal One

Kids aren’t for everybody. But parenting must be.

How else to explain our need to anthropomorphize everything, from hamsters to Hondas? We’re expert at morphing anything into something human-ish, and just as adept at convincing ourselves that anything human-ish loves us back (except, ironically, other humans).

So I get how crazed people get over cats and dogs. And I have to admit: there have been rare occasions when I have mentioned, perhaps even bragged, on my own domestic partners. But I swear, something’s weird about Teddy and Esme.

If I give them a treat, which is so embarrassingly often they must think they get a Snausage for farting, the hounds know the drill. Both know to sit, silently. Teddy gets the big rawhide, Esme the miniature. I usually give it to Teddy first, because he’s got those eyes that make you think he just came from cosmetic experimentation. That’s right, you manipulative ass, anthropomorphize the hell out of me. So he gets first bite.

And I always feel like a sucker, because the moment he has it, Teddy is gone. I am dead to him. He’ll run to the other side of the yard, like he’s afraid I’ll take it back. Or, preferably, he’ll chew it on the couch, where he concocts his own slobber and rawhide leather conditioner.

But if I give the mini rawhide to Esme first, she does something odd: nothing. She will sit there, treat in mouth, waiting for me to give Teddy his. She’ll do the same thing with food (assuming there’s not a treat in it); wait until Teddy’s bowl is on the ground also.

Whether you’re a vet or a dog freak (ahem), there’s something fascinating going on here. She’s either being polite or she’s waiting to see what Teddy receives. The first is unlikely, but the second is almost as odd; if I gave Teddy hamburger, there’s nothing she could do but accept her own treat. She weighs less than a quarter what Teddy does and knows not to be alpha over issues that matter; she won’t even eat from his bowl in the kitchen.

So what is she observing? And why? She’s smarter than most people I know, so I have to be careful not to assign brilliance. But I’d like the Dog Whisperer to come here and give me a straight answer. Cuz she ain’t talking.

And while he’s here, maybe he can explain Teddy’s behavior when I go to the spa. He and Esme normally bound outside for fetch when they hear neighbor-irritating rock from the jacuzzi and see me heading to the door in a towel (my nipples have become their dog whistle).

Esme, though, is a fair-weather fetcher. If it’s cold or rainy outside, she’ll stay indoors, right here by the space heater, which you will surely turn on before you go outside, thankyouverymuch. Allow me to anthropomorphize that as well; I love her to death, but Esme is all about Esme.

Not Teddy. Yesterday brought more rain to the Valley. There’s something about being the in spa in rain, watching water hit the roof as it percolates your insides. Storms are hypnotic.

Yesterday wasn’t one, but the rain came, hard. I grabbed a towel, knit cap and hit the spa. A good half hour. listening and thinking and settling. Finally, I turn the water off, open the gazebo doors, get ready to bolt for the porch.

And there’s Teddy. Just sitting, waiting. Wet as can be from puddling water. But he isn’t moving until I head in.

Hell yes I anthropomorphize my world. I choose to believe there’s love there, even if I can’t give you a reason why. Esme makes Einstein look like a monkey with a Rubik’s Cube. Teddy’s blossoming heart fills any desolate soul.

But that’s just the dad in me.

https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=3WFyajeFaE4&video_referrer=watch

 

At Last

 

 

 

Why Kittens Suck

Ok, perhaps a bit harsh. I’ve owned probably a dozen cats, and one, Jerome David, was the coolest animal I ever met. Six claws per, could catch anything that moved. I saw him swat a fly out of the air. Broke his leg in a fall once and never meowed a whimper. Tough motherfucker.

But still. They’re furry little Hitlers.

Cats are all about cats. They’re fine if you take a month-long cruise. They bathe themselves. Dogs would rather you not leave the couch. Dogs prefer to stink, preferably in your bed, preferably like a dead frog (I had a beagle once, Snooper, who rolled around so much in one he smelled like Kermit’s corpse). The only way dogs are gonna get clean is if you clean them. And they’d prefer you start with their asses. That’s it. Scratch it like you mean it.

We in the media love to debate numbers, quantify the lord of the domestics. And more people own cats than dogs (apparently they have a problem picking up excrement. Prisses.).

But here’s all the evidence necessary to prove dogs are better than cats: our own definitions. Ask yourself: If your pet got irradiated like the Hulk and was suddenly as big to you as you once were to it, would you rather have a dog or cat? SashulkSure, you’d probably get killed by both. But a dog murder would likely be accidental: fatal flattening from asking one to sit; blunt force trauma from a wagging tail; drowning by slobber; flatulence overdose.

A cat would slowly disembowel you, drag you into the house and leave you under the bed covers, a horse-head’s warning to all humans that you’ll pay for putting me in that goddamn hat.

And ask a cat lover what’s so great about Abbie the Tabbie, and you’ll get: She comes when you call; greets you at the door; can be walked; loves people. She even does tricks! Watch. Sit, Abbie. Abbie, sit. Sit, Abbie! SIT! ABBIE!

In other words: she’s dog-like (except for the fuck-off gaze a cat will give you when you try to teach it a trick). Feliners will even say, ‘It’s just like a dog.’

But if you have to say something is like something else, is it all that? You never hear a dog’s landlord say: ‘She’s just like a cat.’

Same with fish (the food, not the “pet”). How many times has someone offered you a taste of their scrod, noting parenthetically, ‘Try it, it’s great. It doesn’t taste fishy.’ No one will ever offer you a bite of steak and say, ‘Try it, it’s great. It doesn’t taste beefy.’

All right, perhaps there’s no need for strident dispute, at least over the four-legged, not the gilled. Truth is, rarely have I met an animal that doesn’t eclipse humans in behavior. I once tried to enter my Labrador Retriever Larry in California’s gubernatorial election recall. I was convinced that Larry would  land more votes than the miscreants who entered the race, which included a porn star, Carrot Top and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Larry’s grinning face, lolling tongue surely would have landed at least a million votes from the SPCA alone. His poster already had a tagline: “This race has gone to the dogs. Let’s give it to the real one.”

Alas, California law at the time required you be a state resident at least seven years, and Larry was but six. I could find no provision that required the governor be human.

If nothing else, no animal would send a bill to filibuster. Swat away, Jerome David, swat away.