MY HORRIBLE WEEK AT PETSMART, by Jacen

I have just spent an entire week plus one day at PetSmart, trying to get adopted, and I can tell you it was NO FUN!  But finally, Mom came and liberated me yesterday afternoon and brought me back home where I belong.  Of course, it was Mom who took me there in the first place and abandoned me, so I've had eight whole days to be mad at her.  But now that I'm home again, I think I might be starting to forgive her.

At PetSmart, there are a whole bunch of cats and kittens, and all of us were in little cages in a room behind a glass wall.  The cages just have a litter box, a food dish, a bowl of water, and a box sort of thing that you can sleep in.  Actually, it's more like shelves than a box.  Or maybe you could say it's kind of a bunk bed for kitties.

Anyway, most of the kittens who were there were about my age.  Aunt Tania calls us "teenagers."  In one big, double cage, there were four teenage kittens together, so they could keep each other company.  But I was in a cage all alone, and I didn't have anyone to play with or snuggle with.  Mom said she tried not to think about me being there, feeling all abandoned and lonely, but she thought about me anyhow.  I'm not sure I believe her, because if she was really thinking about me, she would have come and rescued me much sooner.

The people who work at PetSmart were nice to us, and they fed us and cleaned out our litter boxes every day.  Then while the store was open, people would come in and look at us cats, and a lot of times, little kids would put sticks with feathers on them through the cage doors.  We were supposed to play with the feathers, but I didn't always feel like doing that because having strange people around makes me nervous.  And also, I can't just play or perform on command, like some silly dog would do.

Aunt Tania came sometimes to visit us and check on us and clean out our cages, and she would play with me while she was there.  But really all I wanted was to go back home again.  Which is why I was so happy to see Mom when she came to get me yesterday.

Back at home, I found everything pretty much like it was when I left, except that the three little kittens were bigger, and now they go upstairs and all sorts of new places.  Also Chloe and Charlie hissed at me some.  They probably thought they got rid of me, but here I was, back again!  The dogs sniffed me over pretty good, but they didn't seem to mind that I was there.  That tall dog, Nicky, has funny bandage things on his legs.  I'm not sure what's up with that.

I spent the evening reacquainting myself with the house and playing with the little kittens.  Mom bought them a new tunnel toy while I was gone, and it's a lot of fun to play in.  Finally, I just curled up on Mom's lap and purred while she did her email, and then I slept in her bed all night.  This is the way life should be, I think.

Mom says I will have to go back to PetSmart in a couple of weeks to stay there again for a while, and this time I might get a kitten buddy in my cage with me so I won't be so lonely.  But I don't want to go back there.  I just want to stay here.  Mom says she has too many animals already, and she shouldn't adopt me, even though she would like to.  But maybe if I really turn on the charm, I can make her change her mind!

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A DOG NAMED SNOOPY

Most everybody knows who Snoopy is, because he's a very famous dog who does lots of funny things. The only bad things about him are (1) he's not a real dog, and (2) he's a beagle and not a basenji.  But besides that, Snoopy is pretty much the perfect dog.

Snoopy was invented by Charles Schulz, who spent many years drawing the Peanuts comic strip.  Mr. Schulz was born in 1922 in Minneapolis and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.  When he was a kid, an uncle gave him the nickname "Sparky," because there was a horse named Spark Plug in the Barney Google comic strip.  Sparky's family had a dog named Spike, and this dog ate strange things such as pins and tacks.  Snoopy was based a little bit on Spike, except that Spike was a pointer and not a beagle, like Snoopy.

The first cartoon strip that Mr. Schulz drew was called Li'l Folks, and it was published from 1947 to 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.  After that, the United Feature Syndicate agreed to publish it starting October 2, 1950, with the name Peanuts.

Snoopy was a pretty ordinary dog in the beginning.  At first it wasn't even clear whose dog he was, but then it turned out he belonged to Charlie Brown.  Later in the strip, everyone found out that Snoopy was born at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, and he had 7 siblings.  First he was owned by a little girl named Lila, but then her family had to move to an apartment where dogs weren't allowed.  So they took Snoopy back to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.  After that, Charlie Brown's parents bought Snoopy for him because some other kids had thrown sand in Charlie Brown's face.

For the first two years, Snoopy didn't say anything, but then on May 27, 1952, his thoughts began to show up in word balloons.  At first, the thoughts were just one word at at time, such as "FOOD!"  But as time went on, Snoopy started thinking more thoughts.  Also he got to be more like a human than like a dog.  He even started walking around on two legs!

Snoopy liked to pretend all sorts of things about himself.  Sometimes he was a World War I pilot and other times he was Joe Cool or a lawyer, hockey player, figure skater, or the first dog to fly solo across the Atlantic.  He was always writing novels that started with "It was a dark and stormy night."  He mostly got rejection slips for his novels, but once he got one published.  Except that nobody bought it.

Snoopy fell in love several times, but usually the girl dog he loved left him for a golden retriever.  He loved root beer and pizza, playing the accordion, and being the shortstop on Charlie Brown's baseball team.  He could do a very happy Snoopy Dance, and he could also whirl his ears around and fly like a helicopter.

The doghouse that Snoopy lived in had all kinds of things inside, like a carpeted foyer, a den, a library, a guest room, a stairway, a basement, a television, a bed, a pool table, and an original Van Gogh.  But mostly, Snoopy spent all his time sitting or sleeping on top the doghouse, in all kinds of weather.  I don't know why he did this, but I guess it made him happy.

Snoopy's best friend was Woodstock, who was a little yellow bird.  Snoopy led a scout troop with Woodstock and some of his bird friends in it.  Woodstock always talked like this:  ''''''''  but Snoopy could understand him because they were such good friends.

Spike was one of Snoopy's brothers, and he was in the comic strip more than Snoopy's other siblings.  Spike lived in the desert and had saguaro cacti as friends.  The area where Spike lived was a lot like Needles, California, where the Schulz family lived from 1928 to 1930.

There were lots and lots of movies and products made of Snoopy and the Peanuts gang.  You can still buy this stuff and see the movies on TV, especially at Christmastime.  But there are no more new Peanuts comic strips.  This is because, sadly, Mr. Schulz had some small strokes, and he also had Parkinson's, which made it hard for him to draw.  Then he got colon cancer, and it was spreading through his body.  So on December 14, 1999, Mr. Schulz retired, even though he didn't want to.

On February 12, 2000, Charles Schulz died in his sleep of a heart attack, and the very next morning, the last Peanuts strip he ever drew was published.  Mr. Schulz and his family had decided they didn't want anybody else to draw the comic strip, so that's why there are no new ones.  But you can still read it in a lot of newspapers or online or in books.  So in a way, Snoopy and all his friends never get old, and they always seem to be doing something new.  Which is a very good thing, if you ask me.

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SOME EXCELLENT CAT QUOTES, by Charlie

The trouble with this blog is that there's too much stuff about dogs in it, and not enough about cats!  I have told Piper this more than once, but she just says, "If you don't like it, get your own blog!"  Well, Chloe and I might do that if we didn't have such a busy schedule of cat-napping.  Maybe someday our schedules will lighten up a bit, but in the meantime, I guess we will just have to be content to write in Piper's blog, at least when she deigns to let us!

Anyway, today I have compiled some really good quotes about felines, and I now present them for your edification and enjoyment.


The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.    
--Doug Larson

What greater gift than the love of a cat?    --Charles Dickens

It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens.    
--Cynthia E. Varnado

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.    
--Joseph Wood Krutch

If a cat does something, we call it instinct.  If we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.    --Will Cuppy

You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.    --George Mikes

Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible.    --Roger Caras

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.    
--Garrison Keillor

There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.    --Dan Greenberg

Cats are the ultimate narcissists.  You can tell this by all the time they spend on personal grooming.  Dogs aren't like this.  A dog's idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish.   --James Gorman

If cats could talk, they wouldn't.     --Nan Porter

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MORE WORDS AND PHRASES

STICKY WICKET

This phrase came from that crazy game of cricket that British people are always playing.  Nobody much in the U.S. plays this game or even understands how to play it, unless they are from someplace like the U.K. or Australia or Pakistan or Sri Lanka.  But a lot of Americans do know that the phrase sticky wicket can be used to describe a situation that is, well, sticky, or difficult.

Anyway, to get more literal about it, the surface that you play cricket on is called the "wicket."  So if you are playing in a sheep pasture, for example, and it has rained, the field is all sticky with mud.  This causes the ball to bounce in ways that you might not expect, which makes it hard to bat the ball.  Or something like that.  All this would make more sense if I knew how to play cricket.

A sticky wicket can also be called a sticky dog or a glue pot, but "sticky wicket" is more fun to say because it almost rhymes, so I think that is why people use this phrase more than the other two.  Besides, I don't like to think about a "sticky dog" because a dog who gets all sticky will need to have a bath, and what fun is that?


SKEDADDLE

If you see a big, scary monster coming toward you, you should definitely skedaddle!  At least that's my advice.  Skedaddle is another word that's fun to say, and it's a word that got invented right here in America, during the Civil War.  Maybe there were lots of soldiers who had to skedaddle during battle, and that's what made it a such a good wartime word.  Then after the war, people just kept on finding reasons to skedaddle, so we are still using the word today.

Probably, skedaddle came from scaddle, which is British dialect that means "to run off in a fright."  Scaddle is also a Middle English word for "wild," "timid," or "skittish."


ANTIGODLIN

I never heard this word before, and neither did Mom.  It is used mostly in the south and west parts of the U.S., and it means the same thing as sigogglin (SY-gog-lin, sy-GOG-lin), which comes from the Appalachian region.  Either of these words can be used to talk about something that is crooked or leaning or lopsided.  Like for example, if you aren't a very good carpenter, and you build a doghouse in your back yard, and it looks like it's about to fall over, and your dog is afraid to even go in there, then that doghouse is antigodlin.  Not only that, but it is on the skewgee, which is another useful word I never heard of before.

Actually, sigogglin is archaic now, but some people still say antigodlin or antigogglin.  These words date back to about 1895 or 1900, and they might have come from the British dialect goggle, which means to shake or tremble.  Then if you change goggle to godlin and put anti in front of it, you get a meaning of "against God" or something that is unnatural.  But of course, nobody is totally sure if this is how the word got started or not.






DRESSED TO THE NINES

This phrase means that you are dressed up in really fancy clothes, but it's hard to know what the number nine has to do with getting dressed up.  The same problem is involved with the phrase "the whole nine yards."  Some people have said that it took nine yards of cloth to make the kind of suit you would wear when dressed "to the nines."  Another theory is that "to the nines" came from "to thine eynes," which was an old-fashioned way of saying "to the eyes."  So in other words, you are dressed up all the way to your eyeballs.

One man who wrote about this phrase, and who is named Gary Martin, thinks that "nine" in this phrase just means "a lot."  Another idea is that nine is a very special number because it is the highest single digit, so it stands for the best or for perfection.
















GONZO

This is a word that can be used to talk about anything that is really strange or bizzare or freaky.  There is a gonzo style of journalism that was invented by a writer named Hunter S. Thompson, and in this type of writing, the reporter talks about the action while he is right in the middle of it.  Part of what the writer says is true experience, and another part is fiction.  An example of this is a book that Mr. Thompson wrote in 1971 called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.



A gonzo can also be a crazy person or a fool.  It can be someone who is unconventional or who writes in the exaggerated style of gonzo journalism.  Oh, and Gonzo is also a character on Sesame Street.

Probably this word came from the Italian word gonzo, which means a fool or a simpleton.  Or it might be from the Spanish word ganso, which is a goose or a dullard.

Mom says she is going to start calling us dogs "gonzos" because it seems like a good word to describe us, but I don't know why she would say that.

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ENGLISH BULLDOGS

Most people know a bulldog when they see one, even if there are no bulls anywhere around.  That's because bulldogs have those smooshed-up faces and all those wrinkles that make them look different from most other dogs.  There are actually several kinds of bulldogs besides the English Bulldog, like for example the American Bulldog, Olde English Bulldogge, and the French Bulldog.  But I am only going to talk about the English Bulldog today.

Bulldogs are very stocky dogs, with wide shoulders and a wide head.  They have thick folds of skin on their brows, and over their muzzles they have another fold of skin called a "rope."  The skin under the neck is loose, and their lips are droopy.  I think a bulldog looks like it was left in the oven too long, and its face totally melted.  Either that or it ran into a brick wall, and its face got all scrunched up.  Some people really like this look in a dog, but frankly, I think basenjis are much cuter!

The coat color of a bulldog can be red, fawn, white, brindle, or piebald.  Their hair is short and sleek, and it doesn't need much grooming.  A male bulldog usually weighs 55-60 pounds, and a female weighs about 45 pounds.  The bulldog's tail is short and curled, and that happens naturally, so the tail doesn't have to be docked.

If you look at a bulldog, you might think it is a grumpy dog, but this is not true.  Most bulldogs are friendly and gentle, and they make good family pets.  They are protective and tolerant of children.  And since they don't need a whole lot of exercise, they can live in an apartment.  But it's not healthy for them to get overweight, which means they shouldn't just sit around and watch TV all day.

Because of their short faces, bulldogs don't do well in the heat, and they need someplace shady or air-conditioned to hang out on a hot day.  They especially like to lie on a nice, cool floor.  Those short faces also make them snort and breathe heavily.  Besides which, they snore loudly and they are "the most relentless farters in the canine world."

British people first started to think of bulldogs as a particular breed of dog back in 1500 or maybe even earlier.  But they spelled the name of the dog Bondogge or Bolddogge, probably because everybody spelled words in all sorts of weird ways in those days.  Anyway, the dogs were used in the sport of bull baiting, so that's why they were called "bulldogs."

Bull baiting was a mean and nasty sport, where a bull was tied up, and dogs tried to grab it by the nose and pin it to the ground.  During this process, the bull usually gored or tossed or kicked several dogs, and some of the dogs died.  People bet money on the dogs, and they began breeding bulldogs that were heavier and meaner and had stronger jaws.  Bull baiting and the similar "sport" of bear baiting got to the peak of their popularity in England in the mid-1800s.  But then in 1835, the Cruelty to Animals Act was passed, and it made these activities illegal.  After that, there was no reason to keep breeding fighting bulldogs in England, but emigrants to America took the dogs with them and used them on farms to catch or corner a bull long enough to get a rope around its neck.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, people started trying to make the bulldog gentler, so that it could be a pet.  Also they crossed bulldogs with pugs, and after a while, the breed ended up being shorter and wider and having a smooshed face.  The modern English Bulldog does not have the right kind of jaw shape to grab a bull's nose and hang on.  Also it couldn't breathe well enough to do all the running it would need to do while fighting a bull.

English bulldogs are popular school mascots.
This is Handsome Dan, the original Yale mascot.

The American Bulldog, since it kept on being a working dog longer than the English Bulldog, has a longer muzzle and is less stocky.  But like I told you, I am not going to talk about that breed today.

English Bulldogs live about 7-11 years.  Some of the health issues they might have are heart problems, cancer, allergies, cherry eye, hip dysplasia, and luxating patellas.  More than 80% of bulldog litters are delivered by Cesarean section because of how big the puppies' heads are.  The folds on the bulldog's face need to be cleaned every day to make sure there are no infections there.

Well, that's all I know to tell you about English Bulldogs.  Someday maybe I will tell you about some other kind of bulldog.

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SONNET FOR A MUTT, by Piper's Mom

Shall I compare thee to a rottweiler?

It’s hard to guess while thou art still so young.

Thou hast brown feet and mostly blackish fur,

And two or three black spots upon thy tongue.

Perhaps thou com’st instead from collie stock,

With ancestors who herded woolly sheep,

And now thou dream’st of chasing thine own flock,

With clever nips and barks, while thou dost sleep.

Or German shepherd thou mayest be, in part,

A dog that’s smart and suitable to train

For search-and-rescue or the special art

Of tracking criminals through snow and rain.

But all that truly matters, in the end,

Is that thou art my Dog, my dearest Friend!

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FOUR PRESIDENTS AND THEIR DOGS (or lack of dogs)

Mom read a book recently about President James A. Garfield and how he got assassinated.  The name of this book is Destiny of the Republic, and it was written by Candice Millard.  Mom said I should tell everybody that this is a very good book, and she thinks lots of people should read it.

A nice picture of the Garfield family,
but where is the dog?

President Garfield had the second-shortest presidency of all, after William Henry Harrison.  President Harrison forgot to wear a hat to his inauguration, and he caught pneumonia and died after only 32 days in office.  But that's not what happened to President Garfield.  Instead, President Garfield got shot in the back by a mostly insane man named Charles Guiteau, and he finally died 10 weeks later because of infection caused by doctors sticking their fingers into his wound to try to find the bullet.  But you can read all about this in the book I mentioned before.

President Garfield getting shot in the back

Anyway, President Garfield was a very smart man with a good sense of humor, and he didn't want the same things that the Congress wanted, so they called him a Mugwump.  Also, he vetoed a whole bunch of bills, and he even named his dog Veto.  Sadly, I can't find any pictures of Veto, so we will just have to imagine what he or she looked like.

At least we know that President Garfield was an excellent person because he had a dog, and he might have made a great president who was remembered in history, except for the little problem of his getting shot and dying.  Back in those days, the presidents didn't have any Secret Service people to guard them and keep them safe, even after President Lincoln got shot.  So in my opinion, President Garfield should have taken his dog Veto with him everywhere to keep him safe and bite any assassins in the butt.

After President Garfield died, Vice-President Chester Arthur became the president.  Everybody was worried because Mr. Arthur had done some bad stuff while he was the Collector of the Port of New York. He was also in cahoots with some of President Garfield's enemies.  But people were shocked when President Arthur turned out to be a pretty good guy after all.  For one thing, he got the Civil Service Reform Act passed that President Garfield had wanted.  This was a law that said government jobs should be given to people who actually knew how to do them, and not as a reward to people who happened to be good buddies with some politician.

A journalist named Alexander McClure wrote, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired . . . more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe."  The unfortunate thing about President Arthur is that we don't know whether he ever owned any dogs or not.  He had a kidney disease, and he didn't feel like trying very hard to get nominated to run for another term.  So after serving his one term, he retired.  He only lived about three more years after that, and the day before he died, he had all his personal papers burned.

The next president after President Arthur was Grover Cleveland.  It turns out that his first name was Stephen, but I guess he never went by that name, only by Grover.  Mr. Cleveland was the only Democrat to be elected president during the period from 1860 to 1912.  All the others were Republicans.  This does not seem very fair, but that's the way it happened.

The wedding of Grover Cleveland
and Frances Folsom

President Cleveland was first elected in 1884.  He was a bachelor, so his sister moved to the White House and became his hostess for two years.  Then the president got married, in a great big, fancy wedding, to a woman named Frances Folsom.  Miss Folsom was only 21 years old at that time, and President Cleveland was 49.  This meant that he was 27 years older than she was, but the American people didn't mind this.  They liked their new First Lady, who was beautiful and who had a warm and friendly personality.

Now I will tell you something to prove how much people liked Miss Folsom, which is that lots of little girls were getting named "Frances" about that time.  Mom told me that one of her grandmothers was named Frances Folsom Brown, and it's pretty clear where that name came from because the name "Folsom" is not in Mom's family anywhere.  Mom's grandma was called "Fanny" by her friends and family, and Mrs. Cleveland was called "Frank."

Okay, but here's the important thing.  Mrs. Cleveland really loved all kinds of animals.  And as soon as this news got out, a man from Milwaukee sent her a little 9-month-old poodle.  Except that it might have been a Pekingese.  It was described as the smallest "pug dog" in the U.S., since it only weighed a pound and a half.  So who knows what it was, exactly?  I tried to find a picture of this little dog, but all I could find was pictures of Mrs. Cleveland wearing very fashionable dresses, which seems to be something she liked to do.  I think she could have just held her little dog while she was posing for photos in her fancy dresses, but maybe she didn't want to get dog hair on her clothes.

The Clevelands had some other dogs, besides having five children.  They had one dog that was probably a dalmatian, and then there is this picture of the president with his son Richard and a dog whose name is not known.  To me, this dog looks like some kind of spaniel, so I guess the dalmatian was a different dog.  Either that or somebody thought that any dog with spots is a dalmatian.













When he ran for a second term, President Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison.  I already told you all about President Harrison's pets.  Then after Mr. Harrison had been the president for four years, Mr. Cleveland ran again, and he won!  So he is the only president ever to have two terms that weren't one right after the other.  And he was the only president to be counted twice, because he was both the 22nd and the 24th president of the U.S.

Okay, now I will just tell you a tiny bit about President William McKinley, who was next after President Cleveland.  He was elected in 1896, and he was the last Civil War veteran to serve as president.  There is no record that he had any dogs of his own, but there was one strange incident with a mysterious black dog that I'm going to tell you about.

The president is on the right, and the dog
is on the left.

President McKinley served one term, and then he got elected a second time in 1900.  The next year, he went to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, and I'm sorry to say that a crazy man shot him there.  But the morning of the day when President McKinley got shot, he went to see Niagara Falls, and while he and some other people were walking around, a black dog kept following them.  Nobody knew where the dog came from or whose dog it was.

The assassination of President McKinley

Anyway, that afternoon, the president was at the Pan-American Expo, and he was shaking hands with a bunch of people, and a man came up with his hand all bandaged.  Except that there was nothing wrong with his hand.  He was just hiding a gun inside the bandage.  So when he came to President McKinley, he shot him.  The reason he gave for shooting the president was that he wanted to get rid of government.

Later on, when people remembered the black dog at Niagara Falls, they thought that the dog must have been a bad omen.  At first it seemed like President McKinley was going to get well, but after a few days, his wounds got infected, and he died.  This was another sad case of a president not being guarded from bad guys, even by a dog, and of doctors not understanding enough about germs and icky things like that.

So here are the lessons we can learn from these four presidents:
1.  Every president should have a dog.
2.  Every president needs bodyguards.
3.  Never stick your dirty fingers into a wound.

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