OUR KITTENS ARE SICK......AND OTHER NEWS

We've had our new kittens, Ivy and Ingram, for a week and a day now.  When we first got them, they were very lively and crazy, and they meowed a lot, which was driving us nuts.  They were having some diarrhea, and then last Saturday, Mom saw blood in the diarrhea.  When she found some blood on Ingram's butt, she knew who was responsible for this situation.

Ingram

Mom called Aunt Tania to ask if it was probably just worms, or if she should be worried.  They talked for a while, and Mom decided to take the kittens to Dr. Patricia's office.  She couldn't take them to the shelter because Dr. Regan was still on vacation.

So Mom took the kittens there, and it was Dr. Vodraska who looked at them.  Dr. Griswold isn't at the clinic anymore because she must have got a job someplace else that probably paid more.  So Dr. Vodraska is working there part time.  Many years ago, Dr. Vodraska used to work in Dr. Patricia's clinic, but then Dr. Vodraska, who was in the Army Reserves, got deployed when the war in Afghanistan started.  So now she is done with her Army career, and she is just a regular veterinarian.

Anyway, on Saturday, Dr. Vodraska looked at the kittens, and she looked in their ears, and she listened to their hearts, and she took their temperatures, and she said they were in very good shape.  Then she sent some of Ingram's poop off to the lab to find out what was wrong with it.  And on Monday, we found out that the lab said nothing was wrong with Ingram's poop at all.  But by then, his poop had started looking better, so maybe it was just stress or a change of food or something.

Ivy

Then on Monday evening, Ivy started sneezing.  So Mom was a little worried about that, and she decided to take the kittens to the shelter on Tuesday, which would be Dr. Regan's first day back.  But when Mom called to ask what time would be good to bring the kittens, Dr. Regan said she was too busy to see the kittens on Tuesday, and Mom should bring them on Wednesday.

So Mom was going to take the kittens on Wednesday, but then Aunt Tania called Mom that morning and said that it wasn't a good day to bring the kittens because the inspector was coming, and everyone was feeling stressed and grumpy.  Meanwhile, Ivy was sneezing more, but Aunt Tania said she thought Ivy just had a little cold, and she would be okay.

On Thursday morning, Mom had to do some stuff, but then she called the shelter to find out what time to bring the kittens, and she found out that Dr. Regan and all the other vets were in a meeting that might last for a while, and after that, Dr. Regan was leaving.  Which meant that Mom had to wait until yesterday to take the kittens to the shelter.  And by then, poor little Ivy had a really stuffed-up nose, and it was hard for her to breathe, plus Ingram was sneezing, too.

Poor, sick Ivy

Well, when Dr. Regan saw Ivy, she said, "That is a very sick kitten."  She also told Mom that she shouldn't have waited 5 days to bring a sneezing kitten to the vet.  But Mom said she kept trying to bring the kittens in, but Dr. Regan never seemed to be available to see them.  Anyway, Dr. Regan started both kittens on Doxycycline, and they also have some other stuff that Mom is supposed to squirt up their tiny little noses to help them breathe.  Plus Dr. Regan gave Ivy some subcutaneous fluids, and she gave both kittens a vitamin A shot.  Oh, and Ivy has conjunctivitis, so she has to get ointment in her eyes.

Next week Mom is supposed to take the kittens back to the shelter to get tested for FIV and Feline Leukemia.  And pretty soon, they will be old enough to start getting their vaccinations.  I guess Dr. Regan thinks that Ivy and Ingram will survive their upper respiratory infection or else she wouldn't have told Mom to bring them back next week.  But she did say that if they got worse, Mom should bring them in sooner.

Mom decided maybe the kittens were getting cold in their crate because it's kind of in a drafty location, especially when the air-conditioner is on.  So Mom made a new bed for them out of a cardboard box with high sides, and also she put a blanket over the crate.  So maybe that will help.

The kittens in their covered crate with Nurse Jason on top

But anyway, that's enough about the kittens.  Now I want to talk about ME!  I had to go to the vet's office yesterday to get another one of those tests for my Cushing's Disease.  I got to meet Dr. Vodraska, and she was very nice.  Mom pointed out to Nurse Debbie that I had a wound on my side where my evil brother Barry bit me a couple of days ago.  He bit me when we were both lurking around the kittens' crate, looking for little bits of food or litter or kitten poop that might have fallen out.  Dr. Vodraska said that I needed antibiotics, so now I have to take Clavamox.  Mom and I were surprised, because if I hadn't had this blood test thing, Mom would not have even taken me to the vet for the wound, since it didn't look infected or anything.  But Dr. Vodraska said that my immune system is not so good because of my Cushing's Disease, and everything heals slower when you have Cushing's Disease, so that's why I should take the Clavamox.

My bite wound 

I like taking pills because I get extra little dog food meatballs.  Oh, but guess what!  The other day, Mom was giving Nicky his pills, except he didn't like his meatball, and he dropped it on the floor.  So I snatched it up and ate it, just like that!  Mom was upset because the meatball had some pill called Prozac in it and also one called Tramadol.  So Mom called the vet's office, and they said to give me hydrogen peroxide to make me puke.  Which Mom did.  But I didn't puke.  Then Mom watched me all evening to see if I would have a seizure, but I didn't.  I was just fine, except I was really relaxed and sleepy, so I snoozed a lot.

And that's all the news for today, which is quite a bit of news, but it's important news, so that's why I wanted to tell it to you.

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DALMATIANS

Most people know a dalmatian when they see one, and that's because dalmatians have all those spots.  Usually, the spots are either black or liver-colored.  But sometimes they can be blue, brindle, mosaic, orange, lemon, or tri-colored (with tan spots on the eyebrows, cheeks, legs, and chest).  When the puppies are first born, they are totally white, but their spots start showing up within a week.  By the time they are a month old, they have most of their spots.  More spots can show up later, but at a slower rate.

Dalmatians have a short coat that is fine and dense.  They shed all year long, and the stiff little hairs can worm their way into fabric and be hard to get rid of.  Brushing a dalmatian at least once a week will maybe help prevent this problem.

An adult dalmatian weighs between 35 and 70 pounds, and can be anywhere from 19 to 24 inches tall.  The males are usually a little bigger than the females.  Dalmatians are muscular dogs with a lot of strength and endurance.  They also have a whole bunch of energy and need regular exercise.  Their eyes can be brown, amber, or blue.  Some dogs have one brown eye and one blue eye.

Nobody knows exactly where the dalmatian came from, but the international dog organization, FCI, has recognized the Republic of Croatia as the breed's country of origin.  I have found a map of Croatia, so you can see where it is, in case you don't already know.  I think this country has an interesting shape, sort of like a warped boomerang.  The pointy southern part that goes down along the coast is where Dalmatia is located.  The best guess about how the spotted dogs were used in Dalmatia is that they were guard dogs and companions for nomads.

After dalmatians were brought to England, that is where the breed was mostly developed.  Starting about 1920, the breed became really popular in much of Europe.  Here are some of the ways that dalmatians have been used as working dogs:

1.  Guard dogs
2.  Hunting rats and vermin
3.  Bird dogs, retrievers
4.  Trail hounds
5.  In packs for hunting boars or stags
6.  Circus dogs
7.  Rescue dogs
8.  Carriage dogs
9.  Firehouse dogs

When dalmatians were used as carriage dogs, they were trained to run ahead of the horses and clear the way for the carriage.  They did sort of the same thing for fire trucks that were pulled by horses.  Also they nipped at the horses' heels to get them to run faster.  Plus the dalmatians acted as guard dogs for carriages or fire trucks or in fire houses, because people sometimes tried to steal the strong, fast fire horses.

After fire trucks started having motors instead of horses, dalmatians stayed in the fire houses as mascots.  Lots of firefighters like to have dalmatians as pets.  Pi Kappa Alpha, which is known as the firefighters' fraternity, has a dalmatian as its mascot.

The Anheuser-Busch Company, who makes Budweiser beer, uses dalmatians on their beer wagons, which are pulled by those great big Clydesdale horses.  There are several teams of Clydesdales and wagons, and they tour around the country, along with their dalmatian mascots.  According to tradition, brewers used dalmatians on their wagons to guard the beer while the driver made deliveries.

Another place you might have seen these spotted dogs was in the two Disney movies.  The first one, 101 Dalmatians, was animated, and it came out in 1961.  It was based on a 1956 novel by Dodie Smith.  The second movie, 102 Dalmatians, came out in 1996, and it had real dogs and actors in it, including Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil.  I only mention Glenn Close because she is one of Mom's favorite actors.

Sadly, after this second movie, lots of people decided they wanted a dalmatian of their very own, so they got a puppy.  Lots of these puppies came from puppymills or backyard breeders, and they went to homes where people didn't know how to deal with such a hyper dog.  So the dogs ended up in shelters or with rescue groups, and it was a bad situation.  Nowadays, dalmatians aren't nearly as popular.  In fact the number of AKC registrations for the breed between 2000 and 2010 dropped 90%.

But dalmatians can still be good family dogs, even though they are a high-maintenance breed.  Because of their energy, they need about 30 or 40 minutes of vigorous exercise every day.  They are smart and easy to train, so they can learn to do agility or flyball  or other fun stuff like that.  They can also be trained to go jogging or run along beside a horse and rider.

The lifespan of a dalmatian is about 11 to 13 years, but some can live to be 15 or 16.  Older dogs can get bone spurs and arthritis, but they don't often have hip dysplasia.  About 10% have hypothyroidism.

One bad genetic problem in this breed is deafness, either in one ear or both.  Only about 70% of dalmatians have normal hearing.  At first, breeders didn't realize the dogs were deaf, and they thought they were just kind of stupid.  But even now, after they know about the deafness, they are not trying too hard to breed away from it.  And this is because the dogs least likely to be deaf are the ones that have big patches of color instead of all those little spots.  But the breed standard calls for little spots, and dalmatians with great big spots can't be shown.

The Dalmatian Club of America says that deaf puppies should always be euthanized.  They should never be sold or even placed in pet homes.  Dogs with blue eyes are more likely to be deaf than dogs with brown eyes, so some kennel clubs say that blue eyes are a fault or even a disqualification.  And some clubs discourage the use of blue-eyed dogs for breeding.

So anyway, that's all I'm going to tell you about dalmatians, but I hope you have learned a little something.  What I have learned is that I'm glad I'm not a blue-eyed, deaf dalmatian puppy!

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A CAT NAMED MEOW

This is a very sad story about a cat who died because he was too fat.

Maybe you saw Meow when he became famous by being on the Today show on April 23.  The reason he was on that show was because he was really, really overweight.  In fact, when he first arrived at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and Humane Society in New Mexico, Meow weighed 39 pounds.  He had been given up by the 87-year-old lady who owned him because she couldn't take care of him anymore.



I think that Meow's mom was probably very sad to have to give up her kitty because she loved him a lot.  You could tell that she loved him because she gave him a ton of food to eat and lots of tasty treats with a bunch of calories in them.  So Meow mostly sat around and ate and didn't get much exercise, and he got fat.  This could happen to any cat in the same circumstances, or to a dog, or even to a human.

Anyway, the nice people at the Santa Fe shelter wanted Meow to have a good life, so right away they put him on a diet that had lots of protein and almost no carbohydrates.  By the time he appeared on the Today show, Meow had already lost 2 pounds.  Meow went to live in a foster home, and he was doing well there for a while.  He would go up the stairs, which was good exercise, and he liked getting attention from his humans.

Then on Thursday of last week, Meow started wheezing.  The vet at the shelter thought he might have asthma, so she put him on oxygen.  But he didn't get any better, so then some specialty vets came in to help.  Meow was in the emergency hospital with four different doctors trying to help him, but it turned out that his lungs were failing.  And on Saturday, Meow died.  He was not an old kitty.  Probably he was between 2 and 5 years old.  His lungs just couldn't keep working because he was so very fat.

A lot of people were interested in Meow, and they wanted him to lose weight and be healthy, but that didn't happen, which is very sad.  There is a Facebook page where people could follow Meow's progress, and now they can post comments there about his death.

The best thing that Meow did was he made people more aware of the problem of pet obesity.  There is actually a whole organization whose purpose is to help prevent pets from getting fat.  It is called the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP).  In February of 2012, this group reported that about 53% of American cats and 55% of American dogs are overweight.  And among these overweight pets, more than 1 in 5 is "clinically obese," which means that they are at least 30% over what their normal weight should be.

Sadly, the number of obese pets is growing, and this means that even more of these animals will end up getting arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease.  I don't like to point fingers -- or, uh, toes -- but a lot of the reason for all this obesity is because owners are feeding their pets too much.  And besides that, people are not getting out and taking their dogs for walks or playing with their cats or otherwise giving them exercise.

Another problem is that a lot of humans are also overweight.  I hope I will not offend anybody by saying that.  I am just reporting what I have read and seen with my own eyes.  The Centers for Disease Control says that about two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.  This means that a lot of people don't have a good picture in their minds of what a normal weight looks like for themselves or for their pets either.

On the APOP website, there is something called a Pet Weight Translator, and it tells you how extra weight on a cat or dog compares with extra weight on a man or woman.  This site doesn't have all the dog breeds, like for instance, they don't have basenjis.  But they do have many of the most popular breeds.

Anyway, getting back to Meow, I think it's a shame that he had to die, just because he got fed too much.  Of course, Mom says I should remember this whenever I start complaining about her not giving me as much food as I would like to eat.  It's just that when you're hungry, it's so hard to remember these things!

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MORE WORDS

BADINAGE

This means a sort of playful teasing and talking back-and-forth in a fun way.  It is sort of like tossing a ball from one person to the other, except there's not really a ball.  There's just words.  Another word for badinage is repartee.

The word came from the French word badiner, which means "to jest" or "to banter."  And badiner comes from the Old Provençal word badar, which means "to gape."  I'm not sure what gaping has to do with jesting, but I am just telling you what my research said.

PERSIFLAGE

Persiflage means pretty much the same thing as badinage.  It is light, silly conversation or friendly teasing.  This word also comes from the French, and I think this must be because French people have always liked sitting around in their fancy drawing rooms and talking to each other with witty repartee.  Anyway, the original French word is persifler, which means "to tease."  This word contains siffler, which is the French word for "to whistle."  Siffler is from Old French and also from the Late Latin word sfilre.

BATHOS

If you just look at this word, you might think it has to do with baths, which I personally hate, but I am happy to tell you that bathos is about literary style and not about soap and water.  In Greek, bathos means "depth," so I'm guessing that it is the same root word where we got the word bath.  But if you are dealing with bathos, you don't have to worry about getting shampoo in your eyes.

So anyway, what bathos means is a sort of speech or writing that is going along, talking about important things, and then suddenly, it is talking about trivial stuff.  Sometimes this is done on purpose in order to be humorous.  But other times it might happen because somebody is just a bad writer.

Here's an example of bathos from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams:  "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

A lot of times, stuff that's campy or kitschy could be called bathos.  One example would be something serious such as a painting of The Last Supper that's printed on a silly item like a dish towel.  Or another example is if you have something that looks like a gun, but when you pull the trigger, one of those little flags pops out that says "bang!"

The word bathos can also be used to describe something that is trite or flat or insincere, or else something that is too emotional or sentimental.

PATHOS

It's easy to get the words pathos and bathos mixed up, and that's because they look almost alike.  But pathos is never insincere, like bathos is.  Pathos comes from the Greek word páthos, which means "suffering" or "sensation."  When someone speaks or writes with pathos, they are trying to appeal to the audience's emotions.  The writer or speaker wants other people to understand how he feels, and then to feel the same way.

So for example, if you were writing about a poor, homeless dog, you might say something like this:  "He moved warily along the street, head held low.  His ribs stuck out sharply through the dirty, matted coat."

If you use the adjective pathetic, then you can mean something like "deserving pity."  But you might also mix some contempt and scorn in with the pity.  Like for instance, "Her attempts to make the dog trade its freshly-killed rabbit for a stale dog biscuit were pathetic."

FILLIP

Mom recently re-read one of her favorite books, which is called Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë.  This book was full of words that Mom and I don't know very well, so we made a list, and you may be seeing some of these words in my future blog entries about Interesting Words.  Anyway, in Jane Eyre, one thing that Mr. Rochester says more than once is, "I don't care a fillip about that."  So Mom and I thought that a fillip must be something small that doesn't have much value.

Well, it turned out we were mostly wrong about fillip.  Because one thing it means is that action humans do when they put the fingernail of one finger against the ball of their thumb, and then they flick the finger.  This action has all sorts of practical uses, such as thumping someone on the head or flipping a bug off your sandwich.  I'm a little sad that dogs can't do a fillip, but our paws are just not built the right way.

Anyway, Mom was shocked to learn that there was actually a name for this finger-flicking thing.  One dictionary we looked at online said the word was archaic, so that would mean that not many people use it nowadays.  But besides filliping with your finger, it turns out that you can fillip in other ways.  For example, if you lowered sales taxes, that might fillip purchases.  So a fillip can be anything that boosts or excites or stimulates.  Also, it can improve a situation or encourage someone.

And then, finally, we found a definition that seemed to be what Mr. Rochester was saying, and this definition said, "One that is trivial or of little importance."

The origin of fillip is in the 15th century.  It supposedly imitated the sound someone makes as they flick or snap their fingers.  When Mom fillips with her finger and thumb, it doesn't make much of a sound at all.  When she snaps her fingers, that sound is sort of like the word snap, but it doesn't really sound like fillip at all, if you ask me.  But as usual, nobody asked me!

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OUR NEW FOSTER KITTENS!

Thursday Mom brought home our two new foster kitties.  One of them is a little black boy with just a tiny, short stub of a tail.  His name is Ingram.  The other kitten is a girl who is a grey tabby with cute white markings.  Her name is Ivy.  Mom picked out a bunch of names that started with "I" because she thought maybe she could find more Interesting names that way.  Then she told Aunt Tania some of the names, and Aunt Tania said which names she liked best, so that's how the kittens got named.

Ingram and Ivy started their lives at a truck stop.  The man who runs the truck stop found them, and he also found a litter of newborn kittens, plus he found a mama cat who got killed -- like maybe she was hit by a car or something.  Anyway, we don't know which litter of kittens the dead mama cat belonged to.  Probably, there was another mama cat out there who came back to feed her kittens, and her kittens were gone, and she couldn't find them anyplace.

The litter of newborn kittens is being fostered by somebody else.  They have to be fed with a bottle, but our kittens are big enough that they have just learned to eat canned food.  They are very messy kittens.  Sometimes they stand right in the middle of the food dish while they eat the food.  And they have very soft poop which they don't cover up very well, so they walk in it, and Ivy gets her tail in it.  A long time ago, when we first got Hallie, Hazel, and Hamlet, they were messy like that, too.  Ivy and Ingram are about the same age, so I guess they are all just going through the messy phase of their lives.

Right now Mom is not letting the two kittens come out of their cage because they have not been tested for FIV and Feline Leukemia yet.  Also they have not had any vaccinations or deworming.  Aunt Tania wants to wait until next week to do these things because then Dr. Regan will be back from vacation.  But Ivy really thinks she should come out, so she keeps climbing the door of the crate just when Mom is trying to open it.  Or else she runs out when the door is open.  Ingram thinks he might like to go out and go exploring, too, but he is not quite as bold as Ivy is.  We think that Ivy is going to be a lot like Hallie was, and that she will go everywhere and get into everything, even if she is not supposed to!

These kittens are really different from Jilly, Janey, and Jeeves, just because these new ones have lots more energy, and they are always playing and wrestling with each other.  The "J" kitties were here for several weeks before they started to feel like playing.  Anyway, we hope this means that Ivy and Ingram are nice, healthy kittens, and that they will be ready for adoption as soon as they get big enough to get fixed.  Which will probably be about the first part of June, but they will have to weigh at least 2 pounds before they can have surgery.

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SAD NEWS ABOUT OUR FOSTER KITTIES

We first got our little barn kittens, Janey, Jilly, and Jeeves, on February 11.  Ever since then, we have been trying to get them to be all well and healthy so that they could be adopted.  But every time they got sort of better, something else would start being wrong with them.  The worst part was when we found out they had toxoplasmosis, which they took four weeks of medicine to get (mostly) cured from.  But in the meantime, Jason got toxo, and he was very sick, and it cost a bunch of money to make him well again.

Jeeves and Jilly

And then the kittens had a ton of different kinds of worms, and they also had giardia.  So they got treated for giardia, but they tested positive for it again, so they got treated a second time.

Plus they had really bad allergies, and they were always scratching themselves.  So for a while, they hardly had any hair on their heads or necks.  And their armpits were all scabby.  And Jeeves was the worst because he scratched one side of his neck totally bare and raw, and it looked terrible.





Then Dr. Regan gave Jeeves a steroid shot, and that made him all better.  His neck healed up, and he started looked really good again.  But after about 3 weeks, he began scratching some more, so he had to get another steroid shot.  And the steroids made his immune system weak, so he got conjunctivitis in his eyes.

Last week Mom took Jeeves to see Dr. Patricia because Dr. Patricia said she would give him an exam for free.  She listened to Jeeves' heart and found out that he had a heart murmur.  Which might make him have a shorter life, or it might not bother him much at all.  Anyway, Dr. Patricia said Jeeves ought to have an electrocardiogram before he had any surgery again, and she said the electrocardiogram would cost $300 or more.

Then Dr. Patricia said that Jeeves also ought to get a skin biopsy to find out for sure if he had eosinophilic granuloma syndrome.  And after that, his allergies could get treated, but that would be kind of expensive, and he would have to get treatment for the rest of his life.  So the more we found out about what Jeeves' adopters would have to do for him and how much it would cost, the more we thought that nobody was going to want to adopt him or his sisters either.

Janey

Anyway, the last thing to happen was that Dr. Regan sent a sample of Janey's poop to the lab to culture and see if any bacteria grew in it.  And the results came back saying that there was still giardia, which might have meant they still had it, or it might have meant they were just carriers.  Also there was clostridium, which is another icky thing that can grow in your guts and make you have diarrhea and stuff like that.

So on Monday, Mom and Aunt Tania sat down with Dr. Beth to talk about the kittens and all their health issues.  Dr. Regan was on vacation, so that's why she wasn't there.  Dr. Beth said the kittens would need at least two more weeks of antibiotics and de-worming.  Also she said that she was afraid the toxoplasmosis was not gone, and that the kittens would always have symptoms of it or at least be spreading it around for other animals and people to get.

Then after they talked for a while, Mom and Aunt Tania started to say that maybe the best thing to do would be to put the kittens to sleep because it didn't seem like they would ever be adoptable.  And Dr. Beth said that she agreed.  Aunt Tania said they would all "sleep on it," but by Monday night, Mom had decided that the kittens should be put down, so she called Aunt Tania and told her so.  After which,  we all found it really sad to live in the house with the kittens because we knew what was going to happen to them.  But at least they didn't know what was going to happen, so that was good.

Yesterday morning, Mom put some Parmesan cheese on the kittens' breakfast to make it a little bit more special.  They ran around the house and played for a while, and Jilly sat in the bathroom window, which was open.  I think maybe she was remembering when she was little and she lived outside and could run around everywhere on the farm and hunt mice and do fun stuff like that.

Jilly and Jeeves

Mom took the kittens to the Humane Society about 11:30, and she stayed with the kittens while they went to sleep.  She cried and felt very sad.  Now Jilly, Janey, and Jeeves are at the Rainbow Bridge, and they are running around there, and they don't have to be itchy anymore or have diarrhea or be sick ever again.

Our house seems kind of empty without them, but I think it is Jason who misses them the most because he liked to play with them.  He especially played with Jeeves, and sometimes he played with Janey, too.  When Jason played with Janey, she always squealed and squeaked and made lots of noises because she didn't really like to play so rough.  But Jeeves didn't seem to mind.

Anyway, our house won't be empty for very long because we are getting two new foster kittens later today, and maybe there will be three.  But they are much smaller and younger than the kittens we just lost.  They are only about 4 weeks old, and they are just starting to eat solid food.  I am looking forward to meeting them, and so is Jason, but Chloe and Charlie couldn't care less!

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JAPANESE DRAGONS

Japanese dragons are quite a bit like Chinese dragons, but Chinese dragons came first.  Japanese people mixed the dragon myths they got from China, Korea, and India with their own folk tales, and that's how they came up with their own special dragons.

Dragons in Japan, just like in China, have always been symbols of power, good fortune and wealth.  They are the water gods connected with rain and bodies of water.  They don't have wings, like Western dragons have.  Also, they can be shape shifters who can turn into humans and mate with people.

Dragon painted by Hokusai

Imperial dragons in China and Korea have five claws on each foot.  Indonesian dragons have four, and Japanese dragons have three.  Oh, and non-imperial dragons in China have four claws.  Except sometimes they have three.  But only the emperor can use a dragon with five toes.  Anybody else who uses this image will be sentenced to death.

Here's a folk tale from Japan that is pretty interesting, I think.  There was once a beautiful woman named Kiyohime, and one day a handsome priest named Anchin came to lodge for a while in her village.  The two of them fell in love, but Anchin wasn't supposed to be interested in women, since he was a priest.  So he managed to overcome his feelings for Kiyohime, and he refused to meet with her anymore.  This made her really, really mad, so when Anchin saw this, he left town in a hurry.  But  Kiyo was hot on his trail.

When Anchin got to the shore of the Hidaka River, he asked a boatman to take him across, but told the boatman not to let Kiyo get in his boat.  As soon as Kiyohime saw that Anchin was getting away, she jumped in the river and started to swim after him.  She was so angry that she turned into a huge serpent as she swam.

Kiyohime turning into a serpent,
by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka

As soon as he got to shore, Anchin ran into a temple, and the priests there hid him under the bell.  But Kiyo, the serpent, smelled him hiding there.  She began to coil around the bell, and she beat it several times with her tail.  After that, she belched out a bunch of fire which melted the bell and killed the priest.

Okay, so that was not a very cheery story, but I liked it because it was different from all those happy fairy tales that American kids hear, such as the one about the witch who was always luring children to her house so she could eat them.

Another folk story was about nure-onna, which means "wet woman" in Japanese.  A nure-onna was a strange, not-real type of creature, like a ghost or a phantom.  When people saw her, they said she had the head of a woman and the body of a snake.  Her claws and fangs were very long.  Usually, she was seen on a shore someplace, washing her long, beautiful hair.

Nure-onna

No one knows exactly what nure-onna was up to or what she wanted.  In some stories, she was evil, and she could crush trees with her tail, and she liked to eat humans.  She used to carry around a bundle that looked like a baby, and if someone offered to help her, she would let them hold the bundle.  Then when the person tried to put the bundle down, they found out it wasn't a baby at all.  Instead it was really, really heavy.  In fact, it was so heavy that the person couldn't run away from the nure-onna, who used her snake tongue to suck out all the person's blood.

But in other tales about nure-onna, she was just wanting everyone to leave her alone so she could wash her hair in peace.  And if people bothered her, that's when she got nasty with them.

Ceiling painting in Tenryu-ji Temple, Kyoto

So those are a couple of ancient Japanese stories about creatures that were sort of dragon-like, or at least snake-like.  In these stories, the dragons (or snakes) do not seem to be bringing people all those nice things like power, wealth, and good luck that Asian dragons are supposed to be the symbols of.  I find this confusing, but I am just a little basenji dog, so maybe I am not meant to understand these things.  Anyway, I'm going to stop writing now because I don't want to have bad dreams about being melted alive inside a bell by a dragon's breath!

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