Pity poor Jennifer Hart. "In my day," she laments, "nobody had a dog or a cat. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip." I imagine her taking Silver Beauty to obedience classes, (every Thursday at 7:00 p.m.), attached to a tiny leash (a thread). "Come!" she would command, giving a firm tug, and come it would. "Stay! Oh, look! Silver Beauty knows how to play dead!"



Oh, there are plenty of advantages to owning a paper clip as a pet, I'm sure. They'd be cheap to feed. (I'm guessing iron filings, right?) And if they shed, what would you get? Iron filings. Re-cycle! They may be silver, but they're also green. They'd be obedient. ("Down! Good girl!") And convenient--you could get a whole litter into a matchbox. But for all these excellent qualities, they have little to celebrate about them. They lack depth. They lack mystery. They lack...enthusiasm. Did the Egyptians ever worship the paper clip as a god? No. I think there must be a reason for that.



Now, cats, on the other hand, were (worshipped, I mean). And as both Wodehouse and Pratchett remind us, "...they have not forgotten this." They are imperious. When Davinci (the orange one) discovers the weather is bad, it's clearly my fault. Equally clearly, he lets me know I'd darn well better fix it. Like gods, they baffle and defy us. I know that "Meow" means "I want...," but want exactly what? I am expected to know, but oftentimes I do not. And if I'm too stupid to figure it out, well, he'll just rip another 1/16th of an inch off the moulding at the back door to encourage me to try a little harder. Why do we submit to them like this? I don't know, but we do it willingly. Maybe it's because, like the Egyptians, we are in awe of them. We love them, but maybe we're also a little afraid.



The dogs, on the other hand, are not in awe of them at all. If Les remembers he was once treated as a god, well, Zoee is only too happy to remind him of his fall. In fact, happiness is what dogs are all about.



How can you not love an animal whose very being declares that life is a celebration? Heron on the pond? Get him! Squirrel up a tree? Yay!



If cats have a philosophy, I suspect it is probably Zen, but all that calm (at least on the surface) is too severe for me. Much as I love them, I confess I prefer the philosophy of dogs: "There is now, and there is not now. If now is good, then so is life." I like that. I like it a lot.



I love all our animals, but I love them differently. (Okay. There. I've said it.)These pages celebrate their presence in our lives. Sometimes after a good roll in a dead fish, (personal grooming for dogs), I might love one of them a little less, but if they weren't here, I'd miss them terribly: the muddy foot prints on my windshield, the smell of swamp on the towels, the balls of fur drifting across my kitchen floor.