The cat always gets the last word

You know, if you thought like that for real then you would soon lose your grasp and you might fall into the whirlpool. Forever.

There will come a moment tomorrow when I will feel differently. Hooray!

I wish I could quantify the difference. Perhaps then I could figure out whether I am an optimist or a pessimist.

As if that is a worthwhile endeavor.

Tex is my dog. Tex is old. An old dog. He growls and grumbles and barks at all of us, from time to time. But we still love Tex. Why?

Is it because he is soft and he allows us to hold him close to us and pretend that he is our pet, rather than the ownership being on the other foot. By that I mean, as with any pet, it is sometimes hard to determine who is in charge.

I don't think Tex cares. Tex is willing to put up with us as long as we feed him and let him poot and tinkle on a regular basis. He is even willing to put up with our desire to control him, to a point. He does this because he is a pack animal, meaning that he follows the pack, whether it is the one he was born into or one he takes on.

I have heard that at some point a dog left his pack and joined the human group around the fire. He supposedly did this because he could take advantage of the humans by getting a regular meal around the fire.

This concept does not feel right when you apply it to very small dogs. Yip! Yip! Yip! I guess they got to eat too. "She was the winner, that became the doggie's dinner." Thank you, Nick Lowe.

Anyway, that began all the connections between dog and man, healthy and unhealthy. So along with the saint bernard pulling the skiier out of the snowbed and Lassie pulling Timmy out of the well, we get my elderly cousin Minnie, living in an apartment in Jacksonville with toy poodles who nipped her hands and peed on her drapes.

I have loved all of our dogs, even the ones who were bad sometimes. I appreciate dogs enough to enjoy the mascot of my Law School alma mater. To whoof in a crowd of red and black.

But I am enough of an appreciant of cats to realize that everything has its limits, even dogs.

The cat says, "Get real."