DEAR ABBY!!!

I OFTEN PONDER..

Why in the hell do dog owners feel that just because they own a canine, they are welcome to the party.

SHEESH.

Leave your fucking dogs at home.

I hate them.

Look I'm a Cat Person. They're clean, they think for themselves, and generally speaking, will just go away if they want to. They won't hop in the car when they hear your car keys rattling. Cats don't travel well. When cats take a shit, THEY COVER IT UP!!! Dogs just eat it. You can leave a dish out for Pussy, filled to the brim, go away for a couple of days (whilst tweaking out with a trick), come back to The Silent Treatment, knowing exactly what they're thinking (NAFF OFF!!!), then just hopping on the bed and giving a purrr. And that's when THEY decide to. Dogs, like infants, need constant nurturing and attention.

I want neither.

I will admit. I had a love affair with one Abby, a black lab. I think it was because I was the only one around who gave more than a pat on the head, or violent tugs of the ears whilst riding her to the bathrooom. See, I was the governess of a THREE YEAR OLD. Right out of the psych ward. Still dazed and confused by the jolts of electricity bounding hither and thither through my brain. Oh, this was many years ago, dahling, long before I got "normal". Not to get off topic, but a lobotomy can give you the same UPLIFT as a nose job. Try it and see what you'll forget!!! If only I'd had one recently, I'd not remember the terror of those long days with Little Miss Courtney.

OK. Let's talk Courtney and move on. LMC. Oh, she's all grown up and in college, far and away from her lovely Wine Country home in Healdsburg, beautiful as a young woman can be (though too squat to be model material), whatever happened, happened. Somewhere along the line, betwixt bottles of milk and post puberty petulance, LMC blossomed into a swell gal, who I could go drinking with. Yikes. (I'm passing the 45 mark in mere weeks. I never lie about it because as the Sondheim Song Says: I'm still here. If there's nothing better about life, it's Sondheim because if you open a page, you'll find a lyric that suits JUST where you are in Life at any given moment. HOLD YOUR HATS AND HALLELUJAH, CRAIG IS GONNA SHOW IT TO YA...) I don't even want to think of it, but here goes: Try sitting around with a Three Year Old with slightly irritable habits, in the midday sun, as the grapes were-a-ripening. and yer teeth were-a edge because you just ran out of Valium. There's no booze in the house because Papa just checked out of The Betty Ford Center, and moiself, well. It was fairly neurotic sit-comish scenario. Courtney loved the tale of Peter Pan. So out on lounge chairs we'd sit, she with sippy cup in hand, me with Abby in my lap----all 80 pounds of her----she thought herself extremely Toy Poodlish---and off the top of my head, I'd wreck JM BARRIE's fab fable a few paragraphs in. Love Pete. Hate Neverland. I only really like the beginning and the end, simple because it takes place in London during a certain era, when grown-ups went out in tuxes and frocks, leaving their offspring in the hands of Katie Nana, A DOG??? And what happens? Some 50 year old cross-dresser turns up in the window, teaches the kids how to fly off, drop acid and share coke with each other.

WAY FUNNER THAN THE ORIGINAL.

Fortunately, before we got that far, LMC is having a fit because her Patent Leather Mary Janes are killing her. Abby would look at her, then sorrowfully up at me as if to say: What have I done to deserve this. My thoughts exactly. Then out would lap this pink tongue, dousing my chin with a schmear of schmutz. Even though I knew where that tongue had been (the cat box) I let her because hell, if you share the same bed, you better lick me someplace. Yes, in the middle of the night, Abby would creep into my room, heave herself onto the bed, and snore. If she were alive, she'd TOTALLY lie, and say "I DO NOT!!! I've NEVER SNORED!!!" just like you'd swear you were only 28.

Abby, Abby, Abby.

When I moved out into more treacherous terrain (the Russian River), I'd still drop over at Ma and Pa's place to do laundry and eat whatever I could find in the fridge. Abby would jump from back paws to front paws. Wish I could describe it better. It was catterpillarish. Ma would say: "She never does that with anyone else." Had I been MOTHER IN LAW BARGE IN MARGE, it would have been a completely different scenario. Yeah, wherever there's a kid involved, you can bet there's a gramma.

I guess I only bring this up because our (me and my real ma) largest party of the rest of my life is nigh. Fiesta Finale promises to be a whopper. But please, when you get the invite, don't be angry if it says NO DOGS ALLOWED.

This is THE CAT'S MEOW.