Cat shrines of the Mississippi

 

Thousands of angry dog owners have written in to clerkmanifesto to complain about yesterday's post in which I subtly suggested that our attraction to dogs, while not necessarily individually reprehensible (I too have loved a good dog!), speaks to the human qualities of obedience, domination, hierarchy, and social control that has invariably doomed our species' experiment in the universe to tragedy.

I'm sorry I have offended so many of you. I will make you a deal:

If your dog doesn't bark, growl, or invade my personal space uninvited, I will...

Show you more cat shrines!

Everyone loves cats, don't they?

Well, one would certainly think so judging from all the shrines dedicated to them down along the bluffs and backwaters of the Mississippi River here in Saint Minneapolis!

At the cat shrine

 

Here is a picture I took down by the river bluffs, in the morning, when the shore was frozen.

Actually, the picture I took wasn't much like this one, before I started adding things, and dreaming things, and ended up with a cat shrine.

A cat shrine.

There are nearly as many cats as there are dogs in my country. But I see dogs all the time. I only see cats on special occasions, sequestered as they are.

I think there are wonderful dogs and wonderful dog owners. But those are not the standard. And I think cats are...

cats.

But I believe this, even if it might sound like a joke:

If human beings loved cats far more than we do dogs,  we would make it through. 

But it's sixty-forty to the dogs; loyal, suggestible, territorial, hierarchical, and barking dogs, 

and we are doomed.

Misinformation times three

 

I hate misinforming people. I did it twice this week, and the incidents haunt me.

Being haunted by giving misinformation is probably a helpful trait for a person working at a library, but it's all a bit much for a person living... life.

In the first episode, a library patron was idly curious about some small colored dots on the books in The Friends of the Library Bookstore. They wanted to know if the dots had any meaning. The books in there have default prices or, rarely, price stickers. The dots don't mean anything about price, and I told the person that the dots are left over from other collections and had no meaning.

BUT THEY DO!!!!!

ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Get this: It turns out that the tiny dots are part of The Friends of the Libraries secret code system denoting how long the books have been for sale!

The second episode occurred this afternoon. A man came into the library with a medium sized German Shephardish dog. There was a bit of a yelp from the dog as he came in. He was on a leash. The man walked with him to the elevator. I asked a nearby manager what our official policy was on confronting dog wielding patrons, but all we could remember was that the policy was a bit... complicated. I walked back out to the desk, looked towards the man and he quickly left the library. Several minutes later the man and dog returned, and as they crossed in front of me I said "You can't bring a dog into the library."

The man replied "He's a service dog."

I said "He needs to have a vest of some kind."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I learned that a dog does not need to have a vest. 

We can only ask two questions. 

1. Is that a service animal?

If they say yes we must accept the answer even if it is obviously not true. We can also ask:

2. What service is your animal trained to assist with?

It is not advised to ask the second question.

I also learned that only two animals can be service animals- dogs and pygmy horses.

Pygmy Horses!!! I was super excited, and somewhat insulted that one could have a pygmy horse as a service animal, but not a cat or a bunny.

But then I learned that the pygmy horse loophole was closed and one can only have a dog as a service animal.

Later in the evening the man with the service dog (who the man almost certainly lied about being a service animal, even though after the one yelp the dog turned out to be pretty well behaved) was on the public phone yelling angrily at someone.

So I went up to the dog and said "I'm sorry, but you can't bring a person into the library."

Actually, I didn't do that.

I misinformed you.

And now I will have to pay the price.

Those trees look... familiar

 

I didn't include this picture (and another you'll see later) during Copse Week because, even though our copse makes its lovely appearance in the image, it's maybe not the main point.

Some of my romantic ideals were, perhaps, formed early on. I haven't seen this movie sampled below in many many years, and I don't even know how much I'd like it now. But having had a happy romantic life I am only inclined to feel a warmth towards all the classic bits that had anything to do with forming my way to it.

And so, out here where I run into dogs all too often, I thought I'd put in two of my favorites.

Pandemic winners

If there are enough losers around surely there has to be a few winners somewhere. In this Covid-19 Pandemic there are, and are going to be, an awful lot of losers. Don't look, but we might be ones now.

So who wins?

Pet dogs. Pet dogs are the winners here.

I went out for my morning walk. I kept my distance. I went down to the river. I took all my explorations. Maybe there will be other posts to tell you about the peace and the anger and the birds and the garbage and the art. But here, for now, I will just tell you that everyone was out walking their dog.

So many people are home, and I suspect the great majority of their dogs are very happy about it. And after an hour or two of being home most of those people say "Well, I guess I'll go walk the dog again." And so I see them in the neighborhoods. I see them on the sidewalks. I see them on the river.

Being neither a huge fan of strange dogs or coronavirus I give them all a wide birth; six feet for the dog and six feet for the virus.

Twelve feet is pretty far. 

But even from there I can still see that all the dogs look really happy.

Talking to myself

At about 4:50 the black mood hits. It's a rough day at work, and four hours and ten minutes still lie ahead of me.

My night schedule is extremely unusual for me, and from five to seven I am shelving. I'm not sure if I've ever had two hours of shelving after five. I'm the only person shelving in the whole library tonight and, like I said, I'm in a bad mood. So I shelve slowly and deliberately, nevertheless picking out errors at an astonishing rate, like brambles from the fur of a golden retriever that's been running headlong through the brush.

I stop to start reading the novel I Am Legend about a man just barely surviving alone in a zombie apocalypse.

After a few minutes I say "This is not a good idea." And I reshelve the book.

Sometimes I think surely I have found the bottom of my mood, but there's always further down.

At least so far.

Earlier in the day I was at the front desk, helping an old woman track down a couple seasons of BBC TV shows, one of which existed and one that didn't.

"I'm always glad when you're here to help." She says. "You don't just tell me to go do it myself."

Me too, lady. Me too.

Librarians and dogs

Among the many groups I once suspected would have found my blog interesting, librarians were among the top. After all, I write extensively about libraries; the culture, the politics, and the dream of libraries. I write about the philosophy of libraries, library people, and I write a great deal about books, both as objects of literature and entertainment, and as brute things, glorified bricks. And though I have never shied away from cataloging the foibles and shortcomings of librarians themselves, surely the vast majority of them would have the self-awareness and humility and recognition to take it all in rueful chuckle.

Ha!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

But I suppose that it goes both ways. Today I was leaving the fiction area with my cart emptied of the books I shelved in the peaceful pre opening hours of the library. In the distance, at the reference desk, I saw a librarian. This person must have been a substitute. I did not know her. I had no feelings about her personally. I may turn out to like her perfectly well and I may never see her again. But glancing over, seeing a librarian, I felt a frisson of irritation. And I had a sudden epiphany:

I feel exactly about librarians as I do about dogs.

On an individual basis the sky is the limit in terms of how much I can like them, how glad I am that they exist, and how much I wish their whole grouping were at their delightful standard. I have known some absolute wonderful librarians, some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to meet and befriend. And I have known some delightful dogs, some of the best personalities and most charming animals I have known.

But as a general rule I am inclined to watch them both from a wary distance, hoping they don't pee on anything I find important.

The terrible sound

Being a blog made exclusively out of words it can be a challenge when I want to tell you about something fundamentally visual, or a taste, or a sound. But words, by design and fate, are all I've got.

Today I am going to tell you about a terrible sound. It is one of my least favorite sounds in the world. 

But how do I express it?

The following is a sound I dislike intensely, though it is not the terrible sound that is the main subject of today's essay. I am, as you know, no general fan of dogs even though I can be enthusiastic on a unique case by case basis, and one of the features of dogs that displeases me most is their barking. It is sharp, and loud, and there is something hostile in it. Surely you know the sound of a dog barking, though of course it can vary widely among dogs. Shall I try a few?

yip yip yip,    yip yip yip,     yip yip yip.

Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....Rowrph....

Bak Bak.  Bak Bak. Bak Bak.

urf urf urf, urf urf urf. (30 seconds pause). urf urf urf, urf urf urf. 

YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW YOW


Well, you get the idea, no matter how clumsy mere writing is to express it. Any of these barks can be seriously annoying. Though some, at a distance, can be hardly annoying at all. In the night, near your window, they can drive you to the brink of madness. For dog lovers any of these might even register a range of positive feelings. But I find any of the above mentioned barking, greeting or warning, most unpleasant.

But at their worst these barks can never be as bad as the terrible noise. However, they are all closely linked to it. The terrible noise always follows on from these barking noises above, and though it ranges across the same kind of variety as different barks do, it is always more terrible than the bark itself.

And so, though I know I can do it no real justice, let me try with just one sample, one I heard on my walk this very morning. It goes something like this:



Fifi! Stop barking. Fifi! Don't worry, she's just friendly. Fifi! QUIET! Fifi, stop it. sorry. FIFI! Fifi! Right now, stop it! Fifi. Quiet! Fifi, quiet! Fifi, stop! Fifi!

Why I have so many Addams Family t-shirts

Morticia and Pugsley are working harmoniously in the boulevard strip garden that borders the sidewalk fronting their crumbling mansion home. Gomez pops by. "Why are you taking out all the Venus Flytraps?" He asks.

"Yes darling, it's an unfortunate sacrifice." Morticia responds. "But with all the dogs coming through the neighborhood lately we wanted to try a nice bed of poison ivy."

Yet another argument for cats over dogs

To all the dog owners out there with dogs yarking obsessively in their yards and windows, lunging at anyone anywhere simply because they're so "friendly", and trying to generally eat strangers I say this: The problem here is not with the dog, but with the dog owner. Dogs are trainable. And the only way to love a dog is to train it properly, probably in a series of exhaustive courses that your dog will love but you won't.

It's called sacrifice. It's called the greater social good. It is caring.

On the other hand you can get a cat. Short of being wildly irresponsible, or a monster, you can do whatever you want as far as cat management goes and still freely claim to love your cat without being a liar. And no one will care. 

Least of all your cat. 

SJW

I recently posted something I wrote here about libraries onto a relevant page on the Internet. I thought it would perhaps be of interest there to some people, and perhaps it was. But after a few hours all I got from it directly was an angry comment inspired, apparently, by a joke in it about Forbes being an Alt-Right magazine that was taken with an all too deadpan literalness. In the brief attack that followed I was called an SJW.

For those of you not versed fully on Internet acronyms, SJW means Single Jewish Woman. While I must assert that I am Jewish, I am most delightedly not Single, and I am also not a Woman, though because of my high voice I am occasionally mistaken for one on the phone, mostly by old men and telemarketers.

What's that?

SJW doesn't stand for Single Jewish Woman? It stands for Social Justice Warrior?

Oh. Okay. I'll take your word for it. But you could see my mistake. A person inclined to use the derisive and sarcastic term SJW, is likely to feel pretty much the same about both Single Jewish Women and Social Justice Warriors; bizarrely hostile, uncomfortable, and all... shadowy.

But fine, Social Justice Warrior. I have now been called a Social Justice Warrior.

Well... that's nice. I don't understand. That seems like a good thing to be. I mean, I can try. I want justice for and in society. And I guess I can try to be a Warrior for good.

But it's supposed to be a hostile criticism.

How am I supposed to respond to such a thing?

Say you're walking down the street and a cat comes along and you bend down and skirtch it. Someone nearby sees this and says derisively, in a mean tone of voice "Well aren't you an FTA?"

"What's an FTA?" You ask.

"Friend To Animals." But they say it like it's bad. So you kind of want to say

"I am not a Friend To Animals!"

 Except you are actually quite friendly with animals and are pretty happy and proud to be so, so you don't say anything while this jerkface just walks away. And you're kind of worked up now but you have no idea what to do.

But then all of the sudden the adorable but now angry cat goes running at jerkface in a fury and attacks him! He just scratches the jerkface guy to hell.  I mean he savages him so bad that this guy just bleeds to death right there!

It's horrible!

And then the kitty comes over to you, purring and with bloodied whiskers glowing like jewels in the sun,  and you give him a nice long skirtch on his head. "What a good kitty." You say in a baby voice. "What a nice little Social Justice Warrior you are!"

And (almost) everyone lives happily ever after.

An open letter to dogs

Dear Dogs,


First of all, dogs, let me just say thank you for reading this. I know this won't be the easiest thing for you to hear, and it's not easy for me to say it, but I want you to know I come in hopes of friendship and say all of this only with the sincere ambition of being constructive, as much for your benefit as my own. I deeply respect your willingness to read it.

I think there are some things you should know about yourself, some unpleasant things.

Maybe it is just a matter of no one having told you. Or maybe you have been confused by all the people petting you and giving you food. It is possible you are insulated by people fussing over, adoring, walking, and indulging you. This may have caused you to lose all perspective.

But I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I am going to assume that you simply did not know. I can see how easily that is possible. And though you may find some of the things I'm about to tell you here to be uncomfortable, I believe that you can take this knowledge and become better from it. I believe that the truth can set you free and let you take your place in friendship with all the peoples of the world, not just with the small group that likes to own you.

And that maybe is the first hard truth: You are owned. I know that might be uncomfortable, but it is best to start from a place of real honesty. You are owned. They may like or love you, but they own you. They may indulge your ignorance from the idea of protecting you, and they might do it to protect themselves, but there is a lot they don't tell you. And those of us around you at a remove are the ones who really suffer for it.

This is because your behavior is frequently rude and offensive.

Again, I don't think you know you're doing it, or know what it means necessarily, but the thing is that you are often discourteous, uncivil, violent, and invasive. You yell at everything. You invade personal space. You physically attack people or suggest you might, with trifling, almost non existent provocation. You go to the bathroom offensively in plain sight of everyone, and then you just leave it there! You lick yourself gratuitously in public.

It is not good.

However, if we can amend these grave faults, which, fortunately, come in a short list, we can lay clear your many other sterling qualities in a way that everyone will be able to see and appreciate. I know that you can be friendly, warm-hearted, faithful, amusing, peaceful, and congenial. But these things are, for many of us, hidden behind your flaws. And so I have laid out a short list of rules for you. Follow these few rules carefully and the pain of who you have just discovered you are will soon be a mere anecdote of your wayward youth.

1. Always use your inside voice. You should be quietly saying "Woof", never yelling "Woof!". If people are often saying to you "What was that?", then you are on the right track. You and I both know you speak best with your eyes and tail anyway and have always had least to say with your voice.

2. Don't let anyone see you go to the bathroom. If you simply cannot master a toilet (and I see the structural difficulties), find a deep, hidden place, perhaps in thick bushes, for all your needs. Make sure no one is nearby when you go.

3. Approach everyone at a sedate walk. Stop at five to ten feet distance to see if the party you are approaching is interested in contact. They will usually be moving towards you as well, with hands out and a friendly countenance. Only then should you continue for a nearer approach. If these welcoming signs are not forthcoming keep a quiet and respectful distance.

4. Yes, I know it's important to you, so you can smell and lick the people you come in contact within the template of rule three. However, try if you can to be less obvious about it. A few light, ambient sniffs can do you just as well sticking your whole face in, and likely will reveal far more.

5. No biting, unless they bite first. Likewise with the snarling.


And that's it.

While it may not be easy going at first, with these mere five rules you, I assure you, will be reformed! Good luck.

I look forward to a long and fruitful friendship with you and yours. Welcome to the community of civil beings.


Your friend,


F. Calypso

Dog and cats: the rapproachement

During my accustomed walk today a group of dogs were barking. There were four of them in the front corner of a chain-link fenced yard. They were upset and making a racket. But they weren't barking at me. I was across the street, coming from down the street and they were barking ferociously at a man who was on their side coming from up the street. 

There was a little dog, a medium small dog, a medium large dog, and a big dog. They were all insensible with fury, wild with some kind of doggish alarm and their varying voices combined together in an entirely unmusical way.

I did not like it. I thought bad things about the dogs because I am inclined, unless given specific information to the contrary, to think poorly of dogs.

But these dogs were very much not barking at me, they were barking at some man. And I had a moment of reconsideration.

What if the dogs knew something bad about the man. What if, with their acute animal instincts, they indeed knew something truly horrible about that man? What if they were desperate to alert everyone to the terrible things they sensed about this person.

What could be so horrible about a man to warrant such an outcry?



What if they knew the man did not like cats?

We are what we are

For those of you grimacing lately at my tart, dark comments about dogs chewing on books, please don't think me some animal hater. There are quite a few animals I'm keen on. For instance while working on our automated check in machine just this early evening I looked out the window of my library, and there, on the far edge of our large, northern parking lot, a cat, on its mysterious business, made its graceful way across a far corner of the asphalt.

I felt such a tiny burst of joy seeing this dear and elegant cat expressing freedom in the midst of my own plodding evening, and I longed to have a moment to hang out with it, maybe for a short chat with me saying nothing much and the cat pretending not to listen. But I could not leave my post, and so instead I stood there and watched the cat as it slipped into the tall prairie grasses and small wetlands my library is set in and disappeared.

This cat is welcome to chew on our books. I would go that far!

But that cat will never chew a book, no matter the opportunity. Because it is not a dog.

Dark jokes about dogs

This is a dark joke. But it's okay because it's about dogs. When I made this joke my colleague did not think it was funny. It made her sad. I think she did not think it was funny because unlike me she does not walk around her neighborhood flipping off dogs.

Yes, I do that. I flip off dogs, but only when they bark at me, meanly. If a dog ever barks at me nicely, in a gentle, friendly tone of voice, I simply smile and say a warm hello. I mean I would, if a dog would like to try it.

So we were talking about replacement costs for damaged books at the library. And my colleague mentioned sadly how a dog had chewed just a little bit of a book, but the book was like $28 and she sadly had to charge the person all that money.

I said "I always give them an option. I tell them they can pay for the replacement cost of the book, but if they bring in a document verifying that they put the dog to sleep we will clear the charges."




Oh. Now I feel kind of sad.