Pets? Friends or Foes?

Between Michael Vick's involvement in dogfighting and yet another person in suburban Portland being mauled by a pit bull, dogs have received a lot of press recently in the Oregonian. My family is worried that my dog, Sweet Pea, will kill me. Well, not exactly kill. Just be the cause my death. It's not that she--a large dog pound mutt, a malamutt, so to speak--is a dangerous dog. She's more of a hazard than anything. Speed Bump is one of her nick names because she's always under foot. Whenever I move, she and my cat, Inky also move. Sometimes I feel like the president and the secret service. I get up from my desk and she perks up. "She's on the move," she signals to the cats. "Get ready to swarm in case she decides to go down stairs."

My family's fears aren't totally with out foundation. My uncle died due to complications from injuries he suffered after tripping over his dog. It could have been worse. She could have been his therapy dog. She was a shepherd as I recall. Maybe that's why shepherds are on various lists of "Dangerous Dogs."

Sweet Pea's best friend is my cat, Inky. Actually, I think they're more than friends, if you know what I mean. I just wish they wouldn't flaunt the fact that some in the house have a love life. At least they're both fixed (although I don't think they think they were broken before) so I don't have to worry about baby mutants, even though I'm sure they'd be cute. Also since Sweet Pea's a she and Inky's a he, folks in the Red states can't object.

McHumor.com's Animal Cartoons

Weapons of Mess Destruction

For the second time in a little more than a year I've had a vacuum cleaner go up in flames, which is pretty amazing since my view of cleaning is that if you do it today, in three, four or five years you might have to do it again.  You see, among other things, I have a disorder disorder.  Norman, my long term house guest, is the tidy one.  He's gay and out of the closet, but he likes everything else to be in the closet.  His obsession with cleaning almost makes Felix Unger of the Odd Couple look normal.

The vacuum cleaner I've used most of my life is a 1930s or 40s Electrolux we inherited from my great grandmother in the 70s.  It''s twenty unwieldily pounds of moderate suction power that was never thrown out because of one of my family's own idiosyncrasies: a Smithsonian like tendency to never throw anything away.

I abhorred that vacuum more than nature abhors a vacuum, but it was a hunk of indestructible metal.  I routinely dropped it down the stairs while doing my weekly chores, but it never stopped its moderate sucking.  While my peers drooled over John, Paul, George and Ringo in teen idol magazines, I drooled over vacuums in the Sear's catalogue said to be "feather light" or coming with a "deluxe compact canister."  My parents finally bought a new vacuum when I left home, and that was probably only because I took the Electrolux with me.  Hey.  It was free and I was a starving cartoonist.

I eventually splurged and replaced it with a modern day Hoover and when that blew up I 

replaced it with something that looked like it was out of Star Wars.  When that one started smoking today I told Norman that he was working my vacuums to death.  He said my dog's fur was the root of the problem.  Whichever is the case, I've come up with a solution.  I pulled the Electrolux out of the closet.  Norman's going to be here for a few more months and I'm hoping his daily vacuuming of the rugs and the dog will kill it (the vacuum, not the dog) and I can finally throw it out in good conscience.

McHumor's Cleaning Cartoons

McHumor's Dog Cartoons