How My Dog Smells Dean Flowerfeld __________ The world is a whorl of wonderful whiffsfor a doggie like me who lives by his sniffs and the wind is awash in a welter of wafts,such succulent scents on the breeze are aloft: the sweet and the sour, the savory and musty,the…
Read MoreRhumbline Lucinda Kempe __________ Comus was a black Labrador and came from a breeder on Long Island. Rhumbline Retrievers is run by Susan and her husband Joe. Rhumbline is a nautical term for a straight line between two points.1 Both Susan and her husband had worked in the merchant marine.…
Read MoreTake ’em Both John Janelle Backman __________ The only other customer in the pet shop sidled up to my right, like someone about to whisper a secret. I couldn’t turn my head toward him to get a good look. Short, that I could tell—at least a head shorter than me.…
Read MoreThe Cat Boy Jean-Marc Duplantier __________ When my sister-in-law Amy died, Pascal, her seven-year-old son, moved in with us, and he brought his cat Minou with him. On that first night, I watched from the door of the guest room as my wife Christina kissed Pascal, tucked him in, and…
Read MoreCat O’ Nine Tales Ann Howells __________ Cats domesticated themselves 9000 years ago. My neighbor’s cats are Powderpuff,Queen of Sheeba, & Sugar Dumpling.Their eyes glow like vitreous amber.They loudly order dinner, stayperpetually stoned on canned salmon. My cat, silent & soot-colored, explores unknown spaces, answers to no one. Green…
Read MoreRuthAnnI Tricia Knoll __________ Men in Louisiana grabbed me from the hoarder’s house with the two dead dogs. They called me Ruth Ann. In their shelter they cut open my belly and made fleas go away. Told me I was pretty, but time ran out, they’d have to kill me.…
Read MoreShapeshifter Patience Mackarness __________ Minette turns squirrel and streaks up the trunk of a young oak tree, pausing on a branch twelve feet from the ground. Her long fur is splotched like sunlight, her ears tawnily tufted, her golden eyes rimmed mascara-black. There are Siberian tree-cats in her ancestry, and…
Read MorePre-Obituary for a Rabbit Francis Walsh __________ pre-obituary for a rabbit he was, he was, he was asleep on the carpet and stretched like a strand of dough his paws tucked beneath his chin perhaps dreaming of hay fields and bananas and all the other morsels that occupy the wide-eyed…
Read MoreDread Randall Brown __________ Attie shone the iPhone’s flashlight in her sister Isabel’s face and, with her left hand, knocked her awake. It had been only six hours since their dog Lucky returned after a week, mad, foaming, stumbling through the gates and into their seven acres on the Philadelphia’s…
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