Seeing The Light And Gladly Repenting

I wrote a while ago about my pet peeve of animals dressed as humans. Lately, I have been given cause to reflect greatly upon this source of utmost annoyance. First of all, Joey - our one year old Min Pin, is very little and gets very cold when we take him outside to go to the bathroom thus often refusing to stay out long enough to go #2. This, of course, results in little #2s being left as offerings outside my son's bedroom door. And in his shoes. I suppose I could do what my mother did when I was little and incorporate animal poop into whatever holiday is looming. One year, when I was 6 or 7, under the Christmas tree behind the presents was a pile of kitty poop with a holiday tag on it that read "To: Emily From: Ephraim." Not sure which makes me laugh harder - the fact that the cat shit under the tree and Mom instantly turned it into one of the most memorable Christmas gifts of my childhood or that my hippie Mormon parents actually named our cat Ephraim.

Anyway, it became clear to me that we would need to fashion some sort of warming device for him to wear outside in the snow but I refused to get him a little sweatshirt or doggie jacket because that would make him the ever satanic animal dressed as a human. So, we took an old soccer sock, cut holes in it and stuffed him in. The convulsions his little body flew into trying to get the damn thing off of him was well worth the ordeal of cramming his royal spaziness into the straight jacket - which he immediately shredded and escaped from the second our backs were turned. Clearly I was going to have to give in and get something sturdier. Something store bought. Something resembling clothing. Dammit.

But then the other day I had a revelation. (For the record, my face was not in a hat - but I am SO going to try that one day just to see what happens.) I opened up my email to find a link to a website for kitty wigs and found myself tickled as pink as the wigs atop the kitty's furry heads. Then, that same night, I went to a Rock Band party at the home of my friends Matt-n-Rick where, incidentally, I learned that my official rocker name is Mercedes Uranus. Good to know. Anyway, in this home there live two dogs who freely roam about in wigs, tutu's and feather boas.




It was while watching these two dogs prance about that my brain was hit with two new, glorious, pieces of information: (1) There is a big difference between animals dressed as humans by their humans that take it seriously, and animals dressed in drag. And (2) Animals in drag are the funniest damn things I have ever seen. How could I have forgotten the Pets and Owners In Matching Drag shows on the Castro I attended in my early teens? Sheesh - my sense of humor isn't usually this slow to kick in but, now that it has...

Poor Joey is sooooo screwed.