Hellhounds Up My Tail

Erin and I have two cats -- they're dumb and jerks and really sweet and stuff. Often they stare at us from high perches like fuzzy gargoyles. They bug the shit out of me at 4 in the morning when it occurs to them they're starving to death. I'm getting used to it.

This is not about the cats -- it's about...THE HOUNDS!

Narrator: Who has not shivered at the mention of the hounds of hell? Myriad mythologies regale us with tales of these toothsome apparitions and slobbering beasts. Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades, likely will spring first to mind. Vanquished only by Heracles himself (his twelfth and final labor or "labour")!

Central American folklore tells of Cadejo, a big black dog haunting late night travelers of country roads.

Black Shuck, the Doom Dog, roams the gloamy coastlines of Britain.

Even Sherlock Holmes encounters these "devil dogs" in the case of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (a story I first encountered in my youth as "Sherlock Sholmes and the Hound of the Baskeballs") in the Mad Magazine paperback The Brothers Mad).

Well, Adam & Josh's dogs, Emma & Jack (wasn't that a Meg Ryan film?) don't really fit into that supernatural category. My experience with these hounds can be summed up in two words:

Sonsabitches! Bumpuses!

I feel like the Old Man in "A Christmas Story" whenever Jack and Emma come barreling down the stairs (well, Jack barrels; Emma lumbers).

Shut the bedroom door! Hide the kitties! Indeed, these two species have only met through the crack in the door, or when cat and dog have been restrained. But someday, the twain shall meet!

For now, I get tail-whipped in the goolies, while Erin gets daily crotch inspections thanks to Dr. Jack's probing snout (Note to all female visitors: Jack is accepting new patients...always).

Still, just like our dumb cats, the hounds are sweet and I have grown to love them. But for chrissakes, pups, get outta my ass!