Context is Everything -or- I Might Be Eating Dog Treats

Marketing. I do this for a day job. So my off-duty brain is always making note of how products are positioned, what packaging looks like, and the estimated public tolerance duration for Office Camels asking Life's Great Questions like, "Anybody know what day it is?"

But I admit, a recent trip to the grocery store had my marketing brain flummoxed. Because in the Giant Eagle supermarket, in the pet food aisle, was a very unexpected display. 

Now, normally, these free-standing bins contain colorful rawhide chews... new cat food flavors described in the same manner as five-star restaurant specials... or lint rollers because--well, you haven't seen my house, but... lint rollers. 

But instead, in this small cardboard shelf--right by the refrigerator case containing products for the dog who gets back to his wolf heritage by buying prepackaged single-serving beef options as they did in the Old World when they ran out of grandmothers--here was a box of whole grain air popped crackers that came in Cheese or Barbecue. 

The chip aisle was several rows away. 

I was drawn to examine the box more closely. "Supergrains!" it told me. 

"3.5 grams of fat per serving!" it proclaimed.

"Dare," read the brand. 

So I did. Because it's so rare to find a snack that meets my very narrow dietary restrictions. Plus it didn't mention anything about "promoting a shiny, healthy coat" or being "excellent for teeth and gums," though, I'd be up for that, too.

So I now I have officially tried these Breton Popped Supergrain Crackers, and the verdict? 

Let's just say, if these are dog biscuits, you can call me "Lassie." They're delicious. And I plan to pick up another box today...

Well, right after I bury a few things and sniff some people.


Duty first, you know.

Cat Alarm Operational Instructions

Congratulations on your purchase of this finely crafted Cat Alarm, (10 pound, shorthaired white van model). We hope you will enjoy its exquisite functionality and streamlined style.

Your Cat Alarm will go off each day-- no need to set it; it is entirely self-setting.

Upon going off, the alarm will subsequently need to recharge using meat-based Kibble(tm) charging dock. (Sold separately)

You may expect your Cat Alarm to operate according to the following preset phases, assuring a timely wakeup each day, possibly several hours before you even need to rise:

1. Gentle purring motor and Nuzzle(tm) motion 
2. Level two Headbutt(tm) technology 
3. Runaway locomotive racing action 
4. Close proximity "purr blast" capabilities 
5. Snuggle on-head wake-up features 
6. Single claw to the cranium final phase mode 

We hope you and your handcrafted Cat Alarm will enjoy many years of efficient wake-up calls.

Object Identification from Cat's Perspective

You are a "cat."

This is called a "toy"...

This is also called a toy.

This is called a toy.

This is a toy.

Toy.

Toy.

Toy.

Another toy.

Toy.

Toy.

Toy.

Toy.


Arrgh, here be a toy.

Toy.

Toy.

Food.

What food? So sorry, my mistake...

Toy.

Any questions?

If People Acted Like Pets- Office Edition

I've learned a lot about living with a pet, since adopting my cat, Alice, almost two months ago. Things like: puncture wounds really can mean love. And: wool pile stroking your cheek in the night doesn't mean the area rugs are getting frisky.

But I've been thinking, the lives our pets lead might not apply well to the world of humans, particularly in the corporate world. Simply because this is how that might go:

• Business breakfast meetings would start with coffee, danish, and half the execs running circles around the conference room table excitedly sharing tales of what a great poop they just had.

• All group projects would require two employees to attempt the task, and two to hop up and lay on the project planning document.

• Dull meetings would be filled with long, loud sighs bearing the weight of the world.

• All project discussion would cease when someone accidentally drops a paperclip. Meetings would allow time for executives to compete and see who will bat it around the room.

• When you can't find one of your colleagues in his office, you know he's in the shipping room, leaping in and out of the mailing boxes.

• The corporate cafeteria would serve meat, bones, meat and meat.
  

• Powerpoint presentations would find half the staff in the audience, and the other half up front blocking the screen.

• Business restrooms would be the same, but TP would be tracked with gusto around the office space.

• Dropping the ball in your job would suddenly also involve digging your teeth into it and refusing to pass it to the person you've been working closely with.
  

• And when your boss asks you out for a bite... you bite him.

You pet-owning folks have any more to add to this list? I'd love to read 'em!

At the U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America

At the U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America, we bring to you only the most well-made products of quality. Like our pictured "Cat Toy for Cats" shown here. This popular seller is very big with customers.

Why? Because of our years of lengthy product testing, which is extensive!

You see, originally, we developed the "Cat Toy for Dogs," which was our first product and our premier item in pet toy manufacturing. Did you know that "Cat Toy for Dogs" was unpopular, and consequentially, both dogs and consumers were disinterested in it? This meant fewer sales!

So we redesigned. And with our ambitious "Cat Toy for Horses" line, we thought we might really have something. But user testing, analysis and examination showed that horses play very little ball, so the balls were not played with as much as preliminary data anticipated and expected.

We once again realized the product must be reimagined. So we took a fresh look and approached it from a different angle.

Because of this, "Cat Toy for Capybaras" was born.

In the remote jungles of the Amazon, capybaras, we discovered have very little contact with chain pet stores, because of the distance and also the desolation.

Capybaras, you may recall, are the world's largest rodents on the planet. And we discovered that even by bringing "Cat Toy for Capybaras" to the group in the wild, there was no market due to lack of interest. Additional research showed it might have been because there was no Capybara Nip available to fill the balls.

And that is when one of the fine minds at the U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America had a bright idea which was smart. Why not market "Cat Toy for Cats"?

Now, for the new millennium and well into the 2000s, we find ourselves poised on the cusp of the precipice of successful success. Here at the U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America, we now are devoted to the dedication of quality, well-made "Cat Toys for Cats".

Our successful success with "Cat Toys for Cats" now enables us to bring you a line of other product lines. Such as:

• Dog Chews for Dogs
• Reindeer Bells for Reindeer
• Hamster Wheels for Hamsters
• And
• Business Suits for Geckos

With these innovated inventions for pets and the domesticated animals you keep in your home, the U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America is working hard and slaving away to offer you the products you can always depend upon, and rely on, too!

So we would like to take this moment, to thank you for choosing U.S. National Redundant Product Marketing Company Corporation of America for your choice for all your pet needs for pets!

Pre-Feline Anxiety

Ferret bandannas. I saw a site selling ferret bandannas yesterday and found myself too-long pondering the deep need we humans have to take a creature that is mostly neck and accessorize it.

I feel like ferret bandannas are only one step from snake ponchos and giraffe mufflers. Sure, it's a niche market. But it's also not like without one, your animal bud will feel insecure and unloved while reading her subscription of Ferretista Monthly.

But I didn't actually come to talk about ferret bandannas today. I came to talk about the reason I was even on a site with the odd and assorted ferret bandanna.

See, I'm planning to get my first non-finned pet.

And what I've learned about myself is this. It is just as well that I have no children. Because if I were planning this, I would be researching parenting skills so long, the battery on my biological clock would have completely corroded.

While I love both cats and dogs, I've opted for a cat due to time and maintenance issues. But with the amount of "For Dummies" books I've attained on the matter, and the amount of questions I've asked my cat-owning friends, you would think I was prepping to manage the Lion's Den at the Pittsburgh Zoo or something.

I'm not sure what it is that I'm so worried about. That if I don't train the cat properly, it'll start slipping out behind my back, with a gang of graffiti-spraying tomcats?

That she'll fail all her classes in Scratching, Shedding, and Turning Up Her Nose at Off-Brand Catfoods, and then never get into a good college?

That she'll grab the keys, steal the car, head to L.A. and try to make it big in Fancy Feast ads?

Hard to say. It's possible that I am drawing too much on the sad demise of the only pet I had growing up-- Copper, the psychologically-damaged carnival fish.

Copper had a rough life at the carnie, as part of a game where ping pong balls were thrown into his bowl. It was post-traumatic stress, I think. Weeks after he came home with me to a ping-pong-free environment, he still flinched every time someone would enter the room.

I'm still not convinced he didn't die of a coronary. He was very high strung. But it also might have been my fault. Too many fish flakes perhaps. I might have killed him with foody flakey love.

Now I do recognize I'm not likely to come home to find my cat doing the backstroke like Copper. But you never know. I don't have a lot of previous pet experience. An unsupervised catnip addiction, she goes like Heath Ledger. A slip of the wrong kibble and she could be doing a Mama Cass. I don't think I could handle the guilt. That's why I want to make sure I have all the info I need.

I will promise you this, though. I won't be blogging regularly about my cat. There are enough cat pictures on the internet to satiate a million happy hoarders.

And I won't be buying the cat a bandanna, either. See, I hear they already come complete with a fur coat.

And really, when you're wearing fur, too many accessories just make you look cheap.

The Insidious Submissive Fluffy Belly Enticement Snare- or- Pavlov's Human

"Gotcha!" The claws and fangs coming at my poor, slow fingers proved once again that felis domesticus was the far, far superior intellect in this situation.

For years, the fluffy black neighbor cat-- dubbed by me, without a molecule of creativity whatsoever, as "Miss Kitty" -- had been coming over to visit, and "help" me garden. In addition to sitting on my back porch and making herself really comfortable on my cushions (as captured in-the-act here), her other modus operandi was rubbing up against my legs, purring like a Craftsman chainsaw, and then rolling over at my feet...

There, she would begin her nefarious ploy.

Upturned to me would be this very furry and soft-looking stomach, her paws tilted demurely, compliant, waiting for an affectionate scratch from the human-type-person who I genuinely like to believe she called "friend."

And despite my better judgment-- despite consequences that had occurred time and time again-- despite the howling pain and sense of deep mortal shame-- despite all this....

I would find my hand unable to resist the tractor-beam pull of this insidious trap-- reaching with blind, renewed optimism each time, to give an affectionate scratch to that fur and--

SSSSHHIIIING!

CHOMP!

Miss Kitty would go all ninja on me-- whip out the kind of claws Freddy Krueger would be totally showing off to the other serial killers, latch on to my limb and try to sink her teeth into my loving hand.

In the time of our acquaintance I would say this whole scene happened, oh....

More times than Gary Coleman has said, "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

I would withdraw my hand in dumb shock and scold her, and Miss Kitty would look with wide yellow-green eyes, surprised that I hadn't been as overjoyed as she was with this particular portion of our visit. Then proceed to purr all over me again.

This was our friendship, and I took it. If I ever get married, apparently just chalk me up as a terrific candidate for future spousal abuse. I don't get it.

But over the winter some time, Miss Kitty (who I believe was a rather old dame, though a true lady never tells her age) seems to have passed away. No more did I hear her familiar greeting. No more did I get a bat of the pantleg while I pruned the roses. I missed her presence-- even the part of it with the nasty, big, pointy teeth.

So as I was out gardening this year, along came Gray Cat.

(I spent HOURS thinking up that name, I hope you all appreciate my efforts!)

And Gray Cat likes to help me garden...

(read: lay directly in any dirt I just raked)...

She likes to help me weed...

(read: stalks any vine I pull up and attacks it like she's a tiger, and it's a boa constrictor)

And Gray Cat also likes to lay down on the ground at my feet, exposing her furry belly.

What's more, SHE has a fully-operational tractor beam stomach, as well!

So, the first time she does this, I am at least AWARE of this very familiar and potentially painful experience. But, see, the tractor beam's on, and I am powerless--POWERLESS, I tell you!-- to stop myself.

So I reach down, twiddle my fingers in her velvety gray fur and... She grabs my hand with the soft pads of her paws...

And begins to lick my fingers.

I hadn't even been touching food or anything before this.

It's baffling.

And here's the thing-- while I certainly do miss Miss Kitty, Gray Cat is pretty quickly winning me over. I mean, sandpapery cat-tongue and all, I still think it's an upgrade on my past Human-Feline relations. At least from an injury standpoint.

Of course, she could just be luring me in with the gentle, loving pet routine, in preparation for something really big.

I imagine by the end of the month, Gray Cat and an entire feline hoard will have taken over the yard and I'll merely be a bipedal puppet in their devilish quest to take over the world.

This is how it starts, you know. So, um, in the coming weeks... if the blog begins to dwell overly on say, reviews of Meow Mix? Fund-raising for the ASPCA? And has a new streaming audio soundtrack from "Cats"? Please do me a favor and call the local cops to come check on me...

Tell them they're going to need catnip bombs and string.

Lots of string.

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Humor-blogs almost never needs a lint brush for all the shedding.