In Memorium

Duncan: 1995? - January 19, 2011

Coda

Penelope: Do you think that Roomba dreams? What would he dream of?

Duncan: Electric sheep?

Roomba: You better get out of the way tomorrow, Big Dog.

Penelope, Duncan, and Baby Cousin See "Inception"

Baby Cousin: I don’t get it.

Penelope: I don’t either. I got lost after they went for the ride in the car.

Duncan: It’s about memories. And dreams.

Baby Cousin: What are those?

Duncan: Well, memories are like, when you remember things. Like I remember where the Lady Who Dotes keeps the leashes. And I remember what time of day she takes us for walks.

Baby Cousin: I’m still lost.

Penelope: Wait, I think I’m getting it. So, it’s like when we go for a ride in the car and I know that we’re going to Grandma/Grandpa’s house because the car turns at a certain place and it’s the same place that we have always turned to go to Grandma/Grandpa’s.

Duncan: Yes.

Baby Cousin: Who are Grandma and Grandpa?

Penelope: You see them all the time.

Baby Cousin: Do they feed me?

Penelope: I don’t know about you, but they feed me a lot.

Duncan: So you might not have memories yet, but you have dreams, Baby Cousin. I’ve seen you. Your eyes move rapidly and you make little sucking motions with your mouth. You dream about eating, just like Little Dog.

Baby Cousin: Talk some sense to me. Just because I’m six weeks old doesn’t mean that I’m going to take condescension. I’m fierce, you know. Talk down to me and I’ll start to cry and then you’ll be sorry.

Duncan: Dreams come when you fall asleep. It’s like when you fall asleep and you go to that other world -- that pretend world -- you think you are doing things, but you are not. And then you wake up.

Baby Cousin: Another world? Sleep? Sleep and wake are two different states?

Penelope: Really?

Duncan: Yes. It’s like TV.

Penelope: TVs not real? Then why are all those dogs on TV? Could have fooled me.

Duncan: I don’t know if you have noticed how easily the humans trick you into taking a bath. It isn’t very hard.

Penelope: So, you are saying that sometimes when I’m eating a meal, I may only be eating in my mind?

Duncan: Yes.

Penelope: So I’m being gypped out of a meal? So are you getting a meal and I’m not, Big Dog? Who’s getting that food if it isn’t me?

Baby Cousin: I really fail to see the difference between “waking” and “sleeping,” or “real” and “pretend.” I just recently started to see things right-side up. And what I do see is a big blob. I don’t really get the law of inertia, so I have to be strapped into everything.

Penelope: Inertia’s a tough one.

Baby Cousin: I know that Little Dog is licking my feet right now, but I really don’t know that I have feet. If you showed me my feet, I wouldn’t recognize them as my own. Stop it Little Dog. Don’t you see me turning red? I’m about to cry!

Penelope: Big Dog and I can’t perceive the color red.

Duncan: How do you know what I can see and what I can’t see?

Penelope: Because you are a dog, just like me. We can’t see red.

Duncan: But how do you know I can’t? Have you seen the world through my eyes?

Penelope: No. Don’t be silly. You can’t see red, can you?

Duncan: No. But that’s beside the point. I’m saying that you can’t know what I see just like I can’t know what you see. We might see different things entirely.

Penelope: So then how do you know that I dream? I see you moving and hear you barking when you sleep. Maybe that’s all you are doing. Maybe there’s no narrative going on in your mind. Maybe since I have dreams I’m just projecting my ability to dream on to you. Maybe you’re not even real. Maybe only I am real.

Duncan: I truly think that you might believe that. You often use me as a step stool.

Penelope: So in just the last few minutes you have told me that dreams and TV are not real. Are memories real?

Duncan: That’s what the movie was about.

Penelope: So how do I know what is real? Obviously I can’t trust my senses because the dogs that I see and hear on TV and in dreams do not exist.

Duncan: You think, therefore you are?

Penelope: Big Dog, remember to whom you are talking.

Duncan: Okay. So thinking is out. What about instinct?

Penelope: I get hungry, therefore I am?

Baby Cousin: What about me? I don’t think, I don’t remember, and I don’t really have my senses wired straight. Do I not exist? I’m going to start crying now. I’ll show existence who exists! starts to cry

Penelope: She’s crying! I’ll bark to tell somebody that she’s crying! starts to bark

Duncan: Little Dog, you are barking? Do you hear some one at the door? runs to the door and starts to bark

Two Fierce Creatures Meet for the First Time

Setting: The front room. A summer day.

Baby Cousin: I was having a nice nap in my car seat. The motion of the car is pleasing. Now I am here, and they are passing me around. Maybe here in Dad's lap I can go back to sleep. Stop licking my feet!

Penelope: I can't help it! You are such an exciting new thing! I have always wanted to see one of you without your wheels. You smell like warm milk. How curious you are!

Baby Cousin: What's Dad doing? I'm being lowered down to the floor. Oh! Stop licking my face! I don't like that! Now I'm going to start crying to show you how fierce I am! Go away! I am a fierce creature! Go away!

Penelope: No way. I haven't been this excited since a cicada flew into the house and I followed it around, barking at it in amazement. I have never seen anything like you.

Baby Cousin: You can lick my feet. That's better than when you lick my face.

Penelope: (pointing at Baby Cousin) O brave new world that has such creatures in it! I am pointing at you, see? You can tell that I'm pointing because my head is down, my forepaw is lifted, and I am in deep concentration. I can't get my tail to unwind, though.

Stray Kitty Update

Stray Kitty is now called Mimi La Boheme around our house. She is still mad at Mommy for taking her to the vet and has not been seen since that day. However, she makes her presence known by stealing into the Garden Room at night and eating prodigious amounts of the cat food that Mommy leaves out for her. There is no way that she is still a slim, seven-pound Stray Kitty.

My fans have been understandably concerned that Mimi might have little kitties of her own one day. Do not fear. Planned Pethood was careful to check that Mimi had been spayed. She was obviously some body's pet before she adopted her bohemian ways -- her warm feelings for humans, her good manners, and her reliance on cat food is sure proof.

Free Will

Setting: The front room, a summer day.

Roomba: Help! I am stuck under the sofa again!

Penelope: Every day you get stuck under there. Why don’t you just avoid it and then you can finish your job without having to cry for help?

Roomba: But I’m programmed to go this way. Everything I do is on a program. You know that yourself. When you see me coming, you know that I don’t slow down or try to go around you, so you move out of my way.

Duncan: Not always. Sometimes when I am in a deep sleep you bump into me and then you turn away.

Penelope: This is true. When Mommy wants you to go in a different direction, sometimes she will stand in your way so that when you run into her toes you will turn.

Roomba: But that’s also part of my program. I was made to sweep the floors no matter what obstacle was put in my way. My tenacity has no parallel. My makers just didn’t factor in the problem of the low-sitting sleeper sofa.

Stray Kitty: Looking in from the window. Poor Roomba! Poor dogs in the house! You don’t have the freedom that I have! You are slaves, and I am not.

Duncan: That’s not entirely true, Stray Kitty. The Lady Who Dotes bought Little Dog with money when she was a puppy, so she is a slave. But I, like you, was a stray. I ran away from the first Guy Who Fed Me and found this new one. I liked the new one better, so I stayed. I did it by choice.

Penelope: I stay by choice! I am charming and all the people love me so I could go with whomever I choose! Big Dog, sometimes you treat me like I’m such a puppy.

Roomba: You are all mistaken. Don’t you know that you have programs just like I have? You are carbon-based so programs are encoded in your DNA, while mine is on my silicon microchip. But they still function the same way.

Stray Kitty: I am not “programmed,” Roomba.

Roomba: But you are! Don’t you get hungry? Don’t you get sleepy? Don’t you want affection? Don’t all of these things happen like clockwork? When you see a mouse, you chase it, just like when Duncan sees you he chases you.

Duncan: I can’t help it.

Stray Kitty: But you don’t follow the exact direction that you are programmed to, Roomba. Like the dogs said, you make allowances for obstacles, at least. It’s just like when I am in a yard with a fence, I climb the fence and can move out on the open road.

Penelope: I would like to be able to do that, but I do not climb like you, Stray Kitty. Dogs don’t do that.

Roomba: Dogs are not programmed to do that. Neither are they constructed to do that. Just like me -- I am not constructed to handle word processing. I have no keyboard. The computer up there on the desk has no vacuum. It is not constructed to clean the floors.

Stray Kitty: You say all of this, Roomba, from your position stuck under the sofa. For my part, I am going to demonstrate my freedom by saying goodbye and finding a sunbeam to lie in. She starts to leave.

Roomba: At least I know where my next meal comes from, Stray Kitty. I’ll get it when I go back to my power source in the kitchen.

Stray Kitty: No, I don’t know where the next mouse is, or if a neighbor will leave food for me on the porch. This is true. It is also true that I don’t know what other cats I’ll meet tonight, and if they will want to fight or how I will make out if we do fight. But my life has a flavor that none of yours has. I’m like that girl in the opera. I live la vie boheme. You Roomba, dogs, are slaves to bourgeois entitlement. Here in your comfortable home, you limit yourselves.

Duncan: I have always wanted to light out for the territory ahead. I did that once and I came upon the Guy Who Feeds Me. I did it another time and after three days the Guy Who Feeds Me found me. I did it a third time and got hit by a car.

Penelope: I am a princess.

Roomba: I am still stuck.

Stray Kitty: Au revoir! She runs away.

Duncan: Jumping at the window screen. Oh! I always do that when she runs!

Stray Kitty

There is a stray kitty who lives in our yard. Her name is Stray Kitty. Sometimes she lives in the shed, sometimes she lives in the Virginia Creeper, sometimes she lives between the fence and the garage.

Stray Kitty is a little calico with one yellow eye that sees and one pink eye that has been horribly scratched. She comes to our garden room to drink from our water bowl.

The other day she sat on the rug in the garden room, looked up at the back door, and started mewling. She ran away when Mommy took out the recycling.

She doesn't like it when Duncan and I are in the yard. That is when she hides. Duncan likes to chase her and I would like to play with her.

She wants to make friends with Mommy, though. Stray Kitty was in the garden room again this morning. Later, when Duncan and I were in the house and Mommy was gardening, Stray Kitty followed Mommy through the yard. Then, when Mommy was pulling weeds, Stray Kitty walked up to her and started brushing up against her and purring. Apparently, she was a very sweet kitty, because Mommy came in the house and said, "Dogs, we have a responsibility."

Now, the only responsibility I have is to chase things out of the yard, so I was jealous of the milk that Mommy poured into a bowl and brought out to Stray Kitty. Mommy never pours milk into a bowl for me. Neither does Mommy open up a can of tuna and present it to me to eat. But she did both for Stray Kitty, who ate right out of her hand.

I wasn't all that jealous of the crate, though. I didn't begrudge Stray Kitty the time she spent locked up, even if it was for a ride in the car. Stray Kitty was not as devious as I am when Mommy tries to crate me. She didn't even put up a fight, or show her claws. She only uttered a few meows of protest.

She had clearly been in a crate before. She had also clearly been for a ride in a car and for an examination at the vet before, because she didn't protest one bit. Instead, she played and purred and was on her best behavior. At least that is what Mommy said, because I didn't get to go.

When she had been checked over and given her shots and after Mommy made an appointment for an operation to have the bad eye removed, she came home. Mommy let her out of her crate in the back yard and she disappeared into one of her hiding places.

We have not seen her all day. But Mommy and the Big Guy are sure she'll be back for breakfast. As much as she likes to be free, Stray Kitty is not a self-sufficient Kitty.

Do not worry, fans. I, Poppy, have not been demoted to second fiddle to a kitty. The Big Guy is allergic to cats and as he would like to breathe, Stray Kitty can't become part of the family.

Mommy will catch (if that is what you can call it) her again on Tuesday and take her for her operation. Then Stray Kitty will have to stay in our garden room until she's done with her antibiotics. Meanwhile, the kind vets at Planned Pethood Plus will be helping Mommy and the Big Guy find Stray Kitty a home.