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Pets

Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 107

In Loving Memory
Fup. Store Cat.
1988 — 2007
fup 18 fup 19
Click here for details on our specially designed Fup. Store Cat. T-shirts!
Fup. Store Cat.
Fup watercolor courtesy of reader Linda McDougall. Click here for a larger view.
Bear
bear 		Zooey
zooey

see Fup's photo album

Turns out Fup won't be back from the vet till noon. She mentioned her annual check-up the other night, but Oreo completely forgot. Now, rather than walk all the way home, he waits on the bookstore stoop. Maybe Bear will show up. Or the blue sky will lure another cat to the North Park Blocks for a visit. In the meantime, every customer offers a potential diversion. Oreo stations himself accordingly.

"You'd think he's auditioning for Fup's position," Amber remarks, watching through the front window as yet another pedestrian veers off-path to greet him. He’s a magnet, there's no denying. A scratch under the chin, perhaps some head rubbing, always a few kind words.

"The cat knows how to sell it," Lisa acknowledges. Out on the sidewalk, Oreo rolls onto his back and lifts his paws in the air. Lisa murmurs, "Surely, kind stranger, you will pet my stomach." The stranger does.

Amber wonders if maybe Fup has been tutoring him.

They don't know — how could they? — that before Oreo arrived in Portland he lived in a vacation rental on the coast. "Fully furnished," the marketing materials boasted: a brimming pantry, no shortage of board games and books, three old milk crates filled with LPs...plus several unique amenities, including something called a "catcierge." That was Oreo.

Invariably, when guests sent postcards and thank-you notes to the residence from back home, they came addressed to the cat.

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The Trip to Kahani

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Read the press release.

Follow the links to more Fup adventures
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Fup's Picks

That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are
by Bruce Eric Kaplan

"All these cats lead exciting and varied lives wholly independent of the human race," notes the editor in his Introduction. Well, duh. Scant attention has been paid to the role of community in modern cat culture, so what a relief that here, finally, fifty articulate felines set the record straight. Funny, sad, occasionally shocking, but never less than true, these brave monologues reaffirm our interdependency in ways that choreographed public displays such as Paws Across America never can.

Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs
by Amy Hempel

In "Dog Kibble," Tasha Baxter's verse exhibits a brutal economy of words: "Life is never meaningless," her villanelle announces, "there is always food." Here and throughout this collection these authors demand your attention, as if to bark, "You can send me to my room for yelling at the neighbors but you cannot silence what woofs in my heart!" Among the selections nominated for Best American Writing by Pets 2000 are Bob Barker Barry's sordid and hilarious hallucinogenic escapades with Lynda; a tragic, posthumous prose poem by Marrow Irving; and Sadie Louise Lamott's "Spoon River Sadie Louise," a wildly metered exploration of the cross-cultural dynamics within a household occupied by dogs, cats, birds, and small children. The sheer intellect of these collected pieces will renew your faith in dogs.

Is Your Cat Too Fat?Is Your Cat Too Fat?
by Bronwen Meredith

Too fat for what? And what business is it of this Meredith person's anyway? Bronwen sounds like the kind of lady I wouldn't like at all.

 
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