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Dogs are okay. Outdoor cats are low maintenance."

I was at the grocery store the other day. Just as I stopped my car, I became aware of a loud, boisterous, quite-annoying barking emanating from inside the cab of a big new 4x4 pickup idling there, in whose front bumper shadow I had inadvertently parked my car.

This unseen beast was yowling and barking like it was ripping through the undercarriage of the vehicle it was left in, and I swear I could see large chunks of upholstery and vinyl heave up toward the savaged headliner that received its indignant first realization, that the pickup's driver, perhaps this beast's owner/trainer/handler/shock collar operator, had left it/her/him/ there, by itself-- and had gone into anywhere without him/her/it cradled in his/her/its arms as though a very small frail child, a tiny monkey on a short bejeweled leash, or an ancient bottle of very expensive priceless, invaluable, irreplaceable, hootch the person dared not break for whatever reason (feel free to make one up) and left it there alone, to interminably wait until it presumably died, and whereupon, then and only then, could be safely removed from said vehicle and deposited in the nearest garbage can--which would be the ones located on either side of the grocery store entry and exit doors.

This idea is not so far off, nor unreasonable. It could be done. For this particular spoiled-beyond-measure beast was no bigger than a 16-ounce can of beer and probably weighed less, with its bulgy little head and its scrawny hairless skeletal-like body, its protruding fidgety eye balls constantly straining to escape their eye sockets, its bowed-for-traction little legs and splayed squirrel-clawed feet, its erect rigid little tail no bigger 'round than a No. 2 pencil . . . could be easily compressed even further--and poked into that garbage can with no more thought than,
 "Hmmm, only 31 or 32 more of those would've made a pound, I should've recycled instead.."

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