There Was Never Any Real Hope.

If you've never bookended one of your days with a nice long cuddle with a kitty then I cannot express to you what you're missing. In a way I feel sorry for people with dogs. I also feel something a good deal stronger when I see doodles on the sidewalk.

Although dogs are scandalously precious, there is always the smell, and the drool, and the simpering neediness that oozes out of their every pore. No replacement for a purring furry poof ball rubbing up and down the length of your body as you lie in bed. Staring at the moon. Knowing full well you don't have to take the animal for a walk in the rain so it can relieve itself and eat some other canine's fecal matter, you lie there realizing you can just drift off to sleep like this. And you do. Dreams of dismembered bodies and viscera fill your restful mind, blazing fires tearing through shopping centers. Panic, cries of pain and despair. Large brick storage building collapsing onto pedestrians below. Only a handful are able to get out of the way, and those that do are eventually swallowed up by debris and glass. Crushed to death. Lying under tons of rubble in pain as the life slowly drains from their compressed bodies.

You rouse slightly, shift a little under the covers, hear kitty fling the bedroom door open, and it all starts over again. Much harder to pull yourself away in the morning than it is to drift off in the evening.