March / April 2020 Pet Profile: Herschel

Pet Profile: Herschel (and Steve and also Narf)
March / April 2020

Hey, readers. The name, that my owner Doug gave me, is Herschel. I came to him pretty even keel, so he didn’t have to do much beyond hang out with me. Not much training. Just vibing out. Hippies. However he did make me promise NOT to eat his cats, Steve and Narf. That wasn’t a problem, onaccounta cats scare me. We’re friends now, tho. I chase all the (other) neighborhood cats outta our yard and they ignore me in a friendly kinda way. Sometimes I eat their food, too. Mmmmmm.

I like treats especially when Doug takes me to Smokey Joe’s. They have beef jerky there!!! And everybody’s super nice to me. They scratch my butt and rub me behind the ears. I like the girl fingernails the best. The poor cats only get scratched by girl nails when one comes to the house, which is, sadly, not very often. Sometimes the rock-n-roll people come and make a huge racket in the dining room. That’s always fun cos they all stand up (except the guy that clobbers the buckets and he has his own stool). So, like most times, I get the couch all to myself. They call the “sound” they are making The Willie Douglas Band. It’s a little too retro for my taste, but I’m only like five-years-old… or six, heck, I don’t know.

Steve and Narf like to go outside and get into trouble. That’s their deal; mainly fighting the other cats in the neighborhood, but also stalking tiny mammals / leaving their dead bodies on the doorstep. And, in Steve’s case, getting stuck 30 feet up in a tree seems to be a thing. 3 times. I’m glad I can’t climb trees. Narf always seems to get his butt kicked, and me and Steve are always having to save him. Luckily he’s got this super thick fur that is hard to bite through. And if you do get through and draw blood, that fur matts up into dreadlocks which then cover the wound like armor. So he limps around a bit, often really, and is always nursing some recent injury. We still got him, tho, me and Steve.

Doug is always spending his days washing, painting, and taking pictures of these useless round things he calls “hubcaps.” I don’t know why he does it, but it does give me the chance to hang out with him in the yard a lot. People keep calling them “Very Good Hubcaps” and I reckon they have to be. I trust my owner. (*bark* buncha useless round things)

Sometimes, the boy, Zeb, is here sometimes he’s not and that makes us all sad, but then I’ll see a squirrel and forget all about it for a while. When he’s here, we play a game I like to call “Run Around in Circles at Full Throttle.” It’s better if we go to a park as this backyard just can’t contain me. Another game I like is “Oh, I See You Have Something to Eat There. Can I Have a Bite”? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wanting for a dang thing. The Doug person feeds us good food and pets us all a lot. He does let those cats run around all free-range and that makes me a little bit jealous, but he takes me to the bar for beef jerky and girl scratches, neither of which he or the cats get (I kinda wonder why the Doug goes there so much). Plus I get to eat all of the pizza bones, so I guess we all kinda love him. So… yeah, there’s my story. Catch me at Smokey Joe’s.