A SLEEPER (Howie) AND A NAPPER (Kelly) WITH DAS CONNECTIONS; CELEBRATING AN ANNIVERSARY

Need a dog? Need a cat? Need an explanation for a 3-question opening paragraph? 

At readlarrypowell.com, our first edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap was published on May 14, 2005. 
The spotlighted dog was this guy, Oliver, the Cavalier King Charles who ruled the home of my brother and sister-in-law Barry and Shelley in suburban Chicago. That dog at the top of this page is Calamity, a dog we rescued who would add immensely to the charm and love in the home of my brother and sister-in-law Garry and Brenita in suburban Dallas, if Princeton is a suburb.
With the help of you Dear Readers and the dogs and cats and other critters in all our lives, this weekend feature has been published weekly for all these years. Readlarrypowell.com has been around since around the turn of the century. 
On Tuesday morning this past week, with Hasting the Kitten at the vet for his boy surgery, I was sitting at my desk alone. Office cat William Powell was on the back of the couch in the living room (watching American Graffiti — his first time to see that one — he’s a fan of teen-angst, I’m led to believe.
As I put my hands on the keyboard and began to type, suddenly our dog Wendy — kind of a bird dog/Boxer/something else mix — walked up and leaned on my left leg and waited for the customary petting of her sweet ol’ noggin.
I said to her, “You sure are beautiful, Wendy” and her big ol’ brown eyes looked up at me and at the precise moment, I wondered, “What do dogs really want to be told? Is beautiful good enough. Does she want to be called a ‘smart pup’? Does she want to discuss politics, baseball, space exploration?” 

There is a connection between sleeping dogs and napping cats and the streets of Dallas.
I bring up my adoration of Wendy because she’s was taken off the mean streets of Dallas by my Determinedrescuespouse Martha. How is Wendy connected to this edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap?
In the middle of the week I was scrolling the adorable adoptables on the Dallas Animal Services website and ran across this appeal for a dog named Howie. Not that he looks like Wendy — but he is a Dallas dog. And, if Martha hadn’t saved Wendy (Wednesday Louise Wagstaff Arden), she could have wound up in the shelter or worse — a road victim or a bait dog or an unloved guard dog who barks for a living at some dealer’s house.

How Howie (how’s that for alliteration!) got into Dallas Animal Services I don’t know. Pretty sure Howie didn’t Uber to the shelter and turn himself in. But, based on the photos from his bio on the city shelter’s website HERE I’d say Howie is a dog who knew he’d rather flop over on comfy chair or a carpeted floor than spend any time curled up on a porch or sidewalk or in a metal cage. 
As it turns out, based on his bio at DAS, he qualified for living not in a cage but in a foster home.
As you can tell in his photos, in a comfortable home he is one seriously relaxed dog!

Usually we don’t buy into the idea that a dog can write his own bio, but we’re making an exception in the case of Howie. Here’s what someone interpreting for Howie wrote for his DAS listing: “I am Howie. My foster mom says I am super sweet and house trained, a gentleman in my manners although a bit shy at times around the kids I have met so far. I love car rides and walk well on the leash. I stand behind the front door when I need to go for a walk to go potty. I will stay in my crate when asked, although I'd much rather sit by my foster mom's chair on a dog bed she placed there for me! I just like being close to her -- I bet I would like to be close to you if you adopted me! Let's find out!”

Howie is #A1137335 at Dallas Animal Services. He’s a 63-pound,10-year-old American Pit Bull Terrier. Know what it’ll cost to adopt Howie? Not a dime. His adoption fee is “free.”
Oh, one more thing: You Dear Readers know what a sucker I am for cats — big as I am for dogs. This wonderfully adorned cat is Kelly, #A1141987 at Dallas Animal Services and she is this edition’s Napping Cat. She’s a 7-pound, year-old Domestic Shorthair currently being fostered through Dallas Animal Services. You may have looked at her photos and immediately suspected that the City of Dallas has upgraded it’s cat holding areas from “cages & kennels” to comfy living room furniture and patio resting areas. 
Nope. Kelly’s in foster care, too. And like Howie, her adoption fee is “zero.” She’s a no-fee adoption kitty.  See her and other adoptables at the DAS site HERE.
We have no idea how either the easy-going Sleeping Dog or Napping Cat wound up in the care of the City of Dallas Animal Services Shelter, but, if someone reading this were to adopt either of them, maybe we could get some photos of what their lives look like after they leave the shelter. Adoring and adopting these animals at this time would be a wonderful act of human decency.
It isn’t like the city’s free-roaming knuckleheads have declared a moratorium on dumping their “Pandemic Pals” or have figured out how failure to comprehended the birds and bees results in more puppies and kittens.
These two are clearly endorsed by their foster humans!
[LARRY REMINDER: That handsome fellow on the left is my office cat William -- he calls those eyes "My typo catchers." He's almost 100% but my typing can be a challenge. Dear Readers, please send photos of your slumbering critters to dallrp@aol.com and we’ll happily post them and their life stories in our long-running feature, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap. Your story may inspire other people to open their homes to unwanted dogs and cats. And, no doubt, you’ll inspire insomniacs to believe that they, too, can get some sleep if they can just figure out how to curl up in a chair or on a plate-sized stool while making their snores sound like purrs.]
— Offer sleep advice or midnight snack recipes by clicking on ‘comment’ below or by emailing dallrp@aol.com and put DO YOU REALLY NEED THAT, SLIM? in the subject line. —