AS NEW YEAR APPROACHES, SOME NOTES AND SOME ANIMALS AND SOME TYPING

EDITION OF FRIDAY, DEC. 30, 2022 [PetPowellPress] OK, let’s get right to the business of the day. Anybody else resolve to not be late with your New Year’s Resolutions 2023? Dear Baby New Year, please honor these goals:

1. I resolve to get my car serviced on time. (I’m not alone in that, am I, Dear Readers!)
2. I resolve to makes sure my 1999 Ford F150 is nominated for “The Smithsonian’s Historic 20th Century American Pickup.” Does it matter that it’s on its second engine? Radio still works and so does the cassette player.
3. I resolve to always try to pick up stray cats that cross my path. [To the left is former stray cat William Powell, my office cat, photographed Thursday afternoon as he helped with this list. The photo below shows William after he'd nodded off later in the day, still helping me.]
4. I resolve to always try to pick up stray dogs that cross my path. [PS on 3 and 4: Sometimes dogs and cats are too clever and too fast for their own good. But I’ll keep trying.]
5. I resolve to speak harshly to people I see dumping animals. Harshly with kindness, of course. (This resolution covers all sorts of jerks who mistreat animals. I’ll feel no guilt when I break this resolution.)
6. I resolve to run a marathon to celebrate the Dallas Cowboys winning the Super Bowl.
7. I resolve to run a marathon to celebrate the Texas Rangers winning the World Series.
8. I resolve to seek professional help that can guide me to cease making stupid resolutions about running marathons.
9. I resolve to pick up my office cat William Powell and embrace him each morning until he yowls in protest, jumps out of my arms and runs down the hall to the kitchen when his breakfast awaits. I’m tired of driving him to the nearby Spat’s Pancakes where he always orders the same thing, “Basted Plant-Based Perch-on-a-Stack.” Spat’s is the only vegetarian breakfast joint in our Zip Code. 

10. I resolve to respect people who work so hard to save the lives of animals and to put them in good homes where they can benefit from good humans and good humans can benefit from them. I won’t have any trouble living up to #10.
11. I resolve to remind myself that if I hadn’t gotten a flu shot, a pneumonia shot and the October Covid booster shot, plus taken my array of pills daily, this stinkin’ lousy, annoying, cough-inducing positive-testing Covid I’m hacking through right now might have won the battle with me. Yeah, I tested positive. But I’m upright and walking. I think Covid’s goal was to give me insomnia, but I already beat the es-oh-bee to it! Quick, somebody pour me a saucer of milk and William will help me nod off. He’s hypnotic. Or maybe he’s hypnotized. We’re unclear at this moment.
MEANWHILE UP THE ROAD
IN DAINGERFIELD, TEXAS…
Happy New Year to all of our Dear Readers and acquaintances who live in the hallowed pine forests and river bottom areas of Northeast Texas. 
Lately, due to the diligence of our tipster Tami Kukla, we’ve been paying attention to the shelter she, as an animal advocate in the Metrosprawl, has personally adopted for spotlight the animals who need homes.
We’re citing 3 animals I spotted on a search of assorted Daingerfield Animal Shelter internet sites. And I checked with Shelter Director Tabitha Hicks about this trio. 
[LARRY ASIDE: Remember, this is a holiday weekend — the shelter will be open Friday, but closed Saturday through Monday. That’ll help you make plans. No need for airline reservations. Just kidding the good folks at Southwest….]
(1) Let’s just start with the newsy cat Zelena whose story was updated Thursday at Daingerfield. She’s A50418006. And she was returned on Thursday, also. She was 9-weeks-old when she came in on May 26. Now, Zelena is available once again — didn’t work out at the new home.
Tabitha reports, “Zelena came in as a wild baby. She took weeks of interactions before she was somewhat comfortable being touched. Now she just loves people and getting their attention. She isn't a huge fan of other cats but can coexist if they are respectful of her space.”


 [LARRY ASIDE: You never know if it’s something the cat did or if it was human shortcoming, i.e., lack of patiences, lack of experience with animals, lack of comprehending the need for understanding the challenges facing a cat or dog in a human home.]

(2) I have a personal interest in this cat Violet. When she is adopted, it will be an act in honor of my late long-time office cat and slumber partner Deputy Chief Kittie Leigh Johnson. That’s the “pitch” at Daingerfield Animal Shelter as we try to get some attention for adorable Violet, the cat who came into the shelter as a mommy and has been left behind as her babies were adopted.
Tabitha reports that Violet “is very sweet but can be shy at first with new people and situations. She even tends to try to make friends with the other kitties that are placed in the room next to her. She is a gem and would really flourish in a home willing to be patient with her.”
(3) And, here’s this dog Cornbread. How did Cornbread wind up in the Daingerfield shelter?
Tabitha’s note read, “Cornbread came in after a citizen reported him for jumping her fence and sleeping in the dog house with her dog. He was a little shy at first but now gets super excited when he sees any people. He's very loving but loves to play too. He's not too fond of energetic male dogs but doesn't seem to mind the female dogs at all.”
To ask about these animals, get in touch with Tabitha at the shelter by calling 903-645-2120 or email aniimalshelter@cityofdaingerfield.com.
Monitor the Daingerfield animals by following the shelter’s website HERE.
You can link with its PetFinder page HERE. Or monitor the shelter’s Facebook page HERE.
CONTEMPLATIONS
A NOTE FROM COVIDLAND
Yes, Martha and I are both doing OK — not “well,” but OK. Cranky, we are. Still gotta pass the swab-up-the-nostrils tests a couple of times. Not sleeping. Not jumping up in the mornings and running 2 miles through the streets -- we've never done that anyway. We are watching more TV together than we’ve done in years. I don’t know if that’s a fact or a symptom of something. It occurs to me that when you shove that testing swap up your noses as far as it needs to go, you are doing exactly what the Mothers of the 1950s and '60s told us Baby Boomer Buttheads not do to do with a Q-Tip. …
I was writing about the Daingerfield shelter while, in the background there was yet another news story about poor Southwest Airlines' worst Christmas travel experience ever. I thought surely someone will take advantage of this. For example, noting that Daingerfield is just a couple-and-a-half hours northeast of the metrosprawl, I figured a good tourism slogan would be “DON’T WAIT AT THE AIRPORT! DRIVE TO DAINGERFIELD TODAY.” Or maybe “NO WAITIN’ AT THE DEPOT IN GUN BARREL CITY.”  TAKE A CAR TO FATE; IT'S EAST OF DALLAS BEYOND AIRPORT HELL. OK,I’ll stop. I don’t fly, so it’s really not fair of me to make airport jokes. …
I’m writing and publishing this before the Dallas Cowboys’ Thursday night game. So, however it turned out, Happy New Year to Cowboys fans and, especially, to the people who believe that the Texas Rangers cracked the lock on the team vault and coughed up the right amount of dough to get into the playoffs and earn that World Series Victory Parade. Lord knows how much it’ll cost you to park at that parade!
— Offer ideas or doubts by clicking on ‘comment’ below or email dallrp@aol.com and put THINK WORLD CUP, FOOTFREAK in the subject line. —-