Graydon Carter had brunch at Little Owl in the West Village the other day, and he left a big doodle and a note with his check. I decided to ask my dog Lee what she thought.

At first I couldn't understand her, because she was speaking dog. Then she picked up her stuffed mallard and started playing with it, and then she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. But she still had one ear cocked to the sky, so I knew she was still awake, and I wasn't going to let her get away with anything. Not this time. There's a new-old sheriff in town, buster.

"You should know better than to shove a picture of a cat in my face," she said.

"I know you don't like cats, but it's just a drawing," I said. "A scribble. Nothing even remotely realistic about it."

She sniffed and rolled over onto her side. "I've never seen a cat with just one whisker on one side of his face," she said. "And those eyes! Cats have small eyes that stare at you shiftily. Those eyes are big and unfocused. They look like sunny-side-up eggs. Perhaps that's what he had just eaten for brunch."

"Or maybe he wants to think of cats as less threatening than they really are," I suggested.

"Hmm. Maybe," she said. She stared at me suspiciously. "You're not getting a cat, are you?"

"I'm allergic," I said. She yawned.

"Say, is it time for my walk yet?" she asked.

"Nice try," I said. "You went out an hour ago."

"You know I don't have a good sense of time," she said.

"Can we get back to the matter at hand?" I asked. But inside, I was thinking: You're not the boss of me.

"His G's are exaggerated," she said. "Since that is also the first letter of his first name, I think he has an outsized sense of his own importance."

"Interesting. Go on," I said. "Would you like a rawhide chew?"

She shrugged. "Maybe later. Anyway, so the G's. Yeah, this guy's an egomaniac. But his handwriting is at once ornate and sloppy, suggesting that he sees himself as a big-picture guy. He doesn't need to pay attention to the details," she said. "Someone else will take care of that. Kind of like how you sometimes forget to buy my food until there's almost none left in the bin."

I chose to ignore this remark.

"Anyway," she said, yawning, "I'm also detecting a vaguely Continental influence in the construction of his 'f.' Has he spent much time abroad?"

"He is Canadian," I said.

"Hmm. Unless he's from Montreal, it's an affectation he picked up later," she said. "The Canadians are not a florid people. Didn't you watch the Olympics?"

"You know I watched the Olympics," I said.

"I fell asleep through most of it, except the curling," she said. "I found that strangely therapeutic, akin to rolling around in shit at the park."

I shuddered. "Did you also find it therapeutic when I hosed you down in front of the apartment building to get the shit off of you?"

She glared at me. "That was most decidedly not therapeutic." And with that, she went back to sleep.

[Via]