Thurber Tonight: The Pet Department (1)

In this holiday season, I thought some DWT readers might welcome, well, a different sort of seasonal "spirit." So this month we're going to dip into some of my favorite material by my favorite writer, James Thurber, some of it well-known and some of it not so much. (By way of introduction, tentatively scheduled for Sunday night we've got perhaps my favorite of his self-profiles, "My Fifty Years with James Thurber," the preface to the 1945 anthology The Thurber Carnival. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the background to Thurber's, er, art, we've already had E. B. White's famous explanation, from the preface to their 1929 literary collaboration Is Sex Necessary?, as well as Thurber's confirming version in his preface to the 1932 collection of his "artwork," The Seal in the Bedroom.)

Tonight we kick off with a first installment of "The Pet Department," which appeared in book form first in The Owl in the Attic (1931) and then in The Thurber Carnival. -- Ken

The Pet Department

Q. I enclose a sketch of the way my dog, William, has been lying for two days now. I think there must be something wrong with him. Can you tell me how to get him out of this?

MRS. L. L. G.

A. I should judge from the drawing that William is in a trance. Trance states, however, are rare with dogs. It may just be ecstasy. If at the end of another twenty-four hours he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, I should give him up. The position of the ears leads me to believe that he may be enjoying himself in a quiet way, but the tail is somewhat alarming.

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Q. Our cat, who is thirty-five, spends all of her time in bed. She follows every move I make, and this is beginning to get to me. She never seems sleepy nor particularly happy. Is there anything I could give her?

MISS L. Mc.

A. There are no medicines which can safely be given to induce felicity in a cat, but you might try lettuce, which is a soporific, for the wakefulness. I would have to see the cat watching you to tell whether anything could be done to divert her attention.

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Q. My husband, who is an amateur hypnotizer, keeps trying to get our bloodhound under his control. I contend that this is not doing the dog any good. So far he has not yielded to my husband's influence, but I am afraid that if he once got under, we couldn't get him out of it.

A. A. T.

A. Dog are usually left cold by all phases of psychology, mental telepathy, and the like. Attempts to hypnotize this particular breed, however, are likely to be fraught with a definite menace. A bloodhound, if stared at fixedly, is liable to gain the impression that it is under suspicion, being followed, and so on. This upsets a bloodhound's life, by completely reversing its whole scheme of behavior.

THURBER TONIGHT: Check out the series to date

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