Our friend Paul Kim, an accomplished and ever-working-and-improving artist, painted this picture of Callie.  We’re thrilled with the result and hope you enjoy!

I just lost my best animal friend — Okie-Dokie, the black cat.  She was just fine a few days ago, but then she had some serious kidney problems, and within a few days she was gone.  Poor Okie-Dokie.  She was a good pal to me — after teaching me some dog-cat manners.  I’ll miss her a lot.  I guess, though, that her 17 years were pretty good cat years.

Okie-Dokie adopted Fred and Barbara about 10 years ago.  She just showed up one day, in the front yard, hunting for gophers, a few of which had migrated across the street from the golf course.  She hunted gophers for a few days, and then she started to check out the front doorstep.  Eventually, Fred and Barbara put out some cat food, which the strange black cat gobbled down.  Next, she started to explore the inside of her house.  All in all, it took Okie-Dokie about two weeks to decide to adopt Fred and Barbara.

A few years earlier, Fred and Barbara had dinner at a restaurant in Cabo San Luca, Mexico, where their waiter was just always saying “Okie-Dokie.”  “Okie-Dokie, I’ll bring you another Pacifico.”  “Okie-Dokie, your enchiladas are coming right up!”  So they decided that they would name their next cat “Okie-Dokie.”

A few years later, Fred and Barbara learned the true story about Okie-Dokie.  Okie-Dokie, who was originally named Maxine, was a ferel cat that had been adopted by a  young couple that lived a few blocks away from Fred and Barbara.  When the couple had their second baby, Okie-Dokie decided she wasn’t getting enough attention, so she started scouting for a new place to live.  It turns out that some of the couple’s neighbors saw this happening, but Fred and Barbara didn’t learn about it for several years.

When Okie-Dokie adopted Fred and Barbara, Jamie (my predecessor Golden Retriever) was about two years old (which is what I am now!).  Here’s a photograph from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie,” that shows Okie-Dokie and Jamie having their daily afternoon nap in the hallway.

When I arrived at Fred and Barbara’s house almost two years ago, Okie-Dokie was about 15 years old.  At first, Okie and I didn’t get along very well.  I was a fluffy little puppy, and I kept thinking Okie-Dokie would want to play with me.  But everytime I jumped at her, she swatted my nose.  I finally learned that Okie-Dokie was in charge and that we could play on her terms, not mine.  We didn’t actually “play” a lot, but we got to be very good friends.  We enjoyed sniffing noses.  Sometimes, Okie-Dokie would lick my face, or my coat.  Sometimes I would lick Okie-Dokie’s fur.  We never shared a nap in the hallway, like Jamie and Okie-Dokie, but recently we napped a lot on the futon in Fred’s office.  Sometimes, I used Okie-Dokie like a pillow.  She seemed to like that.

So that makes three really good pals I’ve lost in my two, young years.  Charlie, my Golden Retriever friend that I used to see on my morning jog.  And then Ishka, Karen’s (Fred and Barbara’s daughter) Golden Retriever.  And now Okie-Dokie.  Okie-Dokie is the toughest to deal with, because I spent time with her every day.  I’ve been making up for the loss of Okie-Dokie by spending lots more time with “Stinky,” my one-half stuffed puppy security object.  I don’t know what I’d do without “Stinky.”

Fred says losing a pet is really hard for people, too.  They love their pets very much, and it’s hard for them to understand that dogs and cats just don’t live as long as people usually do.  Here’s a collection of poems that have given Fred and Barbara lots of comfort when they’ve lost pets.

Goodbye, Okie-Dokie.  You were a great cat and a great pal, and I’ll always love you.

Callie

I’m sorry, but I can’t help but think dogs are smarter than most scientists and researchers give them credit for.  In my December 3, 2008, interview with Stan Coren, noted author and researcher on the topics of “dog speak” and dog intelligence, Stan said that dogs have the intelligence of a 2 1/2 year old human child.  Well, that might be right by conventional definitions and measurements of “dog intelligence,” but I think there’s something more going on here.

How do you explain this?

This morning, during my golf practice, I found a nice new tennis ball.  A tennis ball on a golf course, you ask?  Well, there are tennis courts right next to the golf short-game practice area.  So I brought the tennis ball home for Callie, and, as usual, it became her “ball for the day.”  She has a dozen or more tennis balls in her crate and scattered around the house, but this ball became “today’s special tennis ball.”  She brought it to me to play “fetch.”  She carried it to the kitchen when she went out to pee.  And she snuggled with it in the bathroom while I took my shower.

When I went out to lunch, I put Callie in her crate, not noticing that “today’s special ball” was not in the crate.  When I got home and let her out of the crate, she ran immediately (as in “no hesitation”) to the bathroom (which is in the opposite direction of her normal path) and came out with — you guessed it — “today’s special ball.”

Would a 2 1/2 year old child have done that?  Maybe, but I’m not convinced.  Would a child have become so attached to one toy/ball?  Would it have remembered, after about 2 hours, where it had left the toy/ball?  Would it have planned, the instant I opened the crate door, to go retrieve that ball?

I have a suspicion that the scientists are measuring something like “problem solving ability” or “information processing ability.”  So maybe I’m seeing something different.  It just seems to me that dogs have an uncanny ability to “connect the dots” sometimes.  They remember things — much better than a 2 1/2 year old kid, it seems to me.  They remember people, other dogs, places, routes to get to places, and lots of other stuff.  Could a 2 1/2 year old kid find its way from my Lake Arrowhead home to my boat dock?  I don’t think so, but Callie could, if she wanted to go swimming.

We’ve all heard the stories about dogs that found their way home after being left miles — even hundreds of miles — away.  Could a 2 1/2 year old kid to that?  Maybe it’s not “intelligence,” but something different — a homing instinct, an uncanny memory, unbelievable sense of smell, or something else.  But dogs do some pretty amazing things.

Here’s a fun people & pet social networking site you should check out. Lots of cute photos of pets, and they have a photo contest running right now.

Here’s the picture of Callie and Okie-Dokie I submitted for this week’s contest.

While you’re visiting the site, be sure to vote for this photo to win the contest!