Equal time in the catdog book club

Having posted my recollections of A Cat Called Room 8, allow me to recommend a canine-themed book as well. I’ve just finished reading Martha Sherrill’s Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain (Penguin, 2008). Sherrill, a long-time staff writer for the Washington Post, has written a marvelous book about a remarkable man, Morie Sawataishi. Morie is the heart and soul of this book, but it’s just as much about the dogs he loved (and presumably still loves–by the end of the book Morie is 90), the Japanese snow country in which he thrives, the conventions he challenged, the rules he broke to save the akita from extinction as a breed, and the legacy he leaves behind for the dog world.

I won’t give too much away–except to say that Sherrill describes Morie in a respectful, unvarnished way, and that one of the strongest threads weaving through the book concerns the conflicts that often arise between Morie’s communion with the akitas (and with the people who live within their orbit) and his life as a husband and father. His wife Kitako, for instance, almost leaves him when he brings home (in violation of Japanese law at the time) his first akita puppy, since the family, in post-WWII Japan–is just about starving and feeding the pup places even more stress on their food supply.

Morie is a man with a calling. Whether you love akitas or some other breed, Dog Man is a book worth reading.

Learning the lingo

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite books was “A Cat Called Room 8,” the story of a cat adopted by an elementary school in Los Angeles (it might be more accurate to say “the story of a cat who adopted an elementary school in Los Angeles”). Room 8 hung out at the school for 15 years, and was given quite a splendid burial when he died in (I’m dating myself here) 1968. I’m pleased to say that Room 8 not only had his own book,

but that today, owing to his enduring fame, he has his own web site.

I bring this up here not because of the charming story the Room 8 children wrote about the cat, his care, his schedule, and his life, but because of something I remember being in the book (though, given the vagaries of time and my little gray cells, I may well have made this up).

I have a vivid memory of the book containing a glossary of Room 8’s vocabulary. The children realized that he signaled his mood and needs through his body language. If his tail was high, he was happy. If his tail swished, he was irritated. And so on.

I was enchanted. A cat lover even then, I was thrilled to have this guide, a veritable Rosetta stone to help the felinophiles among us to communicate with the objects of our adoration. Why, once I’d read this miraculous lexicon, Dr. Doolittle himself had nothing on me. The language of cats had been revealed to my 9 year old self, and I’ve been comfortable with them (and, mostly, they with me) ever since. My cat Nemo, for instance, flings herself to the ground and rolls on her back when I enter the room–she purrs and cavorts and, when I bend to pet her, rubs her face against my hand. Who could fail to understand that, in her language, she’s telling me she’s comfortable, she’s glad to see me, she trusts me–and, oh yeah–she has marked me as her own.

Then there are the dogs. When I pet them and rub their noses, they scrinch up their upper lips and show their teeth. Dinah makes the most amazing sound–but is she singing? Protesting? Begging for more? Or is she about to snap my hand off?

After six years with her, I know the answer (and I’ll post a video soon of the whole performance so you can see where I might have been confused), but, honestly–cats and dogs clearly speak different languages. Neither is better than the other, but to those of us conditioned and tutored in the language of cats, it can really be confusing.