Luna: Happy Birthday to ME!!!

My Very Busy First Birthday

by Luna Brooks-Russell

So I'm lying on the couch (my favorite place) minding my own business and all of a sudden my mom gets home from "Party City" and announces ...

... it's my BIRTHDAY! Now I'm not exactly sure what a birthday IS but since it seems to involve extra treats and lots of attention, I figure: How bad can it be?

(I'm going to learn to stop asking questions like that pretty soon!) First they drag out the camera -- everything around here seems to be a "photo-op" ... and this is the official Birthday Portrait. (Not bad if I do say so myself!) But then ...

... they decide to have me wear the birthday star.

If you're not used to dog-body language here's a clue ...

Perky ears in the Birthday Portrait = I'm feeling good about myself.

Flat ears in this one = where's a hole I can crawl in?

But wait -- there's more. As if the birthday star isn't bad enough, they bring out ...

"THE HAT."

They don't actually think I'm going to WEAR that thing, do they? I'm thinking to myself but ...

... evidently they do. And as much as I try to cooperate with the mommies when they're in one of these "none of this makes any sense to a dog" phases I'm really only willing to put up with so much humiliation so ...

... once they got their stupid picture, off it came. (I mean really, a dog has to have some standards!)

I think they're trying to make it up to me a little because now I'm back up on the couch and no one is fussing at me to get down. We're waiting for the USC/Notre Dame game to start and pretty soon there will be turkey leftovers for people dinner and I think we're getting the left-over left-overs tonight. All in all it has been a very good first birthday (except for the hat part) so ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Harvey: My Bad-to-Worse-to-Worse Day

Have you ever had one of those bad-to-worse-to-worse kind of days? Well, today was one of those for me. It was just one thing after another. It was bad enough that I gave into my dark side and stuck my head in trash can to try to get the empty dog food can out but then the stupid lid came off and got stuck on my head -- and while I was banging around in the kitchen trying to knock it off here comes one of the mommies with a CAMERA in her hand.

So not only am I caught in the act (no blaming this one on Luna!) I'm caught on the record (looking about as stupid as a dog can!) and then she goes and puts it on our BLOG so everybody can see (if it gets any worse than this I don't want to know about it!)

So now I'm going to go find a quiet corner and try to stay out of trouble for the rest of the day. (Note to self: step away from the trash can!)

Luna: In the News

When the first mommy gets up in the morning it's pretty much the same routine every day: put us out to "do our business," let in any cats who decided to stay out for the night, put on the COFFEE (an essential ingredient to mommies getting going in the morning, evidently) and then go out and get the newspaper ... at our house the New York Times.

It's ususally a pretty quiet time -- the mommies aren't real talkative first thing in the morning -- but yesterday when the paper came in there was a big "Woo Hoo." I'm not sure who the Democrats are or what a "midterm sweep" is but since we got an extra cookie-bone to celebrate I'm thinkin' it's all good.

And it's not just about the extra cookie-bone -- it also sounds like these guys are going to be smarter about getting that war finished so our brother Jamie and his friends can come home and I'm thinkin' that's VERY good.

So cookie-bones all around -- and prayers for those in harm's way wherever they are.