Now I’m cooking for the dog. When we bought him, from an older woman who had never had a dog, we promised to feed him high-grade kibble mixed with a high-grade canned product. The combination worked for six years but lately he’s started to turn up his poodle snout at meal times — so I’ve started heating the canned food until it appears similar to what we eat. The mother of one of my husband’s students sent home a Dixie-cup frozen dog treat that he went crazy over so I tried freezing chicken broth in the ice cube trays; he wasn’t buying it.

Now, I understand loving something so fully that compromise is unacceptable — like my personal-weakness-479 degree-brand toasted sesame + seaweed popcorn (I’d fight a zombie for that stuff) — but really, intensive food prep for the dog is wearing me out.

Oh what we do for our animals. I read a news post recently about a tiger who lost her cubs so her caregivers, not wanting her to die of depression, wrapped a few piglets in tiger fabric which has fooled her into maternal bliss.

For now.