Posts Tagged: pets
On Birds, Cats, and Children
My devotion to the cats was not an imitation of human motherhood. To confuse the two, I thought, was an insult to both.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Marissa Paternoster Knows That Animals Aren’t Objects
[T]he one thing I wake up next to, that I couldn’t imagine living without, isn’t an object at all. It’s a dog.
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It’s Never That Easy: Talking with Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth discusses Wait Till You See Me Dance and I, Parrot, her work with prisoners, and how she ended up with a pet dog.
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Rumpus Exclusive: An Excerpt from I, Parrot
An exclusive excerpt from I, Parrot, by Deb Olin Unferth & Elizabeth Haidle, forthcoming from Catapult and Black Balloon on November 1.
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Sunday Rumpus Poetry: Three Poems by Faisal Mohyuddin
when to survive this day and the next/four years’ worth will require many/more small, nourishing acts of/self-indulgence and sweet defiance.
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The Rumpus Interview with Bronwen Dickey
Bronwen Dickey discusses Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon, her examination of one of the most feared dog breeds, how the media changes perceptions, and what Eliza Doolittle might have to say about this.
...moreWoman’s Best Friend
At The Establishment, Laura Bogart writes a heartwarming ode to her the special type of love that exists only between human and canine—the kind of love she says she’s always been searching for: Together, we built a life from endless repetitions of “sit, stay, come, good”; from my coaching her into a calmer, more confident […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Nina Stibbe
Author Nina Stibbe discusses her new novel Paradise Lodge, our obsession with character likeability, and how she more than flirts with feminism.
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This Is Not a Story About a Ghost
This is a story about memory. About neurons misfiring, about the strange space between dream and awake, that feeling, when I’m falling asleep, of falling backwards, swinging my arms up to catch myself.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Mark and Frances Quinlan’s Favorite Things
What I want/need/love most is to be with my family.
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The Rumpus Interview with Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz talks about his newest novel, Ashley Bell, overcoming self-doubt, and “what this incredibly beautiful language of ours allows you to do.”
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Rumpus Original Fiction: People and Oranges and People
Something must remain of me, of course. Someone has to lock the door behind us when we go out.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Lera
You keep the edge of your love sharp, a knife, so that those close to you know to handle it carefully. You think you’ve done it and then you discover that you’ve been endangering yourself to everybody you meet all this time.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Sound of Galton’s Whistle
Those acres of wild were not about to cough up what I was missing no matter how much I clapped and whistled.
...moreSunday Links
This week’s Sunday Rumpus essay by Jean Kim got me thinking about the kind of retrospective realizations that make us wish we could go back in time and do something differently, or at least apologize for our inability to do so. What synchronicity then to run across “Self Portrait in Apologies” by Sarah Einstein. Sarah […]
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Dog Lab
One day, I saw on the schedule Canine Cardiophysiology Lab. By then I had already carved up human carcasses in anatomy class . . . . Memories of mellifluous verses about springtime and the stark insights of Shakespearian tragedies had long since faded. I went through the motions without rest, a zombie memorizing body parts.
...moreOur Pets, Ourselves
After her dog leapt out of a third story window, writer Laurel Braitman became fascinated by animal psychology. Check out her interview with NPR to see what animal behavior reveals about humans and why gorillas at the Bronx Zoo love Halloween.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #51: Pet Psychic Marla Steele
Each year on my dog Isso’s birthday, I give him the gift of voice: a reading with pet psychics/animal communicators who “talk” to Isso about his likes and dislikes, requests, preferences and physical ailments, if any.
...moreA Writer’s Best Friend
As the saying has it, a dog is a man’s best friend, but dogs are not always the pets of choice among the literary greats. Ernest Hemingway had his six-toed cats, Flannery O’Connor had her peacocks, and Vladimir Nabokov had his butterflies as Rumpus contributor Tim Taranto illustrates in his piece “Author’s Best Friend: The […]
...moreGo Find Lost Cat
Where does your cat go when he’s missing, and what would you do to find out? Rumpus contributors Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton went all the way, employing kitty-stalking gear like cameras and trackers to peer into their pet’s secret life. Go read the whole story in their new book Lost Cat, a beautifully illustrated “true […]
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