Carll yammers a lot about friends, have you noticed? He was lonely as a kid on his big farm with only his dog for company (only his dog!). He writes to make friends. Thoreau and Shakespeare – and pretty much any maker he admires – is his “friend.” And he contrasts these warm fuzzy feelings with my cold-hearted materialism, which seeks from companions food, shelter, fun, and, above all, presence. If you’re nowhere to be seen, you’re nobody to me. I like where I can lick, period.

                  Because Carll is king of the kitchen counter, I sigh when he sighs and laugh at his jokes, to maximize the impact of my goo-goo eyes. My eyes are my drones, programmed to annihilate opposition to my insatiable avidity. Widen them, blink an eyelash, cock my cute head and bingo, a treat from the glistening jar. Initial resistance – “you’ve had enough treats” – evaporates, vaporized by this ingenious ordnance. In that worn-out phrase, “the ayes have it,” only they’ve misspelled eyes.

                  Sometimes, though, it gets my goat being Carll’s butt, as if I were a dope and he Senor Sagacity. (Do you know where the phrase “gets my goat” comes from? Neither did I, so I asked Alistair, who knows everything. Alistair shares my genius for flattery, only his is by comparisons. He keeps congratulating Carll on his resemblance to Montaigne, and poor Carll falls for it hook, line, and sinker. I’ve no idea who Montaigne is, but I worry Carll is being teased down the garden path to nowhere good. Recall Aesop’s caution! “The flatterer lives at the expense of those who listen to him.”

                  (Where was I? Oh yeh. Best guess is “gets my goat” comes from the track, where goats were stabled with high-strung racehorses to keep them calm. If a rascal competitor nabbed the goat, the racehorse might underperform or even injure itself. To analogize: by deprecating me with his self-serving comparisons, Carll injures my placatory pride. I don’t have any pride, as it happens – what’s the use? – but if I did, my goat could be got by Carll’s condescension.)

                  These absent friends Carll keeps mooning about strike me as pathetic malarkey. (Know where malarkey hails from? No points off – neither does anybody else.) An absent friend is my tormenter, not my friend. You can’t eat fond thoughts. A diet of fond thoughts (a fondue) is extremely low calorie. Any friend I can’t sniff I evict from consciousness until they elect to reappear, when I greet them lavish exuberance.

                  Carll fancies he’s so smart. You may think so too because you’re reading this, only today you’ve got me. If smart makes Carll sad, how smart is that? I am happy 24/7, assuming sufficient nourishment. Carll is happy… sometimes. At other times, he befouls our shared air with his groans, aches at loss, dreads death, bewails the vileness of mankind, blanches at his grandkids’ futures. More than once, I’ve read here, he’s contemplated self-elimination. I mean, really – how smart is that? He pines for friends as if they’d assuage his pain. When I quiz him about this, he explains a dog’s life would bore him – some hooey about imagination’s largesse. How could he know, I challenge him, if he’s never tried it! “I’ll have plenty of time for mindlessness,” he massages my ears as he sighs. I lick him because he seems to want that, notwithstanding my irritation at his insuperable superciliousness.

                  “What is a friend?” asked Aristotle (in Greek). “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” To which Henry responds, “A friend supplies treats sur commande – and tosses ratty toys for me to fetch.”