Word: pets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...oils. There are clip-on diapers for parakeets, hairpieces and false eyelashes for poodles, snoods to keep bassets' ears out of the sterling-silver feeding bowl, bikinis, ski suits and sunglasses for vacationing types, earrings, mascara and nail polish in a dozen colors. On his birthday a pet can expect to receive blue or pink cards and summon his pals-on his own phone-for a birthday cake of liver with powdered-milk icing...
...cats, there are Prince Valiant suede tents, "powder-room screens," fiber-glass igloos and a Ko-Z Cat Cottage with pile carpeting, a sun deck, catnip bar and built-in mouse hole. For animals left behind by vacationing owners, pet motels and inns vie to offer such features as wall-to-wall AstroTurf, brass beds, Snoopy linen, piped-in music, color TV, bathrooms, beauty parlors, air conditioning, thrice-daily cookie breaks, and meals cooked to clients' specifications (including kosher diets). If the pet travels with his owners, there are guides listing only hotels and motels that welcome...
Manhattan-based Pet Astrologers Geneviève and Christopher Cerf produce elaborate "caniscopes" for such superdogs as Dustin Hoffman's Subway and President Ford's Liberty ("As she grows older Liberty will really pour herself into her sexual relationships"). Los Angeles, which not unexpectedly is the epicenter of animalmorphism, boasts a special limousine service for pets, which is patronized by, among others, Redd Foxx's Saint Bernard and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.'s llama. There is even a pet boutique that will have a shaggy dog's excess fur made into a sweater in Scotland...
...Pets, notably dogs, cats and some birds, can, if treated sensibly, be pleasant, undemanding, entertaining consorts. During wars, insurrections and depressions, particularly, pet ownership seems to proliferate. Aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution claimed in some cases that they had lived because their dogs had repelled or mollified would-be assassins. Even in today's recession-inflation battered economy, when the care and feeding of pets would seem an exorbitant load on the family budget, there are more and more pet owners in the U.S.-deriving, perhaps, psychological sustenance from what Kipling called the dog's "love unflinching...
Most often, however, humans attempt to endow their pets with human qualities, deluding themselves and demeaning animals. Many married couples who are unwilling or unable to have children adopt animals instead, embarking on a quasi-parental relationship without the responsibilities and hazards involved in child rearing. "If your romance is going to the dogs," suggests a pet-food-industry publication called Pet Pourri, "you might try a dog to save it." In fact, there are countless cases in which a couple's rivalry for a pet's affection-or occasionally even its sexual favors-ends in divorce...