Sighthounds & Other Strangers

People think their relations with dogs and cats are somehow trivial, a side effect of their more important lives. Not true at all. Lived all my life in the company of dogs and cats. My dad, I have to admit, used to try to run down cats in his car. I never did. Then, when I was 21 and I was in a kind of binge problem thing, I found a kitten curled up outside the porch of my family house. I named him Webster after a cat in a P.G. Wodehouse novelette because I was a precious thing in those days. He made me sober for his lifetime. Big achievement for a cat, eh? The Webster in the Wodehouse story was hell on wheels after he lapped up some spilled brandy. Tore through every cat in the neighborhood and lost part of an ear and other things. Except my Webster got terrified by a squirrel in Philadelphia. My Elliott beat the hell out of every cat in the neighborhood in Salem, NJ. All night, every night. Because I wanted him to? Who knows? Cats can be disappointing AND inspiring. Ever realized that? So did I. But the real saving force was not the bad example of cats but the good, really excellent, example of dogs. Dogs are almost never disappointing. Neither are cats if you treat them right. What this book is about.
About the Author: R. F. (Robert) Laird was born in Salem, New Jersey, the son of a World War II fighter pilot and the grandson of a World War I infantry captain. As a member of the notorious Baby Boom generation, he came of age during the late 1960s and witnessed firsthand the radicalization of American college campuses, the explosion of the drug culture, and the sexual revolution. He was educated at Harvard University, from which he graduated at the age of 19, and went on to do graduate work at the Cornell University business school, where he observed former radicals and hippies rededicating their lives to the pursuit of material prosperity. After pursuing a successful career as a management and communication consultant, Laird took a sabbatical from the world of business in the late 1980s to complete a work of satirical fiction he had begun nearly 10 years previously. The Boomer Bible, A Testament for Our Times, was published in October 1991 by Workman Publishing of New York and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 10 most significant books published that year. Laird has since published Shuteye Town 1999 and Shuteye Nation, both blistering multimedia topical satires published at the website Deerhound Diary, The Indictment, An Obama Diary, Why is there a Boomer Bible, The ABCs of Shuteye Nation, Writing Down America, The Lounge Conversations, and The Zeezer Bible and The Snowflake Bible. Meanwhile, R. F. Laird continues to work and write from his home in Salem, New Jersey.