JustFoodForDogs

  

    No column in the paper today. I was on assignment for the Sunday editor, and wrote a larger piece that's running this weekend.

     "I wonder if they have any food for cats," I mused, as my wife and I drove to Highland Park. "Maybe I'll ask them."
     We don't have a cat, not anymore, having lost our Natasha last June. So no need for cat food. But my odd comment becomes less mysterious when you understand our destination: a shop called "JustFoodForDogs" in Highland Park. I guess I was trying to be funny, and failing.             
     Our Kitty, who is a dog, for new readers, or longtime readers slow on the uptake, is pushing 16 years old this summer and has been suffering from what we call a wanky stomach. As have we. I will spare you the details. Let's just say instead of taking her out three times a day, I've been taking her out five or six. This morning, my wife took her out at 1 a.m. And I went at 2:30 a.m. We know to do so because she starts crying. It's like having a newborn.  This also necessitated several visits to the vet — three, maybe four — a variety of tests, including x-rays. An expenditure, I estimate, of some $500. At least.

     We'd given her medications. We'd mixed canned pumpkin into her food. Now the vet's suggestion was to go to this JustFoodForDogs — not sure what happened to the spaces between the words, but that's how they present themselves — and secure some balanced remedy food. No problem. Had Dr. Jones suggested we go to Lourdes and wash her in the water at the Grotto of Massabielle, well, that's what we would do. We love her that much.

     I must admit, I was taken aback by the store, particularly its sparseness. The place reminded me of the Parachute boutique on Oak Street in the 1980s, when "you're going to pay a fortune on this rags" was conveyed by having just a few exquisite garments hanging from a hook or two. Or the Richart chocolate shop in Paris. Swanky dog food.

     I let out a mental slow whistle.

     Our entrance tripped some secret signal, in the back, and a young man hurried out and curated our high end dog food needs. He was a handsome young man, tall, with his face obscured by a mass of hair, and I considered taking his photograph, then thought better of it.

     We bought two forms of the food, a frozen slab and a small box of what was, in essence, cooked turkey and rice with a bunch of oils and vitamins in it , and took it home.

     Kitty zupped the stuff up. And while the unmentionable problems got only a little better, if that, we were encouraged enough to return. This time I bought three frozen slabs, each weighing 18 ounces, for a little over $30, and took them away in a little white bag, the sort of thing you'd expect at a jewelry store or expensive boutique, which I guess this is.

     Yes, it occurred to me we could whip up some turkey and rice and mash it up and save ourselves about 90 percent. But we could also make our brooms out of sorghum. "We cook our dog's food ourselves," is not a sentence that I ever want to utter. 

     JustFoodForDogs was founded in 2010 to offer "human-grade food" to canines without all the filler, sawdust and ground up horses and whatnot that must be in commercial dog food.  In addition to the stand-alone stores, they're available in PetSmart — also no space; I'm beginning to see a trend here,. Maybe the pets eat the spaces between the words.

     When I made the cat joke at the beginning of today's post, I immediately realized that I was re-working a joke David Letterman made when he visited a store called "Just Bulbs" for his show. Doing my due diligence, I dug up the sketch, and was a little shocked to see the bit was aired in 1982. 

     "Do you have any sandwiches here, do ya?" a shockingly young Letterman asks the proprietor. "So besides bulbs, what do you have here? How about shades here? Can you get shades?" She suggests he go to a store called "Just shades." And he does. "Do you sell bulbs?" he asks her, earnestly.

     That's the thing with these jokes. A good one can stick in mind for a long, long time.