The Mutt-Flap

There's so much going wrong in the world and so little being done about it that I just have to stand up and cheer when someone finally comes up with a solution to something. I am referring, of course, to the makers of Rear Gear Butt Covers. Sometimes it just seems like life is a parade of assholes, even in the blue states, but now, thanks to the folks at Rear Gear, we don't have to look at them. Designed for pets with tails in permanent Sphincter Display Mode, the butt covers dangle neatly from the base of the tail and over the offending orifice, and come in Small, Medium, and Kardashian. The information online is sparse. It is still unclear whether the butt covers are washable, which is fervently to be hoped. Also, in what must be a case of false advertising, the proprietors claim that the butt covers give the pet more confidence.

Which is a crock. One of the points of exposing your asshole is to more efficiently release scent from the anal glands and waft it into the air. No one thus occupied is lacking any confidence. They are nothing if not proud of the poop chute. The only thing that would make a poodle more confident would be a dangling butt frame. The butt covers--can't we just call them mutt-flaps?--just lead to coyness. What have I got under here? the dogs project. Do you want to see? Just sweep it aside with your nose, big fella. It might as well be a geisha fan. Coquettishness among canines is like makeup on five-year-olds. It's not attractive.

The butt cover entrepreneurs also declare that their product is appropriate for cats, but it's not hard to notice that they have no cat photographs on the site. I'm not surprised; good war-zone photographers are hard to come by. Our first cat, (Saint) Larry, was strictly a tail-down cat. We would have to give her  a good tailbone-skritching if we ever wanted to pop it up for anus inspection, but, as it happened, over seventeen years, we were never that curious. But we didn't fully appreciate her courtesy in this department until we got Tater.

Tater is a whole different cat. Tater holds her tail up like an opinion. If she taped a tiny parasol to the end, she could keep the sun out of her eyes. "Put that thing down," we told her, dismayed, for the first few weeks, but she never did. After seven years, I can state that there is not one thing Tater has ever been ashamed of. Even the Christmas Tree Incident struck her as random. Her butthole, meanwhile, appears to be a particular point of pride.

And if Tater's tail is an opinion, it's a strong one. Usually, when you grab a cat's tail to keep it from going somewhere you don't want her to go, she objects. Tater not only keeps going, but she's perfectly willing to tow you through the house on your belly if you don't let go. Guests find it entertaining, but the rug burn is the worst.

Like Hugh Hefner, Tater wears nothing but pajamas, and my suspicion was that she would not particularly cotton to butt jewelry, but there was only one way to make sure. Aaaaaaaaand now we're sure.

Well, that's advertising for you. If the Butt Cover people want to re-cast a feline psychotic break as Confidence, I suppose they have that license. I suggest they hang it from the front.

Thanks to our friends at Cowango for this breaking story.

Pressed And Pleated

From Trousering Your Weasel.

So they called me after my last mammogram to tell me they weren't happy with one of the pictures, and would I come in to get the right side done again? And allow time for an ultrasound. Okay. I never did take a good picture.

I've done this before. The last time I was in a panic, and when I was told the appointment was a week out, I asked them to call me if there was a cancellation so I could get in earlier. They did call and I shot out for Kaiser like I'd been spring-loaded. We did the mammograms over again, several times, using concentrated little plates to zero in on a particular few inches of my personal geography, and then they shook their heads sadly and led me to ultrasound, and finally they asked me to go in to the doctor's office for a consultation, and he said everything was fine. Whatever worrisome thing that had been on the film was no longer on the film.

"Where'd it go?" I asked, regretting once again I had not brought extra underpants.

Well, he explained, it probably wasn't there in the first place. It was just a little mammogram technician joke, something to break up the tedium. In all likelihood she had accidentally gotten a little pleat in there. I can see how it could happen. It's like when you're sewing a quilt and there are lots of layers of fabric and batting and thicknesses and everything looks all smooth on top but when you flip it over you discover you've stitched wrinkles into the thing.

Anyway I'm not worried about this. It's probably nothing. And even if it isn't nothing, time has done a number on my ability to work up a good panic. If they've got to get in there and drill or take the whole thing off, so be it. Lop the other one off while you're at it. I wouldn't want to end up always walking in circles.

But it's probably nothing. There's so much opportunity on a woman like me to stitch in an inadvertent pleat. They don't take merely the breast, after all. They gather up any flesh in the vicinity and heave that in there, too. After a certain age there's no real telling what's breast tissue and what isn't. Things are sprawling toward the sides and into the back-fat folds and just to be on the safe side they like to haul all of it around and jam it in the vise. For a few seconds, from the rear, I look like a thirteen-year-old. Then they release the plates and everything rolls back and wobbles for a bit before settling down, comfy and loose as the cat's pajamas.

It was always hard for me to imagine how they were able to do a mammogram on a man. Not the kind of man who has boobs, but ones like Dave. He has everything he's supposed to, but nothing extra. I worry sometimes that without natural fat gussets, he might rip his skin open while sneezing. And yet, a few years ago, he actually did go in for a mammogram. I have no idea what I was doing that was so danged important that I missed the opportunity to observe that. It is nearly beyond my ability to imagine.

But I have a feeling that if someone were to come in the room while he was undergoing his mammogram, they might have concluded that the plates were locked up, and the technician was sliding him in there like a credit card, trying to pop them open again.

Update: It was nothing. Just another mammogram technician joke. Ha ha ha, mammogram technician! You are a stitch! They were looking for something "below the breast, on the chest wall." I told you. If I had a tumor under my shoulder-blade, they could find it in a mammogram.