The Literary Pet of the Month Is Bagheera

Bagheera’s greatest talent is side-eye. It means that he can look at you loaded and buzzing with kookiness solely from his periphery. I call this a talent, but my partner (who abhors dogs) calls it a deficiency. A byproduct. A side effect of having been kicked in the head by an irksome farm donkey when he was just a puppy, at least, this is what I was told by the man who worked on the farm.

I encountered Bagheera when I was twenty years old. He was scarcely eight weeks old. His tummy was plump and fuzzy and he was small enough to sleep curled up in his food bowl. For the entire first day I had him, I called him Baloo after the bear from Jungle Book, but the next day I changed it to Bagheera, after the black panther who was described by Rudyard Kipling as having “a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than dawn.”

People always assume he is a girl. He doesn’t mind this and neither do I. Of the list of names that I actually call him on a daily basis: Bagoogy Fresh, My Little Kitchen Sink, Chickens, and Ra-Roo. According to my mom, Ra-Roo was the name of her old hairdresser’s dog. When Bagheera gives you side-eye, it means that he is scrutinizing your split ends, reimagining you as a blonde. Either that, or side-eye is a look he shoots you when you have been writing too long. He uses it to convey dismay, to tell you that his bladder is about to explode, that your plot is veering off course. I think this is really why my partner doesn’t like dogs. Bagheera is the only one she has ever lived with. She doesn’t like his side-eye, his scrutiny. She is sensitive about her first drafts. She doesn’t want anyone looking at her work until it's complete.

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