Mike and Jeannie went to Jamaica . . .

. . . and all I got was this crummy tee shirt:

M tried to put it on me. "Don't make me bite you," I said.

Technically I got one other thing out of their junket. I got to stay in a "VIP Suite" at Spring Oaks Animal Care Center, which is Willis and Arlo's vet. M and J took me over there a few weeks ago to check it out. It looked okay at the time. Little did I know it would be my home-away-from-home while they were off gallivanting. M said that "VIP" stands for "Very Important Pet," but as I found out the hard way, it really means "Very Incarcerated Pet."

Don't get me wrong: I like Dr. Alshouse and her staff. They were all very nice to me. And the VIP Suites do have some interesting features: For starters, they're in the main, air-conditioned part of the building and are a lot quieter than the regular kennels. Each room has a picture window and a nice, plush bed and a fresh-flowing water fountain. And each one has its own TV. (M said I could watch anything except Fox News, so I asked for the channel that shows Clifford the Big Red Dog.) And the people who work there will talk to you and play with you, and several times a day you get to go out into a really huge back yard. But despite all the amenities, my six-night stay seemed more like six months, because as everyone knows by now, I have separation anxiety issues.

Speaking of which, another thing that each VIP Suite has is its own web cam, so your people can use their computer to check up on you and see how you're doing. (This, I learned later, turns out to be a mixed blessing if almost every time they log on they see their precious mutt doing the God-I-hate-this-place-please-please-come-get-me Polka.)

Well, I don't want to belabor this. Suffice it to say that I'm back home on my couch where I belong. But I'll leave you with a few pictures (some of them obviously screen shots from the web cam), so you can judge for yourself just who it was--M and J  and their extended human family or your humble correspondent--that made out like the proverbial bandit. To borrow a phrase from your eye doctor, does it look better this way?

Or this way?

Does it look better like this?

Or like this?

Like this?

Or like this?

This?

Or this?

I thought so.