There are quite a few literary classics in which the characters must deal with the death of a beloved dog. It's heart wrenching, but sometimes it's there to make a point, and sometimes it is the entire reason for the story. But we don't need "reasons" for a dog to die, or "reasons" to come up with a way that the dog doesn't die. Riane Konc did just that, reworking well-known canine death scenes to make them less sad, and sometimes completely hilarious. Take The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck:

A big swift car squealed its tires and jerked his wheel, the car nearly tipping up on two tires as the vehicle narrowly missed the family pet.

“Dammit, but I won’t be a symbol for the suffocatin’ and murd’rous weight of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream on the day laborer and migrant worker by killin’ your pup with my sportscar!” the driver screamed out his window, giving the whole Joad family the finger.

And he wouldn’t. Everythin’ else — ev’ry death an’ loss an’ unjustice an’ tragedy an’ animal for the next 400 pages or so would basically drive that point home — but at least the whole time, through everything, the Joads had their beloved dog. He wasn’t very good symbolism, but he was a very good boy.

Read about the survival of good dogs from Old Yeller, Marley & Me, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Odyssey, and even Cujo at Electric Literature. -via Metafilter

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Hope for Paws got a notification of a kitten on the freeway in Los Angeles, on a fast lane with no shoulder. Eldad Hagar and Loreta Frankonyte were out transporting a dog with puppies, and did a detour to make a scary rescue. The kitten was scared, hungry, flea-ridden, and had infected eyes. There's no telling how long he was out there on the road by himself. But Napoleon was fed, bathed, treated, and named, and now has a bright future. -via Laughing Squid

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Bruce and Terry Jenkins have led an interesting life. Now that they are retired, they spend their time running a private shelter called Cat's Cradle. They have 30 cats, all of them rescues, elderly cats who have outlived their original owner. They get to spend their sunset years being loved and fussed over by the Jenkins. They are awesome people. Stay for the credits, where we get to see the finished butterfly garden. -via The Atlantic

We all love service dogs, and we are in awe of their abilities and their loyalty. You're not supposed to pet one without permission, because they are on duty. It took time and the internet for people to learn that rule. But what if a service dog approaches you? That would be surprising, but it happens. For a reason. Lumpatronics told a story about how and why a service dog might come up to you.

So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)

I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up

If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help

Now you know. They are truly being Lassie, asking you to come save Timmy from the well. -via The Daily Dot  

Update: Nicolas Steenhout, an accessibility consultant, says this is not how most service dogs are trained to get help. He explains in this Twitter thread. -Thanks, Gristle McNerd!

(Image credit: Lextergrace)

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Milo the Quaker parrot sings along with his human, Erica Croke. The song is a classic, "Bacon Pancakes" from the TV show Adventure Time. Milo must watch the show a lot, or he sings it a lot, or he just loves making -or eating- pancakes. You can see more of Milo at his Facebook page. -via Tastefully Offensive

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Chris Poole brings us a cute Fathers Day greeting in which his cat Marmalade expresses his thoughts. Say it with me now: "Awww." See more of Marmalade and his buddy Cole in previous videos. -via Laughing Squid

While at the (@TulsaDrillers) game .. dog night at the park .. one dog saw a ball .. and go figure. #Dogs pic.twitter.com/6ws99cEQqR

— Harold R. Kuntz (@HaroldRKuntz3) June 14, 2018

The Double-A Tulsa Drillers celebrated Bark in the Park last night, and welcomed fans with their dogs. A group of dogs and their humans were down by the field before the game doing a media appearance, when one doggo noticed the players warming up. Well, not so much the players but THE BALL! That was his cue for fetch, and no one was going to stop him! He chased that ball around the field, caught it, and dutifully brought it back to the shortstop. That's a good dog. -via Deadspin

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She locked herself out of the house. However, there's a sliding glass door that's only held shut by a sawed-off broom handle, and the dog is inside with it. All Sam has to do is retrieve the stick. His years of training in stick-fetching suddenly pay off! That's a good dog. -via reddit

In the newest episode of Simon's Cat Logic, cartoonist Simon Tofield and veterinarian Nicky Treverrow talk about the possibility of a missing cat, and what to do when it happens. The worst part is not knowing whether your cat is injured, lost, taken by someone, turned in to the pound, stuck up a tree, or just plain ignoring you. The very best thing is to equip your cat with an identifying microchip, but you have to do that before he disappears.

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Tofield also tells the story of how his black cat Teddy, who his cartoon cat is modeled after, got stuck up a tree a couple of years ago. You can read the full version of that story at his blog.

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A year ago, we told you about Grandpa Mason, an elderly feral tomcat that came into the care of TinyKittens in British Columbia. The cat was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease, but more than a year-and-a-half later, he is hanging on. Grandpa Mason doesn't like anyone, but he loves kittens, and nothing makes him happier than cuddling with baby cats. The rescue group put him to work fostering kittens, and that seems to have extended his life. We also told you about the three feral cats who gave birth to kittens under a livestream this spring. The nine kittens are now seven weeks old and Grandpa Mason plays with them while their mothers undergo medical treatment and spaying. He is in cat heaven.

In other kitten news, one of the kittens, Aura, was born with a cleft palate and had to be tube-fed around the clock. Tuesday, she ate her first solid food. She took that lesson too seriously, and later that day she bit through her milk feeding tube and swallowed 4.5 inches of it! A veterinarian retrieved the tube endoscopically, and she has recovered. You can read that story as it happened at Facebook.

You can still follow the kittens on their livestream.

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One of the challenges of filming a skater is keeping up as he zips around. One solution is to mount a camera on a loyal and energetic dog! In this video, a dog named Fatman follows Rob Mathieson, Tom Snape, and Nick Jensen around a London skatepark. The result is a dog video and a skateboard video combined, which is a lot of fun. What's really impressive is the stabilization of the footage. See more of Fatman The Dog at his YouTube channel.  -via Laughing Squid

An American soldier found a tiny but full-grown Yorkshire terrier in a foxhole in New Guinea during World War II. Combat photographer Corporal William A. Wynne took a picture of the dog sitting in a helmet to show how small she was. That photo made the dog famous, as it was printed in a military magazine and then in newspapers across the US.

The dog was named Smoky, and over the last two years of the war she accompanied Wynne on 12 combat missions and dozens of air raids, and entertained troops and the hospitalized wounded with tricks she learned during downtime. Those tricks served her well after the war too, used to entertain the world on tours and TV shows. Millions of people knew and loved Smoky the War Dog.

Smoky was so loved that the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an obituary when she died in 1957, which led to solving the mystery of how a Yorkshire terrier came be in a foxhole in New Guinea. Read that story in a newspaper clipping at FishWrap. -via Strange Company 

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This guy has a pet raccoon. Tito was a cute baby raccoon, but once they start to become adults, they remind you that they are wild animals. That goes for hand-raised raccoons. Watch Tito being himself as his human lays some truth down. -via Metafilter 

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A couple weeks ago in Queensland, Australia, a woman was walking her dog and came across ten kittens along the side of the road. They appear to be weaning age, so they must have been dumped.

"I am a country girl who has lived and worked with animals since I was born and I adore them. I was walking my dog, Koda, on a cold morning in Dalby when on my way home a mob of tiny kittens came out of the grass meowing. I was so shocked and nervous that they would be run over by traffic. Unable to pick all of them up, I started walking back home to get my car. When all ten of the kittens ran after me for at least a kilometre, the tiny one that I will be keeping got really tired, so I had to carry her the majority of the way. I took all ten of them home and fed and rehomed the other nine which have all gone to reliable kind homes. I hope that whoever dumped those babies on the road in winter feels horrible for what they’ve done."

-via Laughing Squid

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Faa Mai the elephant grew up at Elephant Nature Park in Thailand, where sanctuary founder Lek Chailet would sing lullabies to her. Years later, the park welcomed a new rescued baby elephant, Thong Ae, and Faa Mai took the youngster under her wing. Now keep track of this: Lek Chailert is the human. She has a lot to do, including showing visitors around the park. That's what she was doing when 9-year-old Faa Mai interrupted her last week.

Faa Mai clearly didn’t care that her friend was busy, and began to playfully push Chailert out into the field, tapping her with her trunk or even wrapping it around her whenever Chailert tried to stop.

“I wondered what it was that she really wanted,” Chailert said.

Chailert knows the pachyderms well, and figured it out. Faa Mai wanted her to sing a lullaby to the baby elephant, just like she did when Faa Mai was young. An elephant never forgets. -via Metafilter