Remember PeeWee? Cousin Sue just sent some new photos, of PeeWee playing with her best buddy, the hardened cow dog, Sadie [click the photos to see big ones.] I can’t help but wonder if Blue Heelers are soft-mouthed dogs, or if Sadie is just soft on PeeWee.

Interspecies cuddling isn’t as unusual as we might think — my friend Cindy sent me this one about a baby squirrel and an adoptive Papillon mother, which is quite wonderful. Be sure to scroll through all the photos.

Dave at How To Save The World talks about the importance of us remembering our own connections to the other animals:

Artist
Andrew Campbell recently referred me to some new work being done in the
study of animal communications. He pointed out the Interspecies.com
site that has been tracking developments in this area for over a
decade. If you’ve never had an extended first-hand experience with an
animal in the wild, the article by this site’s author Jim Nollman
titled What the Raven Said
will give you a taste of what you’re missing.

This is a stunning, wonderful story. It takes me back to Juneau and my many conversations with ravens there — none so deep or marvelous as this.

Dave again:

Studying ‘animal’ and inter-species
communication is one area to which, if I had a bit more competency and
a lot more courage, I could see myself devoting my life. But trying to
teach other animals our language seems to me to get it backwards, so
I’m intrigued at the efforts of those who are trying to learn other
species’ ‘languages’, starting with trying to learn what needs to be
learned to even begin to understand means of communication that at
first we find unfathomable.

Other places to explore interspecies attachments and communication include zoosemiotics; All My Relations; Koko.org; Artful Dolphin; the flickr group zoophilia; and the above mentioned Interspecies.com.

And, of course:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird 
Carnival of the Dogs
Carnival of the Cats: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3

Just as I finished this post, a new story came up on Salon, Cat Show Plans Memorial Service for Dog:

A schnauzer-Siberian husky mix named Ginny will be eulogized Nov. 19 at
the Westchester Cat Show, where she was named Cat of the Year in 1998
for her uncanny skill and bravery in finding and rescuing endangered
tabbies.

Here is Ginny’s Fan Club.

Keep squawking, rasping, hissing, knocking on wood.