Looks like that tainted pet food thing went further than we thought—a straight shot to the heart of The New Journalism.

My own attitude almost reminds me of the epigraph to Nabokov's Pale Fire. The one from Boswell's Life of Johnson in which Dr. Johnson is ruminating about a crazed young man going around London shooting cats. And then reverting to thoughts of his own cat, Hodge, Johnson says (I'm doing this from memory: "But Hodge shan't be shot. No, no, Hodge shan't be shot."

It's some sad, beautiful fusion of wishfulness, wistfulness and dread. The possibility too horrible to contemplate. it sounds selfish, but it's more self-protective.

But then this morning when I'm halfway across the country, to learn to my horror that my Hodge may be being poisoned at that very moment by the callous morons who can't be bothered to care enough to figure this out til ten days or so after the first warnings were issued... You know who should be shot? Well I probably shouldn't dwell on what should be visited upon these dimwit subhumans.

Somehow you knew that when Ron Rosenbaum started catblogging it was gonna play out this way.

Pet Food Rats: The Shame of an Industry [Ron Rosenbaum]
EVEN MORE ROSENBAUM CAT FUN: Saul Bellow and the Bad Fish [Slate]
And! Dingo Kitty Chicken Jerky Recalled!

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