Look! Small adorable animals really DO love me!

It turns out that Bitch Kitty is just an unpleasant poop drop of an outlier on the Every Small Adorable Animal Totally Freaking Loves Jake bell curve -- which isn't even a bell curve at all; it's an enormous universe of purring head scritches and snuggly dogpile naps. With one distant life-sucking black hole known as the Bitch Kitty Belt.

Anyway, I just enjoyed a beyond-delightful evening with superfriend Susan, a freakishly -- FREAKISHLY! -- enormous red bell pepper cut protectively into non-threatening bite-size strips, her four endlessly delightful and Mary Poppins-polite children, and two small adorable dogs that -- I'm sorry -- simply could NOT get enough of my pet-magnet charisma. I tried to take a selfie with both of them, but we all know that the moment you switch a camera to selfie mode, every dog in a four-ZIP-code radius becomes a newborn kitten in a room full of coke-fueled butterflies. So I was able to capture only one dog and the selfless, devoted, undying, instant-soulmate love we share for each other. I think his name is Barney. Or Chester. Whatever. I suck at dog names. The important thing is we've found each other, he's healed my cavernous emotional Bitch Kitty scars and it's far more important that we focus on me than on remembering his name. Which might be Amos. Or Zebulon. Whatever.

Bonding Bonus! Darby here and I are on the same thyroid medication! Except his is the delicious peanut-butter-flavored dog version and mine is the throat-closing earwax-and-corrosion-flavored person version. But the important thing is we've found each other and we share our undying adorable-pet bond. Me and good ol' Dexter. Or Herman. Whatever.