excerpts from a dog's diary

8.30. Ate breakfast with difficulty. Have no appetite.
8.35. Ate kittens' breakfast.
8.36. An affair with the cat (the kittens' mother). But I soon leave her, as the coward does not fight fair, using claws.
. . . 10 to 10.15. Wagged tail.
. . . 1.25. Upstairs into dining-room.Family not finished lunch yet. Young Mr. Brown throws a bread pellet at me, hitting me on the nozzle. An insult. I swallow the insult. Then I go up to Miss Brown and look at her with my great pleading eyes. I guessed it: they are irresistible. She gives me a piece of pudding. Aunt Brown tells her she shouldn't. At which, with great pluck, Miss Brown tells her to mind her own business. I admire that girl more and more.
. . . 2.0 to 3.15.Attempt to kill fur rug in back room. No good.
. . . 6.15. Stalked a kitten in kitchen passage. The other little cowards ran away.
6.20. Things are looking brighter: helped mouse escape from cat.
. . . 7.0. Down to supper. Ate it, but without much relish. I am off my feed to-day.
7.15. Ate kittens' supper. But I do wish they would not give them that eternal fish. I am getting sick of it.
7.16. Sick of it in the garden.

7.25. Nasty feeling of lassitude comes over me, with loss of all initiative, so I decide to take things quietly, and lie down by the kitchen fire. Sometimes I think that I am not thedog that I was.
8.0. Hooray! Appetite returning.
8.1. Ravenous. . .

Bits from Walter Lewis Emanuel, A Dog Day: Or, The Angel in the House (New York:  E.P. Dutton & Co, 1919), passim.