studio ghibli's cat food commercials

Nissin Seifun is a large Japanese food conglomerate that includes a line of pet food.  In 2010 the company celebrated 100 years of business in a most delightful way: they commissioned a commercial from Studio Ghibli. Yes, the source of My Friend Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle, to name a very few of their masterworks.
Studio Ghibli presented Nissin Seifun with Konyara, a rotund cat sketched in a sumi-ink style, rolling round after Nissin's red butterfly logo. The spot was such a hit that two more were made adding some rolypoly kittens into the mix.  All three are elegantly adorable. 

Want to see them?  All three are available in this article at Open Culture.
Want to see the company's page on Konyara, complete with some sweet wallpapers for download?  Right here.

2 dog poems by billy collins

"As young as I look, I am growing older faster than he..."  muses the dog in the first of Billy Collins' two poems in this TED Talk from 2014.  The dog accepts this calmly in the space of a brief, serene verse.
Then we're treated to "The Revenant," a longer piece in which a dog speaks up from the afterlife with a laundry list of comic but legit peeves:  "I hated the car, hated the rubber toys, disliked your friends and worse, your relatives...You always scratched me in the wrong place."

Here's your link to this TED Talk.  Short and ultimately tart, and worth the watch!