Getting Carded

Well this is a new one on me.

I got home this evening to find that we had been sent a sympathy card from our vet expressing condolences over our having to put Jeeves to sleep.

The front of the card has a watercolor picture of a cat's footprint surrounded by a vaguely stained-glass looking setting. Underneath, it says, "Sharing your sadness...."

Upon being opened, the card carries on its sympathetic message: "at the difficult decision you made for your gentle friend and companion."

Um.....'kay.

Yes, of course I'm sad we lost the cat, but I have to say that, far from the warm, fuzzy feelings it evidently was supposed to generate, reading this caused me to start sniggering. Perhaps I have a rather jaundiced view of the world, but I've noticed over the years that the line between the meaningful and the absurd can be mighty thin and it doesn't take much to roll right across it.

Flipping over to the back to see if the Hallmark Collective was behind this little effort, I found that it was, in fact, the product of an outfit called Paws To Remember, based somewhere in the wilds of Minnesota. PTR, in turn, seems to be a subsidiary of a company called Stroke of the Heart, Inc., another name that this time caused me to howl with laughter at its hopefully unintended awfulness.

Looking more closely at the bottom of the card's back, I also noticed this smug little announcement: "Printed with vegetable-based ink on recycled paper in the USA. Contains a minimum of 20% post-consumer fiber." Well la-de-da.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that this combination of treacly sentimentality, cluelessness and ever-so-subtle sanctimony is the product of a bunch of hippies. The PTR mission statement says that its goal is to be a resource to help vets communicate and bond better with people who keep pets or other animals. Well, swell. If a simple hand-written note won't do the trick any more, allow me to help move this opus along. I have a few ideas to pitch for cards that might be appropriate to some of the other curve balls that animal-lovers must face.

For Fido's post-operative recovery period:

Understanding your frustration....Don't think of it as an inverted lampshade. Instead, think of it as a karmic centering vessel. Oommmmmmm.......

For run-ins with the local wild fauna:

Here's sniffing at you, kid.......A skunk's scent is just part of Nature's Wonderful Perfume. Besides, you'll get used to it after a while.

For run-ins of another kind and their unexpected consequences:

Who doesn't love kittens? What are you, some kind of jackbooted Republican fascist?

And finally, for that irreversable passage:

A moment of paws to reflect.....Two little snips now will be rewarded by years of comfort and security to come.....

Alternatively, I thought of a slightly edgier version that might be more appropriate for new geldings:

Dude! Sorry about that 'nads thing!

But who says such cards should be confined to only sad or stressful situations? Why not a Happy Events series as well? I'm sure that we Llamas could come up with something in the "Pimp my Orgle" line.

I'll let you know if the hippies go for it.