Alternative American: review of Philip Miller : Family Members, by Silvia Kofler

"He gives me the eye..." asserts the narrator in "Waking Up with the Dog" by Philip Miller. "I admit to having houseplants / Scattered like cats..." admits the narrator in "Willy Nilly" by Patricia Lawson. In their insightful collaborative collection of stories and poems Why We Love Our Cats and Dogs Lawson and Miller express human emotions through Felis catus and Canis familiaris. The animals are not mere pets, they are the mirrors (the anthropomorphized family members) the narrators reflect upon.

On the cover, the cat throws a sideward glance at the dog posing on the stuffed chair, as if to tell the dog: "Get off my favored spot." Conci Denniston's cover illustration and drawings throughout the book add to the duality-theme expressed through the cats and dogs. In Miller's "Like a Cat" the narrator perfectly expresses this as he ponders:

Grandfather nodded off in that chair;
Aunt Lillian held court there
.........................................
never dreaming I would end up
with that overstuffed chair,
.........................................
or the way I treated the woman
they both thought
I'd live with forever,
and the way the two of us fought like dogs. (13-14, 23-24, 33-36)

The book's four sections begin with carefully chosen epigraphs about cats and dogs by a varied group of individuals like Henry James, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Picasso, and Bill Clinton. Each section begins with a poem and story by Lawson followed by a number of Miller's poems.

"Large, lumbering / She moved low to the ground / Like a dog, scouting / The thing that got her, / An olive seed.../ With enough flesh clinging / to make it palatable / And hide the pit" states the narrator in Lawson's "On the Death of Our Fat Cat". It is a sad event, yet the grim irony evokes a smile because it is the cat-owner's love and overindulgence that kills the cat. Lawson compares the "Fat Cat" to a purse and creates irony through the exposure of overindulgent lives. She compares the cat to a dog searching for "odds and ends" and both animals become personified reflections of the owner. In her stories Lawson touches on this theme of overindulgence as well. The narrator in "For the Leaves" comments on Dee Dee--a boisterous overweight character: "There was something that made one filled up around her...glutted. Something almost repulsive..." (7).

Lawson's wit and gift for irony is evident in all her stories. These stories will reward the reader because they draw you in through their down-to-earth characters, characters easily related to like the couple in "Little Yip-Dogs": "How he hated Pomeranians, little yipping things that moved like fox-colored pinwheels.....Dogs were like the young, whom he also disdained for their tendency to be callow, stupidly hopeful, naive--in short oblivious. His wife was like this..." (32). Here the narrator compares his wife to her dogs, and in this story the animals are not sentimental pets, but they are the annoying mirrors of less than perfect humans.

In "Simmons' Cat" the characters's relationship ends when Eleanor tries to drown the cat left at Douglas Simmons's door. In the end he realizes that he is better off with the cat and without Eleanor who is allergic, whether her allergies are real or imaginary is beside the point.

Patricia Lawson skillfully transforms her dogs and cats into human family members. Each of her stories makes a powerful point about human characteristics, whether it is overindulgence, selfish cruelty, or deception.

In Philip Miller's "A Shaggy Dog Sestina" the dog is the personified narrator who "live[s] for more than a simple bone / or the privilege of walking on a leash....[However] Humanity loves loyalty; it pays a bone...." The shaggy dog speaks for its owner who knows the rules of the game well. If you want to get ahead you have to be loyal, even if you act out of mere self-interest. Miller is a master at his craft, whether it is a poem in free or formal verse. Even though his poems appear to be easily accessible, they have subtle allusions that reveal the knowledge hidden behind the surface.

"What the Cat Would Tell" is a remarkable example of his knowledge about poetry. It reveals that he has--like most deft poets--read and studied much poetry. In this faint echo of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" the distinct focus is on life, not on loss:

We learn to balance take and give,
stare at each other, hold our fires.
The art of dying is to live.

The cat chooses our world to love,
wonders why we won't do the same.
He falls asleep or watches something move.

The cat would tell us if he could. (1-8, 19)

Philip Miller's and Patricia Lawson's cats and dogs are the family members sans pretense. This is a book that will give readers much to think and smile about. It reflects the writers's keen knowledge of human shortcomings, which are often ironically mirrored in these pets.