Sure, we were kinda gender typed (girls get cats, boys get dogs), but remember that my brother also liked to wear my tutu.

It's true I once stuck a toothpick nearly through Tony's hand. It's also true that I would smack him, and if he retaliated I would run to mom and would superciliate "Tony's hitting me!" and mom would scream "Tony! Stop hitting your sister!"

But ever since sometime before he finished graduating from my alma matter, my older younger brother and I (you get this, right: the older of my two younger brothers) have been as close as two differently gendered, differently oriented siblings who live an average of 1000 miles from each other can be. Who had the same teachers in high school. And college. And had crushes on the same boys. (I would go first, and pick the boy, the Tony would come along, and would obsess over him when I was done. Exceptions include the tuba player.) And who wore the same ladies' gloves from an estate sale. And the same ballerina tutu.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, we're tight. Except that there's birth order, which means that Tony is devoted and admiring, but also conniving and sneaky and wants to steal the attention for himself.

In this grand tradition of upping me one or at least of sharing in my thunder, Tony has written a companion piece (giddit?) to my kitten post, in which he elucidates his portion of our mutual childhood obsession with pets. I, the oldest, the girl, the stand-alone, cottoned to aloof and feminine cats, while Tony, who was as a child the single most outgoing, eager-to-please human I've ever met, carried in our household the mantle of The Pooch Person.

I mention all this because this is the most poignant anecdote you've ever heard. It still makes me kind of cry.

The first thirteen days I called they always told me, the boy who loved him, that he was still waiting. And although they never mentioned it, I know that he also missed me as I missed him. Well, all of this was to change on the fourteenth and final day I made my call: "Oh, we only house animals here for two weeks, and then we put them to sleep if they aren't adopted." Did I mention I was six years old and loved my Muffin so much I walked around a picture of him taped to his old leash and that I was happily calling to check on the status of my beautiful friend and his happiness? Well, all of this was the case when the idiot on the phone talking to me thought it appropriate to explain that it was pound policy to murder my dog.

Yes. My little brother, who was not bitter about having been bitten by an enormous white dog, loved a stray beagle we took in for a few days so much, that after that beagle was gone, Tony cut out this beagle's picture from the paper and taped this newspaper picture to the dog collar the beagle had briefly worn, AND TOOK THIS NEWSPAPER PICTURE ON WALKS. Dragging it from a leash. No joke.

Doesn't it sort of make you cry? With kind of laughter as well?