Episode 7: The Many Uses of a Meat Mallet

How Gloria - and Mo - came to Looser Island to run The Dog House Cafe

Excerpt

Mo is a Great Pyrenees—a mix, Gloria is quick to say, because on Looser Island owning a pure breed is considered just this side of shameful. It is pretentious, a sign you think of your pet as a status symbol, like a flashy car or an expensive piece of furniture. (And therefore it comes as no surprise to anyone that Cherry Duluth has a purebred Pomeranian). Mutt is the preferred type, though the Coombs’s greyhound is forgiven, because she’s a rescue from racing. Anyway, whatever Mo is mixed with, the percentage of non-Great Pyrenees must be very, very small; the dog reportedly weighs in at one hundred fifty two pounds. His outer coat alone (he has three coats) consists of six-inch-long hair. That’s how he got his name, Gloria explains to anyone who asks. Within a week of adopting Mo, Gloria and every item of clothing she owned was covered with a layer of beautiful white hair, and she decided if she called him Mo she could say she was wearing mohair.

Together they get the proverbial double take, like a team in a slapstick routine or a child’s picture book: Tiny and Mr. Big Go for a Walk.

At some point—no one can remember when—Gloria took over the island’s only fine dining establishment and renamed it La Maison du Chien. If you don’t remember your high school French, that translates as “The Dog House.” Pursuant to the unwritten rules of the island, everyone refused to use the French name, and insisted on calling it The Dog House Café. Within a year after Gloria commissioned the sign, with its French words and curlicued letters, and hung it over the entry, the sign was completely covered by clematis and other greenery, and the islanders quickly forgot it had any other name.

Read the rest of the episode, and subscribe to receive episodes by email, here.