It used to be tradition for the Rose Festival princesses to enter the bear habitat and, well... mingle. "In the archives," Krista says, "we have all these pictures of the princesses in the 1940s in the bear grotto. They're all in their high-heeled shoes and tailored suits, hugging and patting the bears on the head." She says the zoo no longer puts the teenaged beauty queens into the exhibit with live grizzlies. "Well," she says, "not unless we really don't like them."
Feral Cat Races
On the opening day of the Portland Beavers baseball season, come check out the Feral Cat Alley at PGE Park, at SW Morrison Street at Eighteenth Avenue.
Cardboard cat-shaped cutouts, each one representing a section of the grandstand, race each other the length of the left field wall. Whatever section cheers loudest, their cat wins and someone in that section gets a prize. It's a regular event at the season opener and occurs more and more frequently during other events. The race course is only about a hundred yards, but that's far enough.
Chris Metz, manager of communications for Portland Family Entertainment, says, "You're talking about four overweight, out-of-shape ticket sellers carrying those big cardboard cats."
Ken Puckett, director of operations for PGE Park— who isn't above stopping the race with a cardboard Dober-man—tells the story of the real cats gone wild in the stadium.
The nature of a "seating bowl" always attracts vermin, Chris says. People drop food. The rats come. The cats follow. No doubt they've been in the stadium since the first grandstand was built in 1893, back when Tanner Creek used to flood the playing field. The cats were here in 1909 when President Taft spoke, and in 1923 when Warren G. Harding spoke. When the current twenty-thousand-seat stadium was built in 1926, they were here. For the years 1933 through 1955, when this was a dog-racing track, the cats were here. The cats watched Jack Dempsey fight here. They heard concerts by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Van Halen. The weeklong Billy Graham revival—the Bob Hope comedy routines— the cats have seen it all from under the grandstands.
"These aren't cats you'd pet," Ken says. "They're mean. A lot of people think they're cuddly, but these are almost like bobcats."
During renovation in 2000 a construction worker killed a resident feral cat, and word got out about the accident. The neighborhood feral cat coalition protested and worked with the stadium to trap the remaining twenty-two feral cats. Of those, Ken says, two were killed because they were too sick. The others got their shots. They got spayed or neutered and spent the next seven months living on a farm outside the city, at a cost of some $1,700 per pussy.
"This is not part of the Christian feral cat coalition," Ken says. "There are two coalitions. This is the other one."
With the renovation complete, the cats were released back into the stadium, now equipped with the "Feral Cat Alley," installed under the Fred Meyer Family Deck. At the rate of a pallet per month, Ken says, an automatic feeding station doles out "senior cat blend" cat food. Because so many of the cats are old, he's built a ramp to ADA standards that leads the cats up to their food.
In return, the cats do what cats have always done.
Since 2000 the stadium's eighty-five traps have caught only two field mice. For the price of cat food, the whole place is rat-free. In comparison, Ken says, places like the Rose Garden coliseum pay up to $100,000 a year to control their rats—and fail. "You wait until everyone's gone. Sit in your car in their parking structure," he says, "and you won't believe what you see crawling out of the ivy over there."
As the cats die off, new cats from the Northwest Portland neighborhood migrate to the stadium. Right now, the population is about fifteen, including "Sylvester."
"He's black and white," Ken says, "like Sylvester in the cartoon." Sylvester is there to meet the first people at every ball game. He follows you around. "He was probably somebody's house cat," Ken says, "and he misses people."
So while the Portland Beavers play baseball April through September, while the Portland Timbers play soccer and the Vikings play football, the cats will still be here.
"The cats were here first," Chris says. "They've always been here. This was just the right thing to do."
Doggy Dancing
Kristine Gunter has blond hair tied back in a ponytail, she has pale blue eyes and freckles, and her voice is slightly garbled because she speaks with one cheek full of wiener chunks. "My joke is," she says, "I could never get my husband to dance with me—so I got a dog instead."
Kristine and her five-year-old corgi, Rugby, dance to a rockabilly song called "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This." Her command "between" sends the dog through her legs in one direction. The command "through" sends him through in the other direction. Commands like "spin" and "go by" make the dog pass or circle the handler. "Dance" brings the dog up on its hind legs. "Jump" makes it jump and slap its front paws against the handler's hands.
After each successful step, Kristine spits out a chunk of hot dog as a reward.
The official name is "Canine Musical Freestyle," and Portland dogs haven't stopped dancing since 2001 when Kristine starting giving lessons.
Unlike regular obedience training—where the dog stays to the handler's left—doggy dancing handlers have to prove they can work the dog from every angle or direction. They dance to everything from Strauss waltzes to disco to country-western music. One handler is training her dog to dance to opera. "Ultimately, the goal in freestyle is you want them to cue off a word or a small body motion," Kristine says. "You don't want someone out there shouting commands or doing really obvious body motions."
She and Leah Atwood demonstrate dancing with their dogs. Leah dances with her two-year-old Australian shepherd, Flare, to the song "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)." In their show routine Flare wears a black bib and silver sheriff's badge. Leah wears a prisoners striped uniform. As they dance, each time she shoots Flare with her finger, he falls down dead. At the end of the routine Flare takes Leah away in handcuffs.
To find out about pet activities in the Portland area, Kristine recommends checking the NWDogActivities group within Yahoo!Groups on the Internet. The site lists upcoming pet activities and links to a calendar so you can plan your pet's vacation with yours.
To cut a rug with your dog, call Kristine Gunter at 503-788-3152.
With her cheek still stuffed with wieners, she says, "I'm the only dog-dancing teacher in town."
Pug Crawl
Beer and dogs make such a great combination. Now throw in a costume contest for pugs, a pug dog kissing booth, and a mob of pug owners with their dogs, and you have the annual Pug Crawl. Look for it around the third week in May, at the Rogue Ales Public House, 1339 NW Flanders Street. Phone 503-222-5910.
Pug Play Day
The last Sunday of each month, a sea of small dogs takes over Irving Park at NE Fremont Drive and Seventh Avenue. Starting around 2:00 p.m., several hundred pug dogs waddle in with their owners. Also welcome are similar small breeds, including chihuahuas, French bulldogs, and Boston terriers. Among the regulars look for Portland author Jim Goad, who wrote The White Trash Manifesto and Shit Magnet, there with his pug, Cookie.
(a postcard from 1999)
In July of 1995,I sat down with a group of friends and showed them a type-written manuscript called Fight Club. We were drinking beer, and I asked everyone to make a wish on the manuscript. Everyone there had said something, done something that went into the story, and it just seemed right they should get a reward.