I Suppose it's Allegorical

As anyone who's ever owned a puppy will tell you, they are a mess. A primal engine of entropy on four legs. They can't help it. They must go, do, interact, with all the curiosity, tenacity, and aggression they can muster, which is a lot. So you can't be overly fastidious around one.

A lesson I learned today. The little scamp that occupies the apartment decided recently to investigate my closet, which, as I am not the neatest of men, had quite a pile of clothes collecting in it.

So moved must she have been by the spectacle of my unwashed togs that she was inspired to leave more than a little of herself behind.

This, of course, was unimpeachably natural and unimpeachably disgusting. (Lock your doors, I hear you crying even now. Can't, I reply. My bedroom door won't shut all way. Hell if I know why). I decided to chuck a few items of clothing that I deemed duly doomed by doggie detritus.

Now, I am loath (there's an understatement) to throw some old things away. If I have deemed them helpful, useful, emotionally resonant or particularly faithful, I find it harder to part with those items than I do with most people. The clothing I tossed were undeniably old campaigners. One was a plain black-and-white shirt with a Japanese ideogram on it. (I can tell it now-- reliable sources ID'd it for me as the character for "love", but I always claimed ignorance whenever anyone asked its meaning, because I would've been embarrassed to be walking around with a shirt that said "love" on it. Silly, really). The other was a pair of green twill pants, and by God, I'll swear by the seven seas of Rhye they were some of the best pants a man ever had. But their time had come. They were worn out, faded, ripped, and displayed some truly gargantuan holes around the general buttock-area. They were only a few tenacious stitches away from being disparate pieces of cloth, instead of a singular article. So it really was time, aided by dog's unerring instinct...

I suddenly realize that it may have been that skulking ginger bastard of a cat instead. If that yowling little son of a whore was responsible for ruining two of my most-loved duds, I'll make it my mission to somehow shit on his head in reparation.