For sensitive surfer boomers among us, the paramount summer album of all time is Pet Sounds. But the Beach Boys opus is not really about pets, and pets are really what’s been on my mind this week as I’ve watched the family dogs’ fur fry in the 90 degree summer heat.
Our corgis have become parapetetic, impertinent messes. Our cats too. Even the gerbils. So I’ve been lining up some Pet Sounds to comfort them.

1. Soapy. The original 1965 sax-saturated single was by Mickey & the Clean Cuts, but a later generation of garage fans learned it via The Lyres. I interviewed Lyres frontman Mono Mann in the early 1980s for Rocco Cippilone’s fanzine Bang!, which gained me entrance to the esteemed Mann’s Boston apartment. (There was a secret knock to get in.) One of the many revelations of the hours-long interview: Mono Mann loved cats, and had named one of them Soapy.
2. My Pet. Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer had one of the most remarkable mindmelds in the history of jazz, bonding and fetching and following each other leads as assuredly as a man and his dog. “
3. Martha My Dear. Bestial Beatles, since it’s about Paul McCartney’s sheepdog. The Beatles’ White Album could just as well be called the Animal Album: “Piggies,” “Blackbird,” Rock Raccoon,” “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey,” the elephant in “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”… (I only recently read, in Dorian Lynkskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day, that “Blackbird’ was inspired by a human and not a bird. As Lynskey amusingly writes, “Discovering that ‘Blackbird’ was about a female civil rights activist, an (oh dear) ‘black bird,’ does nothing to enhance one’s enjoyment.”
4. Shannon. Henry Gross wrote this 1976 hit single in honor of Beach Boy Carl Wilson’s Irish Setter Shannon, who had just died. This might explain Gross’ falsetto squeal on the chorus, a sound only dogs can hear. Knowing the song is about a dog invigorates the lyric about “maybe she’ll find an island with a shady tree/just like the one in our backyard.” Something to pee against.
5. We Are Siamese If You Please. May be Peggy Lee’s finest moment as a songwriter. In his new autobiography Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler cites this song as a stirring memory of a three-year love affair he had with a teenage groupie he took on tour with him: “That sweet girl used to recite poetry and constantly sing songs to me like my mother did when she put me to sleep. It was an inspiration to my heart. One of the songs she taught me was ‘We Are Siamese,’ which I’m sure you’ll all remember from the movie Lady and the Tramp.”

Oh, we’re just getting started. More pets in future posts.