The Catcher in the Rye

I'm beginning to feel here like the catcher in the rye where all these little neighborhood dogs are concerned. 

Holden Caulfield put it this way in the novel: 

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - and mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." 

So yeah, who else is gonna keep these little dogs from going over the cliff? Why are they at my house all day?  Because I don't want them to starve. I don't want them to go over the cliff. Who else is taking care of these dogs? How are they eating? Where will they go to get out of the rain? Whose dogs are they anyway? 

Someone recently said that most of these dogs were going to go to some "dog shelter", but that turns out not to be so. A dog shelter in Bali? Yeah, right. They're just going over the cliff, or headed that direction anyway. 

And so they wander into my one room apartment one-by-one, arrange themselves atop the single rectangular space rug, not much more than a doormat, really. I saw one of them up on the main road today, stopped my bike, scooped him up, brought him back to his own street. Stupid dog. You see? There you go, running off that cliff. And why must I stop? Why must I bring him back. 

Because I am the catcher in the rye.