Answers to Peanut. Answers to Nut. Answers to nothing, lately.

Last seen Thursday, 6:40 a.m., corner of Sylvan and the part of Ash that dead-ends into the retention pond. No collar. There was a collar. The collar is on the kitchen table and I have not moved it and I am not going to move it.

Distinguishing features: beige. Bad left hip, so the gait is wrong, so if you see a beige dog walking correctly, it isn't him. Notch in the right ear from a raccoon in 2019. Smells like a wet towel that's been in the car. That's identification, please don't clean him.

He will not come to you. He will come near you and then sit down eleven feet away, which is his number, eleven feet, and he will look at your hands. If your hands are empty, he will wait. He will wait a long time. He waited eleven feet from the couch for six weeks while she was on it and he never once got up on it, which everyone said was because he knew, and I don't think he knew, I think eleven feet is just what he does.

He does not like: men who wear gloves, the vacuum, the sound of a suitcase zipper, being carried. He does like: standing in the doorway with half of himself in and half of himself out so that the door can't close. If you have him: he eats at 7 and 5 and he will tell you it's 5 at 3:30 and he is lying.

If you have seen him: call. Any hour. I’m up. If you have seen something beige on Route 9, near the bend past the sod farm, where people don't slow down, where I have driven that stretch nine times since Thursday with the flashers on and the windows down calling a name into a woods—do not call. I don't want that call.

I want the other call. I have room for exactly one more call in me and it has to be the other one.

Reward: $200. Reward: whatever you want. Reward: I will come get him in my pajamas, I will come get him from anywhere, I will come get him.

He is beige. He is very small. From a distance he looks like a bag, or a glove, or the end of something, and I need you to look twice.