At their bark and call: does the rise in room service for pets herald another boom?

Like most Americans, I am always on the lookout for signs that the economy is on a vigorous upswing. Recently, while staying at a mid-level Beverly Hills hotel, I stumbled upon an unusual economic indicator that caused my heart to soar. On the room-service menu, I found a page devoted entirely to all-day dining for pets. The menu included such items as "Kitty's Salmon Supreme," "Chow Hound Chicken" and "Whisker Licking Liver." The meals, which ranged in price from $9 to $21, were served on "appropriate petware" with Evian water accompanying them.

Populists and curmudgeons will undoubtedly recoil in horror upon reading these words, convinced that this sort of culinary innovation is yet another sign that this great nation, so recently chastened by a brutal recession, is now once again becoming frivolous. They will also complain that no pet should be entitled to such extravagance while the streets of Los Angeles are filled with the poor and the hungry.

I disagree. Proceeding from the assumption that a society that can afford to feed its pets upscale room-service food is a society on the move, I view the all-day pets menu as a clear signal that America is poised for an unprecedented economic boom from which everyone will benefit. For some time, it has been apparent that the travel industry has been making a huge comeback--airplanes are crowded, hotels are raising rates--but the all-day pets menu demonstrates not only that Americans are traveling again, but that they are bringing their pets along. A people who are not afraid to travel is one thing; a nation that is not afraid to travel with its pets is quite another. So just ignore those undernourished employment reports, rising interest rates, and lingering concerns that the consumer may start pulling back from his frantic level of spending. America is back--and she's back for the long haul.

What I found most uplifting about the all-day pets menu is the fact that the hotel in question was not some gilded, four-star affair in the heart of Rodeo Drive, but a mid-tier hotel at the very edge of Beverly Hills. This encourages me to believe that middle-class travelers, and not merely the rich, are now treating their pets like royalty. It holds out the hope that all-day room service for pets may soon appear in more modest establishments such as Econo Lodge and Motel 6, providing incontrovertible proof that the economy is hurtling into overdrive.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the weeks and months to come, I plan to monitor this trend with great precision. If, for example, hotels begin to expand their pet menus to include all-day dining for turtles, ferrets and parakeets, it would become clear that we have reached a watershed moment in the history of the Republic, a time of unbridled optimism where the sky is the limit in terms of consumer spending. This would also be true if hotels began to offer spa or massage services specifically tailored to itinerant pets. At the first sign of this, I plan to empty my wallet and buy every stock in sight, in expectation of the greatest economic explosion this nation has ever seen.

One caveat is the absence of a pet dessert menu at the hotel I visited. This would seem to indicate that while travelers are willing to feed their pets in a reasonably sublime fashion, they are not yet prepared to go the whole nine yards and treat them to Veuve Cliquot and Black Forest Cake. I interpret this as a sign that consumers are now reasonably optimistic, but not yet exuberant. Still, as any cultural historian will confirm, where optimism has already taken root, exuberance cannot be far away. Healthy exuberance, to be sure; not the kind that Alan Greenspan sometimes moans about.

As we continue to dig our way out of the economic abyss we plunged into four years ago, the condition of our pets provides a splendid barometer for measuring the health of the economy. En suite pet dining is one of those affordable luxuries that invariably gets jettisoned during hard times, but, by the looks of it, the hard times are long past. And it's one of those services that perfectly captures the difference between this cheerful, resilient nation and glum societies in other parts of the world. They don't have all-day pet dining in mid-level English hotels, and they certainly don't have it in France. A nation that can afford to order room service for Fido and Mitzie at all hours of the day and night is a miracle to behold, truly the economic engine of the world.

The cat's meow, if you will.