I was in town shopping for food the other day. The bill came to just under $100. Of this, food for actual human beings in my household totaled about 20 bucks.

The rest was for dogs and cats.

I am not making this up.

Well, you might say, of course: This is Vashon, where dogs outnumber children by at least an order of magnitude, and cats — well, for cats you’d need a logarithmic scale. Not to mention sheep. Or llamas.

I have been at the Burton Coffee Stand when the dogs far outnumbered the humans lined up to order their morning eye-openers. And the fact is that very few of the dogs are paying customers. Mostly they just concentrate on staying underfoot so someone will toss them a biscuit from the jar on the counter or, preferably, a lemon-currant scone. I hope the coffee stand has liability insurance, because someone’s gonna fall over one of these beasts one day and break an arm. And sue, because this is America.

I confess that my own two dogs are regulars at the coffee stand. Yes, I am part of the problem. We’re there, the dogs and I, every morning at eight, without fail. I go there for the excellent coffee and the razor sharp repartee with my friend and fellow New Yorker, Bad Michael, along with all the others we’ve gradually corrupted.

We go for the laughs and the coffee. The dogs go for the biscuits. If you have a few unnecessary extra fingers on your hand, feel free to offer these dogs a treat — their eyes aren’t that sharp anymore, but their teeth are.

The beasts that accompany me — the big Siberian husky and the brand new rescue dog of uncertain lineage — are not really my dogs. Oh goodness, no. People make that mistake at peril of their lives because these dogs (and the five cats and the one goldfish) all belong to the woman lately known as my wife. They do NOT belong to me, as she is quick to make clear to anyone within earshot.

Except, of course, when it’s time to pick up their…um…poop (can we use that term in a family newspaper?). No, then they’re MY dogs. I am not certain exactly how this came about. Let’s just say that in my many years on this planet it never occurred to me even once that one day every single outer-garment I owned would have dog biscuits and poop bags in the pockets. Not to mention that somewhere in the house there’s a T-shirt from some wise guy that says: “My Indian name is ‘Walks with Poop.’”

I should hasten to add that my beloved and I have just attained our first anniversary as a wedded couple. This is a signal event and proof that the age of miracles hath not passed. You might think that this obvious evidence of long-term commitment on my part would gain yours truly a degree of status in the household. But nooo. This is because this anniversary puts me exactly 13 and a half years behind the star-crossed moment when she met the Siberian husky. I’m the newbie.

This situation is made clear every evening when the woman lately known as my wife comes home from work. First, it’s love and kisses for her baby — the nearly 15-year-old husky. Then it’s love and kisses for the new puppy, to which she speaks in the high sing-song voice of a kindergarten teacher. As if that helped him understand.

Then, after the dogs, it’s affectionate hugs to all the sweet kitties that swarm around her upon her arrival, fur balls pretending to care about her but who, as with kitties throughout the world, are cynically in it for the food they know she’ll open any moment now.

At some point, typically just as darkness falls and the animals are numbed to stupefaction by an overdose of sheer love and good food, she’ll notice the chap in the kitchen loyally making a gourmet dinner for her, as he does every night, and say, “Oh. Hello.”

You can imagine how his spousal heart soars. How he feels, at last, complete and one with his beloved … and how he dreams of undetectable but utterly lethal poisons for furry quadrupeds.

All of this, of course, is further proof (were any needed) that love is blind. Not to mention deaf and dumb. You see, the thing is I never quite grasped something any other reasonably intelligent man not already struck dumb with love would have tumbled to right from the get-go, to whit: she works in a veterinary clinic!

There should be a warning label attached to each of us, is what I’m thinking, like fabric care instructions or something. A guy might meet some comely lady and be smitten but — Whoa! — her label says: “Spent 20 years in prison for offing her husband,” or “Will drag you repeatedly to sappy chick-flicks.”

Me? I keep hearing this song lyric in my head — it’s Country and Western, which I don’t even like. The opening line is, “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to marry Vet Assistants…”

It’s a regular toe-tapper.

Or maybe a forehead-slapper.

— Will North is a Vashon novelist. His next novel is set on the Island. He is nuts about the woman lately known as his wife.