As I was taking out the trash the other day, I got my first indication. Someone had spray-painted one of the bins with intricately-formed lettering, indictaing that "MJA" was in love with "AMR." 

(Call me an insensitive chauvanist pig if you will — but if I was that little girl, I'd be real upset that someone was professing their love for me on a trash can.) 

I talked to the apartment manager and a local policeman who lives in the complex. We pretty much determined that yeah, it must be a gang thing, because of the way the letters were formed. 

When you don't act to get rid of such graffiti quickly, you're more or less advertising that you're a target. 

Sure enough, two days later when I went to carry out the trash, "MJA-heart-AMR" had been defaced by three heavy, deep marks, which looked a whole lot like some wild animal's claw marks. 

Our resident policeman concurred with my diagnosis. "Looks like a whole new gang," he commented. 

This time our manager got after it, and quickly painted over everything. Problem solved, we figured. Alas, the scratch-graffiti was back the very next morning — this time with an added inscription: "Dawgz rule! E-Z P/Bugeye." 

Our analysis this time was that our new gangsters were named the "Dawgz," and their leaders or "artists" appeared to be named "E-Z P" and "Bugeye." 

Over the next several days, we noticed more and more Richmond police cruisers in and around the ol' neighborhood, yet the graffiti kept popping up. 

My neighbors and I grilled anyone under the age of 21 we saw in the complex, but the best we could come up with was that MJA and AMR had broken up. No one seemed able to find out who was in this new gang. 

We were a little early wrapping up the Friday edition of The Times, so I got home a little earlier than normal. Walking through the front door, I caught my chihuahuas in the act. 

Rusty was wearing a pair of silvered sunglasses and wearing his leather jacket, sitting with a collection of neighborhood dogs on the couch and watching Boyz N The Hood on video; Smedley had gotten into the cabinet under the sink and was sniffing Pine Sol. 

Digging under the bed, I found 38 empty cans of spray paint, in addition to14 petrified socks. Looking in their bedding, I found they'd hidden a large number of illegal weapons: claw extenders, brass claw-knuckles, home-made tail-bats. 

I was humiliated. I'd always thought I was a damned good pet owner. Smedley and Rusty have a nice place to live, good food and water, great veterinary care; why would they feel a need to join a pet gang? 

It was then I realized that feeding them and housing them was wonderful, but can never replace showing them the attention all youngsters crave. 

I can't be certain, but I think there's a moral there.