The Black Rhinos: Pete and Miadi have been reintro-duced to each other after having a baby several years ago. Since then, Miadi flirts: She bumps and rubs against Pete, trying to make him "flamen" and smell her pheromones. "It's when animals, cats included, kind of lift their upper lip and sniff hard," Krista says. It's not until Miadi urinates in his face that Pete chases her. After that, Miadi plays coy and hard to get until Pete gives up. "It's like Miadi's saying, 'You're not going to pay any attention to me? Well, smell my pee!'" Krista says and laughs. "See," she says, still pretending to be Miadi, "I knew you wanted some."

The Monkeys: In the Amazon Flooded Forest, look for J.P., a female howler monkey that jumps on everyone's head the moment they enter the exhibit. Keepers or volunteers, no one knows why, but J.P. has to sit on everyone's head.

Also look for Sweet Tillie, a baby swamp monkey. "She seems to enjoy causing as much trouble as possible," Krista says. Especially when she swings from the tail of the rival colobus monkeys and expects her father to defend her.

And don't miss Charlie the chimpanzee. "Charlies kind of famous for playing games with the people he likes," Krista says, "and throwing fecal matter at the people he doesn't." He knows a little sign language, and if he likes you, he'll introduce himself. He points at himself and signs the letter C with one hand against his chest. If Charlie points to the door that separates his inside and outside areas, he's challenging you to a race. Go ahead and run, but if you run and beat him to the next area, he screams and thrashes with rage.

The Wolves: Look for Marcus, an almost completely black male wolf. But please, Krista says, don't call him by name and do not howl. "People go to the exhibit and howl," she says, "and it's really disruptive. This is how wolves communicate. People have no idea what they're saying."

The Sea Lions: Look for Julius and Stella, both Stellers sea lions. You can call Julius. "If you call his name," Krista says, "Julius preens and poses. It's as if he knows you're praising him."

The Peacocks: Due to an exploding population of free-roving pea fowl, plus complaints from the neighbors, all the peacocks got tiny vasectomies in 2001. The birds strut and fly, upstaging the concert artists. Krista says, "It was really getting out of control."

The Bears: Every year the zoo hosts a "Bear Fair," where people can bring their stuffed teddy bears. Krista says, "At first I thought, What a stupid idea! That's not the mission of a zoo." Since then, she's warmed up to the idea because it does teach people specifically about bears. "Did you know sun bears have sticky tongues?" she says. "It's so they can eat ants." The stuffed bears, she tolerates. "Adults with no children show up with their stuffed animals—it's just their excuse to carry around their teddy bears in public."

It used to be tradition for the Rose Festival princesses to enter the bear habitat and, well... mingle. "In the archives," Krista says, "we have all these pictures of the princesses in the 1940s in the bear grotto. They're all in their high-heeled shoes and tailored suits, hugging and patting the bears on the head." She says the zoo no longer puts the teenaged beauty queens into the exhibit with live grizzlies. "Well," she says, "not unless we really don't like them."

Feral Cat Races

On the opening day of the Portland Beavers baseball season, come check out the Feral Cat Alley at PGE Park, at SW Morrison Street at Eighteenth Avenue.

Cardboard cat-shaped cutouts, each one representing a section of the grandstand, race each other the length of the left field wall. Whatever section cheers loudest, their cat wins and someone in that section gets a prize. It's a regular event at the season opener and occurs more and more frequently during other events. The race course is only about a hundred yards, but that's far enough.

Chris Metz, manager of communications for Portland Family Entertainment, says, "You're talking about four overweight, out-of-shape ticket sellers carrying those big cardboard cats."

Ken Puckett, director of operations for PGE Park— who isn't above stopping the race with a cardboard Dober-man—tells the story of the real cats gone wild in the stadium.

The nature of a "seating bowl" always attracts vermin, Chris says. People drop food. The rats come. The cats follow. No doubt they've been in the stadium since the first grandstand was built in 1893, back when Tanner Creek used to flood the playing field. The cats were here in 1909 when President Taft spoke, and in 1923 when Warren G. Harding spoke. When the current twenty-thousand-seat stadium was built in 1926, they were here. For the years 1933 through 1955, when this was a dog-racing track, the cats were here. The cats watched Jack Dempsey fight here. They heard concerts by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Van Halen. The weeklong Billy Graham revival—the Bob Hope comedy routines— the cats have seen it all from under the grandstands.

"These aren't cats you'd pet," Ken says. "They're mean. A lot of people think they're cuddly, but these are almost like bobcats."

During renovation in 2000 a construction worker killed a resident feral cat, and word got out about the accident. The neighborhood feral cat coalition protested and worked with the stadium to trap the remaining twenty-two feral cats. Of those, Ken says, two were killed because they were too sick. The others got their shots. They got spayed or neutered and spent the next seven months living on a farm outside the city, at a cost of some $1,700 per pussy.

"This is not part of the Christian feral cat coalition," Ken says. "There are two coalitions. This is the other one."

With the renovation complete, the cats were released back into the stadium, now equipped with the "Feral Cat Alley," installed under the Fred Meyer Family Deck. At the rate of a pallet per month, Ken says, an automatic feeding station doles out "senior cat blend" cat food. Because so many of the cats are old, he's built a ramp to ADA standards that leads the cats up to their food.

In return, the cats do what cats have always done.

Since 2000 the stadium's eighty-five traps have caught only two field mice. For the price of cat food, the whole place is rat-free. In comparison, Ken says, places like the Rose Garden coliseum pay up to $100,000 a year to control their rats—and fail. "You wait until everyone's gone. Sit in your car in their parking structure," he says, "and you won't believe what you see crawling out of the ivy over there."

As the cats die off, new cats from the Northwest Portland neighborhood migrate to the stadium. Right now, the population is about fifteen, including "Sylvester."

"He's black and white," Ken says, "like Sylvester in the cartoon." Sylvester is there to meet the first people at every ball game. He follows you around. "He was probably somebody's house cat," Ken says, "and he misses people."

So while the Portland Beavers play baseball April through September, while the Portland Timbers play soccer and the Vikings play football, the cats will still be here.

"The cats were here first," Chris says. "They've always been here. This was just the right thing to do."

Doggy Dancing

Kristine Gunter has blond hair tied back in a ponytail, she has pale blue eyes and freckles, and her voice is slightly garbled because she speaks with one cheek full of wiener chunks. "My joke is," she says, "I could never get my husband to dance with me—so I got a dog instead."

Kristine and her five-year-old corgi, Rugby, dance to a rockabilly song called "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This." Her command "between" sends the dog through her legs in one direction. The command "through" sends him through in the other direction. Commands like "spin" and "go by" make the dog pass or circle the handler. "Dance" brings the dog up on its hind legs. "Jump" makes it jump and slap its front paws against the handler's hands.