Kazak

Kazak was the name of a dog in two novels, The Sirens of Titan and Breakfast of Champions. They are not to be confused with Kazakh, Selena MacIntosh's similarly but not identically named seeing-eye dog in the novel Galápagos. All three are different breeds and the relationship, if any, between them is unclear.

The Sirens of Titan

An English Mastiff

Kazak was a thoroughbred mastiff who was the namesake of the sixteenth month of the Martian calendar, which had thirty days, and the Kazak Pools on Titan, an incipient fourth sea connected to the other three—the Winston, Niles, and Rumfoord Seas—which was a nesting area for Titanic Bluebirds. Kazak accompanied his owner, Winston Niles Rumfoord, into a Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum between Earth and Mars, causing both to exist as wave phenomena in a spiral shape between the Sun and the star Betelgeuse. Due to this, they materialized on Earth every 59 days, on Mars every 111 days, and briefly on Mercury every 14 days. The two would dematerialize at the same time. Described as being "as big and terrible as a tiger" with baying that sounded "like the blows of a maul on a great bronze gong", Kazak would roam the grounds of the Rumfoord Estate during materializations on Earth. When Malachi Constant was invited to be the first to witness one, Beatrice Rumfoord warned him to be punctual since Kazak was prone to bite. He did indeed later show hostility toward Constant, attempting to attack him on Mars until stopped by Rumfoord's command, and needing to be restrained when Constant appeared at the Estate as the Space Wanderer.

When they materialized after Beatrice lost the Rumfoord fortune, she wished to pet Kazak "to find out if a chrono-synclastic infundibula [sic] kills love in a dog the way it kills love in a man" since Rumfoord seemed unconcerned about her financial condition. Their butler Moncrief called for Kazak while Beatrice waited in the foyer, but shortly after rushing inside the house, he began to vanish before Beatrice could touch him. He would appear with Rumfoord at meetings of the real commanders of the Martian Army, and Constant would later remember seeing the two of them there. Kazak appears in the best-selling children's book Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury in which Constant (then known as "Unk") finds the tracks of a large dog in the dust. If an adult is reading the book to a child, it was common at this point "to ask the child with delicious hoarseness, 'Who wuzza dog?'" Kazak's tracks were found by Constant in caves on Mercury six miles above his and Boaz's damaged space ship and they did not excite him, even after noting the adjoining footprints of a human being as well. Nonetheless, he followed them leading to a message left by Rumfoord in harmoniums explaining how to leave the planet.

A copper beech

After the sale of Rumfoord's estate, he and Kazak had no religious significance and were exhibited as a tourist attraction during their materializations, billed as ghosts, by showman Martin T. Lapp. Rumfoord would not speak and cover his eyes with one hand while holding Kazak's choke chain with the other. Once the Estate became a pilgrimage site for followers of the Church of the God the Utterly Indifferent, the appearance of Rumfoord and Kazak would be preceded five minutes before by the sounding of a steam whistle and the closing of the concession stands. Their arrival was announced by the firing of a three-inch cannon, and their dematerialization by the release of a thousand toy balloons. A series of scaffolds and catwalks were used by Rumfoord and Kazak, who was held by a choke chain, during materializations so they were visible to but unimpeded by the gathered crowds. On occasion, Rumfoord would make pronouncements from within a large copper beech tree, tying Kazak to the lowest of the rungs secured to the trunk and used as a ladder.

For unknown reasons, the spiral path of Rumfoord and Kazak coincided exactly with the orbit of Titan around Saturn and the Sun, meaning the two were permanently materialized there. Rumfoord had a palatial home built with Martian labor that was a flawless reproduction of the Taj Mahal, which he named Dun Roamin. There the two would either doze together while Rumfoord sat in his contour chair—his hand in Kazak's coat, who was usually whimpering or twitching from dreams—or sitting by the pool where Rumfoord would monitor signals from their other selves in space and time. Like Rumfoord, Kazak was affected by sunspots. Usually fleeting nausea was the most severe symptom, but in extreme cases they could become momentarily two-dimensional, experience localized bands of dematerialization, or were enveloped by St. Elmo's Fire, which would produce the smell of ozone. During these episodes, Kazak would look poisoned and shiver, staring at a fixed point, and howl when enveloped. An explosion on the Sun expelled the terminal of the spiral of Rumfoord and Kazak from the Solar System. Although Salo assumed Rumfoord would die with "his faithful dog", an explosion on the Sun separated the two, with Kazak disappearing while "howling in a puff of ozone and sick light, in a hum like swarming bees". Rumfoord continued to hold his choke chain for some time afterward. After their disappearances, the two were never seen again.

Breakfast of Champions

A Doberman Pinscher

Kazak was also the name of a Doberman pinscher that patrolled supply yard of the Maritino Brothers Construction Company at night and was raised to kill anything he could catch. He was a leading character in earlier version of the novel, in which Benjamin Davis, husband of Lottie, threw raw meat into the pit where Kazak was kept during the day. Every morning, Davis dragged him down there, covered in mattresses and chicken wire for protection, the detritus of which were strewn over the yard. Before releasing him at night, Davis would yell and throw tennis balls at him. When people walked by the fence, Kazak would lunge, causing it to bulge out toward the sidewalk. Reflecting that "a character as ferocious as Kazak was not easily cut out of a novel", Vonnegut paid little mind to the oddly shaped fence while the dog crouched behind a pile of bronze pipe, preparing to attack. As Kilgore Trout approached, Kazak lunged, causing Vonnegut to leap over his rental car and Kazak to be flung back by the fence onto the concrete, leaving him dazed.