One of a pair of ornamental planters. They flank the doorway of an apartment building near Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco, so I suppose they can be taken for a fair expression of upper-class taste in 21st century America. A big-headed doggie and a big-headed cat confront one another with friendly apprehensiveness. At some point in the past they were uniformly whitewashed, causing sculptural details effectively to be emphasized by airborne street grime. A semi-concealed arrangement of steel wires seemingly secures the object to the marble slab on which it rests, but exactly how this works is not easy for the potential vandal to make out.