That’s only a fraction of the story of Petunia, Boo and the two Gingers.

Ginger Bremberg, the councilwoman, called last week to correct my mistakes.

Usually when Bremberg calls to correct you, there’s nothing to do but put on the blindfold and wait for the impact. She’s mentally acute, more literate than most in her field and aggressive as a bulldog.

First, she said, Carroll Parcher, the publisher emeritus of the Glendale News Press and raconteur of Glendale life for 50 years, was also mayor four times, not twice as I reported.

Worse, he was appointed by his fellow council members, not elected as I said.

Aside from that, she said, the story was fine, very nice actually.

I know how the Glendale mayor is chosen and would be happy to explain the misstatement, except that I have caught Bremberg in a small mistake of her own, which is much more interesting.

She made it seem that she caught the Parcher error herself when, in fact, she got the information second hand through one of the city’s remarkable channels of communication.

The source was Barbara Boyd, the tough-minded keeper of the city library’s Special Collections. Those contain an eclectic lode of information, including the city’s richest historical data and the most extensive collection on cats in the United States.

I dropped in on Boyd this week to talk about Stupid Cat, a pest who trespassed into Parcher’s life a few years ago and made its way into his heart, over many columns. She has been pestering Parcher to sort out his cat columns to give to a publisher.

But I found her preoccupied with a new day’s errors, which had to do with dogs.

“I’m not very happy with people, right now,” she was saying gruffly into the phone. She was alerting the pound, about the dog whose disappearance from behind the library had been reported that morning as a theft in the News Press police blotter.

She was saying that his name is “D-A-W-G,” not “Dog” as the paper reported, and his owner, Jerry, is not a transient, but lives out back of the library. He has secured a sheltered spot for himself and Dawg by doing chores for the Glendale Presbyterian Church.

Dawg would be easy to recognize, she told the person at the pound, because he tells jokes.

Eventually, she hung up with a scowl.

Boyd was hunched down, as usual, at her desk, almost hidden behind piles of things that included old school yearbooks, rolled up engineering maps, Manila folders, bound reports and newspaper clips with headlines such as “Glendale Dignitary Dead at 91.”

The walls of the special collection room are covered with poster art of cats--”Love Cat,” “High Class Cat,” “Love Them Little Mousies” and so on.

But right beside Boyd was a poster of a scowling bulldog under the words, “Our friendly, courteous personnel are eager to serve you.”

Beside it was a snapshot of a Boston terrier resting on the back of a bulldog that looked a lot like the one in the poster.

The dogs seemed more akin to her personality, and were. Her preference in company, she admitted, was “Dog first, any animal after. . . . I sure loved that Dawg.”

She said she would have taken him home if it hadn’t been for her resolution never to own another dog.

“I told them no more,” she said. “Boo had died.”

Boyd is sometimes hard to follow. The “them” referred to her “supposed friends” who conspired to bring Ginger into her life after Petunia, the bulldog in the snapshot, died, followed soon by Boo, the Boston terrier.

The leaders of the plot were Ken Barnes, a retired veterinarian, and the other Ginger, the councilwoman.

“They conned the hell out of me,” Boyd said. “I’ve always thought that those two were the best con artists I’ve ever known.”

It happened in December of 1988. Ginger, the councilwoman, asked Boyd to drop by her office. There, all the conspirators joined in, one carrying the

bulldog puppy over his shoulder.

“When I saw him all I could do was say, ‘Oh, hell,’ ” Boyd said.

Now digressing, Boyd said that Boo, the Boston terrier, loved cats more than anything.

“When Petunia died, I promised her she’d have her own kitten, but she never got it,” Boyd said. “Now people want to know if I’m going to get this Ginger one.

“This is Ginger IV,” she said, seeing that I was confused.

There actually were no previous Gingers. The number refers to the number of legs and distinguishes the bulldog from the councilwoman, who had specified that Boyd’s new companion should be a bulldog but was not responsible for the name.

“People insisted she is full of ginger,” Boyd said. “It fits. . . . Ginger, the other Ginger, is Ginger II, two-legged, because people get mixed up.”

So, if an inner-office memo is addressed from Ginger IV to Ginger II, everyone knows where it goes, the same route that brought Ginger Bremberg’s reproach to my ears.

That’s only a fraction of the story of Petunia, Boo and the two Gingers. But it illustrates how hard it is to keep things straight.

And if any of it is wrong, Boyd said as I left, Ginger IV will be sent to step on my toes.