One tabletop was covered with ceramic pigs, each glazed pink, smiling (if a pig can be said to smile) broadly. Half of the pigs contained salt.  Those that contained pepper, despite their nearly identical appearance, did not seem as happy as the salty pigs.  Perhaps this was because they had less frequent human contact.  In any case, he was relieved to find that salt and pepper flowed from holes bored in their shiny piggish heads, not from their round and shiny backsides.

The tabletop next to the piggy table was covered with cows, some shiny like the smiley little piggies, others flat and black and all too oppressively bovine.  He did not venture to investigate whether they contained salt or pepper, or whether they contained anything at all other than their placid and mooish  predictability.

He had always preferred the company of pigs.