“What a mouthful,” said the bass. “I hope you can do it, but you’ll need land creatures. Us water dwellers can’t get to voting places. Even the giants, the saltwater mammals and huge fish, can’t leave the ocean. Now, they would have real pull! Humans just love whales—not so much rockfish.” He giggled, which came out as a burble.
The wind shifted, and they could again hear Tally’s singing.
“Tally, turn down the volume,” Pewter shouted.
“We can hear that noise even underwater, you know.” The fish burbled again. “Terrible, just terrible.” Then he sent up a little spout of water, which hit Pewter square in the face. Burbling again, he dove back under the water, the bubbles rising like pearls.
“I should have snagged him when I had the chance.” Pewter stepped back, wiped off her face.
“What an interesting fellow.” Sneaky watched Pewter sit on her haunches and use both her paws simultaneously.
The two cats walked back to the dogs.
“Ready?” Finally Tucker had had enough of Tally’s singing as well.
As the four walked through the meadows and back up to the barn, Tally continued to croon his tune.
“Tally, have mercy,” Tucker begged at last. Even the patient corgi had limits.
The Jack Russell stopped, twitched her white mustache. “I thought you liked my singing.”
Tucker was diplomatic: “Uh, perhaps less forcefully and less of it.”
“Tally, you sound like a scalded dog.” Pewter was less polite.
“Pewter, your nose is always out of joint.” Tally half closed her eyes before lunging for the cat’s tail.
The gray cat easily avoided this. “You might be fast in a straight line, half pint, but you will never have the fresh moves of a feline.”
As they climbed the hill, seemingly small in spring but it could send a car sliding backward in winter, they continued to chat.
“Did you watch the news this morning?” Sneaky asked Tucker.
“I heard it. Why? I mean, I was half asleep. It seemed boring.”
“I did,” Tally volunteered. “I watched the news. I was waiting to see if it would rain.”
“I know you saw it. You sat next to me on the chair.” Sneaky did love the little dog, silly though she might be.
“So why do you want to know if Tucker saw it?” asked Tally.
“Corgis have measured judgment.”
Tally didn’t really know what that meant, so she said nothing. Still, she was ready to disagree, in case she was being insulted.
Pewter sniffed. “The usual song and dance. I mean, even when these old white and now black guys quit running, they don’t shut up. I expect when more women run for office they’ll blab all day, too. They never shut up.” Pewter herself could go on and on at times.
“Well, what struck me was what these men do to their wives and families.” Sneaky felt the sun on her fur. It felt good. “They sacrifice their offspring to their careers.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s political or corporate life, does it?” Pewter flicked her tail to the left, as Tally was on her right. “Humans have screwy priorities.”
“I think it’s worse in politics because the wives have to pretend to agree with their husbands and the children have to shut up.” Sneaky called up memories of First Ladies past.
“Those women have to know what they’re getting into,” Tally sensibly answered.
“I’m not sure anyone really knows how bad it is,” Sneaky replied. “But you are right. The wife is an adult. It’s the children I feel sorry for. And when they’re in the spotlight at that gawky stage, it must be painful for them.”
“Humans do go through an ugly phase.” Tucker laughed. “We don’t, ever notice?”
“The horses do,” Tally blurted out.
“Tally, shut up. What if they hear you?” Sneaky reprimanded the dog, for horses grazed nearby in various pastures.
Jones, the thirty-five-year-old Thoroughbred, lifted his head, mouth full of grass, then returned to grazing. That Jack Russell’s voice could cut glass. The old fellow was a friend to all.
“Well, they do,” Tally whispered. “Some horses look every bit as bad as some humans in their teens.”
“Be careful,” said Sneaky. “We wouldn’t want to damage anyone’s self-esteem. Self-consciousness never did anyone any good,” the tiger wisely added. “But what got me thinking about this is that Bible-thumper who thinks people will marry animals. There’s a whole segment of that strange thinking in one political party, not that the other party doesn’t have some strange ideas, but at least they don’t focus on sex.”
“Sex with animals!” Tally screamed, and ran in circles.
“Tally, you need to be spayed. Honest to God.” Pewter wanted to knock the dog sideways.
“Calm down, Tally, calm down.” Tucker, who could best pacify the canine, did just that. “No one is going to sleep with you.”
“I would die. I would absolutely, positively die.” The little dog rolled her eyes, the whites showing.
“Folks like him always swear they are running for your children’s future and their children’s future. If you’re doing it for children, why are they ignoring the masses of human children living in poverty? The numbers are disgraceful and shocking.” Sneaky’s voice was clear.
“They’re all hypocrites,” declared Pewter, the realist, some might say cynic. The fat gray cat moved closer to Sneaky.
“You’re right,” said Sneaky. “They all lie. They say they care about their marriage, their children, but it’s all about them. Egotism. They imagine they have a higher calling than being a husband and a father. Selfish. Can you believe how deluded they are?”
“Yes!” barked Tally quickly. “And my voice is the only one amongst us that counts, since all three of you are spayed. So the solution to this kind of abandonment of family is to neuter the humans who want to run for public office.”
“Excellent idea!” Sneaky agreed. “It will focus the men and calm the women. You are so right, Tally. I will definitely add that to my campaign platform: Spay or neuter your pols.”
Training Humans
Opened on the kitchen table, The Wall Street Journal caught the eye of both Sneaky and Pewter, both of whom had jumped on the kitchen table as soon as their human walked outside.
The forbidden ever entices.
“Hey.” Pewter clawed a newspaper photograph of a dog’s paw, bigger than her own.
The photograph covered nearly one quarter of the page.
“National Disaster Search Dog Foundation,” Sneaky read out loud. “What a good ad. Pewter, think of how many humans search-and-rescue dogs have saved in the last few years.”
“Well, the ad says it takes ten thousand dollars to train one dog. Do you think humans have at least enough good sense to give to the foundation?”
“Let’s hope so.” The tiger cat sat on the effective ad.
Pewter’s brilliant green eyes opened wide. “It’s in people’s self-interest to take care of the animals trained to help them. There are Seeing Eye dogs, dogs that hear for people, dogs that save people from attack. Dogs do a lot of work, I’ve got to admit. Of course, cats have saved people, too. Remember Homer, that cat who saved his human from an intruder standing right at the foot of her bed? And Homer’s not the only one. We cats fend off animals lots bigger than we are. I personally can be ferocious.”
“You’re scaring me,” Sneaky cracked.
“But back to this National Disaster Search Dog Foundation. And, of course, cats are superior. It’s just the two of us, I can speak frankly. For one thing, dogs can barely read. But you must give it to them, Pewter: They do these jobs better than we could.”
“It’s the digging. Tally and Tucker can ruin Mom’s garden in a heartbeat. Dogs can dig through rubble, and the big ones can pull people to safety. It is impressive.” She then lowered herself closer to the tabletop. “Did those two twits hear me?”
“No, they’re asleep.”
“Whew. There’d be no living with them.” Pewter exhaled.
“There’s no living with them now.”
They both laughed.
“They brag that their noses are so much better than ours. If their noses are so great, why are they always smelling the most disgusting things? We have good noses. I can smell anything that Tally and Tucker can smell—not that I’d want to.” Pewter put her paw on the ad paw, and it fit just inside the photo paw.
“Well, are their noses better, or do they smell scent faster?” asked Sneaky. “Think about how quickly foxes react. Can they smell us before we smell them?”
“No. Foxes really throw off, maybe even control, their odor, that odor, like a sweet skunk.” Pewter thought about this. “No, I don’t think foxes’ senses are better than ours or the domesticated dogs’, either.”
“Then why are they always ahead of us, and particularly ahead of the Can Opener?” Sneaky had watched her human try to take photographs of foxes time and time again. The foxes would invariably duck into their dens or just motor on.
“Maybe they do pick up scent before the rest of us. Foxes are uncanny.” Pewter respected the beautiful creatures.
“I better talk to them.” Sneaky put her paw on top of Pewter’s.
“This photo, you can see the trimmed claws.” She removed her paw so Sneaky could put her own inside the photo.
“Be easier if dogs had retractable claws like us. But since dogs don’t climb trees, they don’t need them. Then again, gray foxes climb trees, and they don’t have retractable nails.”
“Neither does C.O., and she can climb trees,” Pewter noted. “I wonder why she doesn’t climb trees more. Why don’t humans climb trees more?”
Sneaky ignored the question. “I’m thinking of those nail colors, remember? The time she painted her nails purple? Painted her toes, too. Why would any living creature want purple nails and toes?” Sneaky wrinkled her nose. “So strange.”
“Maybe she’s color-blind.”
“Wouldn’t we know?” Sneaky stood up.
“How would we know?”
“Perhaps you’re right, then,” said Sneaky. “She must be color-blind. Purple nails.” The tiger cat listened to the snoring of the two dogs. “Those two swear they don’t snore.”
“Everyone who snores does that. It’s odd.” Pewter returned her attention to the ad. Those rescue dogs were genuine heroes. “Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to try to search for suffering people? Or animals? You can smell fear.”
“Yes, you can, but I bet what they really get a nose full of is blood.” The tiger pondered this. “Suffering cuts across all species. Remember when our colt had a heart attack, dropped, and thrashed around? Two years old and such conformation. Dead in five minutes. You never know.”
“Never forget that. Here today. Gone tomorrow.” Pewter half smiled.
“Pewter.”
“Well, we all have to go sometime. Might as well accept it and live life, and do whatever you want to do. No point dwelling on bad news. Now, see, that’s what I really don’t understand. The TV, the radio in the truck, the Internet—all that jabbering, and most of it bad news. X shot Y. A building collapses in Cairo. Hundreds of cows freeze to death in Europe. A terrible storm sends a big wave that wipes out everything in its path.”
“That was an earthquake under the ocean,” Sneaky corrected her.
“Doesn’t matter. It was a total disaster by anyone’s definition.”
Sneaky sighed before getting up. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do about stuff like that, but there’s still something we can do about laws, the way people treat us, and the way they treat one another.”
Pewter started to disagree, then she too rose on all four feet. “I am less concerned about that than about what Tally will do to get even.”
“She’s already forgotten it.” Sneaky jumped on a painted kitchen chair and then to the old wooden floor. “She has the attention span of a three-year-old child.”
“Hope you’re right.” Pewter said under her breath as they tiptoed past the two dogs snoring on their sides.
“Ever notice how different dog personalities are, depending on breed?”
“Sneaky, why ever would I waste my precious time thinking about dogs?” Pewter affected a grand air.
“Because you live with two of them.”
“I live with grasshoppers, too, but I don’t dwell on them. Dogs do what they’re told, eat, sleep, chase things, and try to hump everything.”
“Unneutered males. You’re being unfair.”
Pewter, sashaying along, did not immediately reply, then: “Okay, they’re better than grasshoppers, but really, they are a lower life-form.”
“That’s what some humans think about us.”
“Well, why should I care what any human thinks? How much credibility do they have? No matter how cranky, no cat ever started a world war.”
“No cat lives outside its nature. They do,” Sneaky said.
“What’s that got to do with killing millions and millions of people, to say nothing of the cats, dogs, horses, birds, you name it, that get in the way of the humans’ guns? Mother quotes statistics about how many people were killed in this war and that war, but she never quotes how many people starved or died of disease, and not once has she given figures for the animals, and how they suffered and died.” Pewter warmed to her subject.
“She did tell us that one and a half million horses and mules died in the War Between the States.” Sneaky offered a mild defense.
“I suppose that’s a start. Look, you and I know that dogs have owners, cats have staff. Our dear Can Opener may not know she’s staff, but she performs all those functions.” Pewter laughed as she headed straight for the Can Opener, sitting at her desk.
Sneaky laughed, then she, too, walked into the office, books piled in stacks on the floor, on shelves, papers also stacked neatly.
“Some of these books are really old.” Pewter stopped to inhale. “You can smell the dust. The paper is different from current paper, you know.”
“She’s got enough of them.” Sneaky leapt onto the desk, where one pile of papers had the human’s full attention.
Pewter also hopped up. Outside the window, low clouds made the night even darker, as not one star could peep through.
“It’s not healthy to work at night,” Pewter announced, then grabbed the pencil right out of her hand.
“Hey!”
“You will ruin your eyes.” Pewter’s green eyes looked directly into deep brown ones.
“Come on, Pewter. I need my pencil.”
Taking the pencil back, the human started scribbling anew.
“You really ought to listen. Your eyes are meant for daylight. Artificial lighting isn’t good for your eyes. You should clean up and go to bed. If you leave these papers, I’ll take care of them.”
“Pewter, you’ll push them all on the floor.” Sneaky now sat on the left side of the person.
“Exactly. Paperwork makes her mental.” The gray cat grabbed the pencil again.
“Cat.”
“Flatface.” Pewter pulled harder at the pencil.
The C.O. noted the time, 9:30 P.M., on the old mantel clock. “It’s too late. I can’t think anymore.”
“Go to bed.” Sneaky chimed in with Pewter.
So the human put down the pencil, stood up, cut the lights, and left the room.
“You just have to know how to train them.” Pewter whacked the pencil so it skidded off the desk.
A Hoot
A night chorus of peepers, bullfrogs, and Whip-poor-wills serenaded a soft spring night. The nocturnal Chuck-will’s-widow also sang out in its throaty “chuck.”
Sneaky Pie, out for a solitary prowl, sat at the opened door to the stable and listened to the night music. Until recently Chuck-will’s-widow were found farther south, but the weather has changed enough so that birds and some mammals not commonly seen before 2000 now traveled to Virginia. Last
summer, Sneaky saw a Green Kingfisher down by the pond. The Belted Kingfishers lived there, too, their eggs safe at the back of a tunnel in the pond bank. Sneaky liked kingfishers, as she liked the raptors, probably because, like herself, they were meat eaters and therefore hunters.
Muskrats lived in the pond, and beavers built a lodge farther down the Rockfish River. Sneaky admired how hard beavers worked, but she didn’t much like them. The muskrats, on the other hand, proved good company.
The damp night air filled her nostrils with scent. Scent intensified at night.
She often wondered about each species’ gifts. What would it be like to possess the power and speed of a horse, the grace of a deer, the soaring ability of the eagle a mile up? What would it be like to be a tiny mouse gathering bits of wool, paper, and cotton to make a cozy nest? Sneaky wasn’t much for nests, but she admired the skill it took to build one, especially a big one, high up in a tree. Even squirrels’ nests, sloppy by a cat’s standards, took effort.
Sitting there thinking about how many animals—potential supporters in her campaign—lived just in Virginia, not to mention the entire fifty states, the cat felt overwhelmed by her mission.
Maybe Tally was right. Maybe Sneaky Pie should hand off her noble quest to man’s so-called Best Friend. But then she considered how ready most dogs were to appease authority. A leader needed to know when to compromise and when to fight, both intellectually and physically. A physical fight enlivened Sneaky; it focused her. You won or lost. The mouth battles never felt finished. Even if humans recognized how much Sneaky Pie had to offer them—in wisdom and experience—she couldn’t imagine herself on a podium just going “blab blab blab.” She didn’t think those other candidates believed half of what they said, but when there were so many different types of people to woo, maybe the primary skill of a politician is being a convincing liar. The ability to effectively simulate sincerity might be the most important quality for a politician. She knew she couldn’t fake it. She wasn’t as indiscreet as Tally or as puffed up as Pewter. Sneaky called it as she saw it. An honest cat. Every time she thought of Pewter claiming to be descended from Bolling blood and therefore Pocahontas, she had to laugh. Poor Princess Poke. Married a good man, was carried to a strange land, died young.
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