Harry Cat's Pet Puppy

by George Selden

  “Now hold on, Miss Catherine!” said Tucker. “Do you mean to say that you’re going to walk off and just leave the little dog sitting here?”

  “What is this little dog to me?” She glared toward Huppy, but her eyes jumped away from his woolly face, as if there was something to hurt her there. “What is he, I mean, except a source of great injury—I’ll be lame for a week!—and almost arrested, and—” And she went on, not looking at anyone in particular, but insisting that it would not do! Huppy couldn’t live with her and Horatio, not even in the basement. No! It simply would not do.

  This was the first time Huppy had heard about the plan to move him to the Upper West Side. He listened until Miss Catherine had run out of excuses—the breakable china in the apartment, the janitor finding him in the cellar—and finished shaking her head. Then he said, downcast but determined, “She’s right. I won’t do.”

  “I said ‘it’—” the Siamese corrected him.

  “But I want to thank you anyway, Miss Catherine.”

  “Thank me—” She glared at him, almost angrily. “For what?”

  “For pulling the papers over me. The cops would’ve caught me for sure.”

  “That was nothing!” The Siamese stamped an elegant paw. “Such a nuisance this all is—really!”

  “And I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that bad. I daresay I won’t be lame for a week.”

  Even Lulu knew enough not to break a long silence during which Miss Catherine fretted and fidgeted, and did not go home.

  At last she said, “Young fellow—what’ll you do now? Go back to the pack?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re down here on Tenth Avenue—I’m going to my alley. Maybe I’ll think of something there. If Harry helps me, anyway, I can. But I’m finished with the pack.”

  “Says who?”

  The animals all jumped at the sound: a voice of silken authority that came from in back of a run-down Buick. Out of the night, his smile first, like the Cheshire cat, Max materialized. “Sure you’re coming back with us. I don’t waste my time for nothing, Hup.”

  Harry Cat was the first to shake off his surprise. “Where did you come from?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I saw him bust free in Bryant Park and followed those Looney Tune cops.”

  “You didn’t help much!” said Tucker.

  “What could I do?” Max shrugged. “And why risk my fur? I hung around Times Square. If the blue boys collared him again—good night, little dog. If they didn’t, in future he’ll know enough not to get busted. That’s how a kid learns to stay alive in this city. I tailed you all down here.” He narrowed his eyes on Huppy. “What did you bring these clowns with you for?”

  “We are not clowns, sir!” burst in Miss Catherine. She was very relieved, without knowing it, to have found somebody besides herself to be irritated at. “You’re the brute that Harry’s told me about! Well, just you let me tell you, brute, if it wasn’t for us—” She fell silent beneath the dog’s stony stare of disbelief. No one had called him a brute before. “Boss,” yes. “Sir,” yes—by some of his more frightened subordinates. But never, ever, “brute.”

  “Who is the battle-ax?” Max asked softly.

  “Don’t you dare refer to me in those terms! Why—why—”

  “Look, Kate,” said Lulu, who knew Max better than any of them, “just cool it—okay?”

  “If the ruffian thinks he can call me names!” Miss Catherine was sputtering with rage. “Why, he ought to be in the dog pound himself—with all the bad habits he’s been teaching this puppy!” If Miss Catherine had been a lady now, instead of only a lady cat, she would have been shaking a furious finger right under Max’s nose. “I’ve a good mind to howl right now—yes, I have!—although I haven’t howled for years—and summon those three officers.”

  At that, hardly looking at her, as a human being might flick off a fly, Max lifted a paw and cuffed Miss Catherine.

  It didn’t hurt, despite the gasp of fear and shock with which the other animals started forward. But for Miss Catherine the blow was worse than pain. She’d been insulted—deeply, truly insulted. Even the fright of being gripped in the none-too-gentle hand of the law was nothing compared to this. With almost a kitten’s helplessness, she turned away and began to cry.

  For the others, her tears were dreadful to see. It is awful when a real lady cries—either human ladies or dogs or cats. It makes you feel ashamed and angry and powerless all at once, the way a person always feels when, against all written and unwritten rules, something happens that simply should not.

  A gap of embarrassment held everyone—even Max—for a moment. Bad-mannered, cruel, casual, he too realized what he’d done. He forced a chuckle that stuck in his throat.

  Then a second incredible thing took place. Without warning, without knowing where his own teeth were going, Huppy leaped at Max and nipped his nose.

  The big dog didn’t make a move—didn’t bark, didn’t growl, didn’t bare his own fangs. He just stared at the puppy. Then breathed in slowly, and softly stated what were only the facts: “I could tear you apart.”

  “I know you could.” Huppy backed away.

  “I could wipe up this street with you.”

  “I know you could, Max.”

  It was like those times when a little kid has dared to hit a big kid. He knows that the big kid can beat him up—and probably will—and all he can do, with a fearful and partly apologetic expression, is to wait for his fate.

  Harry sprang his claws, Tucker bared what little teeth he had, and Lulu Pigeon was wondering if she ought to act first—fly up and begin to peck Max’s head. She would have been slaughtered if she had. And so would the mouse and the cat, if they’d even so much as made a move. The dog was big and crafty enough, and had won enough fights, to take the three of them on at once, and Huppy and Miss Catherine too, if she could stop crying. He could have scattered bloody feathers and fur for blocks along Tenth Avenue.

  He unhooked his eyes from Huppy’s, turned his back on them all, and loped up Forty-second Street. And did not look back.

  In the silence that steadied everybody’s relief, no one could explain why Max had left. Out of privacy and a strange respect for him, nobody even tried.

  At last Harry said, “I’ll walk you home, Miss Catherine.”

  “No, no!” She had stopped her crying and was back to fretting like her old self again. “It simply won’t do, that’s all. He can’t go back to an alley, can he? Such a nuisance! Really!”

  “He can’t fit in the drainpipe,” Tucker Mouse reminded no one in particular.

  “You’ll just have to come up to the apartment house, and stay in the basement. For only tonight, mind you!”

  There were mumbles of appreciation.

  Lulu took her post in the air. “Three guys to the right who look suspicious!”

  “Thank you very much,” said Tucker. “But you can go home now, Lulu. We won’t be—”

  “No, man!” yelled the pigeon. “I won’t abandon you now!”

  “Lulu, do us a favor!” Tucker called up. “Abandon us!”

  But she didn’t. She guided them, at the top of her lungs, all the way uptown.

  One plump pigeon up ahead, two fairish-sized cats, an extra-large puppy, and a rather small mouse—all in all, they made quite an odd procession, trudging through the winter night.

  ELEVEN

  A Cellarful of Memories

  The basement of Mr. Smedley’s apartment house was a clutter of cast-off things that the tenants above didn’t really need but couldn’t bear to throw away. (There were a few mice already living there, but when they heard the new arrivals clambering in through the broken window, they scurried into the walls through their holes and stayed hidden until the cellar was theirs again.) Tucker felt very much at home in the jumble and proceeded to do some heartfelt scrounging as the animals waited for morning.

  No one could sleep—except Lulu, of course. She was able to take the wild
est night’s activities in her flight and said that if nobody minded she’d like to sack out for a couple of hours. But as soon as she got her head under her wing she started to snore so loudly that it was feared she’d wake the janitor, who had his apartment at the front end of the basement. Harry and Tucker shook her awake, made her waddle into a cardboard box on its side, and flipped the cover over on her. Inside, she sawed wood to her heart’s content.

  Huppy did a little exploring too. But unlike Tucker, who used his claws to turn things over, Huppy, since he was a dog, limited his investigations to some interested sniffing. “Here’s something that smells like Miss Catherine!” he said.

  “Smells?” Miss Catherine arched an eyebrow.

  “Mind your manners,” Harry reminded the dog.

  “I mean, it smells nice,” said Huppy. “Kind of perfumy.”

  “Well, for land’s sake!” Miss Catherine went over to the corner where Huppy was nosing around. “It’s my good old mat!”

  Her good old mat was an oval hooked rug. “That was yours?” said Harry. “It’s big enough for a—that is, it’s pretty big for a cat, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, my, yes. The edges fell way over the sides of the sewing basket. But Mrs. Smedley finished hooking it the very same day that I was acquired—at the Siamese Specialty Shop on Fifty-seventh Street—and she decided that instead of using it for a rug it would be my mat.” Miss Catherine laughed. “So impetuous Horatio’s mother was—quite unlike her son in many ways. I remember that day very well. She dumped over the contents of the sewing basket, put the rug inside, as much as would fit, and then snugged me in, too! ‘There!’ she said. ‘That can be Miss Catherine’s mat.’ It was she who named me, you know—right then. And quick as a wink I felt at home.”

  “Home,” purred Harry.

  “I’ve always wondered what happened to it. One day it was gone.” She reached out a paw and touched the mat gently, as if there was something alive in it. “Horatio must have thought that a rug wouldn’t do for me. But I think it would—don’t you, Harry?”

  “If you wanted it to,” he rumbled softly.

  Miss Catherine’s eyes picked over the boxes and loosely tied bundles that littered the basement, seeking and sorting familiar things, selecting memories.

  “Miss Catherine—there’s still a couple of hours left, if you want to go upstairs and sleep.”

  “No, no.” She shook the suggestion out of her whiskers. “I won’t abandon you either. Perhaps I’ll just browse awhile down here.”

  Harry Cat went off to one side and curled up. His eyes closed until only a crack was left, but he was a very long way from sleep. Through the slit of vision he watched Miss Catherine carefully as she wandered through her past—a favorite bowl, cracked, for her cat food, a chipped saucer that had been for her milk—going deeper and deeper into her kittenhood.

  “Look, Harry! My bell.” She tinkled a little silver bell with a ribbon attached to it. “At one time Horatio got it into his head that I must have a bell. Well, I put my paw down at that, I can tell you.”

  In an upper corner of the cellar a dirty window showed a patch of night. A silver crescent, dropping westward, slid into view. And a single low note sounded through the cellar.

  “Good Lord!” said Miss Catherine. “What’s that?”

  “Huppy, shh!” warned Harry.

  “Come here,” Miss Catherine summoned the dog, who padded up in front of her. “Was that you howling?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I thought dogs only howled at full moons.”

  “I like to howl at all different moons. I’m sorry if it bothered you.”

  “Oh, no—it’s quite pretty.”

  “Us dogs think so.”

  “‘We dogs,’” Miss Catherine corrected him. “Let’s hear it again.”

  Huppy tried another note, a higher one this time, and his voice cracked. He gulped in embarrassment. Harry and Miss Catherine shot a look at each other and shared a chuckle.

  “Guess who’s growing up,” said Harry.

  “Bend toward me, Huppy,” the Siamese said. She sat up on her hind legs. “Such a thicket your hair is! Can you really see through it?”

  “Oh, yes.” Huppy bowed his head to the elderly cat. “I switch around till I get an opening.”

  “I think it might help if—” She sprung her claws. “Hold still now.” And started to comb Huppy’s hair.

  “Ow!”

  “Hold still, I say! There’s a monstrous knot here. There—isn’t that better?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Huppy looked at her somewhat sheepishly—which was perfectly natural, since he was part sheep dog—through his now combed if still somewhat sooty hair.

  Miss Catherine had her right paw lifted, to give him one finishing brush—but suddenly she pulled away and stamped that paw on the floor. “Oh, really! really! This is too much!” She turned on Harry, eyes flashing with what he knew was not rage. “All right, Harry Cat—you win!”

  “I, Miss Catherine?” said Harry, with his own eyes as wide and innocent as a cat’s eyes can ever be. (Not very innocent, at that.) “Win what?”

  “You know perfectly well!” she fussed at him. “I shall try to inveigle Horatio into letting the animal—”

  “Me?”

  “Hush, child! Yes, you. Inveigle Horatio into letting the animal live with us! It won’t be easy. If you think that I’ve been difficult—”

  “What’s the matter?” Tucker Mouse, who had heard her outburst, came pattering up. Without so much as looking at him, Harry silently flattened him to the floor and went on paying strict attention to everything Miss Catherine was saying.

  “—well, you don’t know Horatio! He has to be won over, too.” She glanced up at the window: gray light filtered through its screen of dirt. “We’ll be out in the park at ten this morning.”

  “That may be too early.”

  “It isn’t too early! We have no lessons on Tuesday morning—”

  “Harry—if you wouldn’t mind—let me up!”

  “—and I only have to tap the door to let him know when I want my walk. In the meantime”—Miss Catherine prepared to go—“I advise you, Harry Cat, and you, Tucker Mouse—”

  “Thanks, Harry. Uff—what a paw!”

  “—to think of some way that this woolly young fellow can be made absolutely indispensable to Horatio Smedley’s happiness! Good morning! And I’ll see you later!”

  “What’s up?” yawned Lulu Pigeon sleepily, as she ambled into the conversation.

  “Huppy gets to live with Miss Catherine after all,” explained Tucker. “At least, that’s what we hope.”

  “Hey, groovy!” Lulu clapped a wing around Miss Catherine’s shoulder and patted her on the back. “But what took you so long, Kate?”

  Miss Catherine glared—then sighed, and looked toward heaven, and left.

  TWELVE

  Riverside Park

  Riverside Park is a narrow band of trees, shrubs, dirt, and other valuable things wedged by concrete against the Hudson River on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The great power of the place—it is like a huge magnet that draws everything toward it—is, of course, the steady and majestic Hudson. Even the trees seem to bend toward its beauty. Polluted though the river is, its current—deep, wide, strong—leads people to think of things that change and yet always remain the same. It is curiously comforting, but it makes a person feel very small. And it makes small animals feel even smaller.

  They were all lined up on the promenade, a sort of broad sidewalk that runs beside the river’s edge, peering through the openings of an iron railing. For a long time no one had said a word—not even Lulu. That’s another of the river’s strengths: it makes all pauses and silences feel peaceful, not embarrassing.

  Splashes of wind tufted Huppy’s fur. He craned through the bars and stared at the water. “It looks alive.”

  “It looks cold,” said Tucker. “See?—ice.” Broken white chunks were scraping against the promenade�
��s cement foundation.

  Although it already was March and the day was sunny, the sky brilliant, and the river’s surface dancing with light, harsh winter had not given up. The chill air pierced through the animals’ fur and made their eyes water. There were weeks before the tight earth behind them would toss, like someone shaking off dreams, and then, at the touch of one warm day, wake up.

  Harry judged by the sun it was almost midmorning. “You remember what we told you now, Huppy.”

  “You didn’t tell me much,” complained Huppy.

  “We said—just be charming!” Tucker airily waved a claw.

  “Yes, but how do you be charming?” Huppy waved his own paw and hit Tucker in the head by mistake.

  “Not like that!”

  “Do a real doggy thing!” suggested Lulu. “Like on television. Go up and lap old Smedley’s hand, and stare at him stupidly and say ‘Woof!’”

  “Grand!” said Harry Cat skeptically.

  “Say!—here’s a great gimmick!” Lulu’s inspiration was now out of control. “Get a stick and drop it in front of Smedley. All dogs like to chase sticks, don’t they?”

  “Better they should chase pigeons,” grumbled Tucker Mouse.

  “You drop the stick, you prance around in front of him, do cute little things with your paws—he throws the stick, you bring it back, and there you are! Buddies!”

  “Unless he hits me on the head with the stick,” said Huppy dubiously.

  Harry Cat was twitching his whiskers. “You know, that stick idea is not bad. If all else fails, Huppy, try it.”

  “What else?” the dog asked frantically. “You haven’t told me.”

  Lulu was sitting on top of the railing and could see deeper into the park than the others. “Here they come! And will you look at that outfit Miss Catherine has on!”