It's a Dog's Life

by John R. Erickson

  Oh, the kids loved them fish heads! They jumped right in the middle of them and gobbled them down. I stood back and watched and, you know, kind of remembered myself at that age, when all at once a man stepped out into the alley. Guess he was dumping trash or something.

  He looked up and down the alley. You might say we’d left a little mess. I mean, when you get all caught up in a garbage patrol, you don’t stop to think about the mess you’re making.

  The man dropped his trash basket and came running toward us, yelling and waving his arms. “Hyah! Get outa here, go on!”

  I sounded the retreat and we lit a shuck, headed south down the alley as fast as we could go. We went several blocks and hid in a hedge row. The kids were out of breath and all excited.

  “Gosh, that was fun!” said Roscoe, and the others agreed.

  “I was scared,” said Barbara. “I thought that old man would catch us.”

  “Yeah,” said April, “he sure looked mean!”

  “Uncle Hank,” said Spot, “I like fish heads.”

  “And playing in garbage is fun!” said Barbara.

  I smiled and nodded my head. “You see, kids? If we hadn’t gone on a garbage patrol, you never would have learned all this. As your mom’s told you many times, education is very important.”

  I stepped out of the hedge and scouted the area to make sure the coast was clear, then I gave the password—“Stinkeroo,” was the secret word—and the kids formed a line and we went marching home. I figgered they’d had enough education for one day.

  We were marching down the alley, maybe three blocks from home, when we passed a yard with a big cedar fence around it. Sitting on top of the fence was a big fat yellow cat.

  My ears shot up and my lip curled, all on sheer instinct. I mean, my instincts about cats are pretty sharp. I glared at her as we went trooping by, just waiting for her to make some kind of smart remark.

  You know my position on cats. I don’t like ’em. I don’t go out of my way to cause trouble with a cat, but any time I find one that’s shopping around for a fight, I can usually be talked into it.

  Well, this cat looked dumber than most but she must have had a little bit of sense because she didn’t say a word as we went past. She just stared at us.

  I supposed that was the end of it, but when we got past her, little Roscoe came trotting up to the front of the column. He had a worried expression on his face.

  “Uncle Hank, that cat said something when we went past.”

  “Hold it! Halt!” The column came to a halt. “What was that again? The cat said something? What exactly did the cat say?”

  “She said, ‘Your momma wears combat boots.’ What does that mean, Uncle Hank?”

  “What that means, young feller, is that we’re fixing to have a demonstration of violence and bloodshed. About face! Follow me!”

  And we marched back to teach some manners to a certain lard-tailed yellow cat.

  Chapter Eight: The Big Showdown

  If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s an insolent cat. This one was insolent. I could see it on her face—that snotty self-righteous, self-satisfied smirk that just drives me nuts.

  I marched up to the fence. She was sprawled out on the top board, maybe five feet above the ground.

  “I understand you made some smart remark about the mother of these children. Maybe I should point out a couple of things to you. Number one, their mother is a wonderful woman. Number two, she’s very sick today. Number three, she happens to be my sister. Number four, I don’t like cats. And number five, if you don’t take back your smart remark, you could be in very serious trouble.”

  She yawned. “Wait just a minute, would you?” She leaned over the other side of the fence and called someone. Three homely little kittens crawled up beside her. “I want the kids to hear this. Children, these are dogs. Remember our little talk about dogs? The ugly one is full-grown and the others are pups. I want you to pay close attention.” She turned back to me. “Would you repeat what you just said, all that number one, number two stuff?”

  “You bet. Your little urchins might learn something.” I repeated it. “And number five, if you don’t take back your smart remark, you could be in very serious trouble.”

  The cat turned to her children. “I said their momma wears combat boots.” The kittens laughed and squealed. “And the Big Yukk didn’t like it.” They laughed some more. “And Big Yukk wants to make something of it.” Oh, they thought that hilarious.

  “You got that right, sister. I’ll try to keep control of my temper, but if you keep talking trash like that, I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

  The old bag turned to her kids again. “Now children, remember what I said about dogs, how they’re not very smart? Here is a perfect example. As long as we’re on the fence and he’s on the ground, we can do and say anything we wish.”

  I turned to my bunch. “Kids, we might as well add this to your education, so study your lessons and pay attention. Here we have a dumb cat teaching her kittens how to be dumb. The old lady thinks she’s safe on that fence, which means she’s never dealt with cowdogs before.”

  “You see the shape of the head?” the mother cat went on. “You’ll notice how crude it is. That’s a mark of the breed.”

  “It’s common knowledge,” I went on, “that tearing down entire fences, even stout ones, is just part of a day’s work for a cowdog. I mean, reducing a fence like that one to a pile of splinters is nothing special to your Uncle Hank.”

  “And you’ll notice,” the cat said, “how dogs like to brag and boast.”

  “You’ll notice, kids, that you very seldom get anywhere talking to a cat. They’ve got a smart-alecky streak that begins at the base of the skull and runs all the way to the tail.”

  “And now, children, we’ll have an exercise in dog pesteration.”

  “And now, kids, we’ll give Big Momma one last chance to repent.” I turned to the old lady. “You want to take back what you said about my sister and the mother of these lovely children?”

  “Kittens, sing along with me, to the tune of ‘America the Beautiful.’ Ready, two, three,”

  Your momma wears old tow-sack drawers,

  And hold them up with twine.

  She has a ringworm on her nose

  And picks it all the time.

  Your momma’s combat boots smell bad,

  So do her dirty socks.

  Which goes to show what all cats know:

  All dogs are just a pox.

  When they finished the song, all four cats looked down at us and grinned. And I might point out that they had terrible voices.

  “Uncle Hank,” said Barbara, “they’re making fun of our momma and I don’t like it!”

  “I know, hun, I heard the whole thing.”

  Little Roscoe came up, and he looked mad. “What are we going to do, Uncle Hank? We can’t let ’em get by with that.”

  “You’re right, son. All right, pups, let’s have a meeting of the War Council.” We huddled up and made some medicine. I asked which of the kids could sing. Turned out that April and Barbara had terrific voices and the boys were, well, tolerable good.

  We came up with a plan of action and turned back to the cats. They were still grinning. “All right, pups, let ’em have it.” We bombarded them cats with a song of our own, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” I stationed April and Barbara on the front line:

  When God made a cat He was desperate

  For something to make Himself laugh.

  He gave it the brain of a monkey

  But dropped it and broke it in half.

  Cats are stoo-pid,

  They don’t have the sense of a snooker ball.

  That’s why monkeys

  Deny any kinship at all.

  “Nice work, pups!” I said
. “Let’s do that chorus again, but this time with harmony and passion. Lead off, April! Sock it to ’em Barbara!”

  We gave them cats another dose of the chorus, and it was just by George wonderful. When we finished, the cats weren’t laughing or grinning anymore. Big Momma had a sour look on her face.

  “That was the worst singing I ever heard,” she yowled. “Kittens, that was a typical performance from a group of low-class, poorly bred garbage dogs.”

  “Garbage dogs! Now wait a minute . . .”

  “The dog that eats garbage thinks garbage. That’s one of the laws of science.”

  “You’re fixing to learn some other laws of science if you don’t watch your mouth.”

  “They’re crude, rude, uncouth, and socially unacceptable.”

  “And about half-dangerous, you forgot that one.”

  “And since they have no talent, no poetic gifts, no subtlety, no reasoning faculty, what they do best is BARK.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She wrinkled her nose at me. “Yeah.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Well I got news for you lady. There’s more talent in one of these cowdog pups than in a whole trainload of cats.”

  “Very well,” she said, “we’ll just see about that.” She turned to her urchins. “All right, kittens, on the count of three, we shall hiss. One, two, three!” They all humped up their backs and started hissing.

  “Okay, that does it! Pups, this is war. Diplomacy is wasted on a bunch of alley cats. Form a line and stand by for growling!” The kids got into position and waited for the command. “Ready on the left? Ready on the right? Aim . . . growl!”

  We let ’em have it, some of the best growling I’d ever heard. The kids did a terrific job and I was proud to be there.

  Old momma cat didn’t like that even a little bit. “All right, kittens, you’ve heard the enemy. As you can see, he’s big, dumb, and loud. On the count of three, we’ll answer with yowling and second degree hissing. One, two, three!”

  They humped up, yowled, and hissed at us.

  “Pups,” I called out, “stand by to bark! By George, if it’s war they want, it’s war they’ll get. And remember the cowdog motto: ‘Do unto others but don’t take trash off the cats.’ Ready on the left? Ready on the right? Aim . . . BARK!”

  Boy, you never heard such barking. Them kids just raptured the air . . . ruptured the air, whatever . . . just set up a thunderous barrage of barking. It was a nice piece of work.

  Old lady cat was getting madder and madder. “Very well, kittens, we shall have to give them the maximum load. On the count of three, give them yowling, third degree hissing, and SPITTING! One, two, three!”

  All four of the little dunces leaned over the fence and let ’er rip. Ordinarily I can control myself in the face of yowling and hissing, even third degree hissing. But hey, that spitting . . . no sir. No cat spits at Hank the Cowdog and lives to spit another day.

  “All right, pups, they’ve pushed us to the limit! This is all-out war. Prepare to attack the fence and don’t bother to take prisoners! Ready on the left! Ready on the right! Take aim . . . attack, charge, bonzai!”

  Barking at the top of our lungs, we launched the first wave against the fence, with the cats hissing and spitting at us from the top. Oh, it was a battle to remember!

  The fence was made of solid wood, don’t you see, and I had calculated that it would take two or three waves for us to lay it flat on the ground. It was our rotten luck that several people in the neighborhood came out their back doors to see what all the noise was about.

  A big guy in a T-shirt came fogging out of the house that belonged to the fence we were in the process of destroying. “Joan, call the dog pound,” he yelled, “we got a pack of stray dogs back here! Hyah, git outa here, you dadgum barking fools!”

  When I saw him coming and heard him mention the dog pound, I canceled the invasion and sounded the retreat. “To the house, pups, run as fast as you can, retreat!”

  They peeled off and headed north down the alley as fast as their little legs would take them. I waited until the last pup had made his escape and then I looked up at the cats.

  “We’ll meet again, cat, and when we do that fence won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.” Don’t know why I said it that way. If you think about it, it don’t make a lot of sense, I mean, fences aren’t exactly . . . in the heat of battle a guy sometimes . . . never mind.

  The old hag had a big grin on her face, looked so smug and self-satisfied I was tempted to risk capture and death just to clean her off that fence and teach her some manners.

  “I told you we could make you bark,” she said.

  “Yeah, and don’t you ever forget it!”

  Just then, that maniac in the T-shirt reached the back gate and filled the air with rocks and sticks. “Git outa here, you sorry flea-bitten mutt! Go on, leave my cats alone!”

  So there you are. The entire incident had started when one of his precious cats had made a vicious, scandalous remark about my sister, the mother of my nieces and nephews. When will the human race learn that cats create 83% of all the trouble in the world and start 93% of all the fights?

  I mean, statistics don’t lie. I pulled these statistics out of the hat, so to speak, and while they may not be 100% accurate, they don’t lie. Yet the human race continues to rush to the defense of . . . oh well. There’s no use getting upset just because the world is all wrong and I happen to be right 96% of the time.

  I ran from the scene, and with my amazing speed I reached the tunnel just as the last pup was crawling back into the yard. It was none too soon. At the end of the block, I saw a white pickup with a wire cage in the back.

  Painted on the door was a big police badge, along with the words, CITY OF TWITCHELL DOGCATCHER.

  Chapter Nine: The Mysterious Ivory Dog Bar

  Idived into the tunnel and wiggled my way through to the other side. Then I held my breath and listened. The pickup came down the alley. It slowed, then sped up and kept going.

  I had dodged another bullet. My sister wouldn’t have been too proud of me if I had got her kids throwed in the dog pound.

  The pups came running up to me, jumping up and down, yipping, licking me on the face, you know how pups do. They were all excited.

  “Oh boy, Uncle Hank,” said Roscoe, “that was the funnest thing we’ve ever done!”

  “Yeah,” said Spot, “we like being cowdogs. I can’t wait to tell Mom!”

  “Hey, wait a minute, hold it right there, son,” I said. “Something tells me we’d best keep our adventures to ourselves. Your ma might take a dim view of it. Mum’s the word, kids.”

  They all grinned and nodded, and for the next fifteen minutes they went around whispering “Mum’s the word” to each other.

  Not long after we got back, Maggie came out of the doghouse. Said she’d had a nice long nap and her head was feeling some better. She asked what we’d done while she was asleep, and I said, “Oh, nothing much. We had a little snack and did some singing.”

  She stared at me and kind of twisted her head to the side. “Really? Singing? Well, I must say that surprises me.”

  I must say she’d have been even more surprised if she’d known where and how and why we’d done our singing, but what she didn’t know wasn’t hurting her.

  “You’ve got some very talented children,” I said. “Yes sir, they sure do a good job of singing, especially them gals.”

  “Well thank you, Henry. I confess . . . well, I just didn’t think you cared about culture and refinement. Maybe I’ve underestimated you.”

  “It’s entirely possible, Mag, I mean, just be­cause I’ve been trained to be a dangerous weapon doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate beautiful music and poetry and that other stuff.”

  The kids were pretty well tuckered out after
our garbage patrol and the cat episode, and they stretched out in the yard and took naps in the sun. But every now and then April and Barbara would sit up and go to scratching. Maggie noticed, and about the third time it happened, she went over to check it out.

  “Barbara, what are you doing? April, why are you scratching? You know that’s not ladylike.”

  For some reason the girls looked at me. “Oh nothing, Mom,” said April. “We just . . .”

  Maggie moved closer, squinted her eyes, and studied Barbara’s hair. She gasped, “Fleas!” Then April started scratching her ear. “You too! What . . . where . . .”

  For some reason she looked in my direction. Why was everybody staring at me? I mean, anyone can catch fleas from a bunch of scroungy cats, but is that my fault?

  Mag turned back to Barbara. “And furthermore, young lady, you smell like dead fish! What on earth have you girls been doing?”

  Well, they started crying. I guess they’d never had fleas before and thought it was something horrible. I couldn’t hear all that was being said over there, but I had a suspicion that my nieces were spilling the beans. And I had another suspicion that a storm was fixing to strike Uncle Hank.

  Maggie gave the kids a severe lecture and sent ’em to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Then she came over to where I was uh, countin’ my change, you might say, and trying to look as innocent as possible.

  “Listen, Maggie, let me explain. I just thought . . .”

  “No, it’s all right Henry. I understand.”

  “You do?”

  She gave me a sweet smile, which sort of surprised me. “The children talked you into taking them on a little romp.”

  “Well . . .”

  “And you were too nice to say no.”

  “Well, yes but . . .”