by Mark Tufo
CHAPTER THREE
I was exhausted; Jessie had been driving for a long enough time I felt I had missed my early morning meal. Her head kept bobbing up and down like she wanted to sleep, but when her head went down the car started to go off the hard-packed path. More than once I had to bark to get her attention, she would look over to me with red blazed teary eyes and then swerve the car to stay on the path when she realized why I was barking in the first place.
“I need some sleep, girl,” Jessie said to me. “And I’m hungry.”
I barked in agreement to both things she said.
The bright disc was just becoming visible; I was looking at a sea of what looked like kitty litter, as if on cue the cat spoke up.
“Can you make the human stop, Riley? I have to relieve myself,” Patches said.
I looked around. There was only one other wheeler and it was just barely within my field of vision. I barked again at Jessie, her head had not even been drooping but it was close.
“What, girl?” she asked.
I pawed the door.
“You need out?” She yawned.
“Well, the cat does, but now that you mention it, I could do with a little stop, myself,” I told her. “And maybe a meat treat.” But I didn’t smell any on her.
The car came to a lurching halt as Jessie stepped on the stopping pedal a little too hard; there was a loud thump as Ben-Ben rolled off the seat and onto the floor, followed immediately by a ‘yip’ of surprise.
“Please, don’t send me back! I’ll be good!” he barked loudly before he completely woke up.
“You alright?” I asked him, looking around the seat to where he was splayed upside down on the floor.
“Sorry,” he replied with his tail tucked between his legs.
“Nobody is ever going to send you away, Ben-Ben, not after what you did last night,” I told him.
He struggled to gain his footing and get back on the seat. “Thank you, Riley,” he responded with his head hanging low. His tail had come somewhat out from under him but not completely.
It was tough to tell with him if the abuse from the two-leggers at his first home had been caused from his behavior, or his behavior had been a result of the two-leggers’ abuse. He had more than proven his worth to me last night and I would forgive him many things I had previously found bothersome.
I was still looking at him when the car stopped completely. Jessie had gotten out and was stretching, Patches was out immediately after her and heading for some small bushes on the side of the road.
“Don’t go far!” I barked.
“Do you mind if I relieve myself in private? I’m not a dog. I have dignity. Always scatting and peeing in front of the humans as if you’re proud of it,” Patches mewled.
“Why wouldn’t we be, Riley?” Ben-Ben asked me.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s just a cat.”
“I can still hear you,” Patches grunted from the side of the pathway.
“Let’s go out, Ben-Ben, I think we’re going to rest here,” I told him. I took a quick sniff of Zachary. He was still asleep but I didn’t think he would be for long, he smelled like he was sitting in his own offal and he didn’t usually care at first but eventually he would get angry about it.
I put my paws far out in front of me and arched to stretch my back, I was thirsty and hungry and needed to relieve myself. I would have done so right on the pathway, but the damned cat now had me thinking about it. One more strike against her.
“Ben-Ben, keep an eye out for the sick ones, I have to do something,” I told him.
He looked longingly at me, hoping I wouldn’t be gone long, I would imagine, but he didn’t say anything.
Patches was just coming out of the brush as I was about to enter.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Nothing! Looking for something!” I barked hastily.
She laughed her cat laugh at me. “Looks like there might be hope for you, after all,” she said as she walked away leaving me to my business.
“We need food and water,” Jessie was saying aloud, not really directed to me but more to all of us.
I finished what I needed to do and came back to the wheeler and looked in.
Zachary began to leak water from his face, I knew this for the precursor that it was, he was about to bellow loudly; for someone so small the sound belied his stature.
“Oh, Zak, you must be starving,” Jessie said with concern as she took the human cub out of the car. “Oooh, and you need a diaper change.” Jessie’s face wrinkled up from the smell.
Zachary was beginning to hitch with his breathing as his cries became even more voluminous.
“Mom always kept emergency stuff in the back,” Jess said as she found something next to her seat that made the back of the car open.
I smelled food; I went to the back of the car.
“Yes, diapers,” Jessie said happily as she pulled a big bright bag out of the car. She spent the next few moments changing the cub’s clothing and then began to rummage through the big pack. She was pulling out all sorts of delicious looking treats by this time; Ben-Ben and the cat were bearing witness.
“Water, formula, breakfast bars, pretzels, and whatever this is,” Jessie said, holding up a small tinfoil pack of the treats I knew Daniel loved. He called them Pop-Farts or something like that. It was a funny name, but I’d tasted more than a few during my life and they were delicious.
Jessie put what she called ‘formula’ into a container for the baby cub and gave it to Zak; she put him back in the car where he drank greedily. Jessie ripped open one of the bags she called breakfast bars and was devouring it almost as greedily as her pack mate. She looked up from her food to see us all staring back. She broke the remainder into three equal parts and handed the first one to Ben-Ben.
“Gentle!” she shouted when he accidentally nipped her fingers.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. He swallowed his before Patches had even finished sniffing her portion.
“Take it,” Jessie urged the cat.
“There’s no meat in this,” Patches said indignantly as she kept sniffing the food. “Or fish.” She swished her tail. “I will not eat this,” she said turning her tail on the proffered food.
I was not happy that the piece Patches had sniffed all over and refused was the piece Jessie now offered me, but my belly would suffer the slight. I gently took the piece and chewed as slowly as I could, it would do little to stop the pang in my belly but it tasted so good.
Ben-Ben was already back sniffing at the last piece remaining. “Mine, mine, mine!” he kept yipping excitedly.
Jessie popped it into her own mouth. Something deeply instinctual was beginning to reawaken in my head that had long been asleep. The two-legger was no longer going to be able to keep my belly full; if I wanted food I was going to have to get it myself. But this wasn’t going to be as easy as prying open a door in the human’s food room. The animals that had sometimes entered our outside area—like squirrels and rabbits—that I had chased for the fun of it would now be things I would chase to eat. I caught them or I would starve.
I was going to need help and right now I was looking at a small dog that was running in circles for a long eaten human hand-out, and to a cat. She at least had some skill; I’d seen her on more than one occasion drop a bird or a mouse on the front stairs of the house of the humans.
“Cat,” I said. She completely ignored me as their species tends to do. “Cat!” I said a little louder.
She glared up at me. “It’s Patches, you mongrel, and if you can’t bother to say it right then I shan’t bother to listen.”
“Fine, Ca—Patches.”
“That’s better. Was that so hard?” she asked me.
“Strangely, it was,” I told her.
“What do you want?”
“I want food.” I answered. The cat began to eye me suspiciously. “Not you, I imagine you’d be stringy without much flavor.”
She hissed at me. “W
hat do you want from me, then?”
“We need to hunt.”
“We?” she asked. “I don’t need any help.”
“We need to get food for the baby cub and your Jessie.”
Patches kept looking at me and then the corners of her mouth pulled up slightly. “And?” she asked, waiting patiently for my answer.
“And what?” I asked, defending myself.
“Say it dog or I will not help you.”
“You will not provide food for the two-leggers? After all they have done for you?”
“What they have done for me?” she yelled loudly. “I have given them my attention in exchange for their food and shelter—was that not a fair trade?” she asked and she meant it. “I do not ‘owe’ them anything.”
“You cannot be serious!” I said heatedly. Had I been too hasty in giving the cat any sort of fondness or credit? “We are a pack, we help each other. We do things together so we can survive together.”
“You have it wrong, Dog. Pack mentality is something you and the humans share, Cats do not work like that. I will take their food because it suits me, but I am quite capable of surviving on my own.”
“Until now I never knew the depths of your selfishness. Had I known I would have snapped your neck when I had a chance.”
Patches bristled. “You have never had a chance.” She hissed, arching her back for size and to be able to launch an offensive strike if it came to that.
Ben-Ben picked this inopportune time to come around the car to see what was happening.
“Whoa, Riley why does she look like she’s going to stick her claws into you? Those things hurt,” Ben-Ben said, bowing his head and rubbing his snout with his paw where Patches had ripped open Ben-Ben’s muzzle a year ago when the incessant little Yorkie wouldn’t leave her alone.
“Stay out of this,” Patches said, “or I’ll do it again.”
“Ben-Ben, can you hunt?” I asked, never taking my gaze from Patches.
“You mean catch stuff and eat it, Riley?” Ben-Ben asked.
“Yes, Ben-Ben, Catch stuff and eat it.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Ben-Ben asked.
“Fine, Cat!” I spat out. “I need help in catching food for the two-leggers and me and Ben-Ben.”
“I knew you would eventually come around and realize my superiority. Why didn’t you just save us all this trouble and just say so?” she asked, standing back up normally.
“What just happened?” Ben-Ben asked confusedly.
“Progress,” Patches answered, but I sure didn’t see it that way. If anything, dog advancement had just taken a huge hit. I had just admitted to a cat I needed its help, I was glad none of my forefathers were there to witness it. I growled my discontent.
Jessie was feeding the baby and she appeared to be almost asleep as Patches, Ben-Ben, and I figured out how we were going to get some food. The more we talked about it the less Ben-Ben seemed interested.
“Why don’t we just find stuff the two-leggers open up and give us?” he said. “Especially the wet meat when they use the loud whirring thing,” Ben-Ben finished, his tail wagging involuntarily as he thought about it.
“It’s a can opener,” Patched told him.
“What’s a can opener?” Ben-Ben asked, his reverie snapped.
“The wet meat comes in a can and the humans use a can-opener to get at it.” Patches elaborated.
“Yeah, yeah, wet meat—why don’t we just go out there and find some of those?” Ben-Ben asked, looking off into the large sand area.
“Meat cans don’t come from the desert,” Patches said.
I was glad she clarified that because I wasn’t exactly sure and I didn’t want to say anything in front of her to make me look not smart.
“Are you sure?” Ben-Ben asked. “Because that would be great, just round up a bunch of those things and we could eat all day!” Ben-Ben said excitedly.
“Has he always been this stupid?” Patches asked me.
“Pretty much,” I answered; Ben-Ben was paying no attention to either of us as his muzzle was leaking drool.
