Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers

by M. E. Kerr

  PEKE COULD NOT FORGET that on Christmas Eve he had been yelled at by Nell, all because of the greyhound.

  His fitful slumber had been blessed with a dream that Percival Uttergore’s red gloves had reached out for Catherine, and pfffft, she’d disappeared. Rich dog or poor dog, family dog or stray, you had at one time or another been told of the evil man who captured dogs. When a new dog was introduced to an only-dog household (even just as a visitor), what only dog did not dream of the dogcatcher coming to snatch the new arrival?

  Now this lowlife had come in from a long morning walk with Ginny and Sun Lily, and she was tracking wet paw marks across the hall floor. On Christmas Day! Peke looked at her with utter disgust.

  “Sorry,” Catherine murmured to him.

  “Save your apology,” Peke told her. “It is too late! Because of you I was beaten on Christmas Eve.”

  “Nell didn’t beat you. She barely raised her voice,” Catherine said.

  “No wonder they put you greyhounds to sleep after you can’t race anymore,” said Peke. “You’re informers! I would never have told on you!”

  “We’re not informers,” Catherine insisted. “They put us to sleep because they are cruel. They think just because we’ve never had any home life, we won’t get along in people’s homes.”

  “They’re right about that,” said Peke. “You don’t know enough to keep your mouth shut!”

  “I’ve kept my mouth shut, Peke. I know you have a secret place where you take ribbons and rubber dog bones and mittens. I’ve been watching you.”

  “You don’t know where it is, though.”

  “I bet I can find it,” said Catherine. “Let’s bet the red rubber hot dogs that Sun Lily gave us for Christmas.”

  “It’s a bet. And stay away from Sun Lily.”

  “Why should I stay away from her?”

  “Because you’re not family. You’re the dregs.”

  “She doesn’t act like I’m the dregs.”

  “Because she’s polite. I don’t happen to be. Sun Lily and I have a special bond, both of us having Chinese origins. You are from Critters, and before that you were from the racetracks. You have no breeding!”

  In the kitchen Nell Star was talking on the telephone.

  “We’ll have to call the volunteers to start a search party,” she was saying. “Goldie couldn’t have gotten far. Oh, what a shame. Just when we may have located his owner, he bolted.”

  Catherine gnawed nervously on a chew stick.

  Peke sighed. “Another lost dog! Ginny and Nell don’t get any rest, not even on Christmas Day!”

  “Don’t you feel sorry for the lost dog too?” Catherine asked.

  “You down-on-your-luck dogs bring trouble on everybody, including yourselves,” Peke declared. “You belong at the dogcatcher’s!” His small goldfish eyes had a very cross expression. The plume he had for a tail bristled. “You are the outcasts of society!” he continued. “I happen to be a direct descendent of Lootie, Queen Victoria’s Pekingese!”

  “Please get your face out of my face,” said Catherine.

  “Pekingese do not have faces!” Peke snarled. “We have masks. You would know that if you were not just racetrack riffraff!”

  Catherine did not have an answer to that. Anyway, Catherine was worried now about what Nell had said on the telephone. Something about volunteers going out to look for Goldie.

  How could Goldie have gotten loose?

  As much as Catherine hated losing bets, she was glad she had lost her Christmas stocking to the Labrador retriever. Maybe he had eaten the doggie doughnuts in both stockings before taking off. Catherine didn’t want to imagine Goldie running lost and hungry in the cold.

  “Christmas with riffraff is no Christmas at all,” Peke grumbled, waddling away from Catherine.

  “You should be more sympathetic,” Catherine called after him. “You’re lucky to have such a nice home!”

  “It won’t be a nice home until you go back to Critters!” Peke barked over his shoulder.

  14

  Dear Diary

  Christmas Day

  DEAR DIARY,

  Radio City Music Hall is a madhouse.

  Outside, there are long lines waiting for the six-o’clock show.

  Inside, all the talent is hanging out in various places—behind the 144-foot stage, upstairs in the rehearsal rooms, and down in the basement, where I am.

  This year I appear at the very end of Act 1, “Christmas in Central Park.” I am onstage for four minutes, right before the thirty-six Rockettes storm out. Then I am onstage for two minutes with the dancing dwarfs in “Santa’s Home,” Act II. Then again two minutes in the finale.

  Now I am in one of the dressing rooms, soaking my feet. The actors from the Nativity Scene are hanging out here. The Three Kings of Orient are playing gin rummy on one side of me. Joseph and Mary are playing backgammon on the other side.

  Next door the Rockettes get into their costumes for the March of the Wooden Soldiers.

  I am supposed to be doing a homework assignment for online correspondence school. Write about something unique in a country was the lesson that came up on the computer last week.

  I’m wearing the red kimono that belonged to Mom. In the pocket is the last photograph of her, holding Dancer. It was taken last summer just after we’d all closed in Nursery Rhymes. Mom was Mother Goose, her final role.

  We were docked in Miami when I took that picture. Mom was sitting on the deck with Dancer in her arms. Dad had gone into town for supplies.

  If she hadn’t loved that dog so, she’d probably still be alive. When the hurricane roared into the harbor, we got off Summer Salt. But Mom called out, “I’m going back for Dancer!” The last time I saw them both, Mom was swimming toward Summer Salt. Dancer was huddled near a life preserver, shivering and yipping.

  The Christmas card from Check and Shirley made me think of times in the rain we’d talk in the pie car. One time Check said what he liked was leaving to go someplace new. The train would move slowly at first, so you didn’t feel it. Then you’d hear a click, feel a sway, and you were started, steel wheels over rails.

  He said sometimes when you did something new in your life, there’d be a click, too, as you’d start to get it. Then you’d get it and pretty soon you’d be going fast. He said it was that way when he met Shirley, and I remember Shirley said, “Get out of here, we never went fast doing anything, including making our minds up to leave this freak show.” She’d be smoking no hands, teasing him, saying it was a freak show, but we all knew she loved it.

  The thing is I can’t just go pfffft from that world to the Real World.

  Now I hear the lambs from the Nativity Scene baaing in their pen down the hall: There’s an old donkey down there too, and other farm animals.

  Dancer used to bark and bark at their smells and-their sounds, but he was like Shirley. It was just noise he made. He loved it since he was a real back-lot dog, who knew just how close he could get to the big cats, the camels, the trucks, and the forklift.

  But his barking would get the Sugar Plum Fairy mad. She would snarl, “Cork it!” Dewdrop, who led the Waltz of the Flowers, always said Sugar Plum was just jealous because Dancer got so much applause.

  I made up my mind to forget all about flubbing the BrainPower audition. I am not going to blame myself anymore for saying “consensus of opinion.”

  “Five minutes!” a stagehand just shouted.

  I’ve got to get into my white spangled tutu.

  One of the Three Kings of Orient is fastening back his big ears with adhesive tape called Earies.

  My heart pounds every time I listen to the sound of the Rockettes charging up the stairs.

  No matter how many shows a day I do, I always get a charge when it’s time to go on.

  15

  “Rex, This Is Rags, Can You Hear Me?”

  SOME CATS THINK AND dream in poetry.

  People believe cats lie around all day and do nothing important, but som
e cats are very busy composing verse.

  Such a cat was Rags Randall, a coon cat from Montauk.

  He had several poems that were his favorites, and as he sat in the window looking outdoors, he recited one or two.

  His very favorite was called “Gifts.”

  I like to crush the mouses’ bones.

  I like to eat their hearts.

  I like upon the doormat

  To leave their other parts.

  I wait for mouses in the fields,

  I catch them by the toes.

  A mouse’s tail is always peeled.

  Put mustard on the nose.

  Of course there were others about birds and moles, chipmunks and rabbits, the frustrations of winter and the joys of warm weather. There was even one about the big fat Persian cat next door who had gross mats in her hair because her owner did not know enough to comb her every day.

  But Rags had never written a poem about Rex until that Christmas Day.

  Cats rarely write about dogs, no matter how desperate they might be for material. Why remind themselves of what life is like with a dog around?

  Even when a dog tries to be pleasant, as Rex always did, what is more deplorable than the sound of a dog barking just as you have slipped into the sort of deep sleep that finds you flopped on your back with your paws up, your whiskers drooping, your tongue hanging out?

  Then … Woof! Woof! Woof!

  Nothing more than a car going down the street, and for that you are jolted out of your sweet slumber!

  Five other obnoxious things dogs do:

  1. Come in from the rain shaking themselves near your cat bed!

  2. Return from a walk stinking of manure (and once it was skunk)!

  3. Gallop through the fields looking for you just as you are sneaking up on a vole!

  4. Hog the rug in front of the fireplace on cold nights!

  5. Try to knock your food bowl off the table and gobble it down!

  Rags could go on and on. There wasn’t a cat alive who did not compare himself to dogs again and again. There wasn’t a cat alive who did not marvel at the difference, raise his eyes to the heavens, and utter, “Dogs!” with the same tone reserved for ticks, fleas, and baths.

  But on this Christmas Day Rags would not care what disagreeable thing Rex did, if only he could be there to do it.

  Rags was heartsick, sleepless, and unable to finish his Fancy Feast, even when it was beef and giblets, the flavor he loved best.

  He sat by the window looking out forlornly. He was face-to-face with a grackle, and his teeth were not even chattering.

  His creative juices were soured with grief.

  Rex, this is Rags, can you hear me?

  I miss not having you near me.

  Run fast Rex, run hard,

  Till you come to our yard!

  Rex, this is Rags, can you hear me?

  16

  Tinsel Turds

  BY THE DAY AFTER Christmas, Placido had his sea legs. He padded through the boat with a sure step on a regular route that led to the master’s cabin. There he devoured Roscoe the Robotic Frog’s red plastic tongue. He chewed up his voice box, too, so he could not cry ribbit! It took Placido a long time to accomplish all this.

  From the porthole Placido could see that one saucy seagull who often perched on the aft deck, waiting for handouts.

  Placido had named him Snack, for that was what he would be one of these days when Placido could figure out a way to reach him.

  In the main cabin the girl was sitting at the computer. Her father was getting into his overcoat. They were still discussing the composition she was to write about something unique in a country.

  “Why can’t you write about Miami?” her father asked. “You really know Miami!”

  “But the United States isn’t known for something in Miami!”

  “Remember the summer your mom, me, and you played San Antonio? There’s a fascinating city for you: San Antonio, Texas!”

  “That’s not what they mean, Daddy! That’s like naming me for a famous person, instead of someone who’s a big star.”

  “You’re a big star! You just played Radio City Music Hall, for pete’s sake. And don’t sell San Antonio short! Remember the Alamo! That was San Antonio!”

  “They want a country, something unique. They want Italy, or France, or England! Someplace exotic! And I am not a star, Daddy! I didn’t even get a callback from BrainPower!”

  “Well, you’re not in a good mood this morning, are you, Jimmie? I have to go buy lumber to repair the aft deck. It’s rotting…. Try to cheer up. New Year’s is coming, and we have the Star-Tintree date.”

  After he left, the girl went back to the master’s cabin and began talking to Placido.

  “If I was going to get another chance to try out for Jane Brain, I’d have heard by now.”

  She was sitting in the captain’s chair while Placido jumped away from the porthole, down to the bed.

  “I wouldn’t have been a good Jane Brain anyway. I said ‘consensus of opinion,’ Placido!”

  Placido suddenly found himself purring contentedly, for he had never had an owner who confided in him.

  Madame de Flute had sung opera to him sometimes, but more often she made threats like: “Stay away from Polly’s cage, Placido, or you’re toast!”

  And of course there were all the owners after Madame de Flute (Placido never discussed his first owner), the two-month owners, the two-week owners, the two-day owners, and the two-hour owners. Placido could hear them yelling at him.

  “Get down, Placido!”

  “If you don’t eat what’s there, then you’ll starve!”

  “Get that dead mouse out of here!”

  “Don’t paw your litter so hard—it’s all over the floors!”

  “Placido, do you hear me calling you?”

  “Placido! You puked on my new cashmere sweater!”

  “I’d rather be Twinkle Toes than Jane Brain, anyway,” the girl continued. “But let’s face it, without Dancer I’m not special anymore.”

  She was beginning to cry. Even better than a stick of butter, Placido enjoyed licking salty tears. He jumped from the bed and sat beside her on the desk. She made no attempt to pick him up, so forget salty tears. Maybe she was repulsed by the eyehole minus the eye. Maybe she was just like everyone else: not taken with him for whatever reason. Just when he was beginning to think of her as Jimmie, too, even though this time he had promised himself to keep his distance from whoever adopted him. Placido was not spoiling for another rejection.

  Behind her there were framed photographs lined up: a woman, a woman and the girl, a woman and the man, and one of that stupid little Boston terrier with his eyes popping out of his head and his stubby tail.

  “I wish we were in Miami, where it’s warm.” The girl sniffled. “If you. go back to Miami with us, you’ll be able to sit out on the deck and sunbathe, Placido.”

  If. Right? If. There was always an if in life, wasn’t there?

  If you have his claws removed, he won’t ruin the furniture.

  Remember that if?

  Major surgery was performed on him, just to save the arms on some ratty old sofa.

  And what had this famous decorator done when Placido showed her his forgiveness by presenting her with a bloody crow kicking and biting as he pounced on it and then wrestled it through the pet door with his teeth? She had called him a killer. Never mind her flyswatter, her mousetraps, her Roach Motels—Placido was the killer! Another trip back to Critters!

  The girl was sounding sadder and sadder, and she got on a talking jag next—about guess who? Dancer!

  Dogs, Placido mused, will do anything—even humiliate themselves—to please people.

  You would never catch a cat waltzing around on his hind legs!

  Neither would you catch one jumping up and down, making a racket that would raise the dead, barking until his throat hurt, just because some people were visiting Critters.

  “Oh, take me home! Oh, ad
opt me!” they’d cry out shamelessly.

  They had no pride, dogs didn’t!

  Both Placido and the girl jumped at the sound of knocking on the door.

  “It’s too late for the mailman,” said the girl. “Maybe it’s FedEx. Maybe the BrainPower people wrote instead of calling.”

  She was on her feet.

  The knocking became louder.

  A dog, of course, would have gone ballistic, barking and tearing toward the door to see who it was. But that was not the way of a cat.

  Placido glared up at Dancer’s photograph on the shelf by her desk.

  He heard the door open, and he heard the girl say, “Oh. It’s you.”

  Then she said, “You can come in and see for yourself. So far he’s knocked over our tree and made tinsel turds.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re mad for him anymore. You sound like you’re mad at him.”

  “I just don’t know if he likes it here or not.”

  Neither does he, Placido thought. How was he supposed to like being second fiddle to a dead Boston terrier? Placido brushed his paw against the framed photograph of Dancer.

  “I took the bus all the way out to see him,” said the boy. Placido knew that voice. Placido liked that voice. That was Mrs. Splinter’s grandson, Walter the Worry Wart.

  “Did you have a nice Christmas, Jimmie?”

  “I worked. Working on Christmas sucks.”

  “My mother came for an hour Christmas Eve. She couldn’t stay longer because of the storm. She didn’t want to get stuck.”

  “Where is your father?” Jimmie asked.

  The world-famous globe-trotter, Placido called him. Guy Splinter broadcasting from anywhere but where his family was. Sometimes when Mrs. Splinter came to Critters early in the morning, the dogs would hear him talking on the Today show. Word would spread that Guy Splinter was here, there, everywhere but his home.

  Walter told the girl his father had been in Israel. “But he’s on his way back. He’s getting an apartment in New York City! Just when I’m in so much trouble!” he said. “It was my fault a dog got loose. I didn’t fasten his cage. I’m so worried that Mr. Uttergore will find him!”

  Placido gave the picture of Dancer a little push.