Tally triumphantly bumped the cat. “See?”
Given Pewter’s bulk, this attempted bump knocked the little dog off balance, not the hefty cat.
Pewter stuck to her guns. “She’s a lunatic.”
“I’m courageous, high-spirited, good company,” countered Tally. “I am the perfect running mate. We’re in a depression. People need their spirits picked up.”
“What they need is jobs,” Sneaky reasonably replied.
“What about an older, wiser dog who works, who demonstrates proven skill?” asked Tucker quietly. “Herding dogs? Hunting dogs? I myself herd cattle.”
Both her friends stared at her, surprised. Before they could say a word, their human called.
“Let’s go.”
Once settled in the truck, they watched the lush scenery pass by, twilight casting long Prussian blue shadows across spring green meadows.
“Are you serious about this?” Pewter asked Sneaky. “You really think you need a dog as a running mate?” Pewter raised her nose, enjoying the higher view a truck affords.
“Sure I do. People aren’t likely to be moved by a goldfish.”
“I don’t see how you can pick one running mate without offending every other breed,” Tucker prudently observed. “I mean, what if you do pick a golden retriever or a beagle?”
“Good point. It has to be a mutt.” Sneaky Pie watched a Great Blue Heron flying overhead to its nest by the water. “It’s all about demographics.”
“A mutt? Never.” Tally yelped. “Have you no pride?”
“Tally, shut up!” the driver reprimanded.
Tally grimaced. “Can’t we find her a mate? Something to occupy her?”
“Then there’d be two of them to manage.” Sneaky laughed. “One is bad enough.”
Pewter laughed, too.
“Maybe you’re right. It’s tough enough as it is protecting her. She can’t even smell. Just last week she was twenty-five yards from a bobcat and didn’t even know it. Luckily, bobcats aren’t vicious, but what if she had been that close to something really aggressive? Or an animal with her young? I tell you, none of them have the sense to get out of harm’s way. Sometimes I go to bed exhausted just from chasing off bad actors.” Tally held her chin up, threw out her chest.
“Tally is right,” Tucker said with feeling. “We dogs must be ever-vigilant around humans. Age is no factor. Adults are as vulnerable as children. Good eyes. Bad noses. So-so ears. Can’t run worth a damn. Living with a human is a full-time responsibility.”
“You all do a good job,” Sneaky said soothingly.
Pewter raised an eyebrow but kept her mouth shut.
“You can’t pick a mutt, really, Sneaky,” Tally said, showing a touch of Virginia blood snobbery.
“You’d better never say that publicly!” the tiger warned. “This whole country is made up of mutts. You just button that thought right up.”
“What are you talking about?” snapped Tally. “Humans are mutts. They’re mixed up worse than a dog’s breakfast.”
Sneaky replied, “A mutt is a mix of blood, usually smart and strong. Anyway, most Americans like to think that when they think of themselves—you know, the old melting-pot stuff?”
“Surely they can’t believe that.” Tally remained unconvinced.
“Tally, Pewter, and I are mutts,” said Sneaky. “I don’t know my bloodlines.” The tiger cat watched a house light switch on far away in the darkness of the country.
“Speak for yourself,” said Pewter. “I am descended from a Bolling.” Pewter momentarily got all grand, naming an early Virginia family. Robert Bolling of Chellowe was granted a charter for viniculture to grow grapes in the Colony. That was long, long ago.
Knowing better than to argue ancestry, Sneaky demurred, “A formidable family. Robert Bolling used Jefferson as a lawyer when he was right out of law school. Our C.O. was just talking about that with one of her friends.”
“I also have a splash of Venable blood,” Pewter bragged.
Venable, like Valentine, was a Virginia surname with some punch.
Sneaky bit her tongue because she wanted to say “So do hundreds of thousands of Americans by now.” That would have started another fight, and things had been quiet in the truck.
The truck stopped at the gate to Monticello. After they were waved through and they parked, they climbed the hill to the house of the director, Leslie Bowman, and her husband, Courtland Neuhoff. Dogs, horses, and one beautiful daughter completed the picture of a tranquil existence on Jefferson’s mountain.
“I’m leaving the windows open, but you all stay here. You know the drill.” The C.O. closed the driver’s door and walked to her meeting.
Tally hung out the window.
“Get back in here!” Sneaky hissed. “She always turns around, and then she’ll come back and run the windows up within an inch of the top. We have important work to do.”
The dog slunk down, crouched beneath the steering wheel. “She can’t see me now.”
The two cats observed intently as their human walked toward the house. “Okay, she’s in.”
Pewter was already halfway out the window.
“I’ll open the door,” said the tiger cat. “That’s easier than you dogs trying to climb out the window.” Sneaky pressed on the door lever as the dogs leaned against it. It opened just enough for them to drop down to the running board. Freedom!
The tiger cat followed. “No noise,” she ordered.
The four animals trotted up the hill toward Monticello, moonlight enshrouding the well-beloved house.
Hovering like an upturned half moon, the signature dome gleamed silver. Early May air carried intoxicating smells from the vegetable garden, as well as the flowers surrounding the back of the house. The roses alone sent off aromas like Eden itself. The drone of insects was subdued, the occasional owl call echoed over the abandoned house. No matter how much a national treasure it was, no house is alive without cats, dogs, people, children playing, fighting, loving—just breathing within its walls.
The four friends paused.
“Once upon a time we would have smelled the horses, the other cats, the poultry,” Sneaky mused.
“Oh, the humans don’t care. It’s all about them,” Pewter airily replied.
“And just how far would Mr. Jefferson have gotten if cats hadn’t kept the rodents out of the grain, out of the pantry, and furthermore, where would he get the goose quills for his writings?” Sneaky stood, transfixed by the magical view.
“You mean a goose helped write the Declaration of Independence?” Tally was far more transfixed by the lingering odor of a rabbit, who had recently scurried to her burrow.
Sneaky walked toward the front entrance. “Well, he couldn’t have done it without the quill, now, could he?”
“The door’s closed.” Tucker noticed the handblown glass in the special windows Mr. Jefferson had designed so they could also be used to go in and out of the house.
“I can see perfectly well,” Sneaky snapped. “I’m trying to remember where the little hole is, so we can crawl in and come up by the window in his bedroom.”
They walked to the left of the door, inspecting the ground.
“Was it here?” Tally found a small aperture in the foundation, which had been repaired.
“Damn. I hate all this improvement. Well, come on. Let’s go down to the kitchen and the walkways underneath. You know they’ll miss something,” Tucker suggested.
Trotting down to the brick labyrinth underneath the finely furnished rooms, the three gloried in the wonderful spring grass underfoot.
“Who goes there?” an irritated voice called out.
“Friends of Mr. Jefferson’s cats,” Sneaky called up to a house wren, now peering over her nest and none too happy at that.
“There are no cats here. The last housecat left with Dan and Lou Jordan.” The wren cited the former director of Monticello and his wife, who’d worked miracles at the place and had been loved by all, including the house wren.
“Guess that makes your life easier,” Pewter sassed.
“You couldn’t catch me if your life depended on it.”
“Really?” Pewter scratched the base of the wide tree. “Why don’t you come a little closer?”
“There should be cats at Monticello—along with cattle, horses, whatever Mr. Jefferson had living with him. We all improved his life and the lives of every human there.” Sneaky warmed to her subject. “They’d still be flying the Union Jack here if it weren’t for us.”
“I agree,” said the wren. “For a while, the Jordans had a kitty in the big house, but there was concern—don’t you love that word, ‘concern’?—that the cat might scratch a visitor.”
“That’s one of the reasons we’re here,” declared Sneaky. “Our human is at a meeting at Leslie and Court’s. She loves all this history stuff, so we thought we’d come along for the ride, and here’s why. If humans keep fading further and further from reality, which is to say nature, the day will come when even you will be removed from Monticello.”
A pleasing warble followed this. As she had a syrinx, the house wren could make two different sounds simultaneously. “Too much catnip, kitty.”
“Go ahead and make fun of me, but the day will come when someone will fund a study, some government type, to prove that your poop carries harmful genes. You and every other bird will have to be removed from Monticello, and they’ll take the caterpillars, too. Some of them bite, you know, and humans just hate insect bites.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Start thinking,” said Sneaky. “As it is an election year, folks are losing their common sense. Bird poop. I mean it.”
“What about poop?” asked the wren.
“Toilets. The humans think they’ve solved the problem, but then they really haven’t. Their poop still has to go somewhere.”
The corgi’s eyes shone in the moonlight.
“Treatment plants,” Tally piped up.
“Have you ever gone by one of those plants?” Pewter wrinkled her nose.
“Of course not,” twittered the wren. “I have better things to do with my time.” She tossed her little head.
“Well, in the New World Order, you will be found guilty of littering just for doing your business naturally. Spreading germs, they’ll say. And I don’t think humans will invent toilets for birds,” Pewter said.
A disconcerted twitter followed this. “Heaven forbid! You’re scaring me. You’re trying to get me to fall out of my nest.”
Pewter—at the base of the tree, voice so sweet—called up, “We know better than that.”
“I’m asking you to think about the rest of us taking over this country. We outnumber the humans,” Sneaky encouraged the wren.
“You plan to seize power by brute force?” the wren asked, snapping her beak shut nervously.
“Absolutely not. We’re nonviolent. We need to vote,” Sneaky said.
“I can’t vote. I can’t write.”
“You can hold a pencil in your claws and make an X. And we can all overrun the polls. I believe we can get this country back on track and protect ourselves. You know.” Sneaky sat for a moment. “It will save them, too.”
“You might have something there,” the wren said breezily.
“While you think about it, and there’s no big rush, I’ll be back up here in a month, as Mom comes to meetings here once a month,” said Sneaky.
“Do you really consider a human a mother?” The wren leaned farther over her nest, which just made Pewter tense all her muscles. There really were muscles under the lard.
“Well, the four of us call her the Can Opener, the C.O., but we love her, and she does care for us. And we don’t remember our real mothers,” Sneaky replied.
“That’s so sad. My little chicks know who their mother is.”
“Have any?”
“Not this year. My friends and I keep an eye on the food supply. Maybe next year. I love having little wrens.”
“We’re trying to get into the house, but the passage we knew under Mr. Jefferson’s bedroom window has been filled up. Is there another way?” Sneaky asked.
“Sure. Go up through the old larder. The opening is big enough, easy.”
“How do you get in?” Pewter asked, as though this was mere curiosity.
“Usually we don’t. Causes such a fuss. But in good weather, if I need to, I’ll go right through an open window. There’s always a thread loose or something else I can use to spruce up my nest.”
Sneaky headed toward the brick walkways as instructed. “Thank you.”
“It’s nice to think that Monticello still has some uses. A thread from a chair would be very nice.” Tally liked chewing things, and silk or satin was a rare treat.
“ ’Tis,” Tucker agreed.
In the old larder, they found the opening, a gap behind a back shelf.
“I can’t see.” Tally coughed as she squeezed into the space, careful not to knock over crockery. Fortunately, it was heavy.
“Stick right behind Pewter,” ordered Sneaky, from outside.
“Just what I want, Tally on my rear end,” Pewter complained.
“Oh, Pewter, shut up,” the diminutive dog snapped back. “You can see better in the dark than I can.”
“I can’t fit,” Tucker half boasted as she tried to squeeze in.
Sneaky took a quick look around. “Stay here and guard us.”
“I’ll miss all the fun,” the corgi whined.
“We won’t be long,” Sneaky promised her.
And it wasn’t long before they emerged from under the bed in Monticello’s little front bedroom.
“Come on,” ordered Sneaky. “We’ve no time to waste, gawking at old furniture.”
The tiger cat hurried across the polished floors ahead of Pewter and Tally, past the Great Clock, powered by heavy cylinder-like weights descending through a hole in the floor into the cellar. The beautiful dining room had been rehabilitated, thanks to a gift from Ralph Lauren for which the famous designer asked no advertising. He just did it because he loved Monticello. Just behind this room, the small party found a wooden door, its handle just out of reach.
“Stand here and stand still,” Sneaky ordered Tally before climbing on the dog’s back, reaching up, and easily turning the old doorknob. “Onward,” the cat ordered.
The back stairway reverberated with four beats each for the two cats and the dog. They came up to the Dome Room, empty but for gleaming moonlight streaming through the large circular windows and oculus skylight.
A walkway surrounded Jefferson’s famous dome. Doors at intervals allowed workmen to get to the dome itself for repairs—fixing leaks, mostly. At the bottom of each door was an opening, just about cat size. The two cats zipped in, and Tally, a bit bigger, squeezed through.
Four busy mice stopped cold in their tracks.
The boldest shouted, “You get out of here!”
The tiger cat challenged them: “You aren’t supposed to be here, either.”
“We are descendants of Mr. Jefferson’s mice. Who else would be here?” The big mouse took a precautionary step backward.
“Well, we are FFV, First Felines of Virginia,” countered Sneaky, “so we have every right to be here. And Pewter here is descended from a Bolling who married Mr. Jefferson’s daughter. If indeed you are descended from Mr. Jefferson’s mice, you know perfectly well about the marriage to John Bolling, a fat fellow who drank too much. So there.”
This caused a moment of confusion.
The smallest mouse piped up. “There haven’t been cats up here in forever.”
“That’s obvious.” Pewter could smell all the mice and see the little treasures they’d dropped around their mouse holes.
“So why are you here? Don’t think you’re about to have any mousy treats. We’re close to our escape routes; you can’t catch us,” the big mouse defiantly pronounced.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Sneaky declared.
“Speak for yourself,” Pewter muttered under her breath.
Tally whispered, “Pewter, don’t piss Sneaky off. We have to ride all the way back home, remember?”
“Well, what do you want?” demanded the biggest mouse.
“I want you and all the mice here to help me run for president.”
“A cat for president?” The little mouse lifted up on his hind legs, putting his front paws together in delight. “You’re even stupider than I thought. Who would want to be president, much less a cat? Isn’t it all just a wee bit far-fetched?”
“Far-fetched, maybe, but it was far-fetched to think we could break free from England,” said Sneaky, “and who would have thought that the skinny redhead who wrote the Declaration and served as Virginia’s governor—working on all manner of things—would wind up president? I mean, everyone knew General Washington would be president, but, well, Jefferson had to fight for it when his time came. Just as we’ll fight for it now.”
“Why ever bother? Mr. Jefferson didn’t much like being president.” The smallest mouse uttered this with pride. “It’s not even on his grave monument, which he designed.”
“He said he didn’t like being president.” Pewter thought all that denial suspicious. “But he pressed on, didn’t he?”
“Once you’re in the traces, how do you cut them?” The middle mouse, also a bit fat, chimed in: “He was stuck.”
“He was vain.” Tally finally spoke to the mice. “Humans all think they can make such a big difference. Time washes all their so-called accomplishments away.”
“Not Mr. Jefferson’s work,” Sneaky corrected her friend. “Think of all that he wrote. And he sent Lewis and Clark on their way. And what about the 1803 Louisiana Purchase? Then again, maybe you’re right, Mr. Mouse, he couldn’t kick over the traces. I might be vain, Tally might be right, but at least my vanity serves you all. We have little choice but to stop the madness.”
“People, you mean, nuclear stuff—that kind of madness?” asked the little mouse. “We hear about all that, even up here.” The little mouse grew sober.
“And it will creep closer and closer if we don’t speak up, organize,” said Sneaky. “So I am here to ask for your blessing. What could mean more than to have Mr. Jefferson’s mice endorsing my campaign? And don’t think people won’t notice that mice are supporting a cat.”
Sneaky Pie for President Page 3