Just then Pewter, triumphant, returned. “Ta-da.”
Tally wagged her tail, taking a step toward the gray cat.
“You two: Cut it out.” The human spoke forcefully.
Pewter joined Sneaky on the table. “Why didn’t you tell me you talked to the owl last night?”
“I didn’t tell you because you were too busy with the chain. I like him. He’s not so much like other birds.”
“M-m-m. He woke up when I was in the hayloft, told me some of what you all talked about. Makes me think. I mean, about gods, goddesses, and now saints. Do you think there were once giants and stuff like that? Dragons?”
“Well, in Genesis there’s a mention of giants. I like it when she reads her books out loud, so yes, why not? Aren’t we all evolving? Some species live. Some die off. If there were dinosaurs, why not giants, dragons, or angels?” Sneaky thought it made sense. “I think of Shetland ponies bred in upper latitudes. Maybe they lived, but fairies and giants didn’t. The creatures that survived lived in the middle latitudes. You know, medium-sized things.”
“You could say in your campaign that you’re descended from a saber-toothed tiger,” Pewter suggested.
“Cool.” Tally liked the image.
“I suppose ultimately I am, but that ancestor stuff doesn’t work these days. Candidates have to pretend to be one of the people, and the truth is, if you’re running for president, you aren’t.”
“H-m-m. Never thought of that.” Now that Sneaky pointed this out, Tucker could see it. “A candidate is supposed to be like Joe Average. Being rich is a sin, right?”
“Being rich is a miracle,” Pewter replied.
They laughed. “Well, if money is the issue, then Sneaky, you’re one of the people. We don’t have but so much money.” Tucker smiled.
“I know. And that’s what I think will make our human old,” Sneaky said. “She’s like so many humans, worrying about money.”
“Really?” Tally quizzically replied.
“Yes. She struggles. She works too long and too late, and you know what, millions of them do just the same to make ends meet. I don’t want our mother to make herself old, to die of a heart attack or something just to pay the bills, the taxes.”
“Millions?” Tally was aghast.
“Tally, there are seven million people out of work, and that figure only counts those on unemployment. Who knows the true figure—those that are now off the benefit rolls, those that are too defeated and poor to look for a job? It takes money to look for a job, Tally. You need nice clothes, you need gas money and a car that will run. You need a haircut and money for parking, too. If you farm like our mom, you need constant equipment repair, and diesel fuel is so much more expensive than regular gas. Seed prices shot up, fertilizer is through the roof. You’ve seen her fertilize, over-seed, harvest, then store her hay. That takes time, money, and help. No one can farm all by themselves. People are scared, you all, scared, exhausted, and deep-down angry.”
“They made this mess,” Pewter rightfully observed.
“Not all of them.” Tucker was thinking along with Sneaky. “Our human never stole money from anybody. She never sold a bad bale of hay pretending it was good. Those people losing their homes were lured into it, sold a bill of goods, you know. Many, most of them, weren’t financially educated. Maybe they should have known better, but they didn’t. They were deceived by those crooks on Wall Street and in Congress who opened the door for the Big Boys.”
“Then there’s the problems with pensions, entitlements, that sort of thing.” Sneaky nodded. “Both ends against the middle. And our human is stuck in the middle, along with millions of other Americans—humans and animals.”
“Well.” Pewter paused a long time. “I don’t want our C.O. to wear herself out, to lose what she’s worked for. You do see things differently, Sneaky. You provide an alternative view, and that is sorely needed.”
Tucker added, “We love our human. We might not talk about it, but we love her, and she loves us. Remember when she was looking at the American Pet Products Association stuff on the computer, Sneaky?”
“Yeah, I called down the numbers to you.”
“And I remember: Sixty-two-point-one percent of U.S. households have an animal in them. That’s millions upon millions of dogs, cats, birds, horses, and I guess goldfish and stuff, but mostly us. All those cats, dogs, and horses love their humans. Okay. Maybe a small percentage of humans are cruel and mistreat their animals. Hell, they mistreat their children, but most don’t. Those dogs and cats and such are your constituency.”
“Tucker, I hope you’re right,” Sneaky replied.
“What about the undomesticated animals?” Pewter wondered.
“I’d like their support, too, at least some of them. But I think Tucker’s right. Humans will first respond to the animals closest to them, the ones they trust. They have a hard enough time understanding us. It will be really hard for them to understand a mountain lion or a sparrow. We need to reach our own first.”
Sneaky rubbed against the C.O.’s face. “So how can I tell her we want justice for all?”
Choose Your Allies Wisely
“Don’t you ever get bored?” Sneaky Pie asked the beautiful visiting German shepherd as they sauntered along the Rockfish River.
“No,” the dog replied. “I like being retired.”
Walking alongside the shepherd Daisy, Tucker inquired, “Why did you enlist?”
“I didn’t. I’m part of a program of special breeding. We’re bred for stamina and intelligence. This has been going on for a couple of decades. I don’t really know, but I know the human breeders study constantly.”
“Like Thoroughbred breeders or hounds, kind of like that?” Tally wondered.
“Yes. They observe other shepherds, they study bloodlines on the computers, they go to special training school. There’s a lot to it, but I never had a choice. I made the grade, and that was that.” Daisy stopped to drink out of the clear-running Rockfish River.
Pewter watched tiny bubbles come up, as they were near the pool. “If you go over to that pool, you’ll get a surprise.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Tally quickly intervened.
The shepherd, though, curious, padded over to the more quiet water, deep, looked down.
Up popped the small-mouthed bass. “You’re a big one!” she exclaimed.
“You’re a jerk,” Pewter snapped at the fish before Daisy could respond.
A stream of water aimed at Pewter missed its mark as the fat cat was just far enough away. “Lucky. Come closer.”
“Nope.”
Sneaky again pondered thoughts of representing fish, but it got too complicated. Plus, who would want to represent this twerp?
A long stream shot from the river, this time just grazing the gray cat’s chest.
“Ha, ha.” With that, the fish sank back into the deeper water.
“Fish are strange,” the big dog observed, before glancing over at Tally, running around in circles. She thought Jack Russells were pretty odd, too.
The five animals trotted past the road that turned up to the barns, following instead the wide footpath along the river. The dried-mud path, cool underfoot, crossed a little feeder creek, a culvert underneath, and opened onto a lovely low meadow, the soil rich. The alfalfa and orchard grass swayed in the slight breeze.
“Two more weeks and this will be ready to cut.” Tucker loved haying.
“The smell is the best.” Sneaky liked it, too.
“It’s a funny thing,” said the visiting dog. “You’d think there wouldn’t be much to smell in the desert, but there is.”
“Really?” Tally always wanted to know more about a good scent.
“At first you have to adjust to the heat. You think a Virginia summer is hot, nothing.” The beautiful shepherd continued, “If you drink a lot of water it helps, and my Army buddy put electrolytes in the water for me. Well, I digress. You can smell gasoline miles away, and when I worked in bomb detection, that was
easy to smell, too. The humans assume it’s the inside of the bomb, the actual explosive material, but you can smell the wiring; the metal really gives off an odor in the desert. A lot of times that’s what I smelled first, the wires, and even though the bombs are hidden or buried, the heat works on the metal.”
“Were you scared?” Sneaky liked this gentle dog.
“I was scared when they took me away from my mother, brothers, and sisters. I liked the training once I got used to being in the Army. The more I learned, the more I liked it, and there were other dogs. I didn’t have to be completely alone with the humans,” Daisy answered.
“Lots of humans?” Tucker wondered.
“Yeah, but they’re in a special unit. They take tests just like we do and the service winnows the wheat from the chaff. The ones that have the ability to work with animals go through training. So you aren’t dealing with an idiot.”
“Did you work with one human?” Pewter couldn’t imagine taking orders.
“Lance Corporal Kenny Falkenstein. Big blue eyes, big fellow. I loved him.”
“Is he dead?”
“No. We worked together in Iraq for a year; then we came back here to train other humans and dogs. Kenny got promoted, and I was considered over the hill. The top brass wouldn’t let him keep me. He tried everything. So I was mustered out, and a group of ex-service people in northern Virginia found a home for me. Most of them had worked in the K-9 units. I miss Kenny. Don’t get me wrong, I like the person I’m with, I like living on a farm, but I miss Kenny. Together, we went through a lot. He e-mails Tiff, my new human. So I know what’s going on with him.”
Tiff was a lady in her late thirties, who liked competing in the agility trials. She and the C.O. were friends.
“Once you get used to a human, it’s difficult to adjust to a new one,” Tally said. “I don’t know how I’d do without our C.O.”
“Oh, one human is pretty much like another,” Pewter airily rejoined, as she walked in front of the others.
Sneaky whispered to the shepherd, “She loves our human. She likes to show off; you know the type.”
Whirling around, Pewter, tail up, accused: “You’re talking about me. I know it.”
“What makes you think I’m talking about you?” Sneaky shot back.
“Because I’m fascinating.”
“Let’s hang back.” Tucker, low voice, warned Tally, “She’s in one of her moods.”
At that moment, Pewter, having taken a few steps backward, turned around and stepped on a flat rock. A large copperhead sunning herself on the rock felt the weight, curled up, and opened her fearsome fangs near Pewter’s astonished face. Pewter simultaneously jumped up and sideways just as the copperhead struck. The snake missed, saw the other animals, and with astonishing speed slid through the alfalfa straight for the river.
“She tried to kill me! I could have been poisoned,” Pewter bellowed, puffed up, looking like a giant bottle brush. “How do I know she’s not a small python? Was it? She came up from the Everglades. I could have been strangled.”
Sneaky ran up to her. “It’s okay. She’s slithered away.”
“I could be dead!” the cat wailed.
“Take more than one bite to kill that fat thing.” Tally enjoyed Pewter’s fright. “Take all twenty-two feet of a mature python to wrap around the blubber.”
“I will kill you.” Pewter, still quite enlarged, flew straight for Tally, who had the good sense to run.
“Are they always like this?” Daisy asked, as she watched the two zigzag, circle, screaming, barking all the way.
“Yes,” the tiger cat forthrightly answered.
“The two cats at our house can be divas, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat like Pewter,” the shepherd said.
Sneaky and Tucker laughed and said in unison, “Lucky you.”
Turning up to climb through the meadows and then pastures to the barns, they spotted in the distance Pewter chasing Tally on the farm road now.
Jones and his two blind pasture mates, Blue Sky and Shamus, the pony, heard the commotion. Jones, with his one good eye, described the action. All three equines snorted air out of their nostrils, laughing at the description of the fat cat chasing the little dog.
“Moves pretty good for a large cat,” the shepherd observed.
“That she does.” Tucker wondered how long this fight would last and wasn’t looking forward to hearing about it from both parties. Tempest in a teapot. She feared it would go on for days.
Sneaky returned to life in the service. “When you were retired, did you get retirement pay?”
“No.”
“Did you have a rank in the Army?”
“No.”
“So you did all that work for free? No pay, no hazard pay, no retirement pay?”
“Not one penny. I did get free medical care in the service, though, but not now, of course. We rely on private citizens to help us after our duty is over.”
“If I am elected I promise that all animals who have served in the Armed Forces will get pay, get retirement pay, and all the benefits that accrue to humans. I will work unceasingly for this.”
“We’ve been in all the wars,” said Daisy. “Many of us were killed. Before mechanized warfare, think of the horses and mules, and what about carrier pigeons?” The shepherd knew she and the other animals throughout time often got a raw deal.
“And yet animals are proud to serve,” said Sneaky. “There were one-point-five million horses and mules who lost their lives in the War Between the States, and of all the horses taken over to Belgium and France for World War I, none came home, I think.” Sneaky knew most all of them died, shoved in unmarked graves, if buried at all. World War I was unremitting horror for humans and animals.
“Would you serve again?” Tucker wanted to know.
“I would. I liked the Army, but remember I was bred for this. I think it’s the same for people. Some can take the discipline and danger, but most can’t. I do think we should receive compensation, though. I mean, I can’t enlist, but once any of us are in there, we deserve consideration.”
“I see. What about the dolphins? The Navy trains them, doesn’t it?” Sneaky wondered.
“I’ve heard that, but I’ve never met one. It’s hard enough to meet land animals from the other branches of the service. Just about impossible to meet the water mammals.”
“Sneaky, that’s farther down the road. Stick with land animals,” Tucker advised.
“She’s right.” The shepherd noticed that Pewter had finally collapsed under a huge pin oak.
Tally was nowhere in sight.
“Will you help me in my campaign?” Sneaky asked the shepherd. “Will you ask your comrades to support me?”
“I will,” the shepherd vowed, glad to have another important task.
Once up at the barns, they joined the two humans sitting in the shade in two directors’ chairs under the sloping barn roofline.
Pewter had now also joined them, but no Tally.
Leaping up when the dog and cat appeared, Pewter shouted. “No reptiles! No reptiles in your campaign! I will leave, I swear it. No snakes allowed.”
Sneaky laughed. “Turtles aren’t so bad, they’re amphibians,” she protested.
“They can snap,” said Pewter. “If it’s cold-blooded, the hell with it.”
“There’s a lot of cold-blooded humans out there,” the shepherd coolly said.
“Don’t represent them, either.” Pewter remained adamant.
“Fine. No reptiles.” Sneaky sighed, but she was just as glad not to have to talk to them. Reptiles were difficult to converse with; those split tongues of snakes always upset her.
Tally crept out of the barn.
“Speaking of reptiles.” Pewter puffed up again.
“What is all this hissing and spitting?” the C.O. admonished Pewter.
“Oh, you have no idea. No idea at all,” Pewter replied, with the perfect blend of indignation and anger.
Sitt
ing right by the C.O., Tally took no chances and stayed quiet.
Sneaky counseled Pewter, “Just forget it.”
“Forget it. Forget it! I could be lying down there on that rock, in the throes of death by poison or strangulation. Painful, protracted death. And she”—Pewter glared right at Tally—“makes light of it.”
The woman called Tiff said, “People think animals don’t have feelings, friends, preferences. Obviously your gray cat does.”
“She is a creature of many opinions.” The C.O. laughed, and all the animals except Pewter laughed also.
“I do have many opinions, and they are all correct.” Pewter had the last word.
Clever as a Fox
Little rain made the ground hard and the grasses brittle, tufts of the latter flying behind Sneaky Pie’s paws as she raced at top speed over the back pasture toward an ancient walnut tree.
Flying overhead, the Yellow Warbler sang out, “They’re gaining!”
Led by the head female, running in broad daylight, five coyotes thought they had an easy lunch.
The tiger cat summoned up one last burst of speed and made it to the walnut. She leapt high, grabbed a low branch, and scurried out of reach. She was breathing hard as she sought to memorize her pursuers’ faces.
On her hind paws, the lead coyote stretched up the tree as far as she could, but the cat was well out of reach.
“You were lucky today, pipsqueak,” the sixty-pound coyote said, baring her impressive fangs.
Sneaky, with the Yellow Warbler on the branch above her, remained silent.
The son of the lead coyote, weighing about forty pounds, whined, “Momma, let’s go. I’m hungry. We can bust out some rabbits.”
The mother licked his handsome face, then turned and trotted off, the others following her.
“Close call,” said the warbler. The pretty little bird watched the coyotes retreat.
“I never thought they’d show themselves in daylight,” said Sneaky. “I’ve smelled them. I’m pretty sure I know where the den is. They’re two miles from home.”
“And my, aren’t they big? Lots bigger than out West,” the bird noted. “That gang of hooligans has been bragging to their relatives about how much there is to eat in the East, about how thick their coats are, and how big they are. They even boast about how they can take on wolves if they have to.”
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