Raising Demons

  During breakfast, while Yain wailed down cellar and the puppy yapped in the barn and Gato prowled back and forth before the back apartment door and my husband said half a dozen times that he personally planned to spend the entire day in the study with the door shut, the children and I mapped out a kind of plan whereby our several pets might become acquainted and enjoy a morning’s lighthearted play together. It went without saying that this must happen outdoors; aside from the probably harrowing effect upon the mice of sitting in upon the introduction of three cats to two dogs, I keep my French salad plates and my grandmother’s Italian decanter set and the ashtray Sally made in kindergarten on shelves in the kitchen. In any case the children ought to be out enjoying the sunlight instead of wasting away indoors. Therefore, I sent Sally and Barry out to settle in the sandbox, on the lawn near the back door. I planned to run Yain directly outside, from the cellar through the kitchen through the side hall to the side door, with no stopoffs, and Jannie was posted at that side of the house with the particular aim of herding Yain away from all other animals. Laurie was to ride around and around the house on his bike, doing courier service, and I was to be stationed on the back porch with the back door open behind me to serve as a retreat or as a temptation in case the sunny weather lured any mice out for a morning stroll.

  I began by letting Toby out the front door onto the front porch; he was mildly surprised, since it is not his usual door, but there seemed to be nothing outstandingly menacing on the front porch, so he went out and sat down on the steps. Gato was established on the kitchen table and refused to move, which barred the way of exit for Yain from the cellar. I went first into the back apartment and let the gray cat out of that outside door, which aimed her directly toward the back of the house, around the corner from the sandbox and directly opposite Toby on the front steps. Then, after another attempt to unwedge Gato from the kitchen table, I was forced to fall back on guile and to use a piece of cantaloupe, of which he was passionately fond, to lure him out of the kitchen and into the study, where my husband was peacefully reading his morning paper. “I just want to leave Gato in here for a minute while I get Yain out of the cellar,” I explained.

  My husband nodded, I dropped the piece of cantaloupe and raced for the study door, slamming it just as Gato flung himself against it from the inside. “Eat your cantaloupe,” I heard my husband saying.

  I opened the cellar door to catch Yain and get him out the side door, which would put him on the fourth side of the house, with Toby at the front, the gray cat at the back, the children in the sandbox by the back porch, waiting to bring out the puppy, Jannie on the side front, and Laurie riding swiftly past shouting, “Toby okay on front steps!” or, “Gray cat washing face by back apartment door!” or, “Barry shovelful sand down Sally’s back!”

  I opened the cellar door and Yain hesitated. I called and called, and Toby, hearing my voice, began clamoring to get in the front door. Just as Yain came easing through the cellar door into the kitchen I heard my husband come out of the study and go to let Toby in the front door—a gesture so automatic and frequent with all of us that we can, and often do, manage it sound asleep. “No, no,” I yelled to my husband, diving for Yain, who doubled sideways and headed up the back stairs.

  “Gato came out of the study. What shall I do?” my husband asked, coming into the kitchen with Toby following him.

  “Where?”

  “Up the front stairs. His cantaloupe—”

  I thought quickly. “Put Toby out the back door so the children can watch him. I’ll head off Yain before he meets Gato upstairs, so if you can get Toby outdoors I’ll put Gato back in the study.”

  My husband, looking perplexed, went to the back door and Toby, looking perplexed, followed him. My husband said, “The gray cat’s here. Shall I let her in?”

  Just then Laurie opened the front door to shout, “Toby gone; gray cat heading back door!”

  I scurried up the back stairs and found Gato, moving with measured steps across the jungle of the playroom toward Yain under Jannie’s bed. With a fast racing dive I captured Yain just as he moved, wheeled, and hurled myself down the back stairs again, Gato following yearningly. My husband and Jannie and Toby were at the back door. “Put Toby out the front door,” Jannie was saying urgently.

  “He just came in the front door,” my husband said.

  “Then shut him in the study,” Jannie said. “I can’t catch the gray cat with Toby because he’s scared of her.”

  “Don’t put Toby in the study, because I want to put Gato in there,” I said. “Don’t let Gato out the back door if the gray cat’s out there.” I turned wildly, holding Yain. “I’ll put Yain in Toby,” I said.

  My husband went into the study and slammed the door and I came right after him. “I’ll put Yain in here for a minute now,” I said. “We’re just having a little trouble keeping them all straight.”

  “It’s like the old League of Nations,” my husband said obscurely, and picked up his newspaper.

  Laurie rode by to report that the gray cat had gone back around the house and was meowing at the back apartment door to be let in, so I took Toby by the collar and put him, bewildered and evidencing a strong desire to get under the piano, out on the front steps again. Gato followed and I picked him up and put him on the front steps with Toby. “Stay there,” I said severely. Then I started for the back apartment to let the gray cat in but my husband opened the study door and said I simply had to get Yain out of there because he was sitting on the desk in a fury chewing pencils, so I gathered up Yain and put him out the back door, which was of course the wrong door for Yain, but by then it hardly seemed to matter.

  A quick inventory showed that everyone was outside except my husband who was now, judging from the sounds, engaged in pushing his desk across the study door. I went out onto the back porch, leaving the door open behind me. Sally had knocked over Barry’s pail of sand and then left the sandbox to establish herself on the swing beyond the driveway. Barry was irritably refilling his pail, talking to himself about bad bad bad girls. Jannie had come around the house and stood in the driveway with Toby pressed nervously against her. The puppy was wailing hideously from the barn, so when Laurie passed the next time I stopped him and said he might as well get Toby’s old leash and start getting the puppy ready to come out, and Laurie got the leash and headed for the barn. After a minute the gray cat slipped, smokelike, around the corner of the house and leaped to the second porch step where she settled uneasily. Gato leaned insolently against a tree, the tip of his tail twitching. One single evil snarl betrayed Yain under the hedge. I sat down on the porch rail and lighted a cigarette, trying to look casual; I had an uneasy sense of baleful eyes regarding me and I was acutely aware that I did not know who was going to jump first, or when, or from which direction. Barry began to make a noise like a dump truck, Sally sang, and the spaniel from across the street turned in through the gateposts and started up our driveway.

  I jumped to my feet and shouted, “Get that dog out of here, someone!” Toby, confused—or perhaps the hijacking of his milk still rankled—wheeled sharply and made for the gray cat, who stood for a moment dumfounded and then, leaving one long scratch across Toby’s nose, disappeared under the porch. Jannie started across the driveway, yelling and waving her arms, and the spaniel skittered sideways toward the hedge where Yain was waiting; with one great triumphant halloo Yain cleared the hedge and followed the shrieking spaniel down the driveway. Wild with success, Toby turned on Gato, who, still leaning against his tree, looked Toby straight in the eye and spoke once; skidding, Toby turned and without losing speed went in through the open back door and across the dining room and the living room and under the piano. From the barn came a single mournful yelp. “Any mice come out yet?” Sally called.

  Jannie came back, panting, and I asked her to go under the porch and get the gray cat out so that I could put her back into the back apartment, but Jannie said
that the only cat at present under the porch was Yain, who had apparently circled around the house and seemed to have eaten something large and satisfying, because he was half asleep and purring. Gato, humming to himself, trotted up the back steps and into the kitchen and up to the kitchen counter, where he ate the half cantaloupe I had left there.

  Laurie called that he was coming out of the barn with the puppy, and Sally decided that since the barn door was going to be opened this would be a good time to go in and get her tricycle to ride, and Barry agreed. Jannie thought that at the same time she would get her stilts, so when Laurie was sure he had the puppy firmly leashed, Sally and Barry went in and came out riding their bikes and Jannie followed them, very tall and unsteady. Laurie came last with the puppy, who had clearly never been on a leash before. The two bikes went down to the end of the driveway, turned, and started back up again, and Gato stepped out onto the porch, where he settled to wash after his breakfast. Toby heard the puppy barking and hurried out to see what was going on; he and Laurie and the puppy began a sort of minuet up and down the driveway, with the two bikes turning and following them and Jannie stalking along beside. While Laurie held the leash in both hands, Toby came gravely forward and bowed to the puppy, and the puppy did a little tango step. Toby then crossed over and the puppy crossed under, taking the leash between Laurie’s legs. While Laurie turned in a half circle, Toby and the puppy, andante maestoso, bowed and crossed again, then reversed in an allemande left, leaving Laurie perilously balanced on one foot. Gato watched, grinning, from the porch.

  Then, without warning, the gray cat came down from the porch roof and charged Toby; Toby went “blip” and cleared the steps in one bound on his way to the piano, he jostled Gato, who went after the gray cat, who went under the porch and Yain came out, rudely awakened, and saw the puppy, whom he clearly mistook for the spaniel. Yain’s charge upset Laurie completely and the puppy went through the stilts as through a doorway and down the driveway with Yain after him. The puppy lost a little ground because he cut sideways to go around the bikes, but Yain went clean over Sally and then, hardly touching the ground, clean over Barry, and we watched in silence as the puppy and Yain went up the hill and then off into the fields.

  “He runs good, that puppy,” Sally said at last. “We better call him Speedy.”

  Gato slouched lazily into the house and went to the washing machine for his nap. Jannie volunteered to search the yard for the gray cat, so I put Sally and Barry into the car, and Laurie took his bike, and we went off to look for the puppy. After hours of wandering and calling and knocking on strange doors we found our several ways back home, to discover that not only had Jannie failed to find any trace of the gray cat, but Yain had not come home, although Gato and Toby showed up for their dinners exceedingly chipper and affable. We spent that evening telephoning neighbors and speculating uneasily upon the probable fate of a four-month-old puppy lost in the country at night, and reminding one another that we had promised to give him a good home.

  The next morning, which was Monday again, I sadly delivered three more ads to the local paper, and on Monday evening we were slightly embarrassed to discover that, since our first ads had been scheduled to run for a week, we now occupied the entire want-ad page except for the personals. Our ads now read:

  Wanted to buy: female cat, kitten or half grown, good mouser. Call 5679.

  Wanted to buy: puppy, mongrel large breed preferred. Call 5679.

  Lost: female cat, gray tiger. Call 5679; reward.

  Lost: shepherd puppy, brown and white. Call 5679; reward.

  Lost: male cat, black, bandaged ear. Call 5679; reward.

  On Tuesday morning the phone rang and when I answered it a man said, “You the person advertised for a pup?”

  “I certainly am,” I said. “Why, have you found him?”

  There was a silence. Then the man said, “What reward you giving?”

  “I thought two dollars,” I said. “You see, we only paid five dollars for him in the first place, and—”

  “That your ad to buy a dog, too?”

  “Well, yes. You see, we put in the ad to buy a dog, and then we lost the dog we bought, so we put in another ad—”

  “You must have quite a hand with dogs, lady,” the man said.

  “Look,” I said, “this phone has been ringing steadily for four days. So if you have found—”

  “Way I see it,” he said, “you’re paying five for a new dog? And only two if I found the one you already got?”

  “Not at all,” I said sharply. “Have you found—”

  “Nope. What I got, lady,” he said, “is a dog to sell.” There was another pause and then he added reflectively, “Must look some like the one you lost, though.”

  I thought about it for a while and then I took the odd three dollars out of my housekeeping money and went off to get the dog. It took me most of the morning to find the farm where the puppy was and when I did I was not particularly surprised to see how strongly the new dog resembled the puppy we had lost. I remarked on this to the farmer, holding my five dollars uneasily in my hand, and the farmer laughed and took the five dollars and said it was a caution sometimes how two dogs could get to look alike. He put the five dollars into his back pocket and pointed out that naturally I didn’t need to buy this dog unless I wanted to, but it was an uncommon good breed of dog for the price. I said I certainly hoped that this dog wasn’t going to get lost, or, if he did, that I could find him, because it was quite a drain on my housekeeping money to have to go buying new dogs all the time. The farmer said soberly that well, a dog was man’s best friend, especially children, thanked me for the five dollars without turning a hair, and helped me get the puppy into the car to bring home.

  The children were just coming home from school for lunch, and they were delighted with the puppy, whom they clearly regarded as the one they had lost, and I did not feel that it was necessary to tell them or my husband that I had had to buy a new dog. I canceled all the ads in the papers, because the next morning Yain and the gray cat, whom we named Ninki, wandered up onto the back porch to share a bowl of milk and a good laugh with Gato. The gray cat was covered with burrs and Yain had lost his bandage somewhere. The spaniel from across the street did not come home for three days. On Tuesday morning there was a mouse in the sugar canister.

  Gray Ninki was the first non-black cat we had ever owned, and for a while it used to give me quite a turn to see her moving soundlessly through the house; I kept thinking she was a ball of dust. When it became clear that she was going to have kittens we were all very much excited over the probable colors to be produced, fondly supposing that the father of the kittens was either Yain or Gato. However, when the kittens were born, four of them were gray, like Ninki, and the fifth one was green, a kind of olive drab shade. We gave away the four gray kittens and Ninki, who had never liked any of us much anyway, moved into a house about two blocks away and refused to come home, so we had Yain and Gato and the green kitten, whom we named Green Shax. Because our kitten was green we had less difficulty in reconciling ourselves to the local insistence that our puppy was not brown, but red, and that referring to such a fine red dog as “brown” was both offensive and misleading. The question of a name for the puppy was a matter of high dispute, and was only solved when my husband one morning cut out of the newspaper an account of a dog show in New York.

  “Here are some good names,” he said, at the breakfast table. “Now we can find something to call it by.”

  “He doesn’t come anyway,” Jannie said. “We might as well go on calling him Puppy.”

  “But he won’t be a puppy forever,” I said. “After a while it will begin to sound silly, especially the way he’s growing.”

  “Well,” said my husband, consulting the paper, “how about Clifford Eidelweis? Quibble Baby? Tiny Trinket?”

  “Clifford is nice,” Jannie said. “I like Clifford.”

/>   “Won Ton Pearmain? Kreplach MacIntosh? Those all seem very fine dogs,” my husband said. “In the paper.”

  “Why not Pal?” Jannie asked. “I thought we were always going to name him Pal.”

  “Why name him Pal,” my husband asked, “when there are names like Hasty Pudding Put and Take? Or Silver Reuben of Iradell?”

  “Pudding,” Barry said eagerly. “A dog named Pudding.”

  “Squirrel Run Kentucky Boy? Shagbark Gimmel? Merriebert Ethelbeast?”

  “Seems to me,” Laurie said critically, “that a family with one cat named Yain and one cat named Gato and one cat named Green Shax had better get a dog named something like, maybe, Spot. Or Prince. Or Rover.”

  “Or Pal.”

  “I used to have a dog named Jack when I was a little girl,” I said. “I’d like to have another dog named Jack.”

  “Champion Red John of Green Shax Farm,” my husband said.

  “Pal?”

  “Jack. Red Jack.”

  “Red Pudding,” Barry said softly.

  • • •

  It was very late, and I came in very quietly through the back door and closed it behind me without a sound. I went through the kitchen and dining room and living room and into the hall, guided by the hall light my husband had left on, took off my coat and left it on the stair rail, turned off the hall light and made my way upstairs softly in the dark. Toby, on the living room couch, lifted his head as I went by, and thumped his tail once. Upstairs, I slipped off my shoes and in my stocking feet went through the guest room and down the hall to Laurie’s room, saw that he was covered, and then into Jannie’s room, where Gato lay hugely on the foot of her bed. Jannie stirred and said “M?” when I covered her, and I slipped out quickly before she woke. By the thin glow of the nightlights I found my way back through the guest room and into Sally’s room; Sally’s blankets were all heaped at the foot of her bed and she was sprawled over them. I took her extra blanket and put it over her, and she said “Hey!” indignantly. A small protest made me realize that Green Shax had been curled next to Sally and I had covered him, too; I moved the blanket and he poked his head out and closed his eyes again. Yain was sleeping on the hall chair, and purred once as I went past. Barry lay exquisitely asleep, blanket smooth, pillow straight. Jack was lying asleep across the doorsill of Barry’s room, and Dikidiki was in bed with Barry, which argued that Barry had gone unwillingly to bed. Dikidiki stared at me unwinking, Jack groaned and sighed deeply.