“Hello, Sylvia,” Taylor called from the back of the car. He was getting out his suitcase—he sure liked lugging that thing around with him.
“Long time, boys,” the woman observed with a cough. Her name was Sylvia and she lived with a female cat named Chloe. It smelled smoky and dry inside and the windows were mostly covered with blankets, so it was gloomy. Dutch sniffed around, excited by the promise of cat, whose name we wouldn’t learn until later.
The backyard was enclosed with a high fence made of boards. Not much was growing there except along the back fence, where bushes and grasses led a sparse, thirsty existence. Most of the space was taken up by a pool, which was the word the people used to describe a small pond filled with clear water that had a strong smell and taste. It was in the backyard where we met the cat for the first time.
Dutch was intensely interested in Chloe, lunging at the end of his leash when he saw her, but Gavin and Taylor both shouted “No!” very loudly and Dutch shrank from their anger, wagging with his ears down.
“You can’t bother Chloe,” Gavin said sternly. “No, Dutch.”
I had the sense that Dutch was bewildered that he was being disciplined when there was a cat right there who needed chasing.
Chloe was arching her back and her tail had gotten very thick, and now she stared at Dutch, her lips pulled back.
Some cats play and some do not and Chloe did not. I decided to ignore her.
“Chloe can take care of herself, she’s not like Mike. But when she has her kittens, your dogs better behave,” Sylvia said crossly. She had smoke coming out of her mouth when she talked, and eventually I would learn that the burning thing in her hand was called a “cigarette.”
The people settled into chairs outside by the pool. Sylvia drank from a tall container full of ice, and Taylor and Gavin held glasses with dark liquid in them. All of them emitted a similar scent.
“Wait, did you say ‘not like Mike’?” Taylor asked. “Mike?”
“He used to hide under the bed when I vacuumed,” Sylvia said.
“I think I’m missing something,” Taylor said. “Isn’t Mike your boyfriend?”
“No, Mike the cat. Different Mike. Mike’s history,” Sylvia stated emphatically, waving her cigarette. “Good riddance.”
“Oh? What happened with Mike, Mom?” Gavin asked.
“He got hit by a car.”
“What?” Taylor blurted, sounding distressed.
“No, I know what happened with the cat.” Gavin laughed. “I mean with Mike the man. I thought you two were talking about getting married.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” Sylvia said, taking a long drink. Taylor and Gavin exchanged glances. “I don’t mean the good kind, either. Gets mean.”
Dutch settled down with a groan, distressed that Chloe was sitting there right in front of us licking her paw.
“We really appreciate you taking care of Bella and Dutch, Sylvia,” Taylor said after a long pause. We both glanced up at our names. Chloe, having laid down the law, strolled loftily away.
“I don’t mind. Could be worse. Remember that biker gang your sister brought over?” Sylvia asked Gavin.
“I don’t know if it was a gang, exactly,” Gavin observed mildly.
“So her boyfriend moves in,” Sylvia told Taylor, “just temporary because his trailer exploded, which was good because it destroyed all the evidence, and then he’s got a cousin and I don’t know who all else, a million tattoos. Mike was terrified the whole while, under the bed, and at some point I had to say if the cops get called one more time, so they left and your sister didn’t talk to me for six months until she called from some place in Canada to ask if she was adopted.”
Taylor stood up. “Anyone else need a refresher?”
“I think, Mom, to qualify as a biker gang at least one of them has to have a motorcycle,” Gavin said as he held out his glass.
“Whatever.” Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t speak Spanish.”
The next morning Taylor and Gavin were up just after dawn, putting their suitcase in the car, so I knew we would be leaving. But it didn’t work out that way. They sat down with us by the pool. “Guys, this is going to be tough, but we’re leaving for a while. Just half a year, but we will miss you so, so much,” Taylor told us. “We’ll be back in the fall.”
“I love you both,” Gavin whispered. He put his arms around Dutch and Dutch leaned into the hug.
I did not understand the words but the tone reminded me of the last time I’d seen Lucas, and it struck me I might know what was going on. Both men kissed me and petted me and Gavin was weeping, but when they went to the gate they blocked Dutch from accompanying them.
I didn’t try to follow. I knew there would be no car ride for us.
When the car drove away, its sounds fading, Dutch cried, reaching out with a paw and scratching the wooden gate. I could feel his distress, but I had learned that people are not as reliable as a dog would like. They went places, sometimes for long periods of time, or entrusted their canines to the care of other people. Dutch could scratch and cry all he wanted, but that would not bring back Gavin and Taylor. If he wanted them, he would have to go find them, just as I was making my way back to my Lucas.
I thought about the time that Dutch saw a cat and nearly pulled Gavin over, how the leash fell from his hand. Sylvia was much smaller than Gavin—when she pushed Dutch’s head away from a plate of food she placed next to her on her chair, she could barely move him. I knew that when we went for a walk with her, I could simply strain on my leash and yank it out of her hands and I would be free.
I could not feel Lucas, but I had a sense of the direction Gavin and Taylor had taken. I would go that way until I could smell the collection of odors that was the town where I lived, and then I would turn and follow my nose.
Next walk. I would Go Home the next time Sylvia took us on a walk.
Twenty
Sylvia did not take us for walks. We did Do Your Business in the sad tangle of weeds and plants along the back fence, and were never allowed to leave the yard. Dutch didn’t seem to mind—he spent a lot of time sitting at the gate, waiting patiently. When he wasn’t standing sentry there, he would lie in an oval of shadow under a wooden table, little flies pestering his mouth.
With no walks and no slide, I did not know what to do. I felt like a bad dog. I needed to do Go Home, and I was no longer certain how to do that.
Sylvia liked to lie next to the pool every day and rest in the sun. She sucked her cigarettes and talked on the phone and drank her drinks. I had my own spot in the shade under the awning. Chloe the cat rarely made an appearance in the heat of the day, but when she did she made a point of completely ignoring Dutch. I left her alone, noting that as she sashayed around the edge of the pool she was spending more and more time gazing at me. I was not at all surprised when she finally came over to sniff at my face. I wagged, but did not try to play with her. Dutch watched Chloe intently, but she had smacked him on the nose with her claw when he trapped her under a chair, which seemed to surprise him. Dutch obviously didn’t understand that while we were both superior to cats, it’s smarter to just leave them alone.
When the sun slipped down in the sky, Sylvia would wake up and let us inside but not Chloe, who would come and go not like a good dog but whenever she felt like it, mewing presumptuously at the door to be allowed inside.
Sylvia rarely had company. The first person we ever saw was a man, heavy and short and smelling like tangy food and a much stronger smoke than the one that clung to Sylvia. Dutch and I both pressed at the front door when Sylvia opened it.
“Hi, honey,” murmured the man we would learn was named Mike. He carried flowers.
The flowers were put in a jar on the table, filling the house with their fragrance, and the two humans went to bed before sundown. Sylvia forgot to feed us. Dutch paced in the kitchen, sniffing along the floor, checking his bowl over and over, but I curled up to sleep. I had been hungry before. Dutch nosed me and I wagged, but
I had no way of letting him know that things would be all right.
Dutch was part of my pack and I knew he was distressed. He missed Gavin and Taylor. He was hungry and did not understand why we were living with Sylvia and he was upset to share the backyard with a cat.
Mike and Sylvia liked to have loud conversations. The anger in their voices frightened Dutch and me. We sniffed each other and yawned and paced while it was going on.
We were especially frightened the time Sylvia picked up her glass and threw it at the wall, where it shattered loudly, the sharp, chemical Sylvia-smell running down the walls. We lowered our heads, feeling like bad dogs, and I saw Chloe streak down the back hallway. “You told me you paid it!” Sylvia shouted.
“I can’t pay if I don’t got any money, you stupid cow.”
“You lied to me!”
“To get you to shut up! You’re always talking, you know that, Sylvia, you just never stop moving your damn lips.”
“So now what, they send the repo man for my car?” Sylvia put her hands on her hips.
“They’re not going to repo that piece of junk,” Mike declared dismissively.
I remembered when a man came to see Mom, and she was angry and she hit him and he crawled out the front door. This was an even louder fight, and I wondered if Sylvia would now hurt Mike and make him leave. Instead, though, Mike crossed the floor with his fist raised. There was a dull sound and Sylvia gasped. She cried out when he pushed her against the table, the now-dead flowers toppling and sour water draining off the table and sopping the carpet.
I felt that to be a good dog I needed to do No Barks, but everything was too bewildering for Dutch, who snarled and barked. Mike grabbed Sylvia’s arms exactly the same way the crawling man grabbed Mom. “Stop it!” she shrieked.
Sylvia’s distress and Mike’s fury galvanized me and now I barked, too, and Dutch lunged, snapping his jaws in the air right in front of Mike’s pants. Mike let go of Sylvia and fell back, knocking over a chair. We both kept barking.
“Jesus! Get the goddamn dogs off of me!”
“Try it. Try to hit me,” Sylvia replied tauntingly.
“You know what? I don’t need this. I don’t need you.”
Dutch and I did not know what to do now. This was unfamiliar to both of us, the way we were threatening a human. We both stopped barking but Dutch was tense, growling, his lips back from his fangs, and I thought he might bite this man.
“Gonna sue you for all you got,” Mike said.
“Oh yeah? Well good luck getting anything because you took all my money!”
“Kill you, Bella,” he muttered. He walked heavily toward the door, staggering a little.
“That one’s Dutch, you moron.”
Having heard both our names, Dutch and I looked at Sylvia in confusion. Mike pushed the front door open and stumbled out into the front yard.
“Good dogs,” Sylvia praised. We wagged with relief and were grateful when she gave us some meat from the refrigerator. Then she walked around her house, taking clothing and other items that smelled like Mike, opening the front door, and throwing the things outside. She remembered to feed us, but that night she fell down and slept on the floor in front of a chair in the living room. She smelled ill to me, and I lay pressed up against her, hoping I could provide her with some comfort. As I lay there, I thought about learning Go Home and Do Your Business. Lucas would do and say the same thing over and over. A dog was supposed to learn when things were repeated. On this day, I learned that when men were bad to women, the man would have to leave. I also now understood that, as upsetting as it was, a good dog should growl and snap when a bad man was hurting a woman.
Chloe had fled into Sylvia’s room and did not come out, and a few days later I found out why when she suddenly was lying with some tiny kittens in her bed. The smell of milk burst from her and filled the room. Dutch, naturally, wanted to investigate, slinking into the bedroom and padding over to the cat bed with his tail stiff and his ears alert. Chloe hissed so fiercely that he thought better of it. When I cautiously approached, though, sniffing the new cats, Chloe did not react, just watched me with unwinking eyes. They were so bitty, making barely audible sounds as they pressed up against Chloe.
Their scent, and the flow of milk from Chloe’s teats, was completely familiar. I instantly was taken back to the den, where I had kitten siblings and a Mother Cat. Then Lucas came to get me and I lived with him and slept in his bed, and we would feed the cats.
I missed Lucas so much in that moment that I went to the backyard and sat at the gate. I needed Lucas to come get me, though I could no longer feel him, or smell the town that was home. After a time, Dutch seemed to know what I was doing, and came and sat next to me. We sniffed each other, but could offer no comfort, because we each had a void only a person could fill. We did Sit to be good dogs.
The two of us waited for people who never arrived.
* * *
When the little kittens started scampering around, Dutch, of course, wanted to chase them. This upset Sylvia, who shouted at him and then put him on a leash, not for a walk but all the time, tying the rope to things in the backyard so that he could not move around much. The kittens learned that when Dutch was affixed to a chair by the table in the backyard they could play, but they knew how far that leash stretched and would not venture within reach. Dutch would lie in the pool of shadow under the table, gloomily watching them frolic.
I was not on a leash. “Be gentle, Bella,” Sylvia would say whenever one of the kittens would launch an attack on me. I did not know what the words meant but I figured she was saying my name because I was playing with the kittens. They were so little they barely weighed anything at all. I was very careful not to swipe them too roughly with my paw or to close my jaws on their tiny, frail bodies. Tussling with them brought back fond memories of Big Kitten on the trail, and I missed her and hoped she was taking care of herself. Big Kitten was the largest cat I had ever met, and these seemed like the smallest.
When they weren’t jumping at me, the kitties were chasing and wrestling each other. They moved in bursts of energy, stopping just as suddenly, climbing all over in a constant game that didn’t make any sense to a dog.
The days were hot. Sylvia went into her pool often, and on some occasions she would stay in the house with all the doors shut so that we couldn’t smell if she was even still in there. A big machine hanging from her window made a loud noise and dripped cool water.
The kittens ignored the heat, but it exhausted me. I now regretted I hadn’t been more firm with them, because whenever I decided to take a nap, they felt the time was perfect to climb on me with their tiny sharp claws.
They were much bigger now, but still very small. Chloe had stopped giving them milk, and they were much less cautious about Dutch. They clearly wanted to understand the dog on the rope, and Chloe had stopped correcting them whenever they strayed closer to the male dog. I was reminded of how my mother wouldn’t let any of her litter leave the den, how when they got older, my kitten siblings were less and less likely to respect her boundaries.
Sylvia had received a box from a man at her front door and had carried it out to the yard so she could sip from her drink while she opened it. She took the contents with her into the house but left the box sitting on its side on a bench by the pool. The kittens were absolutely thrilled with the box, launching themselves up into it and vanishing inside. Most of the kittens were in there but the one I thought of as Brave Kitten, a black male slightly larger than the others, was testing the limits of Dutch’s leash.
And Dutch was paying attention. He was no longer lying down; he had shaken himself and was now sitting, watching Brave Kitten approach. The little cat would skitter sideways, then turn and walk slowly and carefully closer to Dutch, then sit and lick himself.
When Dutch charged he had a low growl in his throat and his tail was wagging. He got to the end of his rope and the chair it was tied to toppled and he kept going. He was being a bad dog! Bra
ve Kitten bolted across the yard, obviously terrified. Dutch pursued and the chair dragged behind him, right toward the box full of kittens on the bench. Brave Kitten veered and when Dutch changed course the chair he was pulling slammed into the bench by the pool and the box tumbled into the water.
Hung up with the tangle of the chair and the bench slowing him down, Dutch barked. Brave Kitten disappeared around the corner of the house.
The box with the kittens in it was floating, open end up, in the middle of the pool.
* * *
The kittens were mewing in distress; I could hear them in the box, which was shaking in the water—they were clearly climbing all over each other inside the thing. Their keening instantly drew Chloe, who came running at the pitiful wails. Dutch was hung up on one side of the pool, his head down, though he perked up as Chloe flashed past him. She half-circled the water, stopping when she came close to the tangle that was the rope and the chair and the dog, and reversing back the other way. Chloe made a fearful noise—a small, tight cry. Her kittens were in danger, but she seemed afraid to go in after them.
A little head popped up at the edge of the box, falling back down inside. They were trying to get out but that was not what they should do, because then they would be in the water. Cats should not go into the pool. Even Big Kitten was afraid to swim!
I was a good dog who had learned No Barks but I barked now, urgently. We needed a person!
After I barked both Dutch and I looked at the big glass doors, but Sylvia did not come outside. The machine hummed and dripped, the kittens cried, and the box tilted to one side as they moved around within it.
Then a small gray kitty appeared at the top of the box, clinging to the edge, looking terrified. She clambered for purchase and the box tipped wildly, spilling her into the pool. She went under, and then popped up, sputtering and trying to swim, batting her front paws at the surface. Chloe howled again.
I dove in. The splash swept over the top of the little kitty’s head, but I swam with strong strokes and was there in an instant. I gently snagged her behind her neck with my front teeth, holding her up into the air, and turned back to the edge of the pool, where Chloe was waiting anxiously. I placed the kitten onto the cement and Chloe began licking her.