Рита Браун - Sneaky Pie For President

The Jack Russell stopped, twitched her white mustache. “I thought you liked my singing.”

Tucker was diplomatic: “Uh, perhaps less forcefully and less of it.”

“Tally, you sound like a scalded dog.” Pewter was less polite.

“Pewter, your nose is always out of joint.” Tally half closed her eyes before lunging for the cat’s tail.

The gray cat easily avoided this. “You might be fast in a straight line, half pint, but you will never have the fresh moves of a feline.”

As they climbed the hill, seemingly small in spring but it could send a car sliding backward in winter, they continued to chat.

“Did you watch the news this morning?” Sneaky asked Tucker.

“I heard it. Why? I mean, I was half asleep. It seemed boring.”

“I did,” Tally volunteered. “I watched the news. I was waiting to see if it would rain.”

“I know you saw it. You sat next to me on the chair.” Sneaky did love the little dog, silly though she might be.

“So why do you want to know if Tucker saw it?” asked Tally.

“Corgis have measured judgment.”

Tally didn’t really know what that meant, so she said nothing. Still, she was ready to disagree, in case she was being insulted.

Pewter sniffed. “The usual song and dance. I mean, even when these old white and now black guys quit running, they don’t shut up. I expect when more women run for office they’ll blab all day, too. They never shut up.” Pewter herself could go on and on at times.

“Well, what struck me was what these men do to their wives and families.” Sneaky felt the sun on her fur. It felt good. “They sacrifice their offspring to their careers.”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s political or corporate life, does it?” Pewter flicked her tail to the left, as Tally was on her right. “Humans have screwy priorities.”

“I think it’s worse in politics because the wives have to pretend to agree with their husbands and the children have to shut up.” Sneaky called up memories of First Ladies past.

“Those women have to know what they’re getting into,” Tally sensibly answered.

“I’m not sure anyone really knows how bad it is,” Sneaky replied. “But you are right. The wife is an adult. It’s the children I feel sorry for. And when they’re in the spotlight at that gawky stage, it must be painful for them.”

“Humans do go through an ugly phase.” Tucker laughed. “We don’t, ever notice?”

“The horses do,” Tally blurted out.

“Tally, shut up. What if they hear you?” Sneaky reprimanded the dog, for horses grazed nearby in various pastures.

Jones, the thirty-five-year-old Thoroughbred, lifted his head, mouth full of grass, then returned to grazing. That Jack Russell’s voice could cut glass. The old fellow was a friend to all.

“Well, they do,” Tally whispered. “Some horses look every bit as bad as some humans in their teens.”

“Be careful,” said Sneaky. “We wouldn’t want to damage anyone’s self-esteem. Self-consciousness never did anyone any good,” the tiger wisely added. “But what got me thinking about this is that Bible-thumper who thinks people will marry animals. There’s a whole segment of that strange thinking in one political party, not that the other party doesn’t have some strange ideas, but at least they don’t focus on sex.”

“Sex with animals!” Tally screamed, and ran in circles.

“Tally, you need to be spayed. Honest to God.” Pewter wanted to knock the dog sideways.

“Calm down, Tally, calm down.” Tucker, who could best pacify the canine, did just that. “No one is going to sleep with you.”

“I would die. I would absolutely, positively die.” The little dog rolled her eyes, the whites showing.

“Folks like him always swear they are running for your children’s future and their children’s future. If you’re doing it for children, why are they ignoring the masses of human children living in poverty? The numbers are disgraceful and shocking.” Sneaky’s voice was clear.

“They’re all hypocrites,” declared Pewter, the realist, some might say cynic. The fat gray cat moved closer to Sneaky.

“You’re right,” said Sneaky. “They all lie. They say they care about their marriage, their children, but it’s all about them. Egotism. They imagine they have a higher calling than being a husband and a father. Selfish. Can you believe how deluded they are?”

“Yes!” barked Tally quickly. “And my voice is the only one amongst us that counts, since all three of you are spayed. So the solution to this kind of abandonment of family is to neuter the humans who want to run for public office.”

“Excellent idea!” Sneaky agreed. “It will focus the men and calm the women. You are so right, Tally. I will definitely add that to my campaign platform: Spay or neuter your pols.”

Training Humans

Opened on the kitchen table, The Wall Street Journal caught the eye of both Sneaky and Pewter, both of whom had jumped on the kitchen table as soon as their human walked outside.

The forbidden ever entices.

“Hey.” Pewter clawed a newspaper photograph of a dog’s paw, bigger than her own.

The photograph covered nearly one quarter of the page.

“National Disaster Search Dog Foundation,” Sneaky read out loud. “What a good ad. Pewter, think of how many humans search-and-rescue dogs have saved in the last few years.”

“Well, the ad says it takes ten thousand dollars to train one dog. Do you think humans have at least enough good sense to give to the foundation?”

“Let’s hope so.” The tiger cat sat on the effective ad.

Pewter’s brilliant green eyes opened wide. “It’s in people’s self-interest to take care of the animals trained to help them. There are Seeing Eye dogs, dogs that hear for people, dogs that save people from attack. Dogs do a lot of work, I’ve got to admit. Of course, cats have saved people, too. Remember Homer, that cat who saved his human from an intruder standing right at the foot of her bed? And Homer’s not the only one. We cats fend off animals lots bigger than we are. I personally can be ferocious.”

“You’re scaring me,” Sneaky cracked.

“But back to this National Disaster Search Dog Foundation. And, of course, cats are superior. It’s just the two of us, I can speak frankly. For one thing, dogs can barely read. But you must give it to them, Pewter: They do these jobs better than we could.”

“It’s the digging. Tally and Tucker can ruin Mom’s garden in a heartbeat. Dogs can dig through rubble, and the big ones can pull people to safety. It is impressive.” She then lowered herself closer to the tabletop. “Did those two twits hear me?”

“No, they’re asleep.”

“Whew. There’d be no living with them.” Pewter exhaled.

“There’s no living with them now.”

They both laughed.

“They brag that their noses are so much better than ours. If their noses are so great, why are they always smelling the most disgusting things? We have good noses. I can smell anything that Tally and Tucker can smell—not that I’d want to.” Pewter put her paw on the ad paw, and it fit just inside the photo paw.

“Well, are their noses better, or do they smell scent faster?” asked Sneaky. “Think about how quickly foxes react. Can they smell us before we smell them?”

“No. Foxes really throw off, maybe even control, their odor, that odor, like a sweet skunk.” Pewter thought about this. “No, I don’t think foxes’ senses are better than ours or the domesticated dogs’, either.”