Рита Браун - Sneaky Pie For President

“Then why are they always ahead of us, and particularly ahead of the Can Opener?” Sneaky had watched her human try to take photographs of foxes time and time again. The foxes would invariably duck into their dens or just motor on.

“Maybe they do pick up scent before the rest of us. Foxes are uncanny.” Pewter respected the beautiful creatures.

“I better talk to them.” Sneaky put her paw on top of Pewter’s.

“This photo, you can see the trimmed claws.” She removed her paw so Sneaky could put her own inside the photo.

“Be easier if dogs had retractable claws like us. But since dogs don’t climb trees, they don’t need them. Then again, gray foxes climb trees, and they don’t have retractable nails.”

“Neither does C.O., and she can climb trees,” Pewter noted. “I wonder why she doesn’t climb trees more. Why don’t humans climb trees more?”

Sneaky ignored the question. “I’m thinking of those nail colors, remember? The time she painted her nails purple? Painted her toes, too. Why would any living creature want purple nails and toes?” Sneaky wrinkled her nose. “So strange.”

“Maybe she’s color-blind.”

“Wouldn’t we know?” Sneaky stood up.

“How would we know?”

“Perhaps you’re right, then,” said Sneaky. “She must be color-blind. Purple nails.” The tiger cat listened to the snoring of the two dogs. “Those two swear they don’t snore.”

“Everyone who snores does that. It’s odd.” Pewter returned her attention to the ad. Those rescue dogs were genuine heroes. “Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to try to search for suffering people? Or animals? You can smell fear.”

“Yes, you can, but I bet what they really get a nose full of is blood.” The tiger pondered this. “Suffering cuts across all species. Remember when our colt had a heart attack, dropped, and thrashed around? Two years old and such conformation. Dead in five minutes. You never know.”

“Never forget that. Here today. Gone tomorrow.” Pewter half smiled.

“Pewter.”

“Well, we all have to go sometime. Might as well accept it and live life, and do whatever you want to do. No point dwelling on bad news. Now, see, that’s what I really don’t understand. The TV, the radio in the truck, the Internet—all that jabbering, and most of it bad news. X shot Y. A building collapses in Cairo. Hundreds of cows freeze to death in Europe. A terrible storm sends a big wave that wipes out everything in its path.”

“That was an earthquake under the ocean,” Sneaky corrected her.

“Doesn’t matter. It was a total disaster by anyone’s definition.”

Sneaky sighed before getting up. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do about stuff like that, but there’s still something we can do about laws, the way people treat us, and the way they treat one another.”

Pewter started to disagree, then she too rose on all four feet. “I am less concerned about that than about what Tally will do to get even.”

“She’s already forgotten it.” Sneaky jumped on a painted kitchen chair and then to the old wooden floor. “She has the attention span of a three-year-old child.”

“Hope you’re right.” Pewter said under her breath as they tiptoed past the two dogs snoring on their sides.

“Ever notice how different dog personalities are, depending on breed?”

“Sneaky, why ever would I waste my precious time thinking about dogs?” Pewter affected a grand air.

“Because you live with two of them.”

“I live with grasshoppers, too, but I don’t dwell on them. Dogs do what they’re told, eat, sleep, chase things, and try to hump everything.”

“Unneutered males. You’re being unfair.”

Pewter, sashaying along, did not immediately reply, then: “Okay, they’re better than grasshoppers, but really, they are a lower life-form.”

“That’s what some humans think about us.”

“Well, why should I care what any human thinks? How much credibility do they have? No matter how cranky, no cat ever started a world war.”

“No cat lives outside its nature. They do,” Sneaky said.

“What’s that got to do with killing millions and millions of people, to say nothing of the cats, dogs, horses, birds, you name it, that get in the way of the humans’ guns? Mother quotes statistics about how many people were killed in this war and that war, but she never quotes how many people starved or died of disease, and not once has she given figures for the animals, and how they suffered and died.” Pewter warmed to her subject.

“She did tell us that one and a half million horses and mules died in the War Between the States.” Sneaky offered a mild defense.

“I suppose that’s a start. Look, you and I know that dogs have owners, cats have staff. Our dear Can Opener may not know she’s staff, but she performs all those functions.” Pewter laughed as she headed straight for the Can Opener, sitting at her desk.

Sneaky laughed, then she, too, walked into the office, books piled in stacks on the floor, on shelves, papers also stacked neatly.

“Some of these books are really old.” Pewter stopped to inhale. “You can smell the dust. The paper is different from current paper, you know.”

“She’s got enough of them.” Sneaky leapt onto the desk, where one pile of papers had the human’s full attention.

Pewter also hopped up. Outside the window, low clouds made the night even darker, as not one star could peep through.

“It’s not healthy to work at night,” Pewter announced, then grabbed the pencil right out of her hand.

“Hey!”

“You will ruin your eyes.” Pewter’s green eyes looked directly into deep brown ones.

“Come on, Pewter. I need my pencil.”

Taking the pencil back, the human started scribbling anew.

“You really ought to listen. Your eyes are meant for daylight. Artificial lighting isn’t good for your eyes. You should clean up and go to bed. If you leave these papers, I’ll take care of them.”

“Pewter, you’ll push them all on the floor.” Sneaky now sat on the left side of the person.

“Exactly. Paperwork makes her mental.” The gray cat grabbed the pencil again.

“Cat.”

“Flatface.” Pewter pulled harder at the pencil.

The C.O. noted the time, 9:30 P.M., on the old mantel clock. “It’s too late. I can’t think anymore.”

“Go to bed.” Sneaky chimed in with Pewter.

So the human put down the pencil, stood up, cut the lights, and left the room.

“You just have to know how to train them.” Pewter whacked the pencil so it skidded off the desk.

A Hoot

A night chorus of peepers, bullfrogs, and Whip-poor-wills serenaded a soft spring night. The nocturnal Chuck-will’s-widow also sang out in its throaty “chuck.”

Sneaky Pie, out for a solitary prowl, sat at the opened door to the stable and listened to the night music. Until recently Chuck-will’s-widow were found farther south, but the weather has changed enough so that birds and some mammals not commonly seen before 2000 now traveled to Virginia. Last summer, Sneaky saw a Green Kingfisher down by the pond. The Belted Kingfishers lived there, too, their eggs safe at the back of a tunnel in the pond bank. Sneaky liked kingfishers, as she liked the raptors, probably because, like herself, they were meat eaters and therefore hunters.

Muskrats lived in the pond, and beavers built a lodge farther down the Rockfish River. Sneaky admired how hard beavers worked, but she didn’t much like them. The muskrats, on the other hand, proved good company.