Рита Браун - Sneaky Pie For President

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.

Sitting 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.”

“I heard the humans say the Wildlife Department has released wolves down in southwestern Virginia. Don’t know if it’s true, but they’re worried. Sooner or later those wolves will reach us.”

“Won’t be a ground nester left, or a rabbit,” the bird said and sighed. The sunlight caught her feathers, so she glowed almost a neon yellow. “Why’d the humans do that? Release vicious wolves into their habitat?”