Stay!: Keeper's Story
Yes, I like to think that it was framed: encased in glass, perhaps with a small engraved label saying PAL. Perhaps there would be dates, indicating my tenure. It would no doubt hang on the wall near the piano.
Thinking about it, I confess that I choked up a bit. I visualized the photographer there in the apartment, maybe with some friends over for dinner. Afterward, during coffee, someone would move to the piano and let his fingers drift into some old show tune. Then his eye would catch the newly framed memento on the wall. The label, engraved PAL. And the small license tag (perhaps bronzed now) fastened meticulously onto a piece of velvet.
The photographer would tell my story, and the pianist would play softly in the background. There would likely be moist eyes and a moment of silence.
I might, I supposed, even become the lyrics of a song. Gentle Pal, O dog supreme—
Where are you now? What might have been?
Well, it didn't rhyme exactly. Maybe if I changed the first line to "O dog so clean." If "been" were pronounced the British way...
No. Maybe "O dog, my Pal through thick or thin—"
Well! That was it, of course. Sometimes, through careful revision, a true poet finds his way to the perfect combination of words.
"I've made an appointment with the vet," Emily's mother was saying. "He has to have a rabies shot before we can get the license."
Of course she didn't know that I had already had all my shots. But I didn't care. I'd have them again—and again and again—if it meant that I would be licensed, I would be legal, I would be theirs.
I bounded toward the stairs, intending to tell the news to Bert and Ernie, who would inevitably be found on Emily's bed, posing as pillows. Never the closest of buddies, we nonetheless did communicate from time to time. Pausing on the staircase, where I was still in full view of the inhabitants of the living room, Emily and her mother, I assumed a proud and regal pose, a pose of gratitude. Observe the dog! He's yours! You're his!
What a glorious day this is!
They paid no attention of course, because my poetry was inaudible to humans. But Emily did glance up, saw me posing there, and smiled. So I continued up the stairs.
Bert and Ernie were, as I had known they would be, curled up together, asleep on Emily's bed. I nosed them awake. They both yawned and looked at me with sleepy impatience.
"Whaaaaat?" they asked. "What do you waaaant?" The cats had a habit of speaking in concert, and their voices were reedy whines, very unlike the assertive, imperious way a dog speaks.
"I'm to be licensed," I announced proudly, and with gruff humility.
Bert yawned again, and stretched. Ernie licked his paws fastidiously.
"Whhhhy?" they asked.
"Well, of course you wouldn't understand. Cats don't have to be licensed. But when a dog is chosen by a family—when a family commits itself to the lifelong care of a dog—"
Bert and Ernie looked at each other and yawned in unison. Bert began to tend his whiskers. Ernie languidly clenched and unclenched his paws, making claws appear and disappear in a shockingly exhibitionistic way. Through slitted eyes he examined each claw, assessing its beauty. It was clear that they were both jealous of me.
"—then the dog receives a license. It's a sort of public statement. An emblem," I continued, pretending not to notice that they were ignoring me out of spiteful envy.
"A license," they chorused in their smirking, pompous voices.
"I composed a poem for the occasion," I told them, and recited it dramatically. Observe the dog! He's yours! You're his!
What a glorious day this is!
Bert gave a throaty chuckle. "Poetic license?" he suggested, and Ernie snickered.
"Doggerel," Ernie commented cruelly.
Then they stretched themselves out again, entwined around each other. Their eyes became slits once more. Ignoring my presence, they went back to sleep.
Disgruntled, I returned to the living room, allowed Emily to rub behind my ears, and finally settled down, though I indulged in a few murderous fantasies about cats before I slept.
A frightening coincidence occurred when I was taken the next day to the vet. I recognized the building and the office as the same one that I had visited before, when I had been in residence with the photographer. I remembered sitting miserably on the same metal table, long ago, to receive the necessary inoculations that are part of a well-bred dog's life.
So I began, on entering the office, to tremble. My fear was not about injections, which I knew already were almost painless, but that I would be recognized. I sat huddled and shaking, but trying desperately to maintain my smile, because I knew that the changed facial expression would be my salvation. It was the much-photographed sneer that had been my hallmark. Without it, I could perhaps pass as a different dog.
I also tried to keep my unruly tail lowered, since its magnificence could give me away as well. It was not difficult, since I was nervous, and a frightened tail tends to stay limp of its own volition.
It worked. Although somewhere in the filing cabinets of that clinical setting there were records of a dog named Pal, no one made the connection. I became a whole new folder under the new name of Keeper.
Then, after Emily and her mother patted my head sympathetically, I was given a rabies shot and several others that would ensure the acquisition of a license. Sure enough, within a few days the meaningful little metal tag arrived and was clipped to a collar along with a separate tag bearing my name. For the first time I did not object to a collar. I had a home now, and a family, and the symbolic jingle-jangle of my tags reminded everyone, including the cats, of my status.
The cats winced when I walked past, pretending that their delicate ears were pained by my jingling. But I knew it was only their pride that suffered. They had no tags themselves to proclaim their standing. They resorted to sarcasm, always the weapon of lesser creatures.
"Hot diggety dog," they began to say in haughty, sarcastic voices as I jingled past. I thought it was unworthy of them and did not lower myself to give a reply.
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Chapter 13
TIME PASSED AND I SETTLED COMFORTABLY into the peaceful life of a child's pet and a family member. I slept on the floor beside Emily's bed and licked her face to wake her each morning, ignoring the preening and stretching of Bert and Emie, who occupied one of the pillows.