I tried desperately to think what to do.
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Chapter 14
OH, IF ONLY A DOG COULD CONVERSE in human speech! Life would be so much easier. If we could write letters, send e-mail, pick up a telephone and communicate! Instead, when told, "Speak!" we put forth an abbreviated "Woof," which garners us a pat on the head and a biscuit.
I needed no praise or biscuits now. I needed information.
Pretending to be napping on the rug, I spent most of the day trying to figure out a way to find Wispy. I was quite certain it had been she in the commercial. No other dog in the world could be so much like me in mannerisms and yet at the same time have that familiar patch of discolored fur, that particular bend to the tail.
The only way was the one I did not want to undertake. I felt that by using my canine sense of direction, smell, and memory, I could very probably find my way back to the city where I had lived. It would take time, and I would have to make my way again through the woods, foraging, to reach the golf course from which I had fled. From there it would be even more difficult, but I know there have been cases where lesser dogs than I have followed car routes for many miles.
In the city, I could make my way to the photographer again. I knew that in his keeping I would find my sister, though how she had achieved the role as my replacement was beyond my powers of imagination.
But to make such a journey would mean leaving the little farmhouse and the family—even the cats—that I had come to love and call mine. What kind of Keeper would I be if I abandoned those dear ones who had taken me in?
There were moral questions involved.
I tossed and turned on the rug, groaning aloud as I wrestled with my options. What is the answer? What is the way?
To leave? Remain? To go? To ...
I was torn not only with indecision but with the frustrations of a poet looking for the right word. Abide didn't rhyme at all, though it had the right meaning. Being a poet is so difficult.
Bert and Ernie, watching me from the windowsill, finally expressed their impatience with my moral and literary struggles, even though they didn't know the cause of my agony.
"Geeeez," they whined in unison. "How can we sleeeep, with you making so much noise?" Finally they rose, looked at me in disgust, and went back upstairs to their alternative napping place.
When Emily came home from school, she knelt beside the place where I still lay on the rug. "You didn't meet me on the road," she said in concern. "What's the matter, Keeper?"
I lifted my head and looked into her solemn, trusting eyes. Poor child! She had no idea that I was wrestling with the idea of leaving her. The realization made me groan anew.
"Mom!" Emily called. "Something's wrong with Keeper! He's groaning! I think he's sick!" Her voice was worried, and she stroked my head gently.
Her mother hurried into the kitchen and knelt beside Emily. It was a lovely moment, lying there surrounded by humans who cared for me. My eyes actually filled with tears at the sweetness of it.
Stay!: Keeper's Story
"Maybe he just has a cold," Emily's mother said. "His eyes are running. And he did sneeze this morning when he came in from the rain."
"But I think his stomach hurts, too," Emily said. "He was groaning a minute ago."
A plan began to form suddenly in my mind. Yes! I began to perceive a way in which I could find a route to my sister, and I would not have to survive in the woods, eating rabbit! It was suddenly quite clear to me what I must do.
I whimpered a little and rested my head uncomfortably on the bare floor.
Emily's mother rose and went to the refrigerator. "Let's see if he'll eat something," she suggested to Emily. "What does he like best? What would tempt him?"
"Not dogfood," Emily said. "He hates dogfood. Do we have any leftover macaroni and cheese? He loves macaroni and cheese."
Her mother looked at her suspiciously. "How do you know that?"
Emily blushed. "I fed him some, under the table," she confessed. "He really loved it."
Her mother sighed. But I could see, even from my reclining position with my half-closed, moist eyes, that she was removing the covered baking dish from the refrigerator.
"Should I put some in the microwave, do you think?" she asked Emily.
I groaned in reply. A dog doesn't need his food warmed. Cold macaroni and cheese was the finest treat I could imagine. I lifted my head and upped my ears slightly. I allowed my tail to thump pathetically against the floor.
"I don't think he cares," Emily said. "Just give it to him cold. See? He's looking better already."
I watched alertly while her mother scooped a lavish helping of macaroni and cheese into the bowl marked FIDO.
But as she set the bowl beside me, I remembered the plan that had come to me just a moment before. I remembered my sister. I knew that everything depended on my ability to withstand temptation at this moment.
It was excruciating. But with the bowl of macaroni within six inches of my mouth, with the smell of macaroni, and especially the smell of cheddar cheese, and a hint of Parmesan, permeating my nostrils, with wild desire palpitating in my very soul, I forced myself to turn away. It was perhaps my finest moment of renunciation. I groaned loudly, writhed a little, and placed my head miserably on the floor.
"That does it," said Emily's mother, and I could hear her lift the bowl and place it on the table. "He is sick. Put your raincoat back on, Emily. We're taking him to the vet."
She carried me to the car. I lay limp in her arms, as good an actor, I thought, as Lassie or Rin-Tin-Tin. I did feel a little guilty, deceiving them, but it was part of the plan that I hoped would serve us all well in the end.
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Chapter 15
EMILY'S MOTHER, LOOKING CONCERNED, lifted me gently to the familiar stainless steel table and laid my unresponsive body on the cold metal. Emily stood nearby, her nose level with the tabletop, watching me, her face worried. I remained limp, feigning serious illness. Feebly, I opened my eyes in order to ascertain that the veterinarian leaning over me was the same one who had treated me so long ago in my previous life as Pal. Sure enough, he was the same overweight, jolly man with rimless glasses that I remembered from the earlier days.
So it was time to act. I jostled the doctor's arm and the stethoscope aside and scrambled to an upright position. Quickly, before he could restrain me, I assumed the posture that I had affected in so many magazine photographs and television commercials: the studied, casual pose, head tilted, looking bored and above it all. Then slowly I lifted my upper lip. Majestically, I sneered.