Sneaky Pie for President (9 page)

“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.

The damp night air filled her nostrils with scent. Scent intensified at night.

She often wondered about each species’ gifts. What would it be like to possess the power and speed of a horse, the grace of a deer, the soaring ability of the eagle a mile up? What would it be like to be a tiny mouse gathering bits of wool, paper, and cotton to make a cozy nest? Sneaky wasn’t much for nests, but she admired the skill it took to build one, especially a big one, high up in a tree. Even squirrels’ nests, sloppy by a cat’s standards, took effort.

Sitting there thinking about how many animals—potential supporters in her campaign—lived just in Virginia, not to mention the entire fifty states, the cat felt overwhelmed by her mission.

Maybe Tally was right. Maybe Sneaky Pie should hand off her noble quest to man’s so-called Best Friend. But then she considered how ready most dogs were to appease authority. A leader needed to know when to compromise and when to fight, both intellectually and physically. A physical fight enlivened Sneaky; it focused her. You won or lost. The mouth battles never felt finished. Even if humans recognized how much Sneaky Pie had to offer them—in wisdom
and experience—she couldn’t imagine herself on a podium just going “blab blab blab.” She didn’t think those other candidates believed half of what they said, but when there were so many different types of people to woo, maybe the primary skill of a politician is being a convincing liar. The ability to effectively simulate sincerity might be the most important quality for a politician. She knew she couldn’t fake it. She wasn’t as indiscreet as Tally or as puffed up as Pewter. Sneaky called it as she saw it. An honest cat. Every time she thought of Pewter claiming to be descended from Bolling blood and therefore Pocahontas, she had to laugh. Poor Princess Poke. Married a good man, was carried to a strange land, died young.

Obviously Pewter was not going to die young, despite her genetics. Pewter crested ten and fudged about her age. Why, Sneaky had no idea. She herself was a mature cat, fourteen by her count, beyond the wildness of youth, although she could still chase a butterfly.

There was a rustle overhead; then the light click of claws grasping a beam caused her to lift her head to see.

“Any luck?” she called to the barn owl, who hooted back.

“Good hunting tonight. Usually is at the edge of a front. Everybody’s out getting food before the rains, although the rains are far off.” The owl fluffed her feathers, then smoothed them down. “Heard you’re causing a lot of talk.”

“I guess.”

“It’s an interesting quest you’ve embarked upon, a difficult one. But I fear our time may have passed.”

“What do you mean?” Sneaky climbed up the ladder, walked across the hayloft, stopped by the beam over the center aisle, where the owl perched.

“I’m thinking of the gods and goddesses. When people worshipped them, they also worshipped us because each god and goddess had an animal sacred to them. We were sacred to Athena. Hounds and deer attended Artemis. Every god or goddess had an animal friend. But now all that is gone: We’ve lost our mythological importance.”

“Well, the bald eagle is the symbol of the United States.”

“And I am tired of hearing about it,” hooted the owl. “Those two eagles on the Rockfish River are conceited beyond belief. What do they do? Sit in trees and catch fish. There’s no reason
they
should be the symbol of this country.”

“Perhaps.” Sneaky, naturally, thought a cat much better suited to the role. She imagined her face on a dollar bill.

“Now, if the humans had more sensibly selected an owl as their national symbol, they would be blessed by wisdom. But no, they chose a fish killer.” The barn owl let out a hoot of derision.

“It is strange,” said Sneaky. “France has a rooster,
England a bulldog, Russia a bear. So those people around the globe at least pay some attention to animals.”

“Oh, pussycat, they haven’t a clue. Although I do think the cock for France is just about perfect.” He chortled.

“Lions, leopards, tigers, wolves, boars—even pelicans were used on shields.” Sneaky liked the books on medieval life that her C.O. read incessantly.

“That was all a long time ago,” said the owl sorrowfully. “No, they have forgotten what they owe us, the courage and guidance we once gave them.”

“That’s why I am mounting my campaign: to restore good sense and dignity across all species.”

“I admire your grit. Don’t know much about your sense,” the owl said.

Sneaky took no offense. “We all know the Declaration of Independence. Even foxes know that.”

“Yes.”

“ ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ ”

The owl, in his sonorous voice, recited, “ ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government—’ ”

The two fell silent for a moment, then the tiger cat said, “The Declaration applies to us, too.”

“Oh, it’s about
people
, always
people
—and for that matter, it was only about white men.” The owl half closed his golden eyes for a moment.

“You’re right. As amazing as Mr. Jefferson was, he was a creature of his time. Just as we are creatures of our time.” Sneaky never failed to defend the long-dead redhead.

“True.”

“Were he with us today, he would see things a bit differently.”

“For one thing, Mr. Jefferson wouldn’t write the Declaration of Independence, he’d text it.” The owl laughed loudly.

“Oh, dear.” The cat grimaced. “Here’s what I think: He owned slaves, he owned animals, he liked cats—but I will set that aside for now. He sort of liked women, and he sort of didn’t. I mean, he loved his wife, lied about his mistress, both here and in Europe, but he thought women were lesser creatures. He didn’t believe they should vote or participate in public life.”