The 101 Dalmatians (3 page)

“Quite sure,” snapped Mr. Dearly. “Now please go away. You're upsetting Missis.”

And indeed Missis was upset. Even with the Dearlys there to protect her and her puppies, she was a little afraid of this tall woman with black-and-white hair who stared so hard. And that poor cat who had lost all those kittens! Never, never, would Missis forget that! (And one day she was to be glad that she remembered it.)

“How long will it be before the puppies are old enough to leave their mother?” asked Cruella. “In case I want to buy some.

“Seven or eight weeks,” said Mr. Dearly. “But there won't be any for sale.” Then he shut the cupboard door in Cruella's face, and Nanny Butler firmly showed her out of the house.

Nanny Cook was busy telephoning the Splendid Vet, but he was out on another case. His wife said she would tell him as soon as he came home and there was no need to worry—it sounded as if Missis was getting on very well.

She certainly was. There was now a fourth puppy. Missis washed it, and then Mr. Dearly dried it, while Mrs. Dearly gave Missis a drink of warm milk. Then the pup was put with the other three, in a basket placed where Missis could see it. Soon she had a fifth puppy. Then a sixth—and a seventh.

The night wore on. Eight puppies, nine puppies! Surely that would be all? Dalmatians do not often have more in their first family. Ten puppies! Eleven puppies!

Then the twelfth arrived, and it did not look like its brothers and sisters. The flesh showing through its white hair was not a healthy pink but a sickly yellow. And instead of kicking its little legs, it lay quite still. The Nannies, who were sitting just outside the cupboard, told Mr. and Mrs. Dearly that it had been born dead.

“But with so many, its mother will never miss it,” said Nanny Cook comfortingly.

Mr. Dearly held the tiny creature in the palm of his hand and looked at it sorrowfully.

“It isn't fair it should have no life at all,” said Mrs. Dearly with tears in her eyes.

Something he had once read came back to Mr. Dearly. He began to massage the puppy; then he tousled it gently in a towel. And suddenly there was a faint hint of pink around its nose—and then its whole little body was flushed with pink, beneath its snowy hair. Its legs moved! Its mouth opened! It was alive!

Mr. Dearly quickly put it close to Missis so that she could give it some milk at once, and it stayed there, feeding, until the next puppy arrived—for arrive it did. That made thirteen!

Shortly before dawn, the front doorbell rang. It was the Splendid Vet, who had been up all night saving the life of a dog that had been run over. By then all the puppies had been born, and Missis was giving breakfast to eight of them—all she could manage at one time.

“Excellent!” said the Splendid Vet. “A really magnificent family. And how is the father bearing up?”

The Dearlys felt guilty. They had not given Pongo a thought since the puppies had begun to arrive. He had been shut up in the kitchen. All night long he had paced backwards and forwards, and only once had he heard any news—when Nanny Cook had come down to make coffee and sandwiches. She had told him that Missis was doing well—but only as a joke, for she had no idea he would understand.

“Poor Pongo, we must have him up,” said Mrs. Dearly. But the Splendid Vet said mother dogs did not usually like to have father dogs around when puppies had just been born. At that moment there was a clatter of toenails on the polished floor of the hall—and upstairs, four at a time, came Pongo. Nanny Cook had just gone down to make some tea for the Splendid Vet, and the anxious father had streaked past her the minute she opened the kitchen door.

“Careful, Pongo!” said the Splendid Vet. “She may not want you.”

But Missis was weakly thumping her tail. “Go down and have your breakfast and a good sleep,” she said—but nobody except Pongo heard a sound. His eyes and his wildly wagging tail told her all he was feeling, his love for her and those eight fine pups enjoying their first breakfast. And those others, in the basket, waiting their turn—
how
many were there?

“It's a pity dogs can't count,” said Mrs. Dearly.

But Pongo could count perfectly. He went downstairs with his head high and a new light in his fine dark eyes. For he knew himself to be the proud father of fifteen.

“AND NOW,” said the Splendid Vet to the Dearlys, “you must get a foster mother,”

He explained that though Missis would do her best to feed fifteen puppies, doing so would make her terribly thin and tired. And the strong puppies would get more milk than the weak ones. The puppy Mr. Dearly had brought to life was very small and would need special care.

The largest pup of all had a black patch all over its ear and one side of its face. This is a bad fault in a Dalmatian—which should be born pure white, as Mr. Dearly had told Cruella de Vil. Some people
would
have drowned this patched pup, because it would never be valuable. But the Dearlys felt particularly fond of it because it had started life with a bit of bad luck. (And they liked being able to recognize it. Until the spots started to come through, some weeks later, the big puppy with the patch and the small, delicate puppy were the only ones who could be told apart from the others.)

The Splendid Vet said the foster mother would have to be some poor dog who had lost her own puppies but still had milk to give. He thought he could get such a dog. But as he wasn't sure, the Dearlys had better telephone all the Lost Dogs' Homes. And until the foster mother was found, they could help Missis by feeding the pups with a doll's feeding bottle or an old-fashioned fountain-pen filler.

Then the Splendid Vet went home for an hour's sleep before starting his day's work.

Nanny Cook got breakfast, and Nanny Butler took Pongo for a run. And Missis was persuaded to leave her family for a few minutes' walk. When she came back, Mrs. Dearly had tidied the cupboard. Missis gave the second lot of pups a meal, and then she and her family of fifteen had a glorious sleep. And Pongo, down in the kitchen, had a glorious sleep too, knowing that all was well.

As soon as the shops opened, Mrs. Dearly went out and bought a doll's feeding bottle and a fountain-pen filler. And then Mr. Dearly and the Nannies took turns at feeding puppies. Mrs. Dearly fancied this job herself but was busy telephoning, trying to find a foster mother. The Nannies were too fat to be comfortable in the cupboard, so soon Mr. Dearly got the feeding job all to himself and became very good at it and just a bit bossy. Of course he couldn't go to business, which was awkward as he had an important business deal on.

Luckily there was a telephone in the Dearlys' bedroom and it had a long cord to it. So Mr. Dearly was able to telephone while he was feeding the pups. There he was, in a dark cupboard with Missis, fifteen puppies, and the telephone. He nearly upset his important business deal by holding a pup to his ear and giving the telephone a drink of milk.

No sooner had Mr. Dearly put the telephone down than the Splendid Vet rang up to say he had not been able to find a foster mother. Neither had Mrs. Dearly, anywhere in London. She now started to ring up Lost Dogs' Homes outside London. It was late afternoon before she heard of a mother dog with some milk to give, nearly thirty miles from London. And this dog had only just been brought in and would have to be kept some days in case she was claimed.

Mr. Dearly put his head out of the cupboard. After being up all night and feeding pups all day, he was beginning to feel pretty tired, but he was determined to go on helping Missis until the foster mother arrived. “Why not go and see if you can borrow that dog?” he said. “Say we'll give it back if its owner turns up.”

So Mrs. Dearly got the car from the old stable at the back of the house and drove off hopefully. But when she got to the Dogs' Home she found that the mother dog had already been claimed. She was glad for the dog's sake, but terribly disappointed. She thought of poor Missis getting exhausted by too many puppies, and of Mr. Dearly, who might easily refuse to come out of the cupboard for a good night's sleep, and she began to think she never
would
find a foster mother.

It was now almost dark, a gloomy, wet October evening. It had been raining all afternoon, but Mrs. Dearly hadn't minded when she was feeling hopeful. Now, as she started back for London, the weather made her feel more and more depressed. And the rain got so heavy that the windscreen-wiper could hardly keep pace with it.

She was driving across a lonely stretch of common when she saw what looked like a bundle lying in the road ahead of her. She slowed down, and as she drew closer she saw that it was not a bundle but a dog. Instantly she thought it must have been run over. Dreading what she might find, she stopped the car and got out.

At first she thought the dog was dead, but as she bent down it struggled to its feet, showing no signs of injury. It was so plastered with mud that she could not see what kind of dog it was. What she
could
see, by the light from the car's headlights, was the poor creature's pitiful thinness. She spoke to it gently. Its drooping tail gave a feeble flick, then drooped again.

“I can't leave it here,” thought Mrs. Dearly. “Even if it hasn't been run over, it must be near starvation. Oh, dear!” With seventeen dogs at home already, she had no wish to take back a stray, but she knew she would never bring herself just to hand this poor thing in at a police station.

She patted it and tried to get it to follow her. It was willing to, but its legs were so wobbly that she picked it up and carried it. It felt like a sack of bones. And as she noticed this, she also noticed something else. Hurriedly she laid the dog on the seat of the car, on a rug, and turned on the light. Then she saw that this was a mother dog and that in spite of its starving condition it still had some milk to give.

She sprang into the car and drove as fast as she safely could. Quite soon she was in the London suburbs. She knew it would still take her some time to get home, because of the traffic, so she stopped at a little restaurant. Here the owner let her buy some milk and some cold meat and lent her his own dog's dishes. The starving dog ate and drank ravenously, then at once settled to sleep. The nice owner of the restaurant took back his dishes and wished Mrs. Dearly luck as she drove away.

She got home just as the Splendid Vet was arriving to see Missis and the puppies. He carried the stray dog in and down to the warm kitchen. After a careful examination he said he thought her thinness was due more to having had puppies than to long starvation and that, if she was fed well, the milk intended for her own puppies might continue. He guessed they had been taken away from her and she had got lost looking for them.

“She ought to have a bath,” said Nanny Cook, “or she'll give our puppies fleas.”

The Splendid Vet said a bath was a good idea, so the dog was carried into a little room which had been fitted up as a laundry. Nanny Cook got on with the bath as fast as she could because she was afraid Mr. Dearly might want to do the job himself. Mrs. Dearly had gone upstairs to tell him what was happening.

The stray seemed delighted with the warm water. She had just been covered with soap when Pongo came back from a walk with Nanny Butler and ran through the open door of the laundry.

“He won't hurt a lady,” said the Splendid Vet.

“I should hope not, when she's going to help nurse his puppies,” said Nanny Cook.

Pongo stood on his hind legs and kissed the wet dog on the nose, telling her how glad he was to see her and how grateful his wife would be. (But no human heard him.) The stray said, “Well, I'll do my best, but I can't promise anything.” (No human heard that, either.)

Just then Mr. Dearly came hurrying in to see the new arrival.

“What kind of dog is she?” he asked.

At that moment Nanny Cook began to rinse off the soap—and everyone gave a gasp. This dog was a Dalmatian too! But her spots, instead of being black, were brown—which in Dalmatians is called not “brown” but “liver.”

“Eighteen Dalmatians under one roof,” said Mr. Dearly gloatingly. “Couldn't be better.” (But it could, as he was one day to learn.)

Wet, the poor liver-spotted dog looked thinner than ever.

“We'll call her Perdita,” said Mrs. Dearly, and explained to the Nannies that this was after a character in Shakespeare.
“She
was lost. And the Latin word for lost is
perditus.”
Then she patted Pongo, who was looking particularly intelligent, and said anyone would think he understood. And indeed he did. For though he had very little Latin beyond
“Cave canem,”
he had, as a young dog, devoured Shakespeare (in a tasty leather binding).

Perdita was dried in front of the kitchen fire and given another meal. The Splendid Vet said she ought to start mothering puppies as soon as possible, to encourage her to provide more milk, so after she was quite dry and had taken a nap, two puppies were removed from the cupboard while Missis went out for a little air. The Splendid Vet said she would not know they had gone—which is possible, as she could not count as well as Pongo could. But she knew all about those puppies going because Pongo had told her and she had sent polite messages to Perdita. Missis felt a bit unhappy about giving any puppies up, but she knew it was for their good.

Before leaving, the Splendid Vet warned the Dearlys that if Perdita could not feed the puppies they must not be returned to Missis, for her sense of smell would tell her that they had been with some other dog and she might turn against them. And this does happen with some dogs. It would never have happened with Missis, but it will already have been seen that she and Pongo were rather unusual dogs. And so was Perdita. And so, if people only realized it, are many dogs. In fact, usual dogs are really more unusual than unusual dogs.