A Dog's Way Home Read online

  “I’m fine. I just wish I had known it was going to happen.”

  “You did the right thing by calling us, though, Lucas. We’ll find good homes for any cats we find. Ready?”

  I had grown completely bored with the monotonous noises and was busily wrestling with the kittens when I felt Mother Cat stiffen, alarm jolting through her. Her unwinking eyes were on the hole, and her tail twitched. Her ears were flat back against her head. I regarded her curiously, ignoring the little male kitty who ran up, swatted my mouth, and darted away.

  Then a light blazed and I understood her fear. Mother Cat fled toward the back wall, abandoning her young. I saw her slip soundlessly into the hidden crack just as two humans came in through the hole. The kittens milled in confusion, the male cats fled to the back of the den, and I shied away, afraid.

  The light danced along the walls, then found me, blazing brightly in my face.

  “Hey! There’s a puppy in here!”

  Two

  “Hey kitty-kitty!” The woman crawled forward, reaching out. On her hands, thick cloth was redolent with traces of many different animals, mostly cats.

  The kittens reacted by darting away in terror. Their flight was chaotic and without direction, and none of them ran to the crack in the wall where Mother Cat hid, though I could smell her in there, cowering and afraid. The other adult cats were little better, though they were mostly frozen, staring in dread at the approaching human. One of them broke for the hole and snarled when the woman caught him in her heavy mittens. She handed him carefully back to another pair of cloth-covered hands. Two more adults made it past her and out to freedom.

  “Did you catch them?” the woman asked loudly.

  “One of them!” came the answering shout. “The other one got away.”

  As for me: I knew what I should do. I should go be with my mother. But something in me rebelled against this reaction—instead, I felt enticed by the woman wriggling toward me, fascinated by her. A compulsion seized me: though I had never experienced human touch, I had an acute sense of how it would feel, as if remembering something from long ago. The woman gestured toward me with her hands even as the rest of the adult cats bolted out the hole behind her. “Here, puppy!” I bounded forward, straight into her arms, my little tail wagging.

  “Oh my God, you’re a cutie!”

  “We caught two more!” shouted a voice from outside.

  I licked the woman’s face, wiggling and squirming.

  “Lucas! I’ve got the puppy, can you reach in and take him?” She lifted me up and examined my tummy. “Take her, I mean. She’s a girl.”

  The man who had been bringing us food for the bowls appeared at the hole, his familiar smell flooding in. His hands reached out and gently wrapped themselves around me, and then he brought me out into the world. My heart was pounding, not in terror, but in total joy. I could still feel the kittens behind me, sense their fright, and Mother Cat was strong in the air, but right then I just wanted to be held by the man, to chew his fingers and pounce on him when he set me down and rolled me around in the cool dirt.

  “You are so silly! You are such a silly puppy!”

  While we played, the woman brought out the kittens one at a time and handed them to two men who put them into cages on the back of a truck. The little kitties were mewing in distress. Their appeals saddened me, because I was their big sister, but I could do nothing to help them. I expected that our mother would soon be joining them, and knew they would feel better then.

  “I think we got them all,” the woman said, coming over to where I was playing with the man. “Except for the ones that ran out.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Your guys got theirs but I wasn’t any good at catching them.”

  “It’s okay. It takes a lot of practice.”

  “What will happen to the ones who took off?”

  “Well, hopefully they won’t come back right away, if the workers are going to tear down the houses.” The woman knelt down to stroke my ears. Having attention from two humans at once was simply the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. “There weren’t any other dogs. I have no idea what this little one was doing down in there.”

  “I never saw her before,” the man said. “It’s always just been cats. How old is she?”

  “I don’t know, maybe eight weeks? She’s going to be big, you can tell that. Look at those paws.”

  “Is it what, a shepherd? Mastiff?”

  “No, I mean, there could be some mastiff in there, but I’m seeing Staffordshire or maybe rottie in the face. Hard to tell. Probably a whole cocktail of canine DNA.”

  “She looks healthy. I mean, if she’s been living in the hole,” the man observed. He picked me up and I went limp in his hands, but when he brought me close I tried to chew his nose.

  “Right, well, I doubt she’s been living there,” the woman said. “Probably just followed a kitten in, or the adult. Speaking of that, when was the last time you saw the mother cat?”

  “It’s been a few days.”

  “She wasn’t in the crawl space, so we must have come at the wrong time and she’s out hunting. If you see her, let me know, okay, Lucas?”

  “Do you have a card or something?”

  “Sure.”

  The man set me down and he and the woman stood up. She handed something to the man. I put my paws on his legs, wanting to sniff it. I was interested in everything the man was doing, and most of all wanted him to crouch back down and play with me some more.

  “Audrey,” the man said, looking at the small thing he held between his fingers.

  “If I’m not there, just talk to anyone who answers. They all know about this house. We’ll come out and try to catch any stragglers. Oh, I asked around, and nobody brought in a big colony of cats anywhere in Denver recently. I think we have to assume the worst.”

  “How can someone do something like that?” the man replied, anguished-sounding. I jumped on his feet so that he’d know that if he was sad he had a puppy down here to make all of his worries go away.

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand people at all, sometimes.”

  “I feel really bad.”

  “Don’t. You didn’t know what he was up to. Though I don’t know why they couldn’t be bothered to drive the animals to a shelter somewhere. We could have found homes for some of them, and we have connections to safe places for feral cats. Some people just can’t be bothered to do the right thing.” The woman picked me up. “Okay, little one, are you ready to go?”

  I wagged, then twisted my head so I could see the man. It was his hands, more than anyone else’s, that I craved.

  “Uh, Audrey?”

  “Yes?”

  “I feel like that’s my dog. I mean, I found her, technically.”

  “Oh.” She set me down and I went over to the man to chew on his shoes. “Well, I’m not supposed to adopt out an animal this way. There’s a procedure, I mean.”

  “Except if it is my dog, it’s not an adoption.”

  “Okay. Look. I don’t want this to get awkward or anything. Are you even in a position to take on a puppy? Where do you live?”

  “Right there, in those apartments across the street. That’s how I saw the cats; I walk past here all the time. I just decided one day to feed them.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  Something very subtle changed in the man’s manner. I looked up at him alertly, wishing he would pick me up again. I wanted to lick his face. “No, I live with my mother.”

  “Oh.”

  “No, it’s not what you are thinking. She’s ill. She’s a soldier and when she came back from Afghanistan she developed some symptoms. So I’m going to school and working with the Veteran’s Administration to try to get her the help she needs.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m taking online classes. Pre-med. So I’m home a lot, and my mom is, too. We can give the puppy all the attention she needs. And to have a dog, I think it would be g
ood for both of us. My mom can’t hold down a job just yet.”

  He reached down and picked me up. Finally! He held me in his arms and I lay back and gazed at his face. Something significant was happening; I could sense it even though I was not sure what it was. The den, where I had been born and where Mother Cat still cowered, seemed like a place I was leaving behind. Now I would be with this man, wherever he took me. That was what I wanted: to be with him.

  “Have you ever had a puppy? They’re a lot of work,” the woman asked.

  “I lived with my aunt when I was growing up. She had two Yorkies.”

  “This one is already bigger than a Yorkie. I’m sorry, Lucas, but I can’t. It’s unethical. We have a vetting process—one of the reasons why we get so few returns is that our placement protocols are so stringent.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying no. I can’t let you have her.”

  The man looked down at me and smiled. “Oh, puppy, did you hear that? They want to take you away from me, do you want that?” He lowered his face to mine and I licked him and he smiled. “Puppy and I vote she stays with me. Two to one,” he told the woman blandly.

  “Huh,” the woman replied.

  “I think things happen for a reason, Audrey. There was a reason this little girl was under there, hiding with the cats, and I think that reason was for me to find her.”

  “I’m sorry but there are rules.”

  He nodded. “There are always rules, and there are always exceptions to the rules. This is one of those exceptions.”

  They stood quietly for a moment. “People win with you? Arguments, I mean,” she asked finally.

  He blinked. “Well, sure. Just not this one, I guess.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “All right, well, like you said, you found her. Will you get her in to see a veterinarian right away? Like, tomorrow? If you’ll promise to do that, I’m okay with it I guess … Let me give you some stuff, I’ve got leashes and collars and puppy food.”

  “Hey, puppy! Want to come live with me?”

  There was a bright smile on his face, but I could sense something in his voice I did not understand. He was anxious, bothered about something. Whatever was going to happen next, it worried him.

  * * *

  Mother Cat did not come out. I could smell her when the man carried me away from the den, and imagined her still in the tight hiding place, cowering from the humans. I didn’t really understand this—what was there to be afraid of? I felt as if I had never seen anything as amazing as the man holding me, never experienced anything as wonderful as the feel of his hands on my fur.

  When the people closed the door on their vehicle the sounds of my kitten brothers and sisters was abruptly cut off, and then the truck drove away, leaving only lingering traces of my feline family on the air. I wondered when I would see them again, but I did not have time to dwell on this odd separation, where my siblings went in one direction, our mother another, and me in a third. There were so many new sounds and sights, I was dizzy with it. When the man brought me into the place I would learn to call home, I smelled food and dust and chemicals and a woman. He set me down and the floor was luxuriously soft with carpet. I ran after him when he crossed the room and dove into his lap when he folded his legs and sat down to be with me.

  I could sense the man’s anxiety rising, it was on his skin the way Mother Cat tensed when she knew humans were approaching the hole.

  “Lucas?” A woman’s voice. I associated the voice with the scents of her layered on every object in the room.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  A woman walked into the room and stopped. I ran to meet her, wagging, wanting to lick her hands. “What?” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened.

  “It’s a puppy.”

  She knelt and held out her hands and I went for them, rolling on my back and chewing on her fingers. “Well, I can see it is a puppy, Lucas. What is it doing here?”

  “It’s a she.”

  “That is not an answer to my question.”

  “The people came from the animal rescue to get the rest of the cats. Most of them, anyway. There was a litter of new kittens, and this little puppy was under the house with them,” he said.

  “And you brought her home because…”

  He came over and squatted next to the woman and now I had both people touching me!

  “Because look at her. Someone abandoned her and she found her way to the crawl space and probably would have starved under there.”

  “But you can’t have a dog, Lucas.”

  The man’s fear was gone now, but I felt something else stirring in him, a different emotion. His body was stiffer, his face drawing tight. “I knew you would say that.”

  “Of course I would say that. We’re barely hanging on, here, Lucas. You know how expensive a dog is? Vet bills and dog food, it adds up pretty quickly,” she said.

  “I’ve got a second interview at the VA, and they said Dr. Gann is bound to approve me—I know everybody there, now. So I’ll have a job. I’ll have the money.”

  His hands were stroking me, and I felt myself relaxing, getting sleepy.

  “It’s not just the money. We talked about this. I really want you to focus on getting into med school.”

  “I am focused!” His voice was sharp and I snapped out of my fatigue. “Do you have a problem with my grades? If that’s the issue, let’s talk about it.”

  “Obviously not, Lucas. Grades, come on. That you can carry the load you’ve got and hold a four-point oh is amazing to me.”

  “So is it that you don’t want me to have a dog, or that you don’t want me making such a big decision on my own?”

  His tone made me anxious. I nosed him, hoping he would play with me and forget about what was making him upset.

  There was a long silence. “Okay. You know what? I keep forgetting you’re nearly twenty-four years old. It’s just too easy to fall back into the mother-son dynamic we’ve always had.”

  “Always had.” His voice was flat.

  Another silence. “Yes, except for most of your childhood. You’re right,” she said sadly.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought that up. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “No, no, you’re right. And we can talk about it as often as you need to, and I will always agree with you, because I have made so many, many bad decisions in my life, and so many of them concern leaving you. But I’m trying to make up for that now.”

  “I know you are, Mom.”

  “You’re right about the puppy. My reflex is to act as if you’re still a teenager and not my adult roommate. But let’s think about this, Lucas. Our lease doesn’t even allow pets in the building.”

  “Who is going to know? Probably the only advantage of having what everyone thinks is the crummiest apartment in the complex is that the door opens onto the street instead of the courtyard. I’ll pick her up and walk outside and by the time I put her down no one from the building will even know where I came from. I’ll never let her out in the courtyard and I’ll keep her on a leash.” He flipped me over on my back and kissed my stomach.

  “You’ve never had a dog. It’s a big responsibility.”

  The man didn’t say anything, he just kept nuzzling me. The woman laughed then, a happy, light sound. “I guess if there’s anything I don’t need to lecture you about, it’s being responsible.”

  * * *

  Over the next several days, I adjusted to my new, wonderful life. The woman was named Mom, I learned, and the man was Lucas. “Want a treat, Bella? Treat?”

  I gazed up at Lucas, feeling something was expected of me, but not comprehending any of it. Then he pulled his hand out of his pocket and gave me a small chunk of meat, unleashing a flood of delicious sensations on my tongue.

  Treat! Soon it was my favorite word.

  I slept with Lucas, cuddled right next to him in a soft pile of blankets that I shredded a little until I understood how unhappy this made him. Lying ne
xt to him was even more comforting than being pressed up against Mother Cat. Sometimes I gently took his fingers in my mouth while he dozed, not to bite, but just to apply the gentlest of nibbles, so full of love my jaw ached with it.

  He called me Bella. Several times a day, Lucas would bring out the leash, which was what he called the thing that snapped to the “collar.” He would use the leash to drag me in the direction he wanted to go. At first I hated the thing, because it made no sense to me that I was pulled by the neck in one direction when I smelled wonderful things in another. But then I learned that when the leash was unhooked from its place by the door we would be going for a “walk,” and did I delight in doing that! I also loved when we came home and Mom would be there and I would run to her for hugs, and I loved when Lucas put food in my bowl or when he would sit so that I could play with his feet.

  I loved wrestling with him and the way he would hold me in his lap. I loved him. My world had Lucas at its center and when my eyes were open or my nose was active I was seeking him. Every day brought new joys, new things to do with my Lucas, my person.

  “Bella, you are the best little puppy in the world,” he told me often, kissing me.

  My name was Bella. Soon that’s how I thought of myself: Bella.

  At least once a day we would go to the den. There were several houses in a row with no people living in them, but only one had cats. They were walled off by a mesh fence, but Lucas would pull at the wires where they were affixed to a pole and then we would be inside.

  The smell of Mother Cat was still strong in the den, though the signs of the kittens were fading from the area. I also knew some of the male cats had returned. Lucas would put food and water down but I wasn’t allowed to eat it. Nor was I allowed to go into the den to see my mother.

  “See her? See the kitty? She’s just there, watching us, Bella. You can barely make her out in the shadows,” Lucas would say softly.

  I loved hearing my name. I could sense a question in Lucas’s voice but it did not lead to any treats for me. I might not understand what he was saying, but I was with Lucas, so nothing else mattered.