Harry Cat's Pet Puppy (14 page)

“You wouldn't be insulting, please, Harry.”

All watched, with cheers, comments, and hollered suggestions, as the rescue was brought to completion. (Many wished it had taken more time. There's nothing like somebody else's danger to perk up a dull weekday.)

In a few minutes a policeman, a music teacher, and a cat and dog were watering the promenade. “Better get home and dry off quick,” said the cop.

“I will, officer.” Mr. Smedley stopped kissing Miss Catherine. “And thank you very much.”

“Think nothing of it. Beats chasing burglars any day.” The cop chucked Miss Catherine under the chin. And stooped to pet Huppy on the head. “And dry off your pets, too. Animals catch cold as easy as people. This dog's got a cut—” Blood still was leaking from Huppy's nose. He had to keep spitting out red drops.

“That isn't my dog,” said Mr. Smedley.

“Whose is he, then?”

“I don't know.”

The dog sat motionless by Mr. Smedley's heel. For the first time the music teacher noticed, through a crack in the matted fur, that his eyes were pale blue—a questioning, rather distant blue—not pleading, merely wondering: the color of the late-winter sky above them.

“He's got no collar. I'll have to take him in.”

“Take him where?”

“The dog pound. Because he's got no collar. Nobody owns him.”

Mr. Smedley frowned. He looked at Miss Catherine. She also frowned, and announced, “Miaow!”

“Come on, pooch,” the policeman called Huppy.

“No,
no!
” Horatio Smedley fretted. “That simply will not
do!
”

THIRTEEN

Happy

It was afternoon of a dozy day in April—the first really irresistible day, when work and worry dissolve and the warm air whispers disturbingly, “Spring has finally arrived, it is right outside the window!” Rich sunlight filtered through lazily drifting curtains, and Jimmy Lebovski could not get through “The Spinning Wheel.”

“Jimmy,” his piano teacher sighed, “your left hand doesn't seem to be on speaking terms with your right.”

“I know,” said Jimmy wearily. “It keeps forgetting where the fingers go.”

“Perhaps it's thinking of picking flowers.”

“It's thinking of my catcher's mitt,” said Jimmy.

“Once more, please!” The teacher tapped the top of the grand piano with a little stick with which he kept time. “And then you can take
both
hands off to the playing field. One, two, three,
and
—!”

“Mr. Smedley”—Jimmy broke off the opening bars of “The Spinning Wheel,” which had not gotten off to all that good a start anyway—“you know what might help?”

“I can't imagine!” Mr. Smedley's curiosity was larger than life-size.

“Well, if I could see the dog—”

“Oh. The dog. You think
he
might inspire you, do you?”

“He could.”

Mr. Smedley squelched a smile, moistened his lips, and whistled a melody. It happened to be the very sweet tune that begins the sextet from the opera
Lucia di Lammermoor,
but Jimmy Lebovski didn't know that, and neither did the huge dog that bounded into the music room from the open door to the hall.

“Gosh! He's grown.”

“Indeed he has.” Mr. Smedley shook his head. “I sometimes wonder if he'll ever
stop
growing.” This dog, who might never stop growing, appeared to have cornered all the hair on the Upper West Side. It floated around him in a gray and white cloud. But at least it was clean; the white patches of fur sparkled like freshly washed linen in the afternoon sun. He also seemed to have something of a monopoly on local high spirits. After a customary lap at Mr. Smedley's cheek, which the music teacher held out obligingly, he put his forepaws up on the piano bench and did the same for Jimmy, who enjoyed large dogs much more than piano lessons.

“Can he sit on the bench, Mr. Smedley?”

“I suppose
that
would make you a concert pianist.”

“Please, Mr. Smedley!”

Jimmy needn't have pleaded, because the big dog did not wait for his master's permission. He jumped up on the bench beside the pupil, sat down, and stared at the piano keys. And woofed.

“He wants to sing, Mr. Smedley!”

“Young man! ‘The Spinning Wheel,' if you please.”

“After he sings, Mr. Smedley! Honest, I promise!”

“Oh, very well.” With an eagerness that he tried to make sound like impatience, Mr. Smedley plunked middle C on the piano. And the dog let out a long and delightful howl. By no means was it middle or any other C, but it was enough to send Jimmy into hoots of laughter.

“Again!” he begged.

“No! Play!” commanded the music teacher.

The dog howled again. So did Jimmy.

“Not
you!
” Mr. Smedley shooed the big fluffy cushion of a dog away. “Run along now, Happy.
Whssht!
That's right—”

*   *   *

“Happy?” said Tucker Mouse. “He calls him Happy?”

In the hall, just out of Mr. Smedley's sight, Harry Cat, Lulu, Miss Catherine, and Tucker were gathered to watch and listen to the concert in the music room.

“Isn't it a coincidence?” Miss Catherine asked. “But a few days after we'd gotten him back here—and washed him and brushed him and made him feel at home—the dog seemed to enjoy himself so much that Horatio decided to call him Happy. Of course he asked me about it first, but I let it pass, being near enough to the name you gave him.”

Happy-Huppy bounded into the hall. “How was I, Miss Catherine?”

“Quite good, child.” She patted the dog on his lowered head. “I still think there's a little room for improvement.”

“He could be called some worse things than Happy,” said Lulu. “If he'd stayed with the pack, we'd be calling him Hippy.
Oo! oo! oo!
”

Tucker groaned and made a face, but since this was a special occasion, nobody begrudged the kookoo bird a pun that she at least considered hilarious. (She'd been saving it up for weeks.)

This afternoon was the first time since the great events in Riverside Park that Tucker and Harry had been invited to the Smedley apartment. Lulu, who was turning into a regular carrier pigeon, tried to keep them informed about Huppy's progress, but Tucker, tending to nerves as he did, could not be satisfied by her rambling accounts. They consisted mostly of jokes, laughs, and descriptions of everything Miss Catherine saved up for her. The cat and the pigeon had become quite chummy lately. Miss Catherine had even miaowed Mr. Smedley into setting up a bird feeder outside the kitchen window. Lulu had had to beat up two starlings—an episode which she described at great length—but the feeder and its contents were now her own.

After three weeks had passed, Tucker Mouse announced that, ready or not, he was coming up to see Huppy. So Miss Catherine decided that she might as well have everybody “to tea.” But fortunately, “tea” was not tea. It was, all laid out in saucers on the kitchen floor while Horatio gave his piano lessons, cat food for Harry—Miss Catherine had made a selection of her own favorite flavors; the usual crumbs from Mr. Smedley's breakfast English muffin for Lulu; and the remains of a cube steak that he'd had for lunch for Tucker.

But strange to say, the mouse had other things than food on his mind. “Are you happy, Huppy?” he asked before so much as inspecting the cube steak. “I mean—are you happy, Happy?”

“What? Oh, sure,” answered Happy absentmindedly. “Miss Catherine, can we practice tonight?”

“Practice what?” said Tucker suspiciously. “Are they training you to roll over and do dopey doggy things like that?”

“Perhaps later we can practice a little,” said Miss Catherine. “When Horatio's gone to bed. But right now, just eat, child. Look”—she tapped a bowl that had HAPPY printed in large red letters on it—“here's that lovely steak bone we've been saving. I decided that today—”

“Practice
what?
” insisted Tucker.

“Just eat, child,” said Harry Cat.

They ate.

With much frowning concern—and also a little pleasure—Tucker licked cube-steak juice off his whiskers. “Where have they got you living, Happy? In the storeroom?”

“I'm glad you reminded me, Tucker.” With a few expert passes of her tongue, Miss Catherine cleaned her own whiskers. “Is everyone finished? Follow me!” She led them quickly through the hall.

Happy stopped at the door to the music room, then caught up, and whispered excitedly, “Jimmy got through ‘The Spinning Wheel,' Miss Catherine!”

“That's nice, dear,” the Siamese smiled back.

“‘Dear,'” grumbled Tucker to all and sundry concerned.

“I think my note helped, don't you, Miss Catherine?”

“Oh, I'm sure it did!” The cat winked at Harry. Or perhaps some dust got stuck in her eye.

Happy explained to everyone, almost apologetically, “Jimmy's not one of our very best pupils, you know.”

Miss Catherine cleared more dust, or whatever it was, from her throat, and said, as they turned a corner, “Here's our room.”

“Our room?” Tucker stopped in his tracks.

“You got quite an echo here!” observed Lulu.

“Shut up, Lulu.”

“Of course, at first Horatio wanted him to sleep on
his
bed, but I insisted, and—” With a wave of her paw, Miss Catherine proudly pointed out: “Harry, do you recognize that?”

“I
do
seem to have seen it before.”

“My old rug! From the basement. Much too big for a cat, but in a flash it occurred to me it would make a perfect mat for Happy!”

“Mmm!” purred Harry, as pleased as an alley cat can be. “What an excellent idea!”

“Feels pretty hard,” said Tucker, jumping up and down on the mat. “I'm surprised you didn't get Horatio down here on the floor while you and Happy—”

“Oh, a hard bed's best—for a growing dog, cat, anyone. The back, you know. My own basket—here it is, by the bye—it may look soft, but just you try jumping in that!”

“Thanks, no, Miss Catherine. In a hope chest I wouldn't jump.”

“Well, have a look, anyway,” she said gaily. “Go on. I suspect that you'll like what you see. Then I'll tell you another plan that I have.”

Tucker reared on his hind legs warily and peered into the basket. The bottom was lined with dark blue velvet and around the edges were necklaces, bracelets, rings glittering. “Very pretty,” he had to admit.

“That's
my
collection!” said Miss Catherine. “And what I'd thought was—why don't we exchange? Temporarily, I mean. The way great museums loan out their things.”

“I'll think about it,” said Tucker Mouse. “Is that ruby real? In that ring there?”

“Indeed it is! It came to Mrs. Smedley from her Great-aunt Agatha, and—”

“I'll think about it.”

“If I were you, Kate, I'd get all the stuff insured,” said Lulu, “before it goes down to the drainpipe.”

“Did Huppy break anything?” asked Harry. “Not your things, Miss Catherine. But Mr. Smedley's heirlooms?”

“A couple of teacups”—she shrugged the damage off. “Just china. We put all the fragile things up on the top shelves of the bookcases.”

Happy had been restlessly bouncing around by the door while all this talk of worldly possessions went on. His dance of impatience overcame him at last. He pawed the edge of his mat and pleaded, “Miss Catherine—I think it's time for Barbara Knowles—”

“Not yet,” said the Siamese. “She comes at three-thirty and I'll tell you when it's time for Barbara.”

“But can't I go look? In case she came early? She likes to hear me at the
start
of her lesson! And she always plays better—” His voice trailed off hopefully.

“Then go and look,” said Miss Catherine. “But don't interrupt if Jimmy's still there.”

“Okay!” Through white fur his blue eyes flashed with importance. “It's just that—well, when I'm on duty I like to be ready for any emergency. And Barbara was making such progress last week!” Drawing himself up to his full woolly two feet, he paraded out the door.

In his absence, Miss Catherine finally allowed herself a good laugh. “As you can see, Happy's proved to be of tremendous assistance. In fact, sometimes he assists so much that Horatio has to shut the door to the music room.”

“He's settled in beautifully,” said Harry.

“Settled—I'll say!” grumbled Tucker Mouse. “You'd think he never lived anywhere else.”

Head hanging, Happy shuffled in and said dejectedly, “Jimmy's still playing ‘The Spinning Wheel.'”

“Don't worry, it won't be long,” said Miss Catherine. “In the meantime, why don't you show Harry and Tucker your collar?”