Bubsy kicked at him and cursed.
The Baron—as if a mysterious spring had been released—leapt and sank his teeth through Bubsy’s trousers into his lower leg.
Bubsy screamed, and swatted the Baron on the head with his fist. This made the Baron turn loose, and Bubsy kicked at him again, missing. Bubsy was gasping. The Baron watched Bubsy go into the bathroom, knowing he was going to get a wet towel for his face.
The Baron was suddenly full of energy. Where had it come from? He stood with forelegs apart, his aching teeth bared, trapped by his leash which was stuck under the kitchen door. When Bubsy emerged with the dripping towel clamped against his forehead, the Baron growled his deepest. Bubsy stumbled past him into his room, and the Baron heard him flop on the bed. Then the Baron went back into the kitchen slowly, so as not to make his leash predicament worse. The leather was tightly wedged this time, and there was not enough space, if the Baron moved towards the sink, to tug it out. The Baron caught the leash in his back teeth and pulled. The leash slipped through his teeth. He tried the other side of his jaw, and with one yank freed the leash. This was the worse side of his jaw, and the pain was awful. The Baron cringed on the floor, eyes shut for a moment, as he would never have cringed before Bubsy or anyone else. But pain was pain. Terrible. The Baron’s very ears seemed to ring with his agony, but he didn’t whine. He was remembering a similar pain inflicted by Bubsy. Or was that true? At any rate, the pain reminded him of Bubsy.
As the pain subsided, the Baron stood up, on guard against Bubsy who might come to life at any moment. The Baron carefully walked towards the living room, dragging his leash straight behind him, then turned so that he was facing the hall. He sank down and put his chin on his paws and waited, listening, his eyes wide open.
Bubsy coughed, the kind of cough that meant the mask was off and he was feeling better. Bubsy was getting up. He was going to come into the living room for some champagne, probably. The Baron’s hind legs grew tense, and he really might have moved out of the way if not for a fear in the back of his mind that his leash would catch on something again. Bubsy approached coughing, pushing himself straight with a hand against a wall. Bubsy made a menacing gesture with his other hand, and ordered the Baron to get out of the way.
The Baron expected a foot in his face, and without thinking hurled himself at Bubsy’s waistline and bit. Bubsy came down with a fist on the Baron’s spine. They struggled on the floor, Bubsy hitting and missing most of his blows, the Baron snapping and missing also. But the Baron was still on the living room side, and Bubsy retreated towards his room, the Baron after him. Bubsy grabbed a vase, and hit the Baron on top of the head. The Baron’s sight was knocked out, and he saw only silvery lights for a few seconds. As soon as his vision came back a little, he leapt for Bubsy whose legs now dangled over the side of the bed.
The Baron fell short, and his teeth clamped the rubber tube, not Bubsy’s leg. The Baron bit and shook his head. The tube seemed as much Bubsy and Bubsy’s own flesh. Bubsy loved that tube, depended on it, and the thick rubber was yielding slowly, just like flesh. Bubsy, with the mask over his face, kicked at the Baron, missing. Then the tube broke in two and the Baron slid to the floor.
Bubsy groped for the other end of the tube, started to put it in his mouth, but the end was frayed and full of holes. Bubsy gave it up, and lay back on the bed, panting like a dog himself. Blood was trickling through the hair above the Baron’s eyes. The Baron staggered towards the door and turned, his tongue hanging out, his heartbeats shaking his body. The Baron lay down on the floor, and his eyes glazed over until he could hardly see the bed and Bubsy’s legs over the side, but the Baron kept his eyes open. The minutes passed. The Baron’s breathing grew easier. He listened, and he could not hear anything. Was Bubsy asleep?
The Baron half-slept, instinctively saving every bit of strength that he had left. The Baron heard no sound from Bubsy, and finally the hackles on the Baron’s neck told him that he was in the presence of something dead.
At dawn, the Baron withdrew from the room, and like a very old dog, head hanging, legs wobbling, made his way to the living room. He lay on his side, more tired than ever. Soon the telephone began to ring. The Baron barely lifted his head at the first ring, then paid no more attention. The telephone stopped, then rang again. This happened several times. The top of the Baron’s head throbbed.
The woman who cleaned the apartment twice a week arrived in the afternoon—the Baron recognized her step in the hall—and rang the bell, although she had a key, the Baron knew. At the same time, another elevator opened its door, and some steps sounded in the hall, then voices. The apartment door opened, and the maid whose name was something like Lisa entered with two men friends of Bubsy’s. They all seemed surprised to see the Baron standing in the living room with his leash on. They were shocked by the patch of blood on the carpet, and the Baron was reminded vaguely of the first months of his life, when he had made what his master called mistakes in the house.
“Bubsy!”
“Bubsy, are you here?”
They found Bubsy in the next seconds. One man rushed back into the living room and picked up the telephone. This man the Baron recognized as the one who had worn fuzzy trousers and had aired him at Bubsy’s last party. No one paid any attention to the Baron, but when the Baron went into the kitchen, he saw that Lisa had put down some food for him and filled his water bowl. The Baron drank a little. Lisa undid his leash and said something kind to him. Another man arrived, a stranger. He went into Bubsy’s bedroom. Then he looked at the Baron but didn’t touch him, and he looked at the blood on the carpet. Then two men in white suits arrived and Bubsy was carried out, wrapped in a blanket, on a stretcher—just as his master had been carried out, the Baron recalled, but his master had been alive. Now the Baron felt no emotion at all on seeing Bubsy depart in the same manner. The young man made another telephone call. The Baron heard the name Marion, and his ears pricked up.
Then the man put the telephone down, and he smiled at the Baron in a funny way: it was not really a happy smile. What was the man thinking of? He put the Baron’s leash on. They went downstairs and took a taxi. Then they went into an office which the Baron knew at once was a vet’s. The vet jabbed a needle into him. When the Baron woke up, he was lying on his side on a different table, and he tried to stand up, couldn’t quite, and then he threw up the bit of water he had drunk. The friend of Bubsy’s was still with him, and carried the Baron out, and they got into another taxi.
The Baron revived in the breeze through the window. The Baron took more interest as the ride went on and on. Could they possibly be going to Marion’s?
They were! The taxi stopped. There was the butcher’s shop again. And there was Marion on the sidewalk outside her door! The Baron wriggled from the man’s arms and fell on the sidewalk outside the cab. Silly! Embarrassing! But the Baron got on his wobbly legs again, and was able to greet Marion with tail wagging, with a lick of her hand.
“Oh, Baron! Old Baron!” she said. And the Baron knew she was saying something reassuring about the cut on his head (now bandaged, the bandage going under his chin, too), which the Baron knew was not serious, was quite unimportant compared to the fact that he was with Marion, that he was going to stay with Marion, the Baron somehow felt sure. Marion and the man were talking—and sure enough, the man was taking his leave. He patted the Baron on the shoulder and said, “Bye-bye, Baron,” but in a tone that was merely polite. After all, he was more a friend of Bubsy’s than the Baron’s. The Baron lifted his head, gave a lick of his tongue towards the man’s hand, and missed.
Then Marion and the Baron walked into the butcher’s shop. The butcher smiled and shook the Baron’s paw, and said something about his head. The butcher cut a steak for Marion.
Marion and the Baron climbed the stairs, Marion going slowly for the Baron’s sake. She opened the door into the apartment with the high ceiling, with
the sharp smell of turpentine that he had come to love. The Baron ate a bit of steak, and then had a sleep on one of the big sofas. He woke up and blinked his eyes. He’d just had a dream, a not so nice dream about Bubsy and a lot of noisy people, but he had already forgotten the dream. This was real: Marion standing at her worktable, glancing at him now because he had raised his head, but gazing back at her work—because for the moment she was thinking more about her work than about him. Like Eddie, the Baron thought. The Baron put his head down again and watched Marion. He was old, he knew, very old. People even marveled about how old he was. But he sensed that he was going to have a second life, that he even had a fair amount of time before him.
Ming’s Biggest Prey
Ming was resting comfortably on the foot of his mistress’s bunk, when the man picked him up by the back of the neck, stuck him out on the deck and closed the cabin door. Ming’s blue eyes widened in shock and brief anger, then nearly closed again because of the brilliant sunlight. It was not the first time Ming had been thrust out of the cabin rudely, and Ming realized that the man did it when his mistress, Elaine, was not looking.
The sailboat now offered no shelter from the sun, but Ming was not yet too warm. He leapt easily to the cabin roof and stepped on to the coil of rope just behind the mast. Ming liked the rope coil as a couch, because he could see everything from the height, the cup shape of the rope protected him from strong breezes, and also minimized the swaying and sudden changes of angle of the White Lark, since it was more or less the center point. But just now the sail had been taken down, because Elaine and the man had eaten lunch, and often they had a siesta afterward, during which time, Ming knew, that the man didn’t like him in the cabin. Lunchtime was all right. In fact, Ming had just lunched on delicious grilled fish and a bit of lobster. Now, lying in a relaxed curve on the coil of rope, Ming opened his mouth in a great yawn, then with his slant eyes almost closed against the strong sunlight, gazed at the beige hills and the white and pink houses and hotels that circled the bay of Acapulco. Between the White Lark and the shore where people plashed inaudibly, the sun twinkled on the water’s surface like thousands of tiny electric lights going on and off. A water-skier went by, skimming up white spray behind him. Such activity! Ming half dozed, feeling the heat of the sun sink into his fur. Ming was from New York, and he considered Acapulco a great improvement over his environment in the first weeks of his life. He remembered a sunless box with straw on the bottom, three or four other kittens in with him, and a window behind which giant forms paused for a few moments, tried to catch his attention by tapping, then passed on. He did not remember his mother at all. One day a young woman who smelled of something pleasant came into the place and took him away—away from the ugly, frightening smell of dogs, of medicine and parrot dung. Then they went on what Ming now knew was an airplane. He was quite used to airplanes now and rather liked them. On airplanes he sat on Elaine’s lap, or slept on her lap, and there were always tidbits to eat if he was hungry.
Elaine spent much of the day in a shop in Acapulco, where dresses and slacks and bathing suits hung on all the walls. This place smelled clean and fresh, there were flowers in pots and in boxes out front, and the floor was of cool blue and white tile. Ming had perfect freedom to wander out into the patio behind the shop, or to sleep in his basket in a corner. There was more sunlight in front of the shop, but mischievous boys often tried to grab him if he sat in front, and Ming could never relax there.
Ming liked best lying in the sun with his mistress on one of the long canvas chairs on their terrace at home. What Ming did not like were the people she sometimes invited to their house, people who spent the night, people by the score who stayed up very late eating and drinking, playing the gramophone or the piano—people who separated him from Elaine. People who stepped on his toes, people who sometimes picked him up from behind before he could do anything about it, so that he had to squirm and fight to get free, people who stroked him roughly, people who closed a door somewhere, locking him in. People! Ming detested people. In all the world, he liked only Elaine. Elaine loved him and understood him.
Especially this man called Teddie Ming detested now. Teddie was around all the time lately. Ming did not like the way Teddie looked at him, when Elaine was not watching. And sometimes Teddie, when Elaine was not near, muttered something which Ming knew was a threat. Or a command to leave the room. Ming took it calmly. Dignity was to be preserved. Besides, wasn’t his mistress on his side? The man was the intruder. When Elaine was watching, the man sometimes pretended a fondness for him, but Ming always moved gracefully but unmistakably in another direction.
Ming’s nap was interrupted by the sound of the cabin door opening. He heard Elaine and the man laughing and talking. The big red-orange sun was near the horizon.
“Ming!” Elaine came over to him. “Aren’t you getting cooked, darling? I thought you were in!”
“So did I!” said Teddie.
Ming purred as he always did when he awakened. She picked him up gently, cradled him in her arms, and took him below into the suddenly cool shade of the cabin. She was talking to the man, and not in a gentle tone. She set Ming down in front of his dish of water, and though he was not thirsty, he drank a little to please her. Ming did feel addled by the heat, and he staggered a little.
Elaine took a wet towel and wiped Ming’s face, his ears and his four paws. Then she laid him gently on the bunk that smelled of Elaine’s perfume but also of the man whom Ming detested.
Now his mistress and the man were quarreling, Ming could tell from the tone. Elaine was staying with Ming, sitting on the edge of the bunk. Ming at last heard the splash that meant Teddie had dived into the water. Ming hoped he stayed there, hoped he drowned, hoped he never came back. Elaine wet a bathtowel in the aluminum sink, wrung it out, spread it on the bunk, and lifted Ming on to it. She brought water, and now Ming was thirsty, and drank. She left him to sleep again while she washed and put away the dishes. These were comfortable sounds that Ming liked to hear.
But soon there was another plash and plop, Teddie’s wet feet on the deck, and Ming was awake again.
The tone of quarreling recommenced. Elaine went up the few steps on to the deck. Ming, tense but with his chin still resting on the moist bathtowel, kept his eyes on the cabin door. It was Teddie’s feet that he heard descending. Ming lifted his head slightly, aware that there was no exit behind him, that he was trapped in the cabin. The man paused with a towel in his hands, staring at Ming.
Ming relaxed completely, as he might do preparatory to a yawn, and this caused his eyes to cross. Ming then let his tongue slide a little way out of his mouth. The man started to say something, looked as if he wanted to hurl the wadded towel at Ming, but he wavered, whatever he had been going to say never got out of his mouth, and he threw the towel in the sink, then bent to wash his face. It was not the first time Ming had let his tongue slide out at Teddie. Lots of people laughed when Ming did this, if they were people at a party, for instance, and Ming rather enjoyed that. But Ming sensed that Teddie took it as a hostile gesture of some kind, which was why Ming did it deliberately to Teddie, whereas among other people, it was often an accident when Ming’s tongue slid out.
The quarreling continued. Elaine made coffee. Ming began to feel better, and went on deck again, because the sun had now set. Elaine had started the motor, and they were gliding slowly towards the shore. Ming caught the song of birds, the odd screams, like shrill phrases, of certain birds that cried only at sunset. Ming looked forward to the adobe house on the cliff that was his and his mistress’s home. He knew that the reason she did not leave him at home (where he would have been more comfortable) when she went on the boat, was because she was afraid that people might trap him, even kill him. Ming understood. People had tried to grab him from almost under Elaine’s eyes. Once he had been suddenly hauled away in a cloth bag, and though fighting as hard as he could, he was not sure he would h
ave been able to get out, if Elaine had not hit the boy herself and grabbed the bag from him.
Ming had intended to jump up on the cabin roof again, but after glancing at it, he decided to save his strength, so he crouched on the warm, gently sloping deck with his feet tucked in, and gazed at the approaching shore. Now he could hear guitar music from the beach. The voices of his mistress and the man had come to a halt. For a few moments, the loudest sound was the chug-chug-chug of the boat’s motor. Then Ming heard the man’s bare feet climbing the cabin steps. Ming did not turn his head to look at him, but his ears twitched back a little, involuntarily. Ming looked at the water just the distance of a short leap in front of him and below him. Strangely, there was no sound from the man behind him. The hair on Ming’s neck prickled, and Ming glanced over his right shoulder.
At that instant, the man bent forward and rushed at Ming with his arms outspread.
Ming was on his feet at once, darting straight towards the man, which was the only direction of safety on the rail-less deck, and the man swung his left arm and cuffed Ming in the chest. Ming went flying backwards, claws scraping the deck, but his hind legs went over the edge. Ming clung with his front feet to the sleek wood which gave him little hold, while his hind legs worked to heave him up, worked at the side of the boat which sloped to Ming’s disadvantage.