IN THE ANIMAL STORE
It was a long journey and I was terribly frightened. After the man had
walked a long way there was a lot of noise and then we were in a train,
only I didn’t know what it was at the time. The motion made me very
uncomfortable and I felt a little bit sick at my stomach. But I managed
to go to sleep presently, with my nose close up to one of the holes in
the box.
The next thing I knew the box was being lifted up and then the man
carried me for awhile. It was very noisy where we went and it smelled
differently from any place I’d ever been. I guessed it was the City,
and I was right. When we reached the end of the journey the cover of
the box was taken off and I found myself in a little room with the
man who had stolen me and another man who looked very dirty and fat.
I could hear a lot of funny noises; dogs barking and cats meowing and
birds chirping. The man who had brought me there said:
“Thirty dollars takes him, Bill, and not a cent less. He’s a
prize-winner, he is. Belongs to――”
“I don’t want to hear who he belongs to,” said the other man. “You
bring him to me and say you want to sell him. That’s enough. If he
wasn’t your dog I wouldn’t be buying him. But twenty dollars is all I
can pay for him. There ain’t much call for dachshunds just now. They
ain’t in style.”
So the two men talked and talked for a long time, the man who had
brought me saying he must have thirty dollars and the other man saying
he could only pay twenty. But after awhile they agreed on a price and
the new man gave the other some money and he went away. Then the new
man took me into another room that was filled with cages and put me
into one and gave me water and food. I was very thirsty and a little
bit hungry, but the place was so strange that I didn’t do more than
drink a little water at first.
There were lots of dogs there in cages, some of them just little
puppies, and there were cats, too, cats with long hair and bushy
tails and cats with short hair, and one cat with no tail at all! And
there was a goat, too, and parrots and canaries and queer birds whose
names I didn’t know, and lizards and turtles and goldfish swimming
about in tanks of water. Oh, it was a funny, queer place, and as for
noise――well, I’d never heard anything like it! Even the dog show was
a quiet place compared to that store. People came in from the street
outside and stared at us through the bars of the cages and poked their
fingers at us and laughed when we were frightened, as I was, or when
we tried to lick their hands, as the puppies did.
[Illustration: Oh, it was a funny, queer place]
Right across the aisle from where I was there was a little cage made
mostly of glass and in it were some tiny white mice with funny pink
noses. Every little while one of the mice would come out of a loaf of
bread where they lived and get in the middle of the cage and go around
and around and around in a circle as fast as he could spin! I suppose
he was chasing his tail, just as I used to do when I was a puppy, but
he did it so fast that my eyes ached. Sometimes two of the mice would
spin at the same time and it made me dizzy to see them.
Well, I stayed in that store for many days, just how many I don’t
remember. Several times folks asked about me; what my name was, how
old I was, had I any tricks, what my price was; and once I was nearly
bought by a very stout lady who had lots of rings on her fingers. But
I didn’t like her smell――you know we dogs judge folks a good deal by
their smell――and so I snapped at her when she went to stroke me and she
said right away that she wouldn’t take me. I thought that the man would
be very angry with me, but he wasn’t. He just chuckled as he put me
back in the cage.
After that I made up my mind that I would have to stay right there in
that store all the rest of my days, for I had heard the man tell folks
that my price was fifty dollars, and fifty dollars seemed a great deal
of money and I didn’t believe that any one would ever give that much
for me. The man used to tell folks a great many fibs about me. He said
my name was Kaiser and that I was raised in Germany and had taken
twenty-four prizes at dog shows since I had been in this country. He
said I was just two years old and as sound as a whistle. He wasn’t far
wrong as to my age, and I was sound, but the rest of the things
he said were just plain fibs. I was sorry about the fibs, for he was
rather a nice man and treated us all quite kindly, and I was afraid
something dreadful would happen to him for telling stories. It is very
wrong to tell fibs, of course, and dogs never do it.
I made several friendships at that store. There was Mouser, who lived
next cage to me. I never thought that I should like a cat, but I did.
He was a big grey cat and had the longest whiskers I ever saw. He and I
would put our heads through the bars and have fine long talks together.
He had seen a great deal of life and had always lived in the City. At
first he wouldn’t believe the things I told him about the country. He
took quite an interest in Ju-Ju and said he thought she was a very
lucky cat. Mouser didn’t know who his parents were or where he was
born. Isn’t that strange? Fancy not knowing your own father or mother!
I wouldn’t like that, would you?
Mouser said that when he was a tiny little kitten he lived just
anywhere; under doorsteps and on roofs and in sheds; and all he had
to eat was what he could find in the gutters. I guess he had a pretty
hard time of it until a little girl picked him up one day and took him
home with her. After that he had a nice home for nearly a year. Then
the little girl’s family went away and closed the house up and Mouser
was put out into the street again to get along as best he could. It was
harder then than it was before, because he had got used to having his
food given to him and to having a nice warm place to sleep each night.
For awhile he almost starved, he said, and had to fight other cats, and
dogs, too, and even rats sometimes, to get anything to eat. He said he
stayed around the house he had been living in for a long time, hoping
the family would come back again and let him in, but they never did
and so finally he wandered away to another part of the town where there
were many more garbage barrels. He said he was like the cat in the
verse that the little girl used to recite to him. I asked him what the
verse was and he repeated it to me. This was it:
Poor little Kitty-in-the-Street!
Ain’t got no thing to eat;
Ain’t got no garbage pails,
Ain’t got no fishes’ tails;
Poor little Kitty-in-the-Street
Ain’t got no thing to eat!
I think it is quite a sad little verse, don’t you?
One day when Mouser was prowling about looking for his dinner a man
with a net on the end of a pole came along and slipped the net over him
and took him off in a wagon to a place where there were lots and lots
of cats who had no homes, like Mouser. The next day a lady came looking
for a cat who would catch mice and a man whose place it was to find
homes for the cats said:
“Got just what you want, Lady. Here’s a fine big fellow that’s a
regular mouser.”
So the lady liked his looks and carried him to her home in a basket and
named him Mouser. Before that he had had another name, but he didn’t
remember what it was. He stayed with the lady for a long time and then
she, too, went away to live in a place where cats were not allowed and
so she brought Mouser to the animal dealer’s, and here he was looking
for a new home. I told him I didn’t think I would like having so many
homes, but he said you got used to it in time and that almost anything
was better than no home at all and being just a “Kitty-in-the-Street!”
Then there was Prince. Prince was a funny, good-natured dog who lived
in a big cage across the aisle. He wasn’t any regular kind of dog, but
a little of every kind. He had a long brown coat and a shaggy tail and
a pointed nose and very yellow eyes. One of his ears stood up straight
and the other fell over just as if it was tired. But he was a real
nice, jolly fellow, and had the finest, deepest bark I ever heard. He
was just about my age and had been born in the country. One day he came
with his master to the city to sell a load of vegetables at the market
and another dog quarrelled with him and they had an awful fight and
the other dog bit him so that he had to run away. And when he stopped
running he was quite lost! He hunted around and at last he found the
market again, but his master had gone. So he stayed there for a long
time and the marketman gave him pieces of meat and he got along very
nicely. He thought that some day his master would come back again. And
perhaps he did, but Prince wasn’t there because one day a boy tied a
piece of rope about his neck and took him to the animal dealer’s and
sold him for fifty cents.
He was quite happy and contented, though, and I liked him very much.
And I hope that he and Mouser each found a nice home. There was a
little white and tan dog whose name was Peaches――which is a funny name
for a dog, isn’t it?――and he lived in a cage next to Prince for awhile.
He was sold while I was there and taken away by a big man with a gruff
voice to hunt rats in a stable. Peaches was not a very gentlemanly dog,
but he was full of fun and we all liked him a lot. One of the funny
things he did was to stand on his front legs, with his hind legs in the
air, and walk around the cage. And while he did it he would say:
“Mary had a little dog,
He was a noble pup;
He’d stand upon his front legs
When you held his hind legs up!”
The parrots were noisy things. I don’t see why any one should want a
parrot around, do you? There was one that used to look at me by the
hour with his head on one side until I got quite nervous. When I barked
at him he would laugh and say “Here, Fido! Here, Fido! Good dog! Good
dog! Who killed the chicken?” I wished very much that I could have got
hold of that parrot and pulled some of his tail-feathers out!
Well, I stayed in that store a long time, and I got so I didn’t mind
the noise much. We had plenty to eat and drink and once a day we were
taken into a tiny yard at the back to run around. Of course I wasn’t
happy, and I used to long for my home and Mother and Father and the
Baby and William and Freya and, most of all, I think, for Alfred. When
I got to thinking about them I felt very sad and would often cry myself
to sleep, just as I used to do behind the flower-pots. I tell you I
missed those flower-pots a great deal those days! I had quite given up
the hope of ever getting back to my home, or even getting away from
the animal store, when one day a wonderful thing happened, a thing so
wonderful that it deserves a chapter all to itself!