Having heard both our names, Dutch and I looked at Sylvia in confusion. Mike pushed the front door open and stumbled out into the front yard.
“Good dogs,” Sylvia praised. We wagged with relief and were grateful when she gave us some meat from the refrigerator. Then she walked around her house, taking clothing and other items that smelled like Mike, opening the front door, and throwing the things outside. She remembered to feed us, but that night she fell down and slept on the floor in front of a chair in the living room. She smelled ill to me, and I lay pressed up against her, hoping I could provide her with some comfort. As I lay there, I thought about learning Go Home and Do Your Business. Lucas would do and say the same thing over and over. A dog was supposed to learn when things were repeated. On this day, I learned that when men were bad to women, the man would have to leave. I also now understood that, as upsetting as it was, a good dog should growl and snap when a bad man was hurting a woman.
Chloe had fled into Sylvia’s room and did not come out, and a few days later I found out why when she suddenly was lying with some tiny kittens in her bed. The smell of milk burst from her and filled the room. Dutch, naturally, wanted to investigate, slinking into the bedroom and padding over to the cat bed with his tail stiff and his ears alert. Chloe hissed so fiercely that he thought better of it. When I cautiously approached, though, sniffing the new cats, Chloe did not react, just watched me with unwinking eyes. They were so bitty, making barely audible sounds as they pressed up against Chloe.
Their scent, and the flow of milk from Chloe’s teats, was completely familiar. I instantly was taken back to the den, where I had kitten siblings and a Mother Cat. Then Lucas came to get me and I lived with him and slept in his bed, and we would feed the cats.
I missed Lucas so much in that moment that I went to the backyard and sat at the gate. I needed Lucas to come get me, though I could no longer feel him, or smell the town that was home. After a time, Dutch seemed to know what I was doing, and came and sat next to me. We sniffed each other, but could offer no comfort, because we each had a void only a person could fill. We did Sit to be good dogs.
The two of us waited for people who never arrived.
*
When the little kittens started scampering around, Dutch, of course, wanted to chase them. This upset Sylvia, who shouted at him and then put him on a leash, not for a walk but all the time, tying the rope to things in the backyard so that he could not move around much. The kittens learned that when Dutch was affixed to a chair by the table in the backyard they could play, but they knew how far that leash stretched and would not venture within reach. Dutch would lie in the pool of shadow under the table, gloomily watching them frolic.
I was not on a leash. “Be gentle, Bella,” Sylvia would say whenever one of the kittens would launch an attack on me. I did not know what the words meant but I figured she was saying my name because I was playing with the kittens. They were so little they barely weighed anything at all. I was very careful not to swipe them too roughly with my paw or to close my jaws on their tiny, frail bodies. Tussling with them brought back fond memories of Big Kitten on the trail, and I missed her and hoped she was taking care of herself. Big Kitten was the largest cat I had ever met, and these seemed like the smallest.
When they weren’t jumping at me, the kitties were chasing and wrestling each other. They moved in bursts of energy, stopping just as suddenly, climbing all over in a constant game that didn’t make any sense to a dog.
The days were hot. Sylvia went into her pool often, and on some occasions she would stay in the house with all the doors shut so that we couldn’t smell if she was even still in there. A big machine hanging from her window made a loud noise and dripped cool water.
The kittens ignored the heat, but it exhausted me. I now regretted I hadn’t been more firm with them, because whenever I decided to take a nap, they felt the time was perfect to climb on me with their tiny sharp claws.
They were much bigger now, but still very small. Chloe had stopped giving them milk, and they were much less cautious about Dutch. They clearly wanted to understand the dog on the rope, and Chloe had stopped correcting them whenever they strayed closer to the male dog. I was reminded of how my mother wouldn’t let any of her litter leave the den, how when they got older, my kitten siblings were less and less likely to respect her boundaries.
Sylvia had received a box from a man at her front door and had carried it out to the yard so she could sip from her drink while she opened it. She took the contents with her into the house but left the box sitting on its side on a bench by the pool. The kittens were absolutely thrilled with the box, launching themselves up into it and vanishing inside. Most of the kittens were in there but the one I thought of as Brave Kitten, a black male slightly larger than the others, was testing the limits of Dutch’s leash.
And Dutch was paying attention. He was no longer lying down; he had shaken himself and was now sitting, watching Brave Kitten approach. The little cat would skitter sideways, then turn and walk slowly and carefully closer to Dutch, then sit and lick himself.
When Dutch charged he had a low growl in his throat and his tail was wagging. He got to the end of his rope and the chair it was tied to toppled and he kept going. He was being a bad dog! Brave Kitten bolted across the yard, obviously terrified. Dutch pursued and the chair dragged behind him, right toward the box full of kittens on the bench. Brave Kitten veered and when Dutch changed course the chair he was pulling slammed into the bench by the pool and the box tumbled into the water.
Hung up with the tangle of the chair and the bench slowing him down, Dutch barked. Brave Kitten disappeared around the corner of the house.
The box with the kittens in it was floating, open end up, in the middle of the pool.
*
The kittens were mewing in distress; I could hear them in the box, which was shaking in the water—they were clearly climbing all over each other inside the thing. Their keening instantly drew Chloe, who came running at the pitiful wails. Dutch was hung up on one side of the pool, his head down, though he perked up as Chloe flashed past him. She half-circled the water, stopping when she came close to the tangle that was the rope and the chair and the dog, and reversing back the other way. Chloe made a fearful noise—a small, tight cry. Her kittens were in danger, but she seemed afraid to go in after them.
A little head popped up at the edge of the box, falling back down inside. They were trying to get out but that was not what they should do, because then they would be in the water. Cats should not go into the pool. Even Big Kitten was afraid to swim!