Harry Cat's Pet Puppy (11 page)

Under cover of all this outlandish activity, Huppy sneaked behind the officers, made a quiet leap into the trash basket and landed, with barely a rustle, in the midst of a pulled-apart copy of Sunday's
New York Times.
Which meant there was quite a lot of paper to hide in. Miss Catherine followed through the air—very gracefully, for a cat her age—and began to claw the loose sheets over him.

With much effort, the two policemen managed to detach themselves from their new-found friends Harry Cat and Lulu Pigeon. Harry was finally uncoiled like a snake from one officer's leg, and Lulu was unceremoniously scraped from a broad blue-uniformed shoulder. She was laughing too hard to fly, however, and fell down to the floor with a plop. Still shivering, she stood up and waddled into a hole in the wall. The cat pranced after her. And the mouse, after one last Halloween “Boo!”, scooted in behind the two of them.

“Boy!” Tucker's victim—or rather, his audience—took off his cap and scratched his head. “You never know
what
you're gonna see when you've got the duty at night in Times Square.”

“Where's the pooch?” said a fellow officer.

“Must have made his escape.”

“Thank goodness,” breathed Harry Cat, in the drainpipe.

“Just save your thanks,” whispered Tucker. “My cop is scrounging around the trash basket.”

“Hey, you guys!” called Tucker's cop. “There's something in here.” His hand flashed down and pulled up—“First mice, now this!”

“This” proved to be Miss Catherine Cat. The officer was holding her by the back of the neck. And although that is the way you are supposed to hold cats, Miss Catherine resented it terribly. Horatio would never have dared to manhandle her thus. She let her disapproval be known by wriggling and spitting fiercely.

“Stop laughing, Lulu!” said Harry.

“Boy, you two throw a great dinner party!” The pigeon propped herself against the wall.

“The party was an hour ago,” said Tucker. “This is trouble!”

“Whatever it is, I love it!” gasped Lulu.

“So what'll we do with the fur ball?” asked Tucker's cop.

The other two thought a minute. Then Lulu's decided, “Better take it back to the station house.”

“Yeah,” Harry's agreed. “We lose a dog—we catch a cat.”

To Miss Catherine, the “station house” sounded very much like “jail.” Her legs flew out, stiff; her fur crackled with electricity; her spitting changed into wild shrieks: Miss Catherine became a bolt of feline lightning, held at arm's length by a wary policeman.

“Wow! Some wildcat!”

“Harry,” urged Tucker quietly, “you've got to do something!”

“Aw, let 'em take her,” Lulu advised. “A night in the pokey'll do her good!”

“
Harry
—they're leaving.”

“Well, I hate to interfere with due process of law,” said Harry Cat, “but—”

He dashed from the drainpipe, slowed, slipped up behind the policemen, who were now on the stairs leading out of the station—and soundlessly mixed himself up with the feet of the one who was carrying Miss Catherine.

“Hey!”

“Watch it! There's another one.”

Down came the officer, still holding Miss Catherine aloft. She yanked herself free, spun twice in the air, but with all her cat's instincts still functioning, she landed right side up, on feet that already were running. In a flash she was down the stairs—in the drainpipe—safe.

Harry wrestled his way through grasping hands. He gained open space. With a rush he, too, was among his friends.

For a while, without much enthusiasm, the policemen searched at the pipe's opening. Tucker's cop was even brave enough to reach in his hand—but not too far: where there was a mouse there might be rats. The animals backed against the wall.

“You want me to peck that hand?” offered Lulu.

“No!” whispered Harry. “Just hush up, that's all.”

Before long—“The heck with it!” said Lulu's cop.

Harry's gave the opening a futile kick. “There's something strange going on in there.”

He was right, of course. But not even the police know all the strange things that go on in New York.

TEN

Max

An hour later the animals were all huddled in a parking lot near the corner of Forty-second Street and Tenth Avenue. While Tucker stood guard—on the lookout for policemen and other overly inquisitive people—Harry had coaxed Huppy out of the trash basket. It took a great deal of cajoling and reassuring before the dog's fur-covered eyes appeared beneath the book-review section of the Sunday
New York Times.
After much encouragement he jumped out, and everyone padded, on paws and claws, as fast and silently as they could, away from Times Square.

Silently, that is, except Lulu. She insisted on flying ahead of them and squawking warnings—“Squad car ahead!” “Two bums in a doorway on the right!”—at the top of her voice. Despite her help, they escaped from the crowded blocks to an area where even Forty-second Street was deserted.

“Well—this is it,” said Harry, with a flick of finality in his tail. “We've got to decide what to do.”

“Before your deliberations begin,” said Miss Catherine, “I shall bid you good night.” For most of the hour since her unladylike escape—the indignity of it still rankled—she had crouched in a cranny of the drainpipe, trembling, but now that Tenth Avenue stretched ahead of her, the path to the safety and comfort of Horatio's apartment, her old arrogance returned. “
So
pleased to have met you all!” Her smile glittered as cheerfully as the ice in the parking lot behind them. “Such a nice meal, Mr. Mouse! Harry—I trust that I'll see you again. But give me a couple of days to recuperate. I haven't had so much excitement since the apartment two floors down caught fire!” She laughed—at nothing especially funny, perhaps just at her own embarrassment, to be leaving them in the lurch.

“Now hold on, Miss Catherine!” said Tucker. “Do you mean to say that you're going to walk off and just leave the little dog sitting here?”

“What is this little dog to me?” She glared toward Huppy, but her eyes jumped away from his woolly face, as if there was something to hurt her there. “What is he, I mean, except a source of great injury—I'll be lame for a week!—and almost arrested, and—” And she went on, not looking at anyone in particular, but insisting that it would not
do!
Huppy couldn't live with her and Horatio, not even in the basement. No! It simply would not do.

This was the first time Huppy had heard about the plan to move him to the Upper West Side. He listened until Miss Catherine had run out of excuses—the breakable china in the apartment, the janitor finding him in the cellar—and finished shaking her head. Then he said, downcast but determined, “She's right. I won't do.”

“I said ‘it'—” the Siamese corrected him.

“But I want to thank you anyway, Miss Catherine.”

“Thank me—” She glared at him, almost angrily. “For what?”

“For pulling the papers over me. The cops would've caught me for sure.”

“That was
nothing!
” The Siamese stamped an elegant paw. “Such a nuisance this all is—really!”

“And I'm sorry you got hurt.”

“Oh, it isn't that bad. I daresay I won't be lame for a week.”

Even Lulu knew enough not to break a long silence during which Miss Catherine fretted and fidgeted, and did not go home.

At last she said, “Young fellow—what'll you do now? Go back to the pack?”

“No, ma'am. We're down here on Tenth Avenue—I'm going to my alley. Maybe I'll think of something there. If Harry helps me, anyway, I can. But I'm finished with the pack.”

“Says who?”

The animals all jumped at the sound: a voice of silken authority that came from in back of a run-down Buick. Out of the night, his smile first, like the Cheshire cat, Max materialized. “Sure you're coming back with us. I don't waste my time for nothing, Hup.”

Harry Cat was the first to shake off his surprise. “Where did
you
come from?” he asked suspiciously.

“I saw him bust free in Bryant Park and followed those Looney Tune cops.”

“You didn't help much!” said Tucker.

“What could I do?” Max shrugged. “And why risk my fur? I hung around Times Square. If the blue boys collared him again—good night, little dog. If they didn't, in future he'll know enough not to get busted. That's how a kid learns to stay alive in this city. I tailed you all down here.” He narrowed his eyes on Huppy. “What did you bring these clowns with you for?”

“We are
not
clowns, sir!” burst in Miss Catherine. She was very relieved, without knowing it, to have found somebody besides herself to be irritated at. “You're the brute that Harry's told me about! Well, just you let me tell you, brute, if it wasn't for us—” She fell silent beneath the dog's stony stare of disbelief. No one had called him a brute before. “Boss,” yes. “Sir,” yes—by some of his more frightened subordinates. But never, ever, “brute.”

“Who is the battle-ax?” Max asked softly.

“Don't you
dare
refer to me in those terms! Why—why—”

“Look, Kate,” said Lulu, who knew Max better than any of them, “just cool it—okay?”

“If the ruffian thinks he can call me names!” Miss Catherine was sputtering with rage. “Why, he ought to be in the dog pound himself—with all the bad habits he's been teaching this puppy!” If Miss Catherine had been a lady now, instead of only a lady cat, she would have been shaking a furious finger right under Max's nose. “I've a good mind to howl right now—yes, I have!—although I haven't howled for years—and summon those three officers.”

At that, hardly looking at her, as a human being might flick off a fly, Max lifted a paw and cuffed Miss Catherine.

It didn't hurt, despite the gasp of fear and shock with which the other animals started forward. But for Miss Catherine the blow was worse than pain. She'd been insulted—deeply, truly insulted. Even the fright of being gripped in the none-too-gentle hand of the law was nothing compared to this. With almost a kitten's helplessness, she turned away and began to cry.

For the others, her tears were dreadful to see. It
is
awful when a real lady cries—either human ladies or dogs or cats. It makes you feel ashamed and angry and powerless all at once, the way a person always feels when, against all written and unwritten rules, something happens that simply should not.

A gap of embarrassment held everyone—even Max—for a moment. Bad-mannered, cruel, casual, he too realized what he'd done. He forced a chuckle that stuck in his throat.

Then a second incredible thing took place. Without warning, without knowing where his own teeth were going, Huppy leaped at Max and nipped his nose.

The big dog didn't make a move—didn't bark, didn't growl, didn't bare his own fangs. He just stared at the puppy. Then breathed in slowly, and softly stated what were only the facts: “I could tear you apart.”

“I know you could.” Huppy backed away.

“I could wipe up this street with you.”

“I know you could, Max.”

It was like those times when a little kid has dared to hit a big kid. He knows that the big kid can beat him up—and probably will—and all he can do, with a fearful and partly apologetic expression, is to wait for his fate.

Harry sprang his claws, Tucker bared what little teeth he had, and Lulu Pigeon was wondering if she ought to act first—fly up and begin to peck Max's head. She would have been slaughtered if she had. And so would the mouse and the cat, if they'd even so much as made a move. The dog was big and crafty enough, and had won enough fights, to take the three of them on at once, and Huppy and Miss Catherine too, if she could stop crying. He could have scattered bloody feathers and fur for blocks along Tenth Avenue.

He unhooked his eyes from Huppy's, turned his back on them all, and loped up Forty-second Street. And did not look back.

In the silence that steadied everybody's relief, no one could explain why Max had left. Out of privacy and a strange respect for him, nobody even tried.

At last Harry said, “I'll walk you home, Miss Catherine.”

“No, no!” She had stopped her crying and was back to fretting like her old self again. “It simply won't
do,
that's all. He can't go back to an alley, can he? Such a nuisance! Really!”

“He can't fit in the drainpipe,” Tucker Mouse reminded no one in particular.

“You'll just have to come up to the apartment house, and stay in the basement. For only tonight, mind you!”

There were mumbles of appreciation.

Lulu took her post in the air. “Three guys to the right who look suspicious!”