Sneaky Pie for President (2 page)

“Tally’s right again.” Tucker sought to praise the excitable dog.

“Perhaps,” said Sneaky, “but humans cutting trees must be careful. They can’t just buzz-cut the world and leave slash all over the place.”

“Roll the slash in rows and little animals can make homes there. You know, like bunnies. Then I can hunt them.” Pewter smiled broadly. “Besides,
our
own human manages timber.”

Sneaky replied, “Yes, she’s responsible about timbering,
but that doesn’t stop other humans from pouring sludge into the rivers. My point is, we can no longer allow them to run things.”

Pewter enjoyed a life of leisure. She sighed. “Oh, please, why not? Politics is so boring. Let the humans do it.”

“Us?” Tally was incredulous, looking at all the other animals before setting her gaze on Sneaky. “You think we should take control?”

“We couldn’t do any worse.” Sneaky laughed.

“Taxes? I’m not paying taxes,” Tally petulantly declared. “I worked hard for my bones and I’m not giving them up.”

“You share with me,” Tucker replied.

“I live with you,” Tally said. “And if I don’t share, you’ll steal when my back is turned.”

“It’s a smart dog that buries its bones,” the older corgi said and laughed.

“A juicy deer bone is a juicy deer bone.” Tally shrugged. “And I do share with you, Tucker, even if I don’t really want to.”

“I am appalled.” Pewter turned her head away from the dog, got up, and sat with her back to Tally. “You don’t share with me.”

“What’d I do?” asked Tally.

“Told the truth,” Sneaky Pie replied. “Nobody—not people, not animals—want to hear that.”

“You and I tell the truth to each other,” said Tally.

A long silence followed this. “Sometimes we do,” said Sneaky at last.

“What do you mean by that?” Tally asked, while Pewter sighed loudly for effect.

“I keep a lot to myself,” Sneaky Pie said.

“I don’t.” The dog lay down, head on front paws.

“We know,” the two cats and corgi said in unison.

“You all are making fun of me,” said Tally.

“Who else are we going to make fun of?” Pewter turned around.

“How about our human?”

“Too easy.” Pewter puffed out her gray chest. “She’d be dead if we weren’t here to guide her. I mean, she doesn’t have a grain of sense.”

“She’s not so bad.” Tucker did love the person in the house, and would defend her to the death. “She gets sidetracked a lot.”

“If she’d stop watching the debates and reading the paper, she’d be all right. She always gets this way during elections.” Pewter thought the woman in their lives wasted a lot of time on nonessentials. “She read aloud the Constitution to us the other night. What good is that to me?”

“We can use the Constitution as well as she can. I certainly value my free speech,” the tiger cat replied.

“Oh, Sneaky, none of them has a clue as to what we’re
saying. It’s all a big waste of time. Let’s forget all this and see if we can open the cupboard door.” The thought enlivened the gray cat. The dogs, too.

“She’s put the fresh catnip in a tin,” said Sneaky Pie. “Won’t do any good.”

“I could bite holes in the tin,” Tally offered, mouth watering. She looked toward the kitchen.

“I’ll pull out the little sack of Greenies, I can chew through the sack,” Tucker added. “Maybe I can figure out a way to open the tin, too.”

“
Smelling
catnip is better than no catnip at all.” Pewter raced for the cupboard.

From the living room, Sneaky Pie heard the cupboard door open. Pewter could be clever with her claws. If a container didn’t have a twist cap, that cat could usually figure out a way to open it.

Sneaky heard Pewter pull out the Greenies sack. Just as it hit the wooden kitchen floor with a thud, the back door opened.

“Head for the hills!” Pewter yelled.

Tucker blasted out of the kitchen, her tailless rump disappearing down the hall.

Tally, a step behind, turned. “It’s okay. It’s only Sid from FedEx.”

Sure enough, the FedEx delivery man placed a small carton on the table by the back door, closed it, and left.

“Whew.” Tucker headed back to the kitchen.

Sneaky joined the thieves there. “Sid makes me think. If you drive a truck, a car, you know the rules of the road. You have to memorize them. Once you have those rules in your head, you can drive and get anywhere you want. Drive in the right lane. Put on your turn signal if you’re turning. Don’t park at a fire hydrant. Makes perfect sense, and it works.”

“So?” Pewter was more concerned with the tin of catnip Tally had in her jaws. “Get your fangs up under the crease of the lid.”

“I’m trying.” The little dog dropped the square tin, then Tucker snatched it up.

“If the other drivers aren’t drunk, drugged out, or texting, everyone is okay,” continued Sneaky Pie. “My point is, like the rules of the road, there should be rules for living together.”

“That’s a good one. Never happen.” Pewter, on the other side of the tin, was prying it with her claws.

“You two aren’t listening to me, and this is important.”

“Nothing is more important than catnip,” Pewter passionately said.

“Greenies.” Tally’s bag rested right beside her.

She left the bag to help Tucker and Pewter.

The dog really was being a good egg, because she surely loved those Greenies.

“Pfft,”
Sneaky exhaled.

“One, two, three.” Pewter counted as she, Tucker, and Tally bit and pulled hard. “Got it!”

“Pull the string on this sack,” Tally told Pewter, the cat’s face already in the catnip.

“Okay.” The gray cat hooked the yellow string with one exposed claw and the bag opened just enough.

“You know when she gets home there will be hell to pay.” Sneaky inhaled the enticing scent before diving into the catnip, now all over the floor.

“Make hay while the sun shines.” Pewter succumbed to overwhelming bliss.

“That is so tired.” Sneaky now put her nose in the small plant buds and stems broken into little pieces.

“Can you think of a better one?” Pewter challenged.

“No,” she purred in reply.

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” Tucker said.

Tally, with a Greenies bone sticking out of one side of her mouth, mumbled, “Too puritanical. Let the good times roll, I say.”

The two cats’ glassy eyes turned to her.

Tally laughed, dropping her bone for a moment. “Do it now. You’re going to be dead a long time.”

Give Peace a Chance

“Isn’t that the dumbest name, Tufted Titmouse?” Pewter giggled, looking up at the handsome little bird, the size of a sparrow.

“
Fatass
is funnier,” the saucy bird called down from the thin branch of a loblolly pine. Below her, Pewter and Sneaky Pie strolled down a farm road, just west of where the human lived.

Sneaky Pie laughed. The gray cat smacked her.

“Hey!”

“Well, stop encouraging him,” Pewter reprimanded Sneaky. “How quickly you forget.”

“Forget what?”

“I was the one who liberated the catnip. You wimped out.”

“I didn’t wimp out.”

“Yeah, sure. We didn’t even get spanked for it. All she did was bitch and moan and sweep up what we left,” Pewter boasted, quite satisfied with herself.

As the cats walked along the dirt road, woods on one side and open pasture on the left, other birds flocked to join the insulting Tufted Titmouse. Black-crested Titmice flew to perch on branches along with chickadees, creepers, and one Downy Woodpecker, all of them chattering away.

“Fatty, fatty,” they called down, encouraged by Joe, the Tufted Titmouse.

Pewter was fuming. “I might just call all of you chickens. Fly off those branches and I’ll kill every last one of you,” she threatened.

A well-groomed chickadee flew lower and counseled the gray cat in a confidential tone. “If you ignore Joe, he’ll pick on someone else.”

The Tufted Titmouse overheard. “You are such a gossip,” said Joe to the chickadee. “You try to get on the good side of everyone, woo them into telling you stuff, then you
chirp chirp chirp
it all over the woods, the fields, the farm.”

Glynnis, the chickadee, who was indeed inclined to chirp too much, protested, “I am no gossip.”

“Well, I have some gossip.” Sneaky Pie sat down, wrapping her impressive, bushy tail around her.

“Really?” Above, on her perch, Glynnis was enthralled before she even heard a word.

“Do you really, really?” chirped the chickadee, excitedly swooping in circles.

“Really.” Sneaky Pie nodded to the chickadee, then looked up at the other gathered birds, who now fell silent. “You know this is a presidential election year?”

“Of course we know,” the Downy Woodpecker replied. “I hear all about it.”

“You do?” The Black-crested Titmouse flew closer to the woodpecker, larger than he was but not huge like the Pileated Woodpecker.

“The radio in the barn, the radios in the trucks, and if you sit on the ledge of the open window you can hear everything on the TV.
Same old same old
,” the woodpecker said, her voice a staccato.

A tinier-than-usual Yellow Warbler, just two years old, looked up to the Downy Woodpecker with wide eyes. “What’s an election?”

The Downy cocked his head. “A bunch of people say hateful things about one another and then promise the moon to other people, who give them money. Whoever gets elected gets to live in a fancy house. They can eat all the seeds they want. It happens every few years, and humans fall for it every time.”

“Oh, my.” The Yellow Warbler shook her head, confused. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to hear my gossip or not?” The tiger cat swished the tip of her tail.

“Tell! Tell!” the chickadee begged.

The Tufted Titmouse dropped down to a lower branch as well. “I told you Glynnis lived for gossip.”

“Oh. This is about the presidential election. If a Bible-thumper gets elected, your name will be changed.”

“Joe. The Bible-thumper will outlaw the name Joe?” The Tufted Titmouse—whose name was Joe—was incredulous.

“No, he and his followers will outlaw any words they think salacious: words like
titmouse
.” Sneaky pronounced this with gusto.

“Never!” both the Tufted and the Black-crested blurted out.

Pewter, catching on, baited the birds. “For these hormone-addled humans, I’m afraid your name possibly has a sexual connotation.”

“What? My name? My
species
name?” Joe snapped his bill, which clicked. “Impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible in an election year. Think it over,” Sneaky calmly advised.

“Not only will the religious nuts change your name, they are going to make Sneaky and me wear four little bras.” Pewter gilded the lily.

At that, Glynnis laughed so hard she nearly fell off her perch. The cats might have had an early supper.

Just then a cowbird who had been sitting on the pasture-side fence joined the avian group.

“Pickpocket!” the Yellow Warbler screamed. “Lazy! Bad mother!”

“Shut up, squirt.” The cowbird glared at the tiny bird, who usually stayed high in the trees.

But the Yellow Warbler was indignant. Tiny, but indignant. It was something to see. “You lay an egg among mine, then leave me to feed and raise it. Your behavior is despicable.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen you push them out. Splat!” the cowbird responded. “So stop acting so high and mighty.”

“It’s not my job to hatch your egg.” Puffed up, small though she was, the Yellow Warbler did look tough.

“Do you really do that?” asked Pewter. It was hardly normal bird behavior to abandon eggs. But then the whole species was flighty. Pewter liked them for breakfast or lunch.…

“Well, why should I exhaust myself if someone else will do the work for me?” the cowbird defended herself. She was tired of this argument. It’s like everyone wanted to give her mothering advice.

Sneaky, considering this, replied, “You don’t care if your egg is destroyed?”

“Some make it, some don’t,” said the cowbird. “Anyway, I am not raising a bunch of brats, beaks always open, squawking for more food. Give me a break.”

Still puffed up, the Yellow Warbler sharply added to the conversation. “You could stop breeding. Try and control your primal urges!”

“Why? As long as I can get away with it, this girl just wants to have fun.”

Glynnis was reveling in the exchange. With a superior tone, she said, “The rest of us are a bit more sensible about the number of eggs we produce.”

“Jealousy, thy name is chickadee,” said the cowbird. “Now, shut your beaks!” And with that, she opened her wings and returned to the pasture fence.

“Did you hear how she insulted me?” squeaked Glynnis. “If I ever so much as see one of her eggs in anybody’s nest, I will peck a hole in it.” She flew up to sit beside the Yellow Warbler.

“I suppose that’s one solution to the problem,” Pewter dryly commented. “Murder the young.”

The Yellow Warbler fumed. “First of all, the damned cowbird isn’t hatched yet, and second, the egg has no business in my nest, and last, you fat thing, cute as the baby may be, it will grow up to be as awful as its mother.”