Best Friends (18 page)

L
ate in the afternoon, as was his habit, Michael walked his dogs. The summer heat induced a pleasant perspiration as he chaperoned Sun and the latest addition to the family, That Naughty Girl, she of the Heinz 57 variety.

He was thinking about how much he liked brainstorming with Tomato. Somehow the little cat enabled him to clear his head, to put things into perspective. Tomato was also taking on a most demanding personality, to the point of insisting that he have his own column. He had even chosen his title: investigative reporter. That way he could reveal to Best Friends members what
truly
went on at the sanctuary. Michael crossed the county road onto the sandy track to The Village. It was quite a trip having the saucy, cynical pussycat as his stand-in.

His thought process was disturbed by the accelerating roar of a six-cylinder engine. He stepped aside quickly as a smart new Jeep flew past, trailing a cloud of red dust in its wake.
Did they have to drive quite so furiously?
Suddenly the off-roader reversed and jammed back to his side. Two young, anxious faces craned toward him from the driver's window. “We were told there's a place that takes care of cats around here?” The boy's German accent rushed the question.

“Anything wrong?” was Michael's instinctive reaction.

It was the girl—tanned, fair-haired, blue-eyed—who answered. “We find a mother and kittens near the Grand Canyon.”

Michael didn't let her finish. He knew it had to be bad. He scanned the vehicle's interior. An unmoving calico mass huddled inside a man's shirt laid on the backseat. “Excuse me,” he said and yanked open the rear door. Gently he slipped long fingers under the shirt and lifted the matted, furry bundle over the front seat. “Hold them. It's not far. I'll direct you,” he said, urging his dogs ahead of him into the backseat.

The girl look startled for an instant, then muttered something to her companion. The German boy nodded and the car bucked forward toward Catland.

Michael knew Diana was tabling in Arizona, but Judah should be on duty.
Let Judah be at cats
, Michael prayed. His glimpse of the feline family had confirmed his fears. Mother and babies were dreadfully dehydrated, and who knew what else.
Please let Judah be at Catland
. “Take the right fork,” he instructed urgently.

Sure enough, Judah Nasr was at the TLC Club. Francis's son didn't say much as the trio trooped in. He had only to read Michael's face to know he had an emergency on his hands. Wordlessly, he led the way to the back quarantine room. The girl followed, cradling the felines to her breast.

Judah had been taught well by his father and Dr. Christy. With the efficiency of one for whom a veterinarian on call was no longer a privilege, Judah Nasr hooked up fluiding bags, filled a syringe, and eased the needles into the three inert bodies.

“What about the other kitten?” the girl asked. “Why do you not help him?”

“He's dead,” Judah answered as gently as he could.

The girl hid her head in her boyfriend's shoulder.

Michael saw that Judah could manage without them. “You've done a wonderful deed,” he said with feeling to the young couple. “We'll take it from here. Is there anywhere we can reach you, to tell you how they're doing?”

The boy answered. “Eva and I, we'd like to stay around.”

Michael looked at the two drawn faces. They were so young, couldn't be more than twenty. If this was the future generation, there was hope after all. “Would you like to see our place? Perhaps a cup of tea at The Village?”

The two tourists gazed in wonder at everything Michael showed them. “It is a paradise,” the girl Michael now knew as Eva said. She turned questioning eyes to him. “But what are you doing with all these cats and dogs?”

“Most of them are ugly, rambunctious, three-legged, or special-needs in some way. Nobody wants them. They'd be put down, you know, killed in a shelter. So we take in as many as we can.”

Michael wasn't prepared for the immediate reaction. Two mouths dropped open as if he had told them the earth was flat. The couple conversed rapidly in German. “You don't mean . . . ?” the girl seemed unsure of how to phrase her concern. “They kill homeless animals in America?”

Michael nodded.

The boy was most solemn. “In our country, it is illegal to kill animals that don't have a home.”

It was Michael's turn to stare. “Illegal in Germany?”

The boy seemed in shock. “Nobody would dream of doing anything like that in our country.”

For Michael, it was a long walk back to his trailer that afternoon. Sun and That Naughty Girl, sensing their person's mood, trotted, subdued, by his side. Michael kept asking himself the same questions.
We are a civilized nation. The greatest peacekeeper the world has ever seen. And yet we treat our unwanted animals no better than disposable tissue. Why?

Once again he pondered the apparent accidents in life after which nothing was ever the same. What were the chances of two German tourists hiking the wilderness of southwest Utah hearing the mew of a dying cat? What were the long odds that the car they stopped to ask directions to the nearest veterinarian would send them to Best Friends? And what even greater happenstance had brought them together with Michael?

For as surely as the early evening light caught the canyon in magic time, Michael knew that these two people changed the way he saw the problem of homeless animals forever. The concept of simply housing and finding homes for the unwanted wasn't enough. One day there must be no more homeless pets. For this, nothing less than a sea change in the way most people related to animals was needed. And that would require a radically different approach.

As he wended his way home, Michael felt a growing excitement. He knew this was a new beginning. He had started on a journey that would take him through the rest of his life.

B
est Friends had much to be thankful for as the holidays approached. For one thing, they were still standing. For another, the special Christmas newsletter they had sent out was proving a huge success and generating a bonanza of donations.

Then again, the number of their supporters was growing bigger every month, which meant that many more copies of the magazine needed to be printed and mailed. The count had grown to the point where Michael and Steven began to hold “label parties” to handle the mailing: Whoever was in the canyon when that month's issue was ready to send was shanghaied to The Village to stick on address labels.

The gatherings gained in raucous inventiveness as membership increased. In the sedate beginning they had Coca-Colas to help them along. Soon the general consensus was that things did not only go better with Coke. Beer, potato chips, nuts, and pretzels, coupled with rowdy cheers as they ploughed through each state's mailing, became the new order of the night.

Michael likened the atmosphere to that of a bingo parlor with people shouting out zip codes as if they were winning numbers. He also noted that subscriptions were coming from all over the country, with heavier concentration from New York, Florida, and the Northwest—which surprised him somewhat. But then that was how Mollie, the pot-bellied pig, came to Best Friends.

“She's not really a pig. I mean Mollie's more like one of the family. She watches television with my wife and me, and sleeps on the bed.” The voice sounded young and very distraught.

“I understand perfectly,” Estelle Munro commiserated.

“One of my parishioners gets your magazine. That's why I called.”

“Parishioners?” Estelle queried.

A nervous laugh. “I'm an assistant pastor in Pocatello, Idaho.”

“Why don't you tell me about Mollie?” Estelle encouraged and settled in to listen.

The story the pastor told was of the transition of a farming community to a spreading township, and of the disruptions that inevitably follow. Mollie was the couple's dearly loved companion. She was house trained, “as clean as a whistle.” Mollie came when called, never left their sides, was never any trouble.

But as always, growth forced change. The new ordinances decreed no farm animals within the town's limits. Mollie had to go. “It would kill us if we thought she'd end up as . . .” The pastor couldn't voice the horrible idea of Mollie being bacon. “We can tell you're good people. We'd have some peace if Mollie was with you.”

To Estelle had fallen the job of deciding which critters Best Friends would continue to take in. If an animal was healthy, young, and eminently adoptable, Estelle would gently direct the caller to a local adoption organization.

If, on the other hand, the animal was old, infirm, had special needs, or held little chance of living out its life in safety and comfort, then Estelle would likely welcome the innocent into their fold. Still, nobody had tried to give them a pig before. But it was the week before Christmas, and it was Estelle, not Good King Wenceslaus, who looked out onto the pristine whiteness of their wonderland and gave silent thanks. “It's a long drive,” she cautioned the boyish-sounding minister.

The joy that flowed through the telephone wires made it all worthwhile. “We'll leave tomorrow. God bless you. God bless you.”

 

None of the Best Friends made any salary yet, so it was a little hard to go on a shopping spree. And yet nobody felt deprived. A big old stove crackled and filled The Village with the nostalgic fragrance of burning sage and piñon. The Christmas tree sparkled with homemade ornaments. Heaped under its greenery were who-knew-what inventive goodies. And everyone was coming home for the holidays.

Michael and Faith, hanging the last of the decorations this late afternoon, thought it was one of their own when they heard a car stop outside the meeting room. They didn't pay any attention as the front door pushed open. “Hello?” a tentative voice called. “Have we got the right place?”

Their visitor had the gangling skinniness of youth. His eyes were solemn behind their wire-framed glasses, the sandy brown hair primly short. Although casual in jeans and parka, the man had a definite . . . Faith searched for the word . . . pious look. From what Estelle had reported this could only be one person. “You've brought Mollie?” she said smiling.

The tension drained from the pastor's face. He almost managed a smile, but worry won out. “She's outside with my wife,” he said and ducked back into the cold.

A small, pale girl with straight bobbed hair stepped hesitantly into the room, led by a black potbellied pig on a silver-blue leash. Her husband struggled in behind them with a carved wooden bed that appeared custom-made.

“Do you need any help?” Michael offered. The pastor shook his head and placed the bed next to the pig and left once more.

Michael stared at the sleek, confident swine, who gave him the eye in return. Mollie had to be the cutest potbelly he had ever laid eyes on. Then Michael reminded himself he had never met an animal he didn't like. Still, Mollie had to be the epitome of adorable. Michael knew that pigs were among the most intelligent creatures on earth, but wondered how many more city ordinances would be changed before the current craze petered out.

The pastor returned with a soft, brown blanket and a wicker basket. Twice more he whisked outside to bring in shopping bags of toys and treats. His wife stroked the pig's rump continuously, the hurt plain on her face.

Finally, all Mollie's possessions lay beside the door. “You have a nice, clean place here,” the girl ventured, “but excuse us, we'd like to know where Mollie might be living. She's used to being inside with us, you see.”

“I'll show you the sanctuary, if you like,” Faith said.

The pastor flushed scarlet. “We already took a drive around. I hope you don't mind.”

Mollie had stood like a statue during the whole proceeding. Now she raised her head and Michael saw the soft, pink nostrils twitch. The little potbelly backed against her mistress's ankle and oinked once. The girl dropped the silver-blue leash and bent to her pet. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Big mistake. Michael had recognized Mollie's expression. Sun was the master at flaring his nostrils before the plunge for whatever food was in the vicinity. “Wait a minute. . . .”

Too late. Mollie plummeted forward with the velocity of a bullet, straight for the Christmas tree—and the presents. With unerring accuracy, the pig snuffled out a square box wrapped in shiny gold paper. Before they could stop her, Mollie had ripped open the gift and pushed her snout into the See's Candies.

“No! They'll make her sick,” Faith yelled as she and Michael dove for the recalcitrant animal. Still Mollie managed to gobble two chocolates before they could wrestle the box away.

An ember caught in the fire and a log spat blue-green flames into the shocked silence. The wife sniffled, “Oh Mollie, how could you?”

Faith read the card on the lost present. “For me.” She smiled. “Thank you, Mollie. I shouldn't eat chocolates anyway.”

Michael had to laugh. With no more interest in anything else the tree might offer, Mollie ambled back to her persons and looked up at them like a naughty child.

“She's usually so well behaved,” the pastor apologized.

Faith knelt and gently caressed Mollie's ears. Michael knew what she was thinking. What do we do with this “pig who is a person?” Faith spoke softly. “It's not like your home, but my place is warm and the doggy door's big enough. What do you think?”

Mollie looked from her persons to the woman who was whispering so sweetly in her ear. “It's all right, Mollie.” The wife couldn't hold back her tears any longer. The pastor slowly lifted his foot and surreptitiously nudged his pet's backside forward. Mollie knew what was expected. She hesitated only fractionally, then trotted straight into Faith's arms.

Which was exactly where the newspaper reporter from Salt Lake City saw her three months later.