Stay!: Keeper's Story by Lois Lowry Page B

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    Bert gave a throaty chuckle. " Poetic license?" he suggested, and Ernie snickered.
    " Doggerel, " Ernie commented cruelly.
    Then they stretched themselves out again, entwined around each other. Their eyes became slits once more. Ignoring my presence, they went back to sleep.
    Disgruntled, I returned to the living room, allowed Emily to rub behind my ears, and finally settled down, though I indulged in a few murderous fantasies about cats before I slept.
    A frightening coincidence occurred when I was taken the next day to the vet. I recognized the building and the office as the same one that I had visited before, when I had been in residence with the photographer. I remembered sitting miserably on the same metal table, long ago, to receive the necessary inoculations that are part of a well-bred dog's life.
    So I began, on entering the office, to tremble. My fear was not about injections, which I knew already were almost painless, but that I would be recognized. I sat huddled and shaking, but trying desperately to maintain my smile, because I knew that the changed facial expression would be my salvation. It was the much-photographed sneer that had been my hallmark. Without it, I could perhaps pass as a different dog.
    I also tried to keep my unruly tail lowered, since its magnificence could give me away as well. It was not difficult, since I was nervous, and a frightened tail tends to stay limp of its own volition.
    It worked. Although somewhere in the filing cabinets of that clinical setting there were records of a dog named Pal, no one made the connection. I became a whole new folder under the new name of Keeper.
    Then, after Emily and her mother patted my head sympathetically, I was given a rabies shot and several others that would ensure the acquisition of a license. Sure enough, within a few days the meaningful little metal tag arrived and was clipped to a collar along with a separate tag bearing my name. For the first time I did not object to a collar. I had a home now, and a family, and the symbolic jingle-jangle of my tags reminded everyone, including the cats, of my status.
    The cats winced when I walked past, pretending that their delicate ears were pained by my jingling. But I knew it was only their pride that suffered. They had no tags themselves to proclaim their standing. They resorted to sarcasm, always the weapon of lesser creatures.
    "Hot diggety dog," they began to say in haughty, sarcastic voices as I jingled past. I thought it was unworthy of them and did not lower myself to give a reply.

Chapter 13
    T IME PASSED AND I SETTLED COMFORTABLY into the peaceful life of a child's pet and a family member. I slept on the floor beside Emily's bed and licked her face to wake her each morning, ignoring the preening and stretching of Bert and Emie, who occupied one of the pillows.
    Summer was an exquisite time. With school finished, Emily was at home each day, and together we played in the yard and explored the nearby meadows. I frisked about like a puppy, chasing butterflies and grasshoppers. Emily and I took turns hiding in the tall unmown grass and leaping out to surprise each other. Again and again I retrieved the ball that I had trained her to throw.
    Now and then the pair of cats deigned to join us out of doors, but they always pretended to think that our games were boring and juvenile, and after a short romp they inevitably found a sunny spot in which to languish, yawning.
    At the end of that idyllic summer, Emily's front teeth reap-peared, she got new shoes, and it was time for her to return to school. Each morning I trotted beside her on the dirt road, returning to the little brick farmhouse only after I had seen her safely to the edge of the schoolyard. There I waited, relaxing in the yard, guarding my household, during the day. Occasionally I chased a squirrel for amusement. I could see Bert and Ernie luxuriating on a windowsill, watching my playful antics with bored disdain. The cats rarely came