'Twas the Chihuahua Before Christmas by Esri Allbritten

 
    ‘ Twas the Chihuahua Before
Christmas
    On the morning of Christmas Eve, Charlotte
Baskerville woke to enthusiastic doggy kisses on her right cheek.
Until recently, two soft little muzzles had licked her awake. She
quelled a sense of loss and opened her eyes. Lila, her long-haired
black Chihuahua, stared at her from inches away. Charlotte stroked
her sleek head. “You have to love me twice as much now that Chum is
gone, don’t you?”
    Chum, another Chi, had died in his sleep
about a month ago, at the grand old age of 19. He hadn’t done much
in his last years except snooze and grace Charlotte with
gap-toothed smiles, but she still missed him.
    Lila bounced around on the covers, long habit
causing her to avoid the place where Chum used to lie. She paused
and sniffed the spot, then looked up questioningly.
    Charlotte’s eyes teared up, but she pushed
back the covers and made her voice cheerful. “Come on, let’s get
up. That Mrs. Claus costume won’t finish itself, and we still have
to decorate the tree.”
    Lila ran down the carpeted stairs that led
from the high bed to the floor and stood expectantly, her silky
tail waving gently.
    Charlotte followed more slowly. At seventy
years old, she ran an extremely successful dog-clothing business,
Petey’s Closet, and volunteered extensively, but that didn’t mean
she ran around like a teenager. Slow and steady got the job
done.
    She went to the window to check the weather,
the floor chilly under her bare feet. The Victorians had built
elegant houses, but weren’t much for insulation.
    Outside, four inches of fresh snow hid the
brown grass under a blanket of white – unblemished except for lines
of animal tracks that crossed and recrossed the yard. Charlotte
squinted. Those didn’t look like squirrel or rabbit tracks, and
they were spaced too close together for fox. They looked a lot like
Chihuahua tracks, but Lila used a potty pad and hadn’t been outside
since before the snow.
    “Must be a cat,” she muttered to herself.
Most people knew better than to have outdoor cats in Manitou
Springs, Colorado. Coyotes, mountain lions and hawks made meals of
unattended pets in the foothills of the Rockies. “Maybe someone new
moved in and they don’t know any better. I’ll ask around.” She
pulled a quilted robe over her flannel nightgown and stuck her feet
in slippers.
    Lila frisked around, nipping at the toes of
Charlotte’s slippers and making her laugh. She led the way to the
bottom drawer of the dresser and pawed at it impatiently.
    “Who wants to look pretty?” Charlotte
asked.
    Lila stood on her hind legs and pawed the air
impatiently, then stuck her nose in the opening of the drawer as
Charlotte pulled it open.
    Tiny, colorful outfits filled the drawer.
Most of them were from Petey’s Closet and had been available to the
public at some point, but a few were one-offs or gifts from
friends. Charlotte chose one of these – a hand-knitted pink sweater
with a Christmas tree of silver yarn on the back. Fluffy turquoise
balls decorated the tree, and a bow sat at the top, right at the
neckline. She dressed Lila in it, praising her squinty little face
as it emerged from the neck hole. “What a beautiful girl you
are!”
    Lila sat as soon as she was dressed, and
Charlotte rewarded her with a treat from a jar on the dresser.
“Come on, Lila-loo.”
    They went into the hall and downstairs, to
the main floor of the house. A pre-lit artificial Christmas tree
stood in the parlor next to the entryway, surrounded by boxes of
ornaments.
    In the large kitchen, Ivan Blotski sat at the
table, staring at a mug between his hands. Ivan was Russian. His
first career was as a wolf trainer with a traveling Siberian
circus, until an affair with the circus owner’s wife resulted in a
move to the United States. Then he worked at a wolf sanctuary until
someone poisoned the wolves, leaving him jobless. At that point,
Charlotte hired him to work with her dogs, and gave him a room in
her