it was a long journey and i was terribly frightened. after the man had walked a long way there was a lot of noise and then we were in a train, only i didn’t know what it was at the time. the motion made me very uncomfortable and i felt a little bit sick at my stomach. but i managed to go to sleep presently, with my nose close up to one of the holes in the box.
the next thing i knew the box was being lifted up and then the man carried me for awhile. it was very noisy where we went and it smelled differently from any place i’d ever been. i guessed it was the city, and i was right. when we reached the end of the journey the cover of the box was taken off and i found myself in a little room with the man who had stolen me and another man who looked very dirty and fat. i could hear a lot of funny noises; dogs barking and cats meowing and birds chirping. the man who had brought me there said:
“thirty dollars takes him, bill, and not a cent less. he’s a prize-winner, he is. belongs to—”
“i don’t want to hear who he belongs to,” said the other man. “you bring him to me and say you want to sell him. that’s enough. if he wasn’t your dog i wouldn’t be buying him. but twenty dollars is all i can pay for him. there ain’t much call for dachshunds just now. they ain’t in style.”
so the two men talked and talked for a long time, the man who had brought me saying he must have thirty dollars and the other man saying he could only pay twenty. but after awhile they agreed on a price and the new man gave the other some money and he went away. then the new man took me into another room that was filled with cages and put me into one and gave me water and food. i was very thirsty and a little bit hungry, but the place was so strange that i didn’t do more than drink a little water at first.
there were lots of dogs there in cages, some of them just little puppies, and there were cats, too, cats with long hair and bushy tails and cats with short hair, and one cat with no tail at all! and there was a goat, too, and parrots and canaries and queer birds whose names i didn’t know, and lizards and turtles and goldfish swimming about in tanks of water. oh, it was a funny, queer place, and as for noise—well, i’d never heard anything like it! even the dog show was a quiet place compared to that store. people came in from the street outside and stared at us through the bars of the cages and poked their fingers at us and laughed when we were frightened, as i was, or when we tried to lick their hands, as the puppies did.
right across the aisle from where i was there was a little cage made mostly of glass and in it were some tiny white mice with funny pink noses. every little while one of the mice would come out of a loaf of bread where they lived and get in the middle of the cage and go around and around and around in a circle as fast as he could spin! i suppose he was chasing his tail, just as i used to do when i was a puppy, but he did it so fast that my eyes ached. sometimes two of the mice would spin at the same time and it made me dizzy to see them.
well, i stayed in that store for many days, just how many i don’t remember. several times folks asked about me; what my name was, how old i was, had i any tricks, what my price was; and once i was nearly bought by a very stout lady who had lots of rings on her fingers. but i didn’t like her smell—you know we dogs judge folks a good deal by their smell—and so i snapped at her when she went to stroke me and she said right away that she wouldn’t take me. i thought that the man would be very angry with me, but he wasn’t. he just chuckled as he put me back in the cage.
after that i made up my mind that i would have to stay right there in that store all the rest of my days, for i had heard the man tell folks that my price was fifty dollars, and fifty dollars seemed a great deal of money and i didn’t believe that any one would ever give that much for me. the man used to tell folks a great many fibs about me. he said my name was kaiser and that i was raised in germany and had taken twenty-four prizes at dog shows since i had been in this country. he said i was just two years old and as sound as a whistle. he wasn’t far wrong as to my age, and i was sound, but the rest of the things he said were just plain fibs. i was sorry about the fibs, for he was rather a nice man and treated us all quite kindly, and i was afraid something dreadful would happen to him for telling stories. it is very wrong to tell fibs, of course, and dogs never do it.
i made several friendships at that store. there was mouser, who lived next cage to me. i never thought that i should like a cat, but i did. he was a big grey cat and had the longest whiskers i ever saw. he and i would put our heads through the bars and have fine long talks together. he had seen a great deal of life and had always lived in the city. at first he wouldn’t believe the things i told him about the country. he took quite an interest in ju-ju and said he thought she was a very lucky cat. mouser didn’t know who his parents were or where he was born. isn’t that strange? fancy not knowing your own father or mother! i wouldn’t like that, would you?
mouser said that when he was a tiny little kitten he lived just anywhere; under doorsteps and on roofs and in sheds; and all he had to eat was what he could find in the gutters. i guess he had a pretty hard time of it until a little girl picked him up one day and took him home with her. after that he had a nice home for nearly a year. then the little girl’s family went away and closed the house up and mouser was put out into the street again to get along as best he could. it was harder then than it was before, because he had got used to having his food given to him and to having a nice warm place to sleep each night. for awhile he almost starved, he said, and had to fight other cats, and dogs, too, and even rats sometimes, to get anything to eat. he said he stayed around the house he had been living in for a long time, hoping the family would come back[169] again and let him in, but they never did and so finally he wandered away to another part of the town where there were many more garbage barrels. he said he was like the cat in the verse that the little girl used to recite to him. i asked him what the verse was and he repeated it to me. this was it:
poor little kitty-in-the-street!
ain’t got no thing to eat;
ain’t got no garbage pails,
ain’t got no fishes’ tails;
poor little kitty-in-the-street
ain’t got no thing to eat!
i think it is quite a sad little verse, don’t you?
one day when mouser was prowling about looking for his dinner a man with a net on the end of a pole came along and slipped the net over him and took him off in a wagon to a place where there were lots and lots of cats who had no homes, like mouser. the next day a lady came looking for a cat who would catch mice and a man whose place it was to find homes for the cats said:
“got just what you want, lady. here’s a fine big fellow that’s a regular mouser.”
so the lady liked his looks and carried him to her home in a basket and named him mouser. before that he had had another name, but he didn’t remember what it was. he stayed with the lady for a long time and then she, too, went away to live in a place where cats were not allowed and so she brought mouser to the animal dealer’s, and here he was looking for a new home. i told him i didn’t think i would like having so many homes, but he said you got used to it in time and that almost anything was better than no home at all and being just a “kitty-in-the-street!”
then there was prince. prince was a funny, good-natured dog who lived in a big cage across the aisle. he wasn’t any regular kind of dog, but a little of every kind. he had a long brown coat and a shaggy tail and a pointed nose and very yellow eyes. one of his ears stood up straight and the other fell over just as if it was tired. but he was a real nice, jolly fellow, and had the finest, deepest bark i ever heard. he was just about my age and had been born in the country. one day he came with his master to the city to sell a load of vegetables at the market and another dog quarrelled with him and they had an awful fight and the other dog bit him so that he had to run away. and when he stopped running he was quite lost! he hunted around and at last he found the market again, but his master had gone. so he stayed there for a long time and the marketman gave him pieces of meat and he got along very nicely. he thought that some day his master would come back again. and perhaps he did, but prince wasn’t there because one day a boy tied a piece of rope about his neck and took him to the animal dealer’s and sold him for fifty cents.
he was quite happy and contented, though, and i liked him very much. and i hope that he and mouser each found a nice home. there was a little white and tan dog whose name was peaches—which is a funny name for a dog, isn’t it?—and he lived in a cage next to prince for awhile. he was sold while i was there and taken away by a big man with a gruff voice to hunt rats in a stable. peaches was not a very gentlemanly dog, but he was full of fun and we all liked him a lot. one of the funny things he did was to stand on his front legs, with his hind legs in the air, and walk around the cage. and while he did it he would say:
“mary had a little dog,
he was a noble pup;
he’d stand upon his front legs
when you held his hind legs up!”
the parrots were noisy things. i don’t see why any one should want a parrot around, do you? there was one that used to look at me by the hour with his head on one side until i got quite nervous. when i barked at him he would laugh and say “here, fido! here, fido! good dog! good dog! who killed the chicken?” i wished very much that i could have got hold of that parrot and pulled some of his tail-feathers out!
well, i stayed in that store a long time, and i got so i didn’t mind the noise much. we had plenty to eat and drink and once a day we were taken into a tiny yard at the back to run around. of course i wasn’t happy, and i used to long for my home and mother and father and the baby and william and freya and, most of all, i think, for alfred. when i got to thinking about them i felt very sad and would often cry myself to sleep, just as i used to do behind the flower-pots. i tell you i missed those flower-pots a great deal those days! i had quite given up the hope of ever getting back to my home, or even getting away from the animal store, when one day a wonderful thing happened, a thing so wonderful that it deserves a chapter all to itself!
