"Do I do that in front of a restaurant?" Brinkley innocently asked.
"No, no. Your human will pitch a fit because you've rolled in dirt or whatever is on the sidewalk. Just point." Tucker demonstrated a point. "Trust me, they get the point."
"Very funny," Pewter dryly said.
"How long does it take to train a human?"
"Brinkley, all your life. Now some lessons they retain such as your feeding time because it's tied to their feeding time." Mrs. Murphy liked the yellow Lab. "Going to sleep, waking up at the same time, they learn that pretty quickly, too. Truth is, we're usually on similar schedules so it's not too taxing for them. But other things, getting them to notice something out of the ordinary or warning them that another human isn't right, oh, that's hit-and-miss."
"Really?" He nudged the tiger cat who patted his nose.
"Now our human is very smart." Pewter puffed up.
"Our human? I thought you didn't claim any human," Mrs. Murphy teased her.
"I changed my mind." Pewter tossed her head. "And she is smart."
"Highly trainable." Tucker nodded in agreement.
"She's a country person so she's not so far away from her real self," Pewter added.
"Real self?" The growing fellow was curious.
"You know, the animal in them." Mrs. Murphy thought this would be self-evident.
"They don't know they're animals?" Brinkley was astounded.
"No, they really don't." Pewter turned up her nose.
"And the more they live away from other animals, the worse it gets." Elocution, a lively girl, held the tip of her tail in her paw but forgot why she had picked it up in the first place.
"What about your human? Is he smart?" Brinkley asked.
"Depends," Cazenovia, who had lived with Herb the longest, answered. "He's smart about fly-fishing. He pays attention to the signs in the runs and branches when he's fishing but he can walk right through a meadow and miss fox poop. Or worse, bear poop."
"Can't he smell it?"
Cazenovia hopped onto the back of the sofa to be at eye level with the Lab, who was sitting upright. He was already so big he couldn't stretch out on the sofa. There wouldn't be room for the others.
"They can't smell." Cazenovia delivered the shocking news.
"Can't smell?" Brinkley felt terrible. This was his sharpest sense.
"Now that's not true." Mrs. Murphy countered the longhaired calico. "They can smell a wee bit. If they don't smoke they can smell better. But for instance, if you put out a piece of bread, say, fifty yards from them, they wouldn't smell it even if it was fresh. A smell has to be very strong or right under their noses to affect them."
"Those poor creatures." Brinkley's ears drooped for a moment.
"Eyes. They rely on their eyes." Elocution kept staring at her tail tip. "'Course their eyes aren't nearly as good as a cat's but they aren't bad. They're better than your eyes."
"Really?"
"Oh yes." Pewter smiled up at the big dog. "You can't see nearly as well as they do, but you can hear and smell way, way beyond them."
"Harry's got good ears." Mrs. Murphy loved Harry.
"Actually, she does. She quite surprises me." Tucker thought Harry exceptional for a human.
"Well, they could all hear better if they'd yank those stupid phones out of their ears, turn off the computers, TVs, and radios. They can't hear because they're surrounded by noise." Elocution finally dropped her tail.
"No animal would willingly shut out information about what's around them," Brinkley sensibly said. "Why do they keep noises?"
"Oh, they think it's information. They will sit in front of the TV and watch something that happened in New Zealand but they won't know what's happening in Crozet. Or they sit and watch things that don't happen." Cazenovia giggled.
"How can you watch what doesn't happen?" The Lab thought this was insane.
"Made-up stories, films. Or books. They'll sit down and read fiction. It's stuff that never happened!" Cazenovia watched the yellow handsome fellow just get bowled over with the information.
"How can they tell the truth from what they make up?"
"Brinkley, they can't!" Cazenovia laughed so hard she fell onto the Lab's back, then rolled under his tummy. She quickly righted herself but remained under his tummy.
"Now wait a minute, Cazzie. You aren't exactly fair." Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward, all attention. "Brinkley, humans are afraid. They're not fast, you see. They can't outrun danger and they aren't strong or quick. They are much more afraid than we are because of this. So these stories that are made up are made up to let them learn about other humans' lives. See, it gives them courage. They don't feel so alone. They're herd animals. Always remember that they fear being alone and they fear the dark. Their eyes are good in daylight but pretty bad at night. I would have to say that the made-up stories serve a purpose and I think most humans do know the difference between those stories and what's happening around them."
"Oh, Mrs. Murphy, you're too kind." Cazzie shook her head. "I've seen Herb weep over a story."
"Daddy's sensitive." Elocution nodded in agreement.
"They have a great range of feeling if they choose to use it," Mrs. Murphy said.
"Mostly they blunt their nerve endings, listen to the noise, and wonder why they feel out of step." Cazzie moved to sit alongside Brinkley. "They're too caught up in words."
"We can talk. We have words," Brinkley said.
"Yes, but we don't confuse the word with the deed. They do," Mrs. Murphy told him.
"Better yet, they substitute the word for the deed and do nothing." Pewter laughed uproariously, the others laughing with her.
"I had no idea humans were so complicated." Brinkley liked Cazzie rubbing along his side.
"They are and they aren't. They need to go back to their senses, live where they live instead of worrying about something thousands of miles away. Too much planning." Elocution liked humans nonetheless.
"Hey, if you live in a temperate climate, you have to plan. Winter changes how humans think. Humans who live in the tropics or subtropics don't have to plan." Mrs. Murphy read along with Harry who had been reading about these things. "But any animal that lives with winter has to figure things out. Even squirrels bury nuts. Humans, too."
"I haven't seen Tazio bury nuts."
"Her bank accounts. That's where the nuts are," Pewter sagely noted.
"You mean that's what she does when she goes to the bank?"
"Oh yes. They store things. Lock them right up, they do." Cazenovia nodded in agreement. "That's why we have, I mean had, those boxes of communion wafers."
With this all the animals screamed with laughter.
"What's going on in there?" Harry called from the next room using her "mother" voice.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Pewter sassed.
32
Harry drove from the meeting to the Clam. She'd missed the first half of the game because the meeting went on and on. The animals curled up in the blankets and she hurried into the building.
Matthew, BoomBoom, and Tazio also rushed to get to the game. The rest of the gang was already there.
Fred flipped a bird at Matthew when he looked over his shoulder at him. Harry saw it and couldn't believe Fred was that childish.
Anne Donaldson had given her seats to friends. Harry, Fair, and BoomBoom introduced themselves.
Tracy and Josef officiated a tough game, a dirty game, too. The opponents stuck out elbows under the basket, tripped players if no one was looking. Tempers frayed. Despite their efforts to throw the UVA team off stride it didn't work. UVA easily won by twelve points, which was a boost after their last game.
Miranda joined Harry, BoomBoom, Susan, Brooks, and Fair for a bite to eat down at Ruby Tuesday's, which wasn't that far from the Clam.
Tracy said he'd join them after he showered. He pulled on his clothes, picked up his gym bag and was all ready to go out the side door. Josef, in a hurry, had already left. The players' locker rooms were on the other side of the officials' locker room.