shrugged. “It was small, defenseless, and vulnerable.” We sat down four
people and one gray catto eat, drink, and strategize by candlelight.
“Carpe crustulorum, ” Bobby said.
Brandishing her fork, Sasha said, “Carpe furcam.” Raising his cup as if
in a toast, Bobby said, “Carpe coffeum.”
“Conspiracy, ” I muttered.
Mungojerrie watched us with keen interest.
Roosevelt studied the cat as the cat studied us, and said, “He thinks
you’re strange but amusing.”
“Strange, huh? ” Bobby said. “I don’t think it’s a common human habit to
chase down mice and eat them.” Roosevelt Frost was talking to animals
long before the Wyvern labs gave us four-legged citizens with perhaps
more smarts than the people who created them. As far as I’ve seen, his
only eccentric belief is that we can converse with ordinary animals, not
just those that have been genetically engineered. He doesn’t claim to
have been abducted by extraterrestrials and given a proctological exam,
doesn’t prowl the woods in search of Big Foot or Babe the blue ox, isn’t
writing a novel channeled to him by the spirit of Truman Capote, and
doesn’t wear an aluminum-foil hat to prevent microwave control of his
thoughts by the American Grocery Workers Union.
He learned animal communication from a woman named Gloria Chan, in Los
Angeles, several years ago, after she facilitated a dialogue between him
and his beloved mutt, Sloopy, now deceased. Gloria told Roosevelt things
about his daily life and habits that she couldn’t possibly know but with
which Sloopy was familiar and which apparently the dog revealed to her.
Roosevelt says that animal communication doesn’t require any special
talent, that it isn’t a psychic ability. He claims it’s a sensitivity to
other species that we all possess but have repressed, the biggest
obstacles to learning the necessary techniques are doubt, cynicism, and
preconceived notions about what is possible and what isn’t.
After several months of hard work under Gloria Chan’s tutelage,
Roosevelt became adept at understanding the thoughts and concerns of
Sloopy and other beasts of hearth and field. He’s willing to teach me,
and I intend to give it a shot. Nothing would please me more than
gaining a better understanding of Orson, my four-footed brother has
heard much from me over the last couple years, but I’ve never heard a
word from him. Lessons with Roosevelt will either open a door on
wonderor leave me feeling foolish and gullible. As a human being, I’m
intimately familiar with foolishness and gullibility, so I don’t have
anything to lose.
Bobby used to mock Roosevelt’s tete-a-tetes with animals, though never
to his face, attributing them to head injuries suffered on the football
field, but lately he seems to have shoved his skepticism through a
mental wood-chipper. Events at Wyvern have taught us many lessons, and
one of them, for sure, is that while science can improve the lot of
humankind, it doesn’t hold all the answers we need, Life has dimensions
that can’t be mapped by biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.
Orson had led me to Roosevelt more than a year ago, drawn by a canine
awareness that this was a special man. Some Wyvern cats and God knows
what other species of lab escapees have also sought him out and talked
his ear off, so to speak. Orson is the exception. He visits Roosevelt
but won’t communicate with him. Old Sphim Dog, Roosevelt calls him, mute
mutt, the laconic Labrador.
I believe that my mom brought Orson to me for whatever reason after
falsifying the lab records to account for him as a dead puppy.
Perhaps Orson fears being taken by force back to the lab if anyone
realizes that he is one of their successes. Whatever the reason, he more
often than not plays his I’m just-a-good-old-dumb-dog game when he’s
around anyone other than Bobby, Sasha, and me.
While he doesn’t insult Roosevelt with that deception, Orson remains as
taciturn as a turnip, albeit a turnip with a tail.
Now, sitting on a chair, raised on a pair of pillows, daintily eating
milk soaked bits of cinnamon bun, Mungojerrie made no pretense to being
an ordinary cat. As we recounted the events of the past twelve hours,
his green eyes followed the conversation with interest. When he heard