Renni the Rescuer (2 page)

Renni had to try his needle-like teeth on everything hard. He would gnaw slippers, shoes, the edge of benches. He would fall eagerly and blissfully on every object he could possibly reach.

Mother and son had quite a problem with these tendencies, but managed to deal with them without losing their good humour. Mother Marie hung old rags all over the house for Kitty, and George gave Renni dog biscuits made in the shape of bones to gnaw on. It filled him with delight to see the two young animals always so gay and so active.

They never had the remotest idea of resorting to punishment. Mother Marie knew just how useless it is to punish a cat. “Cats are wild animals,” she would always say, “free, untamed and untamable. If you want
their friendship you must let them go their own way. The only reason cats live with people is so they can be more comfortable. If they ever become attached to anyone it is by their own free choice. They don't know the meaning of obedience, and we simply have no right to expect it of them.”

Ordinarily Mother Marie did not have much to say. It was only when she got on this cat theory of hers that she turned loose at a great rate, as if she expected someone to contradict her. But George had no idea of contradicting. He agreed with it all absolutely.

Mother Marie would make another point: “People have been spoiled by the servility of dogs, and they're so stupid they don't like cats because cats know how to stick up for themselves. Yes, indeed, if there's one thing people can't endure in other people, let alone in animals, it is independence.”

George was willing to admit this too. He would not even take issue over the servility of dogs, but when his mother stopped talking he would begin to lay down
some ideas of his own. He thought it horrible and cowardly for a man to punish a dog.

“A dog,” he said, “is smart enough to get upset by a serious scolding and feel remorse.” Now in turn his mother would agree with him. She did not raise the slightest objection, and thus there was always peace in the house. Both of them knew these speeches pretty well by heart. Each heard them often from the other. They were patient, mother and son. They were as united and loyal as parent and child always ought to be but very seldom are.

One day Renni began to bark for the first time. His voice wavered from a high, keen whining to a deep resonant tone and back again. Renni was sounding the alarm. A strange dog, a Doberman pinscher, had caught sight of Kitty and, ready for battle, was coming through the open lattice gate from the street into the garden. Kitty arched her back like a “U” upside down, remained rooted to the spot and looked defiantly into the pinscher's eyes.

Renni was yapping excitedly, for he had never seen
either an arched back or a strange dog. Very likely he had supposed he was the only dog in the world.

The pinscher paid no attention to Renni. Coming close with his feet bent for a leap, he growled threateningly at the cat and waited for the moment to seize her. He waited in vain. Suddenly Kitty flashed her sharp claws into his face. The pinscher drew back, and swift as lightning Kitty was up in the top of an apple tree. The angry pinscher began barking up the tree. Renni was all excitement. Amazed at the pinscher, he barked now in his funny, squeaky, puppy voice, now in the deep bass of a police dog. He felt just as big a dog as the other. It was a regular dog-duet.

Kitty from the safe height of her treetop listened to the hullabaloo with the utmost peace of soul. Then George ran up and chased the pinscher out of the garden to his master who had been calling him in vain. When the gate had clapped to, the pinscher, as if to show contempt for banishment, hoisted his leg. Then he dashed madly after his master.

It took a long time for Renni to quiet down. Kitty
came down from her tree as calmly as though nothing had happened, but she did not seem to want to play. Very carefully and deliberately she made her toilet and then she lay down in the sunshine. Renni, perfectly agreeable to this or anything else, stretched out by her side.

Using this incident as a text, Mother Marie and George might well have aired their opinions about cats, dogs and human beings, but they had done so a short time before and they had the sense not to do so again. They knew how to be moderate in all things.

The episode of the pinscher wrought a change in Renni. He had become acquainted with the garden gate; he had found out that beyond it the street stretched out forever. People strode along it. Dogs ran swiftly or prowled slowly past. Sometimes they would stop to investigate the gate, turn around sniffing three or four times in the same place before they finally made up their minds, and then, with a serious or even worried expression, would lift their legs.

For Renni, the street was a place of charm and mystery.
All sorts of fascinating, enticing smells made their way inside, through the garden fence; it was enough to put his head in a whirl. As occasion offered he would slip out unknown to everyone and soon be striking up peaceful acquaintance with strange dogs. He was initiated into the mysteries of trailing, of mutual sniffings, into the ceremony of lifting the leg properly—all of which he observed formally and to the letter.

When he found he could not get back into the garden because the gate was closed, he would sit whimpering pitifully. George would let him in. “Renni,” he would say sadly, reproachfully, “Renni, you know you must not go out on the street alone. You're not allowed to do that. You'll turn out a good-for-nothing vagabond. You might get stolen. You might get run over. There's nothing out there that concerns you at all. Do you hear? Nothing at all!”

Crouching down or lying on his back, his paws in the air, Renni would listen piously to this sermon, apparently filled with remorse.

Still Renni had a notion that there was a good deal
outside which did concern him, and so he had an adventure that came within a hair's breadth of costing him his life. Once more he ran out on the street, loitered around on the pavement, chased after a dog and found himself across the way where the fields spread out. He was so tantalized by the smells of mice and moles that he went rummaging about here and there.

George, who had been trying to keep an eye on him in vain, at last caught sight of him. “Renni,” he cried, “Renni, come here this minute!”

But Renni did not come. No matter how loud George called, Renni seemed to have forgotten his name completely, forgotten that George had anything to do with him, But at last something of the sort must have entered his head, and he started back.

George was happy when he saw this and cried out, “Good boy! That's a fine dog!” though the puppy did not deserve such praise at all. But then a strange spell came over Renni. He lay down right in the middle of the highway. He lay there deaf to all shouts.

Nobody could ever determine whether some sudden
pain caused him to stretch out that way, or whether he grew tired, or whether he lay down to think over the riddle of the universe.

Whichever it was, he did not get a chance to carry out his purpose. He did not have time to make up his mind about anything. A truck came roaring along straight at Renni. Choking with fear and anguish, all George could do was utter a dull moan. It was too late to get Renni, too late now to call him again.

Renni did not move. He acted as though the thunder of the heavy truck meant no more to him than the buzzing of a fly.

George tried hard to signal the driver of the threatening monster, but the driver seemed as much a monster as the truck. George's wild and anguished warning had not the slightest effect on him. George grew rigid, felt helpless. It came to him now that the driver could not possibly stop the truck before it reached Renni even if he wanted to.

Renni was gone, gone beyond hope of saving. All that would be left of the young life, all that would be
left of George's hopes would be a bloody little mass, crushed and tattered. That and a great sorrow. Nothing more.

Through George's mind there whirled in a wild confusion, self-reproach because he had not taken better care of Renni, visions of the next few terrible seconds, foretastes of the sadness which the next few weeks would bring. He came near collapsing.

By this time the truck had roared over Renni, and on past, leaving behind a cloud of dust and bluish smoke.

Renni lay flat on the ground, not moving a limb. He was alive! He had not the slightest wound! He was only paralyzed by fright. That was why he dared not make a move. He had lain between the crushing wheels while sudden darkness, crashing and roaring, broke over him, passed in the twinkle of an eye and then vanished, leaving the bright friendly sunshine again.

When George rushed to him and found him safe and sound, picked him up and felt him all over, he could not believe that Renni had escaped whole from certain death, that nothing at all had happened to him.
Like a man possessed he pressed the puppy close, hugging the chubby warm body to him, stammering words of endearment mingled with threats and warnings. At last he came back to the garden with his clothes soiled, his hands dirty, but with an inexpressibly happy expression on his face. He closed the garden gate with a bang. Put down in the grass, Renni came to and performed a dance of joy around George. In his gaiety he ran over Kitty and sent her rolling. Kitty was ready enough to play with Renni, but she had to sneeze every time she came near him, for he smelled of street dust and burnt gasoline.

From that day on George redoubled the care with which he watched over Renni. He screwed a spring latch onto the garden gate so that it sprang shut whenever a delivery man or anyone else went in or out.

Renni was growing larger and larger. He could no longer be called a puppy, except as a pet name. He still had all the signs of puppyhood in his looks, his awkwardness and clumsiness, but he was no longer a pup. There was no way to tell whether he remembered the
adventure in which he had almost lost his life. George declared that Renni was cured once and for all, that he would dodge any automobile and would be careful to keep off the highway. Mother Marie laughed. “Then why did you put the automatic lock on the garden gate?” she asked.

“To keep him from running around in the fields by himself,” said George in self-defence.

The relations between master and dog became closer and more intimate from day to day. According to George, Renni realised that George owned him. As a matter of fact, Renni was firmly convinced that George was his personal property.

If George was gone for a few hours Renni might condescend to frolic with Kitty, who was always challenging him, but in a little while he would refuse to be tempted further and would lie waiting in front of the house door or peeping out the garden gate, with his big sharp ears pricked up. Those ears were very expressive. If he had to wait too long he would give vent to an impatient whine and then lapse into his silent waiting.
Once again longing would overcome him. He would lift his beautiful head and a soft, wailing howl would come from his rounded lips in long-drawn-out, high-pitched tones. They seemed to say, “Where is he? Why doesn't he come? Won't I ever see him again?” Renni's song of mourning voiced every imaginable complaint.

But he knew when George was coming, a long way off. Before he came into sight, before his steps could be heard by human ears, Renni's eager tail would be thumping the ground loudly, he would be getting up to greet his master with an outburst of joy. He would spring up on George as high as he could, try to kiss him, dash around like a whirlwind, come back to him again and again, and would not begin to calm down until he had been praised and petted extravagantly. As long as this dance of joy went on, nothing and nobody existed except George—not Kitty or Mother Marie, or a bite of his favourite food, or furniture or rugs or anything. He upset chairs, rolled over and over, pulled at a rug until it wrapped itself around his legs and threw him down. When he knocked dishes clattering around him they
did not scare him or lessen his joyous madness in the least degree.

Later on Renni fell into the habit of getting hold of some piece of George's clothing—a cap, a shirt, a neckerchief; anything he could snatch up in a hurry he would take and stretch out on it just as though he had George safe forever, and now George could never leave him again. Anyone listening then could hear deep, soft, sighing breaths of joy and peace. As soon as George became aware of this habit he cut short the ceremony of greeting by throwing Renni something of his, and Renni was immediately satisfied.

A
BOUT THIS TIME A SORT of crisis arose between master and dog. Renni set his will against George's. Neither had the least suspicion what was going on. Olga was the cause of it all. Olga was a pretty, flashily dressed girl whom George met in one of the city parks and found very attractive.

From the very beginning Renni took a strong dislike to her. Gay, jolly, full of fun, apparently harmless, ready for everything, the girl set her cap for George. Naturally
the dog had not the slightest idea of that, but in some instinctive way he felt her insincerity and simply could not stand her.