Even you Humans know that real Time is not measured by clocks. You can make it speed up by being busy or slow it down by doing nothing. Enjoyment also speeds up your time just as boredom or pain slow it down. If you go on holiday and do dozens of different enjoyable activities each day, the holiday will whizz by but in your memory afterwards, it will seem to have lasted and lasted because you will have so many different stories to tell yourself about what you did and where you went. The reverse is true if you lie on the beach every day, sit talking each night; the holiday will seem to last and last but in your memory it will be only two moments.
Every puppy knows that the day is long when you are alone waiting for your Master to come home from work, however big a chew toy he left for you. And that you do not think of time passing when you are chasing your Master into the sea, splashing and yelping together. And any dog who has been staked out alone on a hillside has to discover new ways of passing time and new perceptions of time passing. I was no longer a puppy to hang my heart on the appearance of the only Human in my life, not when she mostly ignored me. No, I mostly ignored her in return. And as basic provisions were always there, the appearance of food was equally a non-event. No, I turned my attention to my domain. My body might be chained but my hearing and sight were free to roam.
Nothing was too close or too small for my attention, nothing too distant. I was a patou surveying my domain as patous had done for hundreds of years. Every day brought new encounters. A skinny little viper whipped through the grass on a mission. I held the liquid brown-eyed gaze of a chamois that leaped into my clearing then froze when she saw me. A nod, a flick of a bob tail, then she bounded out of sight again. A rabbit screamed, a fox gave its high sharp bark. Marmots chittered to each other and scampered for cover. A shadow of wings crossed over me and a beige vulture glided overhead, silent carrion-picker. I heard the slow snuffle of a badger tracking through the night and thought of my identity card, which declared me ‘blanc/blaireau’, white/badger; the identity card that said I belonged to Marc. And there it was at the heart of everything. I wasn’t bored, I was waiting. I had company, good company, but I was lonely for my Human, the one who would come.
Leaf-fall was coming to an end and the farm noises were getting closer. My Breeder was extending pens out towards my hillside. I heard the soft whinny of horses and the bray of their companion and soon their whuffle-huffle breath was my company under the trees. I gathered from Snow that the shock-ribbons formed horse-pens and my territory was now in the middle of one such. Then the chickens moved in, roosting in trees and in my shed, when they weren’t clucking, pecking or fighting, in a flurry of spurs and stiffened wings. Where the chickens were, there rats followed; and where there were rats, were the farm cats, stalking rodents or tall grass – you never could tell with cats. I didn’t speak any of their languages but, from observation, I began to understand the breathy friendship of the horses, the busy egg-laying cluck of hens, the purr and rough tongue of a tabby cat. I would lie quietly until a fellow creature lay beside me for the warmth, and then we would just be, no more than that, just two beings in the now of the great universe. These were good moments and something better was coming.
The tabby cat had been acting strangely, gathering leaves, tree bark and feathers, and secreting herself somewhere in amongst the trees. When I heard multiple mewing, I understood. A very thin tabbycat rubbed against me, wowled and rushed off for a short spell hunting. I guessed the wowl meant ‘Look after them for me,’ as if I wouldn’t have! No wolves would come near my growing flock of cats, kittens, chickens and horses. Perhaps two hundred years of Soum de Gaia blood did count for something after all.
From then on, every time Tabby Cat left her litter, rubbing against me as she stretched her limbs before the hunt, I was extra-vigilant. A warning bark or two, just to let them know I was there, was enough to keep most predators away. But some were sneakier than others. I’d already had one twilight run-in with a fox who thought he’d help himself to the chickens and hadn’t been put off by my warnings. No, the cool character approached my territory in swift circles, giving his high bark from ten different directions. Like a gullible fool, I went to the end of my chain in each direction, barking what I’d do to him if he came close enough. And from that, he took bearings and worked out exactly what my limits were. Then he slunk in, well short of my chain length, sending a scurry of squawks and feathers as the chickens fought each other to reach their roosts in the trees. Barking mad and helpless, I watched the lunge of his maw and a brown hen grabbed, still complaining from the fox’s mouth as she disappeared with him into the dark.
I learned from that not to give away the fact that I was chained but to stay in one position and bark, keep them guessing. Wolves and bears were unlikely to come down from the high mountains but if they did, I was ready. I practised the moves, running the length of my chain and rearing on my hind legs to clash against my imaginary opponent, while the chickens scattered around me in panic. I let my collar grow imaginary spikes – on the outside – and my chain be just one more weapon in my armoury, something I could wear with pride. ‘I am the guardian,’ I roared, shaking out the full mane of white hair which had grown since spring moult. The reply was in whinnies, yowls, mews, clucks and quacks – yes, ducks had joined the flock, churning a recent rain-pool to mud with their webbed feet.
Twilight, the violet hour, Storytime, was also in-between the day creatures and the night creatures, when one could eat the other, and I had to stay vigilant. Sometimes I had to break off talking to Snow to send a warning out into the shadows and my senses grew ever sharper for danger, always on watch. So it happened that just when Snow was telling me about building plans and show cheats, my sixth sense was aware of swooping wings and, faster than a scream for help, one of the kittens had panicked and was running into the open, mewling as the rush of owl wings descended closer and the great talons dropped into clutch position. Tabby Cat’s cry told me she was on her way back, but not near enough, and I roared a great, ‘No!’ at the owl as I charged towards the two shapes, gnashing my teeth at the white face fixed on its prey. The kitten was trembling at my feet as, faced with seventy kilogrammes of angry patou, the owl suddenly braked and achieved as near vertical take-off as I’d ever seen. Septimus would have been in his element studying the owl but all I thought of was the little one. I picked her up in my mouth by the loose scruff of her neck and padded back near the shed, where I lay her down between my paws.
This was how Tabby Cat found us, me licking her little daughter, who was already shaking off her fear, patting my paws with her little claws. Maternal instinct is always strongest when combined with the fear of loss, and the smell of anguish and relief rose pungent from the mother cat who dived between my great paws, hauling out her offspring, purring, then thwacking her roughly for being so stupid. I merited some hissing and spitting, whether for allowing the owl anywhere near, or for presuming to touch her kitten, or just because I was there and it felt good to hiss and spit, I don’t know. But I was also entitled to a double dose of rubbing and purring, which was duly delivered before Tabby Cat berated her daughter all the way back to their den beneath the trees.
From that day on Little Tab visited me, tangling her tiny claws in my fur, rasping her rough tongue on any knots she found. She was the spitting image of her mother, who looked indulgently on as the light of her life whacked a patou on the nose and then skittered sideways. There were five kittens, all bouncing out of their den these days. When Little Tab ran over to me, the others formed a cautious wide-eyed band behind her, scattering like chickens if I stood up or said, ‘Boo!’ only to re-group and take teeny steps in my direction once more. It is a privilege to watch little ones grow, to re-discover the world through their curiosity and surprise, to feel the life running through their tiny bodies as they pluck up courage, tap you and run away, only to come back, bolder each time. And if one of those little ones grows up to be your good friend, this is one of the treasures life brings your way. I didn’t know what to do with the first dead mouse that Little Tab brought me but I licked her as pack anyway. And although she ranged further and further away, so her adventures were beyond my ken, when she came back there was always a warm place for her against my side or, as she’d first discovered, between my paws.
Warmth, or rather the lack of it, was becoming more and more important for the other animals, who didn’t have my long, weather-proof coat. First snow was of course sighted on the peaks while we were still in leaf-fall but our nights too grew chill, fresh and starry, with frost sparkling around us at dawn. The shed became popular and the chickens less so; the floor below their roosts in the shed was thick in droppings that smelled of concentrated acid, that oozed black onto your paws if you accidentally stood on it and that made half the shed a no-go area. The cats moved back down to the farmhouse and its fire. My Breeder tied blankets on the horses’ backs.
And one night the magic happened.
‘Snow!’ I barked at Storytime.
‘Snow!’ she agreed, playtime in her voice. She spared me the details of mock combat in the drifts, of rolling a patou in the deep white covering and we shared instead the pleasures I could know too, the solitary pleasure of spinning to catch the flakes on your tongue, seeing your own pawprints, rolling in a tingle of cold. The snow made us pups again and I longed for a playmate but my sister had never been able to repeat her bid for freedom; however hard she tried, she could not find a way past the shock-ribbon.
The rapture of first snowfall diminished to familiar pleasures as the snow stayed ... and stayed. Winter had arrived and if I enjoyed the cold, I missed the friends who had moved back to the farmhouse, especially Little Tab. Once again, I adjusted to the new now of my life, watching the forest creatures who lost their shyness in hunger, scrabbling through the snow for worms and grubs, or tracking spoor across the white desert. Eyes glowed in the dark, measuring my strength and wisely deciding that my food was not for the taking. Berries grew scarce, vanishing overnight as a swoop of birds discovered them and moved on. No-one could hide in the white, nor hare nor fox, but no-one could move fast on the ground either. The advantage was to those in the air and the great raptors swept the skies, unhindered. The aim was the same but the rules had changed and everyone was adjusting, taught by cold and hunger.
I felt neither, so I lay in the snow and watched my mountains flaunt their winter clothes, shrouded and sombre when the snow was falling then dazzling blue-white sky-snow reflections in the following daytime. Or red-white at dawn and dusk, flooding the landscape with blood. You could shrivel and cower in the shadow of such peaks or you could stand tall, throw back your head and be part of it, know your age-old right to be here, feel the mountains coursing through your veins.
Winter cocooned me in its endless white now so that the melt took me unawares. A tiny white flower drooped its fragile head in the melting snow, alive and pushing upwards, the first round in the annual fight of spring against winter. Little Tab and the other cats re-appeared. She would always be Little Tab to me but of course she was as big as her mother now, and her purring vibrated right through my own body, though she still played the kitten between my paws.
It was during one of winter’s late retaliations that Snow gave me the news of Mother’s death. She was in her eighth year, not old, but we big dogs do die young. The vet said that her womb had turned septic and she could only have been saved if her Human had taken her to him as soon as the symptoms began, and then she would have needed an emergency operation that may or may not have worked.
So the warm place which had nurtured us before birth and ushered us into this world had turned poisonous. Snow and I sang a proper farewell, told the Soum de Gaia stories, admitted one more to our store of ancestors, but what you don’t feel, you don’t feel. She had never forgiven me and I didn’t know her. Snow seemed to have finally come into her own, and her voice filled with the authority of leader, the Alpha of Soum de Gaia. You Humans think it is always a male who leads a pack. Not so. There are many examples of great female leadership, calm, decisive, fair-minded and I knew better than most that if it came to a physical challenge, Snow could flash her little teeth in a way that would have shocked her show judges. Beauty Queen and leader, she had it all. And with that knowledge came a great sense of being at ease in her own fur. So it was only a question of time before the next news reached me.
First, there was the non-event of my second birthday, Snow yowling to me at twilight that we should do something special. ‘There’s not a lot you can do on a chain,’ I told her.
‘Then destroy something,’ she replied, typical Snow.
So I did. I pounded a corner of the shed that had been snow-damaged (appropriate, I thought) and when I had bashed a hole through I took some rotting planks in my teeth and chewed on them, savouring the mould and softness of the decaying wood.
‘This must have rotted right through! But I can’t understand how it happened so quickly!’ my Breeder would comment the next day. ‘Any other dog and I’d think you had something to do with it, but you’re not the destructive kind...’
So I was two years old. As was Snow. Only two.
‘I was far too young to be taken to Tarquin,’ Snow reflected. ‘But of course I didn’t think I was. Just another example of her greed.’
‘So you were too young for Rockie too,’ I teased.
‘That’s different,’ she said, as I knew she would, then with a hint of the little bitch she used to be, ‘you wouldn’t understand.’ There was a silence, then ‘Marc will come,’ she told me.
‘Someone will come,’ I bayed in return. My faith had shrunk from a glowing core to a small hard nut, un-crackable, but giving me nothing.
The new season of show gossip started again and I noticed that one particular male was getting rave reviews, and not just from the judges. It was, as I say, just a question of time. Snow was absent more and more from Storytime and dreamily distracted when she did make contact. Her most frequent contribution was ‘Sorry, what did you say? I missed that.’
So it came as no surprise to smell her excitement on the wind, hear her weary voice announcing, ‘I did it, Sirius, ten puppies! You’re an uncle!’
I watched the stars long into that night and my chain chafed me in a way it hadn’t done for ages. I thought of kittens growing up and of Snow’s puppies that I would never see. But I was a dog not a Human, I had my ears and my nose, and as soon as they could yap, Snow made her pups tell stories to Uncle Sirius, tales of inter-sibling rivalries and friendships, of the pointlessness of blue and green rabbits.
‘Some things don’t change,’ their mother told me. ‘And you’ll never guess, Sirius. Two of my boys are dead ringers for Stratos and you.’
Perhaps it was sisterly imagination or perhaps it was true. Perhaps two of the family faces had swum the gene pool to appear again in this new generation. I wished them both luck.