One day the wolf, the last survivor of his pack, was so hungry that he finally leaped over the barbwire fence and crossed the border into the suburb. He sniffed from house to house, toppling garbage cans for food until he focused on one large white house somewhat hidden from view behind two oddly shaped cypresses. He smelled animal presence and was delighted to find a small Chinese pug barking at him in the backyard.
He went straight to the pug and said, “Don’t bark, comrade-sister, hear me out! Why are you with those pasty white owners anyway? They dress you up in a shabby brocade kilt, put a stupid coolie hat on you. They make you fetch their newspapers and dance on your hind legs. They get a big laugh out of you when their neighbors say, ‘My, what an ugly face on that dog; it’s so ugly it’s cute.’ In return for your party favors, all they give you is cheap dog food. Don’t you have any self-respect? Haven’t you heard of post-colonial self-reliance? It’s the twenty-first century, baby! Take off your leash and collar, set yourself free! Gandhi freed his people. Mandela freed his people. We must not be occupied! We are cousins, you and I, we are of the same blood. Why don’t you run with us, hunt with us, go wild! Don’t you know, you are really a wolf in pug clothing? Domesticated creatures unite! We must start a canine revolution!”
Indeed, the pug had been unhappy, but she couldn’t put her finger on the nature of her unhappiness. But then, again, by bourgeois habit we’ve personified the creature by presupposing that she can understand happiness in the first place. So let’s say, she’s been uneasy lately, a bit nervous. Dogs, if they can’t discern unhappiness, perhaps are armed with a sixth sense and feel ominous forebodings: the onset of storms, the presence of dangerous beasts that might cause harm to themselves or to their owners. Presently, the appearance of this pushy wolf had increased her anxiety.
She had never seen a wolf before. Although this creature possessed four legs and a tail, he had bad breath and spoke in a gruff, unappealing manner. He had a huge nose and a long drippy tongue. Why should she trust him? He was not her kind. For every virtuous liberator, there dwells a heinous dictator who oppresses his own people: how about Kim Jong-il, or Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin, not to mention, the most dastardly of them all, Hitler? The list is endless. Then, with a nostalgic tear, she considered the Rochesters, her English owners. They picked her out from a litter in Hong Kong. They prided themselves their empathy, for choosing the smallest, most vulnerable one. Thank goodness; otherwise, she would have ended up roasted and served on a table at a fashionable Guangdong restaurant or dragged by the nape and drowned along with other unwanted doglings.
She wasn’t so clear about her identity in the first place: What is a pug, anyway? Is a Chinese pug really Chinese? Whatever she had become was a result of thousands of years of evolution, inbreeding and serendipitous genetic engineering. And if one were not so clear about the reason for one’s existence, why bite the hand that feeds one?
The pug said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wolf, but no deal. Please go away, or else I shall have to bark loudly and alarm my owners.” But as she turned away, the wolf leaped on her and bit her throat and proceeded to tear open her abdomen in a few ghastly chomps.
Then the wolf squeezed through the swinging dog door into the kitchen and saw Mrs. Rochester standing in her orange and pink appliqué floral apron. First, she was alarmed, but then, when she saw pieces of the pug’s fur and blood in the wolf’s teeth, she screeched, “What have you done to my little Mei Ling?” and raised a pan of hot sizzling bacon off the stove and showered it on the wolf’s head. With the wolf howling in pain, she went into the bedroom and brought out a twelve-gauge shotgun and shot him five times in the face, not missing a single shot. It just so happened that she was trained as a marksman by the Scotland Yard in their elite antiterrorist forces.
Obviously, there shall be no revolution tonight. The Rochesters will conduct a solemn ceremony and bury whatever is left of poor little Mei Ling in their backyard. The remains of the wolf will be dragged away and incinerated in a local blast furnace operated by the city’s animal rescue unit. In a year or two, the Rochesters will go to Hong Kong and purchase another Chinese pug pup: the tiniest, most vulnerable one of the litter, of course. They are good tender-hearted Christians, after all. And, oh, how they love that breed of dog.