Bone and I waited a very long time for Mother. That first morning, when we didn’t know that she wasn’t coming back, we entertained ourselves as we usually did. We hunted in the woods. We played by the stone wall. We visited the garbage heap and found bits of smoked turkey, a melon rind, coffee grounds (which we tasted but didn’t like), and half a piece of cake with white frosting. We ate until our stomachs were quite fat.

The day was very hot. It was so hot that the Merrion children, who had been spraying one another with the garden hose in the morning, went indoors for their lunch and didn’t come back outside. By the time the sun had reached its highest point and had started to pass over the Merrions’ backyard, the shed, even with its open window and door, had grown too stuffy for any creatures except the mice. Bone and I lay in the shade of the woods and waited for Mother.

At the end of the day, when the shadows were long and the heat had faded a bit, Bone and I returned to the shed. I expected to find Mother in our nest. Sometimes now Mother left us for long periods of time, but she always came back by evening. Our nest was empty, though. And the shed was still stuffy. One of the cats poked his head through the door, sniffed at the dusty, dense air, turned and left. Bone and I remained. I was hungry and I suspect Bone was, too, but we wanted Mother.

The air cooled, darkness fell, the stars came out and so did the bats, and still Mother did not appear. Bone and I curled into each other in our nest, our stomachs rumbling. I thought of the garbage heap, of the turkey and melon rind and cake, but Bone and I hadn’t been outside in the nighttime by ourselves yet. Besides, surely Mother was on her way back to us.

All that night Bone and I slept on the burlap sack, slept with our legs and tails entwined. I could feel Bone’s breath on my neck. It was our first night without Mother, and it seemed very long.

In the morning when I awoke I saw Bone, three of the shed cats, and a mouse poking its head out of a flowerpot, but no Mother, I knew that she was not going to come back at all.

 

Bone and I were on our own. We were responsible for finding all of our food and water, and for remembering the many, many things Mother had taught us — how to stay out of trouble, when to snap and bite at an animal, to steer clear of humans and other dogs, to clean our wounds, to groom ourselves. We tried hard and we managed fairly well. The garbage heap became our best friend.

I do not understand emotions very well. I know what fear feels like, and I have been afraid many times. But I am less clear about words such as joy, happiness, sadness, and anger. Over the years I have heard humans, especially Susan, talk about these things, though, and I see how Susan appears when she says she is happy. Looking back, I think I was happy during the rest of that summer when Bone and I lived in the shed; that I was happy even though Mother was gone.

The truth was that with Mine gone as well, the Merrions’ property was a much more peaceful place and our world seemed less threatening. Mine’s kits had left, too — the morning after their mother was killed they tumbled out of their den, trotted into the woods, and just kept going. So the Merrions’ yard was free of foxes, and I was not to see the man with the gun for quite a while. Bone and I began to feel safe.

The air cooled down after that one blistering day, and sometimes I saw the Merrion children wearing the kind of clothes they had worn in the spring. Cooler air meant that the shed was more comfortable. And just enough rain fell — enough to fill the buckets and watering cans that Bone and I drank from, but not so much that we couldn’t go hunting. We were not very experienced hunters yet, my brother and I, but we caught enough small animals here and there so that our stomachs were usually full. If we had a bad day, we could always raid the garbage heap.

Our lives were quiet. Bone and I played and hunted. We chased squirrels and chipmunks and each other. I finally made friends with some of the shed cats. One of them, Yellow Man, would wait for me in front of the nesting boxes each morning and rub his head under my chin before he left to spend the day in the woods. I even came to recognize the shed mice, every single one of them. I never thought of them as meals. They were my neighbors.

 

It was a warm afternoon with the smell of cut grass in the air and bees humming in the bushes when Matthias discovered Bone and me. He took us by surprise. We had eaten breakfast at the garbage heap and were napping in the woods, our bellies full, when I heard the sound of crunching leaves and a hushed human voice. Bone and I jerked to attention. Here came Matthias, the boy who liked to sit under trees, the boy Mrs. Merrion would tell to take his nose out of that book. He was carrying a book now, and talking to himself, and his face looked like Susan’s does after Mrs. Oliver has told her she’s too old to be living on her own.

Bone and I drew back and held very still, afraid to run and draw attention to ourselves.

Matthias almost stepped on us.

“Hey!” he cried. “What — Hey, I found puppies!”

Bone and I did scramble away then. We ran straight for the shed and zipped through the door.

Matthias ran after us and followed us to our nest.

“Hey, puppies. Hey, puppies,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” He held his hand toward us.

Bone growled at it.

“I know. You don’t trust me,” said Matthias. “I don’t blame you. You don’t know me.” He paused. “Not yet anyway.”

Bone and I left our nest then and backed into a corner.

Matthias stood up but he didn’t approach us. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

As soon as Matthias left the shed, Bone and I scooted out the door and ran for the woods.

We hid in the woods, afraid to move about, but by the end of the day we felt brave enough to make our way to the garbage heap. When we did, I saw Matthias walking around the Merrions’ yard. He was holding something in his hand, and he was peering under bushes and around trees and in the sheds and playhouse. He didn’t call out, though, as Mr. and Mrs. Merrion had done one day when they couldn’t find the noisy little girl. I realize now that Matthias didn’t want his mother to know he had found puppies on the property. She wouldn’t stand for that. We were Matthias’s secret.

We didn’t want to be Matthias’s secret, though. Mother had taught Bone and me to fear humans, so we tried to stay alert and keep out of Matthias’s way. But one morning the rains came again, and after Bone and I had found breakfast and relieved ourselves, we returned to the shed. We were settling in for a cozy day with Yellow Man, the rain drumming on the roof, when the door was flung open and in walked Matthias.

“There you are,” he said softly when he saw Bone and me.

Matthias always spoke softly, not like his sister. He crouched down and held out his hand.

I glanced over my shoulder. Yellow Man and the other cats had retreated to the farthest recesses of the nesting boxes. I was about to run for the corner when a scent, a wonderful, beautiful scent, reached my nose.

Chicken.

Matthias was offering us pieces of chicken.

Bone and I couldn’t bring ourselves to approach Matthias, but we didn’t turn and run, either.

Matthias stretched his hand out as far as it would reach.

Bone and I darted forward to snatch the chicken, and then we did retreat to the corner.

Matthias grinned. “That’s all for today,” he said. And he left.

But he returned with more chicken the next morning and the next morning and many mornings after that. By the third morning, Bone and I didn’t feel that we needed to hide in the corner in order to eat our prizes. Matthias did nothing while we ate but sit and wait and watch. If Susan had been there then, she would have said that Matthias was patient.

One morning Bone and I were eating our fabulous chicken breakfasts when I realized that Matthias’s hand was resting on my back. His other hand was resting on Bone’s back. I was startled, but not so startled that I couldn’t finish the chicken.

The following morning, Matthias stroked our heads while we ate.

And then one morning he pulled me into his lap. I struggled at first, but Matthias kept patting me and murmuring, “You’re such a good puppy. The best puppy ever. Good puppy, good puppy.” He pulled Bone into his lap next, and Bone growled, but he didn’t struggle too much.

After that, I waited every morning for Matthias to come to the shed. Sometimes Bone waited, too, sometimes he didn’t. Matthias always brought chicken, and sometimes he brought a ball or a toy. I would eat the chicken and then I would sit in Matthias’s lap. Or we would play in the grass behind the shed. I noticed that Matthias was as careful to stay out of sight of his house as Bone and I were.

 

At the height of summer, something of fall was already in the air — although I didn’t realize it then, didn’t know that the days would turn short and cold and that food would become hard to find. It was during this time that Bone and I saw the man with the gun again. And one evening we heard a blast from the rifle.

Bone stayed awake all the rest of that night. I had seen him do this on other nights, had watched as he woke from a deep sleep, sat up, and listened to the coyotes in the hills or to voices from the Merrions’ porch. My brother was becoming restless. I loved our summer days — being greeted by Yellow Man in the morning, hunting or going to the garbage heap with Bone, waiting for Matthias, romping in the woods. But Bone was tiring of our days. And he was becoming suspicious. He eyed the Merrions, even Matthias, more warily than ever. He growled when he saw the man with the gun. And on the morning after the rifle blast, he decided to leave our home in the country.