Chapter Six: Pete Gets Drenched, Tee-hee

Our mission had failed, but the most tragic part of it was that Sally May had almost broken my heart. I mean, there for a while I’d thought we had patched things up, formed a new relationship, reached a new platoon of emotional emotions, started all over again.

But then she’d dashed it all by shoving me out of the yard and saying, “That’s it.” All at once I felt used, tricked. I had dared to reveal tender emotions to this lady, had crawled out of my shell of . . . something.

Oh well. I hadn’t expected it to work anyway. I mean, Sally May was a hard case. We dogs were pretty successful at fooling Slim and Loper, but Sally May was always tough. We could fool her once in a while, but not very often.

So, in spite of my broken heart and so forth, I wasn’t exactly shocked when our plan fell as flat as a gutted snowbird and Little Alfred got captured going out the front door. I was still sitting beside the yard gate when his momma escorted him around to the backyard.

“No, Alfred Leroy, you may NOT go fishing by yourself.”

“But Mom, I wasn’t going awone. I was going wiff Hank.”

A chirp of laughter shot out of her mouth. “Hank! Am I suppose to feel better about that? Sending you down to the creek with that dog?”

“He’s a good dog, Mom.”

“I know you think so, but to any mother in this world, sending you and Hank off to fish is like sending off Laurel to supervise Hardy. No.”

“Aw Mom, pweese?”

“No. And if you want to argue about it, we’ll go over to the hay field and discuss it with your father.”

“But Mom, I’m bored. There’s nothing to do awound here.”

She stopped. Her brows rose and a smile spread across her mouth. “Oh really? Well, young man, I have just the cure for that.” She seized his fishing pole and tackle box and set them down near the corner of the house. “You see these flowers and shrubs in the backyard? They all need to be watered.”

The boy scowled and pooched out his lower lip. “That’s not what I wanted to do.”

“I’m sure it’s not, but I have to go fix lunch for the men, and since you’re so bored and can’t think of anything to do, you can just do my watering.”

His lip pooched out even further. “I don’t even wike your dumb old fwowers.”

She stiffened. “Do we need to talk to your father?” Alfred shook his head. “All right. Straighten up your attitude. The spray nozzle is on the hose. Give everything a good watering—and don’t make a mess.”

“Bummer.”

She towered over him and crossed her arms. “The proper response, young man, is not ‘Bummer.’ It’s ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Now, try it again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s better. I’ll be out to check on you when I get the potatoes whipped.”

She went into the house. Alfred followed her with a dark scowl. Kicking at tuffs of grass, he sludged over to where I was sitting beside the gate.

“I got caught.”

Yes, I’d noticed. And I’d be the last dog in the world to say, “I told you so.”

“I have to water my mom’s swubs. Tom Sawyer never had to water dumb old swubs.”

Life was sometimes cruel.

“You want to come into the yard and help, Hankie?”

Uh . . . no thanks. I had gained a little ground with his mom and I wanted to hang onto it for a while. I would watch—and supervise—outside the yard.

He heaved a sigh, trudged over to the hydrant, and turned on the water. He picked up the hose and began watering the shrubberies. There was a spray attachment on the end of it, see, and he could change the shape and intensity of the spray by squeezing the handle.

I watched as he experimented with the thing, going from a broad mist to a single stream that squirted quite a long distance. It was fairly obvious that the best setting for this job was the broad mist, but it was just as obvious that the boy preferred the Fire Hose setting, with which he could send out a stream of water halfway across the yard.

This began to cause me some concern. Alfred and I had been through a lot together, and I knew him pretty well. One of the things I knew about him was that he had a weakness for ornery tricks, and that he wouldn’t be content watering plants for long.

There is a Universal Law of Physics which states . . . let’s see if I can remember the exact wording . . . which states, “Loaded water hoses in the hands of little boys tend to go off in all directions.” Yes, that’s it, and as you might imagine, this began to cause me some concern.

See, even though Alfred and I were great pals, it was only a matter of time until he got bored with watering plants and began looking around for . . . well, live targets, shall we say. And I had reason to suspect that he might include ME in that category.

I had just about made the decision to abandon my position at the gate and move my freight to a safer location, when suddenly and all at once something wonderful happened. In the course of spraying the shrubberies and flower beds, Alfred sent a shower of drops into the iris patch at the northeast corner of the house.

Would you care to guess who or whom was loafing in the iris patch, and who or whom got nailed by the spray? Tee-hee. Pete the Barncat. Mister Never-Sweat. Mister Kitty Moocher. Mister Lurk-in-the-Flower-Beds.

Ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha.

Pete hated water. My ears shot up, my eyes popped open, and new meaning surged into the dusty corners of my life. All of a sudden I forgot the cares and responsibilities of running my ranch, and I prepared to indulge myself in the sheer delight of watching Kitty-Kitty get the hosing he so richly deserved.

Pete came flying out of the iris patch. His ears lay flat on his head and he wore a most unhappy expression on his face. Tee-hee. I could hardly contain myself. Ten feet west of the iris patch, he stopped and looked around. Then he began licking the water off his left hind leg.

Well, I was really involved now. Do you see the meaning of this? That cat was so dumb, he didn’t know where the water had come from! No kidding. He didn’t get it. I mean, there was a five-year-old ranch boy holding a loaded garden hose, and Pete thought the water had come from a passing cloud!

Hard to believe, huh? Not for those of us who study cats in great deeth and dovetail . . . great depth and detail, I should say. See, cats have a tiny form of intelligence. They’re good at scheming and avoiding all forms of work, but they don’t understand kids or cowboys. Your average ranch dog, on the other hand, will put the clues together (little boy + garden hose + shower of water) and figure it out in the brink of an eye.

How do we do it? Well, tremendous intellectual powers, for one thing, and also we understand the minds of ranch lads and cowboys.

But Pete missed it, totally missed it. He sat down in the grass to lick himself dry . . . and what do you suppose happened next? Heh-heh. You know. I know. Even Drover would have known. It was obvious to everyone on the ranch but Pete, and much to my joy and delight, he never saw it coming. And he got fire-hosed.

We’re not talking about a little sprinkle, fellers, or a few stray drops that hit the mark. By this time, Little Alfred had mastered his weapon and had learned how to deliver the maximum amount of water to a small target. Pete got blasted, plastered, smeared.

I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I laughed, I chortled, I guffawed, I snickered. I whooped for joy, barked, and moved my front paws up and down. Pete heard me and came at a run.

Seeing him in this soggy condition brought even more and deeper meaning into my life. I mean, the little snot was soaked to the bone. His whiskers were stuck together. His ears were pinned down and dribbling water. His hair was plastered into lumps, and his tail had lost all its fluff and now resembled the tail of a possum.

Tee-hee, ho-ho, ha-ha. It was wonderful.

He came slithering up and gave me an evil eye. “Well, Hankie, I guess you’re enjoying this.”

“You could say that, Kitty, yes. And it serves you right for being all the things you are: hateful, spiteful, sneaky, and greedy, just to name a few. Oh, and lazy. If you’d been out catching mice instead of loafing in the shade, this wouldn’t have happened. You got exactly what you deserved, Kitty, and yes, I must admit . . .”

HUH?

Splat! Slosh! Slurp!

All at once my lecture was interrupted by a, uh, fire-hose torrent of water which . . . surely the boy had been aiming at the cat. I mean, we were pals, right, and we’d both been sharing the joy of seeing Pete’s chickens come home to root . . . rot . . . roost . . . whatever . . .

We’d been sharing a precious moment of joy and happiness, and we were pals and we understood one another and . . . yikes, the little snipe was giggling and dragging the hose and running in my direction . . . and there was a devilish gleam in his eyes and . . .

SPLAT!

Forget what I said about him aiming at Pete. He’d been aiming at ME, and this was no accident. He’d fire-hosed his best friend in the whole world. I was shocked, outraged, wounded, and to register my sense of wounded . . . SPLAT!

Okay, that did it. I should have known he’d . . . I went to Full Throttle on all engines and got the heck out of there. I ran into a patch of tall weeds some fifteen yards west of the gate, and there I stopped to repair the damage and check out the situation.

The good news was that he’d run out of hose and I was out of range of his stupid water. The bad news was that he had managed to give me a thorough soaking. The badder news was that Pete and I were sharing the same patch of weeds.

He batted his eyelids and gave me his usual smirking grin. “Now, what were you saying, Hankie?”

I gave him a withering glare. “I was saying . . . shut up, cat, and that’s my last word on the subject.”

Well, Little Alfred had a big time squirting all his friends on the ranch, but he should have stopped there. He didn’t, and when he saw his mother’s face at the kitchen window . . .

You’ll never guess what he did.