"I heard Mom say that Old Roy won't be coming back from the House of Pain."

            Snowball, the shorthaired white female cat, said this to Lau-Lau and Clarence.  They'd all gathered for their afternoon catnap in the front parlor, where a swath of sunlight poured through the big picture window there.

            Clarence sat and scratched behind one of his orange ears.  "I thought Dad looked upset.  So the dog found a new home at the vet's?  Why would any animal want to live there?"

            "No, dimwit.  Old Roy's chased his tail for the last time.  He's treed his last cat.  He's a goner.  A deader."

            Lau-Lau, the longhaired tabby, shivered where she lay and covered her eyes with her paws.  "Goodness gracious.  What a dreadful thing."

            "Yes, but good news for us," Snowball said.  "I for one won't be missing that smelly cur.  I daresay none of us will.  I doubt that Mom will, either.  She was always tripping over him when she did her housework.  We were always her favorites."

            Clarence said, "True.  Roy was always Dad's pet, right from the get-go."

            "Please don't curse in front of us, Clarence," Lau-Lau said.  "Even if dogs do deserve that title."

            "Sorry, Dad's person," Clarence corrected himself.  "Anyway, I feel sorry for Dad.  He's not such a bad guy.  Sometimes I even let him stroke me.  Just a couple of times, mind, but . . ."

            Snowball snorted.  "You never did have any taste, Clarence.  Nor a sense of smell.  Maybe that explains why you never cover up after yourself when you use the litter box.  Not once, in twelve years!"

            "Why bother?  Lau-Lau always follows behind me and takes care of that.  She's the tidy one around here.  I'm just . . . me."

            The cats all shifted an inch to the left to track the spot of sun that crept along the carpet.

            "But here's the thing, friends," Snowball said.  "What's to stop Dad from bringing home another dog?"

            In response to this notion, Lau-Lau began retching up a fur-ball from her seemingly limitless supply of them.  "Heavenly Bastet, not another puppy in the house.  I couldn't live through that again."

            "I suppose I could teach it manners, same as I did for Old Roy when he was a pup," Clarence said.  "But I don't much feature putting up with another dog either."

            Snowball pulled herself upright.  "Then we have to figure out a way to make Dad realize he doesn't need another dog.  What is it that dogs are good for, anyway?  Maybe we can all bend a little bit and fill that void.  It'd be for our greater self-interest, after all."

            The three cats sat quietly for a long while, trying to think of the answer to that very difficult question.  But since no amount of intense feline concentration can ever prevent the onset of an afternoon catnap, the conversation ended there.  A trio of soft snores soon echoed through the room.

#

            "We've been asking the wrong question," Lau-Lau said.

            They sat in the kitchen, hunched over their food bowls.  Mom was in the far end of the house, doing laundry.  Snowball looked over at Lau-Lau with a quizzical expression on her face.

            "What are you saying?"

            "Look, we can't ever know what good a dog is.  All we can ask is what it is they do.  And whatever that is, it must be pleasing to Dad."

            Clarence chimed in.  "They sleep most of the time.  They go to the bathroom.  They vomit.  They lick their bottom parts a lot.  Not much different than us, come to think.  So why wouldn't that be enough to satisfy Dad?"

            Lau-Lau shook her head.  "No, there are some things you're missing.  Roy used to fetch the newspaper from the front yard every morning and bring it in to Dad.  And he'd bring his slippers to him in the evening, when Dad got home from work.  And once in a while, he'd chase after a ball that Dad was trying to get rid of, and bring it back to him.  Although I can't quite figure out why that last item would please Dad instead of making him angry."

            The other cats paused and thought about this.

            "We ought to be able to do that sort of stuff," Snowball said.  "Of course, Roy weighed ten times as much as any of us, and he was pretty strong.  But I suppose if we all worked together . . ."

            Clarence gobbled up the last piece of his food.  "Five times, maximum.  Speak for yourself.  I'm not nearly as scrawny as you two.  I'm stronger than you think."  He pushed his plastic food bowl across the vinyl floor with one paw to demonstrate.

            "So we should cooperate?" Lau-Lau asked.  "But we've never done that before.  I've never heard of any cats doing that, ever.  Is it even possible?  I'm not so sure--"

            "It's for our greater self-interest, remember?" Snowball said.  "We'll do whatever it takes.  The result will be its own reward.  No more dogs in this house!  Ever again!"

#

            Early the next morning, the three cats waited on the front porch for the newspaper to arrive.  The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east.  Clarence yawned.

            "This better be worth it, is all I can say," he said.  "Cats weren't meant to be up this early.  And it's darned chilly out here."

            "Shut up, Clarence," Snowball said.  "We all have to make sacrifices.  At least until we can convince Dad we're all he needs.  Look!  Here comes the paperboy!"

            The folded newspaper plopped on the sidewalk in front of the house.  The three ran down to it.  Snowball grabbed a corner of it with her teeth and tugged, hard as she could.  It moved less than an inch.

            "Uh!  Heavier than I thought it'd be.  Give a hand here, people."

            Lau-Lau bit down on the opposite end, and Clarence found a spot in the middle.  Together, they dragged the paper a yard or so across the rough concrete, then they let it go and sat next to it, puffing.

            "I never realized Old Roy was that powerful," Snowball said.  "This is going to be tougher than it seemed.  Come on, we've got to get it around back to the kitchen entrance and through the pet door before Dad wakes up and gets dressed.  Once again: all together now!"

            They started to get the hang of working together.  Once they got the paper off the sidewalk and onto the grass by the side of the house, it slid a lot easier.

            "Glory," Lau-Lau said.  "We can actually do this!"

            Snowball muttered between clenched teeth: "Don't get cocky.  Keep pulling."

            They reached the rear patio and carefully skirted the edge of the sunken goldfish pond that lay at one end of it.  Lau-Lau, who was the least athletic of them, suddenly stumbled, knocking them all off balance.  As they fell down, the newspaper, freed from their grasp, took an odd bounce.  It came to rest halfway over the pond's lip.  Lau-Lau tried to recover from her mistake and made a desperate grab for the teetering paper, but only succeeded in pushing it all the way over the edge -- ker-splash!

            "Oh, Merciful Heavens," Lau-Lau said.  "We're doomed!  And it's all my fault!"

            "Nothing for it, but to retrieve it.  Maybe we can roll on it and squeeze most of the water out," Clarence said.

            "You mean, we have to go into the pond?"

            "Whatever it takes, people," Snowball said.  "At this point, we can only try to make the best of things."

            By the time the three sopping-wet cats dragged the waterlogged paper through the pet door, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table sipping on a cup of coffee.  Mom was at the stove, fixing his breakfast.

            "Well, will you look at that.  I wondered why the paper wasn't out front this morning," he said.

            Dad lifted the dripping newspaper from the floor and chuckled as he dumped it into the waste can.  Then he grabbed a kitchen towel and began to dry off the three soggy cats, best he could.

            They couldn't bring themselves to look him in the eye.  Lau-Lau whimpered like a frightened kitten.  Snowball looked glum, ears down, utterly defeated.  Clarence purred while he was being toweled off, then rubbed against Dad's legs as the man worked on drying the other two.

            "Eat your eggs before they get cold, Sam," Mom said.  "I'll finish taking care of our little would-be puppies."

            She dried them off more, then fixed them their own breakfast.  She poured some bacon grease over it, an extra-special treat.  After they were done, she gave them each a pinch of catnip and placed an old fluffy blanket on the floor for them to lay on.

#

            At their afternoon naptime gathering in the parlor, the three cats reflected on the morning's misadventure.

            "Not so easy being a dog, eh?" Clarence said.

            Lau-Lau sighed.  "At least Dad didn't get angry at us for messing up.  Heavens, I was so scared."

            Snowball laid down on the carpet.  "Okay, so it wasn't such a great idea, after all.  But we tried, and that's what counts.  I guess if it comes down to it, we can learn to live with a new dog in the house."

            Clarence licked his paw for a moment, then laid down for his own nap.  "That's okay, Snowball.  If that's the way it ends up, I'll teach it its manners.  I don't blame you for how things turned out."

            "Mercy, neither do I," Lau-Lau said.  "We just weren't cut out for the job.  Who could know?"

            Snowball yawned.  In just another short minute, nothing but three soft snores could be heard in the room.

###