His eyes soon lost the milky, puppy look. They became first grass-green, then a lighter, wilder colour. “Wolf’s eyes,” said Basil, and added The Wolf temporarily to the names he called Sirius. About that time, Sirius discovered he could eat from a dish and gave up feeding from a bottle. He grew. And grew. And went on growing.
“Is this thing of yours going to turn out to be a horse?” wondered the thunderous voice, in one of its rare moments of interest.
“A Great Dane perhaps?” Robin suggested.
“Oh, I hope not!” Kathleen said, knowing how much Leo ate already. Sirius realised she was worried and wagged his tail consolingly outside his basket. It was a long, strong tail by this time, and he filled the basket to overflowing.
His tail was a great trial to everyone. He would wag it. He beat dust out of the carpet with it every time one of the household came into the room. He meant it as politeness. In a cloudy part of his mind, which he could never quite find, he knew he was grateful to them – even to Duffie – for feeding and housing him. But only Kathleen and Robin appreciated his courtesy. The rest said, “Must that creature thump like that?” and at other times there was a general outcry.
There were times when that tail seemed to have a life of its own. When he was trotting around the house, Sirius normally carried it arched upward in a crescent and forgot about it. He dimly thought, in that cloudy part of his mind, that he could not always have had a tail, because he never remembered it until it was too late. If the least thing happened to excite him, if Robin started to dance about, or Kathleen came in from shopping, Sirius would bound jovially forwards and his tail would go whipping round and round in circles, hitting everything in its path. Ornaments came off low tables and broke. Cats were battered this way and that. Papers flew about. Basil’s fossils were scattered. The next thing he knew, a cat was scratching him, or a strong arm was beating him. He was beaten oftener for wagging his tail than he was over house-training. One of the most constant memories he had of those early days was of lying aching and ashamed under the sideboard, while Kathleen, often in tears, cleared up a breakage or another kind of mess. Duffie was always looming above her.
“I warn you, Kathleen. If that creature ever gets into my shop, I shall have it destroyed.” Her cold voice was so menacing that Sirius always shivered.
The shop took up the two rooms in the front of the house. Duffie spent most of every day in it, either making odd whirrings and clatterings in the nearest room, or talking to all the people who came in and out in the room farthest away, which opened on the street. These people were mostly women with loud voices, who all called the owner Duffie. If Duffie happened to be in the living-room looming over Kathleen when they came, they would stand and shout, “What-ho, Duffie! It’s me!” until Duffie came.
Now, in those days, Sirius’s whole world was the house and the yard behind it. The shop left very little of the world downstairs over, so he was naturally curious to see into this shop. He was naturally curious anyway. Kathleen often said, “I know they say Curiosity killed the cat, but it ought to be killed the dog. Get your nose out, Leo.” Sirius made a number of attempts to poke his blunt, enquiring nose round the door that led to the shop. Duffie always stopped him. Mostly she kicked at him with a sandalled foot. Sometimes she hit him with a broom. And once, she slammed the door against his nose, which hurt him considerably. But he kept on trying. It was not that the dusty, clayey smell from beyond the door was particularly pleasing, or that he wanted to be with Duffie. It was that he felt he was being cheated of the greater part of his world. Besides, the cats were allowed inside, and he was rapidly becoming very jealous of those cats.
By this time, it would have been hard to say whether the cats were more jealous of Sirius than he of them. He envied the cats their delicacy and disdain, the ease with which they leapt to places far out of his reach, and the way they came and went so secretly. He could not go anywhere or do anything without somebody noticing. The cats, on their part, disliked him for being a dog, for being new, and for taking up everyone’s attention.
They were three rather neglected cats. Until Kathleen came, no one except Duffie had taken any notice of them at all. Duffie, from time to time, took it into her head that she loved cats. When this happened, she would seize a struggling cat, hold it against her smock and announce, “Diddumsdiddy, Mother loves a pussy then!”
Romulus and Remus, who were twin tabbies, both escaped from this treatment as soon as they could fight loose. But Tibbles bore it. She had an affectionate nature, and even this seemed better to her than total neglect. Tibbles was an elegant cat, mostly white, with a fine tabby patch on her back, and worthy of better treatment.
All three welcomed Kathleen with delight. She fed them generously, knew Romulus and Remus apart from the first, and gave Tibbles all the affection she wanted. Then Sirius came. Kathleen still fed the cats generously, but that was all Sirius would let her do. The day Sirius found Tibbles sitting on Kathleen’s knee was the first time he barked. Yapping in a furious soprano, he flung himself at Kathleen and managed to get his front paws almost above her kneecaps. Tibbles arose and spat. Her paw shot out, once, twice, three times, before Sirius could remove himself. He was lucky not to lose an eye. But he continued to bark and Tibbles, very ruffled, escaped on to the sideboard, furious and swearing revenge.
“Oh Leo!” Kathleen said reproachfully. “That’s not kind. Why shouldn’t she sit on my knee?”
Sirius did not understand the question, but he was determined that Tibbles should sit on Kathleen’s knee only over his dead body. Kathleen was his. The trouble was, he could not trust Kathleen to remember this. Kathleen was kind to all living things. She fed birds, rescued mice from the cats, and tried to grow flowers in a row of cracked cups on her bedroom windowsill. Sirius slept in Kathleen’s bedroom, at first in the basket, then on the end of her bed when the basket grew uncomfortably tight. Kathleen would sit up in bed, with a book open in front of her, and talk to him for hours on end. Sirius could not understand what she was saying, but he darkly suspected she was telling him of her abounding love for all creatures.
One night, when it was spitting with rain, Romulus forgot about Sirius and came in through Kathleen’s bedroom window to spend the night on her bed as he had done before Sirius came. That was the first time Sirius really growled. He leapt up rumbling. Romulus growled too and fled helter-skelter, knocking over Kathleen’s flower-cups as he went.
“You mustn’t, Leo,” said Kathleen. “He’s allowed to. Now look what you’ve made him do!” She was so miserable about her broken flowers that Sirius had to lick her face.
After that, Sirius knew the cats were putting their heads together to get revenge. He did not care. He knew they were clever, Tibbles especially, but he was not in the least afraid of them. He was at least twice their size by now and still growing. His paws, as Kathleen remarked, were as big as teacups, and he was getting some splendid new teeth. Robin, who was always reading books about dogs, told Kathleen that Leo was certainly half Labrador. But what the other half of him was, neither of them could conjecture. Sirius’s unusually glossy coat was a wavy golden-cream, except for the two red-brown patches, foxy red, one over each ear. Then there were those queer green eyes.
“Red Setter, perhaps?” Robin said doubtfully. “He’s got those feathery bits at the backs of his legs.”
“Mongrel,” said Basil. “His father was a white rat and his mother was a fox.”
“Vixen,” Robin corrected him.
“I thought you’d agree,” said Basil.
Kathleen, who seldom argued with Basil, said nothing and went away upstairs to make the beds, with Sirius trotting after. “I