I waited until the last possible second, when Splotches’s back paws landed on his bottom stair, and then I leaped on him. I hit him as hard as I could and he was caught so much by surprise that he fell over, and we rolled across the floor together, matched tit for tit, tat for tat; if I grabbed his ears, he grabbed my ears; if I chewed on his leg, he chewed on mine; if I shredded his fur to ribbons, well, you get the idea. Cher’s words—“There’s nothing he can do”—rang over and over in my mind, and, inspired, I fought just as hard as I could. When I thought that I was finally beginning to gain the upper paw, Pepper came around back, saw the two of us together, let out a high-pitched, bloodcurdling howl, and promptly jumped into the mix herself, digging her claws right into Splotches’ back. I bet you can imagine the yell that he let out then. And if you can’t, drop a thirty-five-pound anvil on your left foot and get back to me.

Cher woke up when Pepper yelled, as did almost every other dogz in Shady Glen, leapt to her paws, galloped down our steps and over to the fight, diving RIGHT into the middle of the battle, and pulled Splotches to his feet by his ear. She was taller than him—HA!—so it was easy. Once he was standing, albeit painfully and a bit off balance, she growled and woofed, “I’ve had enough of this! I’m going to make you run away if I have to wrestle you through the Runaway Door myself.”

“What?” I said, from my position on the ground, amid a rather large pile of fur scraps and several small puddles of blood, some of which was mine and some of which was probably his. “Runaway Door? What’s that?”

“Well, you see that blue door over there next to the Petz Door?” Cher said, “the one with the sign that says ‘RUN’? When a dogz or catz goes through there, they hardly ever come back. We don’t know what happens to them. Usually, it’s because they’ve been neglected or abused. But this time, I’ve had enough.”

“So have I!” said Pepper, quite indignantly.

“ME TOO!” Choco howled, from her pedestal across the way. I don’t think she had any idea what we were talking about.

Cher and Pepper grabbed Splotches by his ears and tail, lifted him off the ground, carried him towards the Runaway Door, backed up, began running, and, at the very last second, let fly. Splotches soared toward the Door. We watched as the force grabbed him, pulled him through, and, just like that, we were rid of Splotches.

“Cher…” I said. I still hadn’t moved.

“Hmm?” said Cher.

“Why, exactly, didn’t you think of this before?” I yelled angrily. “It’s a bit more effective than music boxes, you know!”

Cher grinned. “Most of the dogz that go through there never come back. You know we say dogz can’t die; well, going through the Runaway Door is the closest thing we’ve got to dying around here.”

“So…” I said.

“So I didn’t want to risk it,” said Cher.

“But you’ve changed your mind now?” I said, almost screaming.

“He’s really impossible, and I just don’t see how we can live with him any more—do you?” Cher said, very reasonably, completely ignoring the fact that my voice continued its upward climb in octaves.

The lights came on just then, right when they should have. All of us headed over to the food and water dishes for a celebration, and I resisted the growing urge to strangle my wife. It was the most understated, untimely demise of an archnemesis in the history of the universe, I thought, but as I sit and reflect I suppose not everything in life happens with a flash, a bang, a boom, and a tin of gunpowder. Some things are just as simple as a toss through the Runaway Door.

And I did have to admit Cher’s logic was solid.

--

While Cher, Pepper, and I ate, I asked Cher when she thought our puppy would be born. “Actually, I’m not sure,” she replied. “Do you remember the day we got married?”

One more thing I have to interject here; you may not be aware of this, but whenever two dogz get married, they automatically begin having a puppy. I’m not really sure how; I just know it happens.

“No, not really,” I said. “They don’t have a calendar in Petz 3, do they?”

“No, they don’t. I wish they did. I think the pup could be born any day between now and two weeks from now.”

“So two weeks is fourteen days, right?” I said, still trying to master those stupid Real Time calendars.

“Right,” Cher said. “You know, I’m really happy that Splotches won’t be here to torment our pup. When he’s old enough, I’ll tell him all about how you came and we chased him off.” She smiled and I licked her. I thought, I didn’t chase him off, you tossed him out the Runaway Door before I had the chance, but I didn’t comment.

I’d never felt so good before in my life. It was a euphoric sensation, and I was pretty sure Cher felt the same way. We went on licking each other even after Pepper went off to play fetch. After awhile, we had one more kiss and moved over to the water dish. We slurped there for a few minutes without saying anything. We kissed again, but I don’t think you want to hear about that, and then I said thoughtfully, “Cher, now we’re married, whose pedestal are we going to use?”

She ruffed, “Well, I guess we can use mine and someone else can use yours, if that’s okay, since we’re going to have to do a lot of rearranging anynow how. I mean anyhow now.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“With Splotches gone, the line of pedestals will have to move down two. Everyone’s name tags will be all mixed up,” Cher explained.

“How, exactly, do we go about fixing them?” I asked.

Cher laughed. “That’s easy,” she said. “We just scratch the old name off and write in the new one.”

“Okay,” I said. I paused. I grinned, and I kissed her again. I was about to start the cycle over, but then I remembered the news.

“What do you want to name our pup?” I said.

“Usually, we just wait until it’s born and look at its colors and personality,” Cher said. “I guess you can see how Choco was named.”

“Sure can! Hey, you want to go through the Door now?” I said. I was hyper. I was also going bald, thanks to a certain evil dogz. I think the absence of fur might’ve made me even more hyper.

“I think the correct name really is the Petz Door,” Cher said.

“Oh. Same difference; let’s go through anyway,” I said giddily.

Cher chuckled. “Okay, Scrappy,” she said.

We went through the Door together and found ourselves in—surprise, surprise—a back yard. Looking around, I spotted some soil with the green, leafy tops of carrots growing. There were also some flowers—I saw some daisies, roses, and tulips. When we sat down on the grass together, I picked a few pawsful and twisted them together into a ring, which I placed gently around Cher’s floppy ears. She looked beautiful, so I told her so.

“You look lovely,” I said, smiling.

“Thanks, Scrappy,” Cher said, and she blushed. Then she said, “You know what I really want right now?”

“Hmm?” I said.

“A change of clothes, a brush, and a watering can bath. Come on. Let’s go.”

She went to a watering can sitting on the grass, picked the handle up in her jaws, carried it back and poured its contents over me. I jumped from the shock, but Cher said, “It’s all right. It’s just water. Now you need a brushing and a change.” Before she could get away, I took the can in my jaws and emptied the rest of the water over her. She laughed out loud and we chased each other for a few minutes, splashing water everywhere, before we went through the Door again.

Suddenly we were in the same clothes closet I’d been in before. The cursor was there, and it searched for a moment before it chose a shirt that was tie-dyed for me, a white hat with a yellow flower and flowered shirt for Cher, and finally another baseball cap for me. We beamed and posed, our heads thrown back playfully. I asked Cher why we do that. She said that it was because the clothes were so nice and new. She said it was something called instincts. I thought she was insane, but again, I chose not to comment.

After that, we found ourselves in what Cher called a “toy closet.” The cursor brought a blue brush from one of the shelves, but while she wasn’t looking I saw Cher slip a pillow out with her teeth and push it through the Petz Door. Then I stopped looking, because the cursor began to brush me.

It actually felt quite nice. I could feel the mats being combed out of my coat, and it was especially nice on and around my ears. After I was thoroughly brushed, the cursor moved over to Cher. When we were finished, Cher said my fur looked sleek and shiny, and I said that her fur looked sleek and shiny too, for lack of a better comment.

Then Cher leaned over and asked if I wanted to go back to the Room. I told her that I did, very much. My sock was gone and I wasn’t limping any longer, so I must say that I actually was quite handsome, and Cher was as astonishingly goddess-like as always.

We walked through the Door and began crossing to our pedestal when Cher came to a very abrupt stop and nearly stepped on a passing puppy.

“What is it?” I said.

“Uh…” Cher said.

“Is it something bad?” I said, nervously.

“Oh, no,” said Cher, “it’s not that, it’s just—”

“Just what?” I said.

“It’s just I think I know when the puppy’s coming, is all,” she said.

“When?” I said.

“Uh, well, you see, now,” said Cher.

“WHAT?!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Wasn’t this just a little, oh, SOON? Hey, forget a little, it was a lot soon!

“Don’t freak, Scrappy,” Cher said, very bluntly—a little too bluntly, if you want my opinion, which she obviously didn’t—“it’s quite all right. In Petz 3, you have pups very easily. Let’s go to bed now. It’s about lights-out. The baby will be here in the morning. Come on.” And she grabbed the pillow with her teeth and dragged it up the stairs to our pedestal. I stood there staring after her for a few minutes, wondering whether she was COMPLETELY out of her mind or she was just trying and succeeding to make me look like an idiot, and then I gave up and followed her. Once Cher got an idea in her head, you couldn’t pry it out with a crowbar.

Unless you were a Dane like Oreo, in which case you probably could.

But I wouldn’t know.

When I reached the top with my wife we snuggled up together, giving Cher plenty of room to have a pup, even though she insisted it wasn’t going to happen that way. I couldn’t fall asleep, so regardless of the darkness, I stared out into the Room and thought about the puppy. But despite my good intentions, I must have drifted off at one point, because the next thing I knew I was wide awake, there were three dogz on the pedestal, not two, and one of them was squeaking.

I immediately awakened Cher—and everyone else, as a bonus; quite a trick, that was—by jumping out of my fur and howling, “IT CAME! IT CAME! IT CAME!”

Don’t worry, I went back and retrieved my fur afterward.

Cher stretched, yawned, and said, grinning, “Scrappy, I know it came, you know it came, but do you have to wake everyone else up too?”

“Oh.” I blushed. “Er, sorry, guys,” I said.

“That’s better. He is a good one, isn’t he?” said Cher.

“Definitely. Why, he’s wonderful!” I said, gazing at my son. The pup was brown with a white tail, white ears, a white muzzle, a bald patch square in the center of his head, and Dalmatian-sized white spots all over his body. We couldn’t see what color his eyes were because they weren’t open, but I guessed they’d be brown—Pepper’s and Choco’s eyes were both brown, and they were related to Cher, and my eyes were brown, so if his were blue it’d mean either an alien invasion or some really, really, really weird genetic mutation.

“What do you think we should name him?” Cher asked.

I thought for a minute, and then I said, “How about Chex?”

“I like it,” Cher said.

“I like it too,” I said. I turned to Chex. “How do you like your new name, Chex?”

Chex uttered a low sound, which I identified as a garbled combination of a whine, a ruff, a bark, and a growl. That or an extraterrestrial being from another galaxy was making a failed attempt at communication, but I strongly doubted it was the latter. I suppose Cher noticed the rather demented look on my face—it was hard to miss—because she laughed and said, “We can’t understand him yet, Scrappy. He still talks puppy-talk.”

“He is going to, er, grow out of it, right?” I said.

“Of course,” said Cher.

“How, exactly?” I said.

“Well, when he gets a bit older, we get to teach him how to ruff,” she said. “That’s the fun part.”

I grinned. “Okay.” Then I paused. “But he learns my name first.”

By this time, the lights were on, so my rather loud howling and early-morning disturbing didn’t bother anyone because all the petz got up anyway.

“Will Chex be all right if we leave him here and go down for breakfast?” I asked.

“Sure he will,” Cher said. “Just look at him. Do you really think he’s going to move?”

I glanced at Chex. I thought about it.

I glanced at Cher. I thought about it.

I glanced at Chex again, and by then I didn’t have to think about it any more.

“Okay, stupid question,” I said. Cher laughed. Chex emitted what was becoming his trademark squeak, and together—Cher and I together, not Cher, Chex, and I together—we went down the stairs and over to the food dishes.

It was the start of a new, Splotches-free day; we were happy. But we didn’t know what was going to happen in less than a week, and it was horrible enough that we’d find ourselves wishing Splotches would return.

That should give you an idea of just how bad it was.

Trust me, it was bad.

Bad, bad, bad, with a capital B. And a capital A and D, too, for good measure.

--

In the morning the following day, life fell back into its usual routine. There was the usual milling about. The Door swung. Cher nursed Chex. Atop our pedestal, I padded in circles.

Cher watched me for a little while, while she kept one paw gently on the back of Chex’s tiny head. Then I guess I made her so dizzy that she simply couldn’t tolerate it any more, because she paused in what she was doing and said, “Scrappy, am I mistaken, or are you bored?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m definitely bored,” I said.

“Hmm. Hey, I have an idea!” said Cher.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Why don’t you—” she began, and then I don’t know what Cher intended to say next, but she didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence, which was good, because I was fairly sure she was about to make me do something unpleasant, or at least dull, because I noticed something.

Chex’s eyes were open.

I flipped out. And flipped over. Literally. I did a back-flip and nearly fell off the pedestal entirely.

Hey, I was surprised.

“CHER!” I said.

“Hmm?” said Cher.

“Chex’s eyes are open!” I said.

“Oh, Chex’s eyes are open!” said Cher.

I guess Cher was excited, too, because she didn’t even realize that she’d repeated me ruff-for-ruff, and I must’ve been really excited, because I didn’t comment.

For about ten minutes, I stood stock-still and watched my son with a heady combination of awe, adoration, and astonishment. Then Cher completely ruined the moment by saying, “You think that bald patch on the top of his head will grow in later?”

“CHER!” I said.

“Hmm?” said Cher.

“Of course it will!” I said.

Cher laughed. “I guess so,” she said.

“Think he can talk?” I asked.

“Not yet, but we can certainly teach him.”

“Well, how, exactly, would we go about doing that?”

Cher winked one eye, which is, of course, the standard way of winking. It would’ve been strange if she’d winked two eyes. It would’ve been even stranger if she’d winked three, since she didn’t actually havethree in the first place. “Watch me,” she said.

She leaned down to Chex and slowly ruffed, “Hello.”

Chex blinked curiously and, after some time, eventually repeated, “Hullo.”

“Now it’s your turn,” Cher said, turning to me and grinning. I was eager to try my paw at this new game.

“Cursor,” I said.

“Cursur,” said Chex, screwing up his tiny face in concentration.

“Your turn,” I said, chuckling.

“Water,” Cher said.

“Watur,” said Chex, panting and tilting his head to one side as he studied us.

“Food,” I said.

“Food,” said Chex.

“Scrappy,” Cher said, winking at me again. I winked back. Chex didn’t notice a thing. Thank goodness.

Instead, he just said, “Scappy.”

And he learned my name first.

By lights-out that day, Chex could say, “Hello Scappy,” “Hello Cher,” and “Hello Pepper,” and he was so proud of himself that he tried these new phrases out all day. Toddling slowly down the steps, he’d announce, “Hello, Pepper!” to everyone, regardless of who they actually were. The dogz fell in love, and all of them joined in, trying to teach Chex how to say their names. At the end of the next day, Chex knew everyone’s name and could match—relatively accurately—the right name with the right dogz, although he persistently called Kurt the Schnauzer Jared, which annoyed both poor dogz to no end. I suppose he figured all Schnauzers looked alike.

In a way, he was right.

That evening, Chex was so hyped up we just couldn’t get him to go to bed; instead, he spent the entire night saying “Hello,” and Cher and I didn’t get one wink of sleep.

Then we quit trying and just got up.

I was tired of listening to “Hello,” and we both had bags under our eyes, so Cher and I decided to teach Chex to say “Good night” instead—and he said it quite well, regrettably; rather than saying “Hello,” he just bid us all good night about two thousand times. Each. When I was about to go completely insane, I turned to Cher.

“WHEN IS HE GOING TO STOP REPEATING THINGS?” I yelled. I thought my head was going to explode.

“Probably when he’s a pup, not an infant, and he gets his own pedestal,” she sighed.

“When’s that?” I gasped.

“It’ll be soon, don’t worry,” Cher said. “Probably in a day or two.”

“Whew.” I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“Oh, Scrappy,” Cher said, smiling.

It was early enough that Cher and I were able to light one of the menorahs. Then we brought Chex over to the food dishes and began teaching him the names for different items. When the lights came on the next morning, which was really that morning because we were up so late—or so early, depending on how you looked at it—Chex knew the ruffs for treatz, food, water, and anything and everything else that was currently in the Pedestal Room. He also knew lots of toyz in the toy closet, and he could speak in short sentences—things like “Where is my pedustal?” or “I’m hungwy, Scappy.” We had even managed to successfully teach him the difference between Kurt and Jared, and that was quite a feat.

As the lights came on, Chex said, “Light!”

Then he said “Good morning!” about thirty times, followed by a rousing “Hello!” to every petz in the place.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

My ears were aching by the time Chex finished, and despite what she ruffed, I spotted Cher pawing hers a bit too.

So don’t let her fool you.