Beware of Cat Read Online Free PDF Page B

places to run and explore.” I assured him that everything would be okay.
    We sat together for several minutes until I became aware of the surrounding silence. When I looked up, the whole yard full of people was watching us.
    Standing up, I leaned over to give him one last pat on the head. “You be a good dog, Cowboy. Everything’s going to be just fine.”
    He made no attempt to follow when I walked away. Guests shuffled aside as I crossed the yard. Even the food servers stopped what they were doing to look at the big yellow dog. Many eyes were moist, and I saw a large man wearing a Stetson hat pull out his handkerchief.
    At the gate, the handyman shook my hand. “Thanks,” he said.
    We turned to look at Cowboy still perched on the steps. The sister was petting him, and a few of the other guests began fussing over him, too. Cowboy enjoyed the attention, his tongue lolling out of his mouth in time to his panting.
    Setting off on my route again, I knew I was going to miss him. But I was glad I had said good-bye, if for no other reason than to see the smile return to Cowboy’s face.

Delivering Reality
    On a Saturday morning in one of my first months on my regular assignment, the accountables clerk handed me a registered letter. Generally speaking, the few pieces of registered mail I’ve handled contain coins or gems. This doesn’t happen too often on a blue-collar, residential route like mine.
    When a customer goes to the expense of registering a letter, the window clerk signs for it, enters it in a log book, gives the customer a receipt, and locks the piece of mail in the office safe. Later, when the truck driver arrives to take our outgoing mail downtown for processing, he signs for it. Most drivers carry a pouch to keep such an item safe until it’s delivered to an accountables clerk downtown. Once again it’s signed for. An individual accounts for every leg of the journey for a registered letter. Losing one can be grounds for dismissal.
    Although they are rare, I have handled insured registered letters valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. In 1968, the Postal Service very quietly delivered the Hope Diamond, registered and insured for $1,000,000. If you’re the type to ponder the nature of reality, just join the Postal Service. Toss in a registered letter, and it doesn’t get any more real than that. Like a mortgage payment, or the anxiety leading up to tax day, the Postal Service is all about reality.
    Letter carriers guard a piece of registered mail with assiduous attention. I usually secure it in an inside pocket. Until it’s delivered and signed for by the customer, or safely returned to the accountables clerk, a registered letter is a nagging presence in the back of a carrier’s mind.
    I could count on one hand the number of registered letters I had handled in my short career, so I was startled on this Saturday morning when the accountables clerk asked for my signature. Even more surprising was the condition of the letter. Smudged, dirty, dog-eared, it looked like a museum specimen. We studied it together, calling other carriers to have a look.
    The postage consisted of several colorful stamps from Vietnam. Near them was a receiving postmark in San Francisco. We looked at each other in wonder when my finger underlined the receiving date: 1976. The letter had arrived in the United States at least fourteen years earlier. The original address was faded and crossed out, but we deciphered a Vietnamese name (or at least an Asian name) and General Delivery in San Francisco. None of us had ever seen a registered letter addressed to General Delivery.
    Below that, someone had penciled in another address in San Francisco, but that one was also crossed out. Various official stamps blotted the envelope: NO SUCH ADDRESS, or MOVED , LEFT NO FORWARDING . Without a return address to work with, carriers in California had kept the letter alive. Four or five
addresses had been hand printed, with notes added, such as,