Only the Animals Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned to go and I felt bad, and lonely. ‘I’m coming,’ I said, dragging myself up and stretching out my forelegs.
    â€˜Good,’ he said. ‘You won’t be sorry, Kiki, I promise.’
    â€˜As long as you know nothing’s going to happen between us,’ I said archly. ‘I’m not really a fan of toms in general.’
    â€˜I know,’ he said. ‘You were my main rival when I was trying to seduce she-cats in the rue de Villejust.’
    â€˜Really?’ I said quickly, before I could hide my surprise. It was too late then to keep up my superior act. ‘It’s just – well, I haven’t been very lucky in love.’
    â€˜Who needs a lowly she-cat’s love when you are an author’s muse?’ he said. ‘That would be enough for me.’
    Most – but not all – of the time it is, I thought. I followed him along the edges of the trenches, passing the quiet dugouts, moving towards the outer boundary of the line. It was a new-moon night, and very dark.
    â€˜Here, kitty, kitty,’ one of the sentries said as we passed him, and he looked so relieved at discovering he was not entirely alone that we let ourselves be petted for a moment.
    I could smell dog very strongly as we neared the next sentry point, and soon afterwards saw a massive, shaggy Berger de Brie just like the ones Colette had admired on a trip to Avignon with Missy. He was tied to a listening post on the firestep, so that he could just see over the edge of the trench. After growling faintly at us, the dog turned away and stared back into no man’s land.
    â€˜His job is to sniff out Germans who might be raiding our line,’ the tomcat whispered. ‘They’re starting to train these dogs in the Vosges. He’s one of the first out here. Many of them can’t master the trick of not barking to signal danger, but this one is the king of the low growl.’
    The dog growled again and the soldier said quietly, ‘Okay, boy, I’ve seen the cats. Ignore them.’
    The dog growled more loudly, his nostrils dilated, his body tilted forward.
    â€˜Let’s move away,’ the tom said. ‘I think he’s trying to signal something else.’
    We melted back into the trench.
    Once again the dog growled, not moving his eyes from the direction of the German lines.
    â€˜I’m getting the commanding officer,’ the soldier said to the dog, his breath visible in the overnight freeze. ‘So this had better not be about those cats.’ He left through the side warrens of the trench, and after a while returned with an officer who had clearly been sleeping in his uniform.
    For a while the commanding officer stood and observed the dog’s growling, his expression showing nothing but scepticism. ‘You said there were cats,’ the officer said.
    â€˜Yes, but he turned around to growl at them,’ the sentry said. ‘This is different. He’s been focusing on that same point – to the left, ahead of us – for a while now.’
    â€˜I am not a believer in using dogs at the front,’ the officer said. ‘They’re good for morale, but bad for strategy. Nothing but wartime pets.’
    â€˜Sir, I’ve never seen him like this before,’ the sentry said. ‘Could we send up a flare? It might be somebody wounded and left for dead, trying to make it back to the trenches. Or it could be a raid.’
    The officer rubbed his eyes. ‘Send one up,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going back to bed.’
    â€˜Sir, we should wake our men, in case it’s a raid,’ the sentry said.
    â€˜Go on,’ the officer said. ‘You wake them. They hate me enough already.’
    The sentry went from soldier to soldier, rousing them with a squeeze on the shoulder. They were alert instantly, accustomed to being woken at night, and were soon lined up along the edge of the trench with rifles ready. In a quick,