Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller Read Free Book Online

deceiving and that beneath the most off-putting exterior there may beat a compassionate heart. She is willing to suspend judgment until she gets to know her better.
    After becoming better acquainted with one another, they all take turns playing with the baby. Pooch is relieved to have some respite from caring for it, though of course she loves it dearly. This is the first real time she's had away from it almost since she began to take over the household chores. Luckily for the master and mistress, her capabilities began to manifest themselves at just about the time the baby was born. Pooch knows that, if it hadn't been for her, they would certainly have had to hire someone to come in to help look after it, since the mistress began to manifest the worst of her own changes at about that same time. Before the birth of the baby, Pooch had done only simple fetching and carrying, waited on the older children, also cleaned the bathrooms and washed the kitchen floor as soon as she was able to hold a mop. But then it became clear that she was able to do even quite complicated tasks and so the diapering, bottle washing, and nighttime feedings immediately became her special jobs. Now, here in the kind gentleman's basement, all the other inmates are virtually fighting over who gets to do what for the baby, even the washing of the diapers. To them it seems a privilege to take part in anything concerning the baby so that Pooch, though confined to the basement, actually feels freer than she ever has since being adopted by the master and mistress. Now she, along with the others, has plenty of time to examine the books in the small bookcase. Luckily, one is Stories From the Great Operas , and another, One Hundred Best-Loved Poems . Pooch immediately sets about memorizing the plots of operas and also poems that she had not known before.
    They read the old newspapers, those who can. They tidy up, wash out their underwear, water the plants, take naps, and of course discuss their situation, though they take care now to do so only when the doctor's wife is out, which is really a good bit of the time. And so the first day passes.
    Pooch, though grateful for the two books mentioned above and for the dictionary, is rather disappointed in the literature available. From the very first, or at least as far back as she can remember, she has always wanted to improve herself, yearning toward a life of the mind as well as a life surrounded by great music. Here the magazines are mostly True Confessions and the books mostly old romances. The others do enjoy them, though, and Pooch does not begrudge them these simple pleasures. She even helps them with the more difficult passages. Also, no one there likes the kind of music that Pooch likes best. (Yes, there is a small radio.) Sometimes the rock and roll nearly drives her out of her mind, though not when Phillip dances to it. Then it's worth the pain in her ears to watch that sinuous body twisting and turning to the harsh beat.
    As for the newspapers, so far there has been nothing about their own predicament, that is, nothing about the changing females, and the papers are not that old. It is clear that, for the time being at least, there will be nothing. There seems to be a blindness to the whole business on the part of most of those of the opposite sex. Not a blindness exactly, but rather some desire to handle it as though it were not happening. Of course there was that first tacit enthusiasm for taking on new and exotic sexual partners from among the changing animals, for trying new positions impossible before, and for dropping off old partners into the woods or zoos or oceans, and saying nothing about it to anyone ... going on as though all this were the most natural thing in the world. It was almost as though the men had at last found a world to their liking, in which they had even more control than before and in which relationships and responsibilities were less confining. After all, they merely involved