Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [15]
“But how did you get back to camp?” Ralph wanted to know.
“Last year when Lana was packing her duffle bag for camp, her mother said that since the people who ran the camp had let her buy me, they could put up with me for two weeks. She was tired of reminding Lana to feed me and clean my cage, and she wanted a vacation herself. She said the same thing this year. So here I am at camp for the third time. Oh well, at least it’s a change, and nobody runs a vacuum cleaner or practices the violin near my cage.”
Ralph was silent. Chum had given him a lot to think about. Like Chum he sat swinging to and fro on his wheel, swinging and thinking. And as he swung and thought, something caught his eye.
It was the striped forepaw of Catso reaching through the hole in the rusty screen door. Ralph watched in frightened fascination. The screen bulged from the pressure of Catso’s shoulder as the paw groped and searched. The rusted screen stretched, and the evil paw with its claw unsheathed reached farther into the craft shop.
Where’s Sam? thought Ralph in terror. Why isn’t that watchdog watching? The paw withdrew, and Catso’s face pressed into the hole. His evil green eyes searched the craft shop. Ralph shrank into a ball in the farthest corner of his cage until he heard a short bark from Sam and summoned his courage to look around. Catso was gone, but the hole in the rusty screen remained.
5
The Personul Mowse
Ralph’s life in the cage was never the same after the arrival of the hamster. Chum was picky about his food and fussy about his housekeeping. One corner of his cage had to be his bathroom, another his sleeping quarters, a third the storehouse for the food he liked. He was forever pushing, shoving, and stomping his cedar shavings. His exercise wheel rasped and creaked whenever he ran, usually while Ralph was trying to nap. He had a particularly irritating way of gnawing noisily at the bars of his cage.
“Why do you do that?” asked Ralph. “You can’t chew through metal.”
“I’m not trying to chew through the bars,” said Chum. “I’m wearing down my teeth.”
Ralph was astounded. “Don’t you want teeth?” he asked, thinking how dependent he was upon his own sharp teeth.
“If I don’t chew something hard, my teeth will grow so long I won’t be able to eat,” Chum explained impatiently. “I chew the bars because Lana is too stupid to give me anything hard to chew.”
“Oh,” said Ralph, grateful that his teeth did not continue to grow. Chum had another habit that disturbed Ralph. He nipped at Lana whenever she tried to pick him up.
“That’s not nice,” said Ralph one day, when he had seen Lana hastily withdraw her hand from her pet’s cage. “That’s biting the hand that feeds you.”
“I have some rights,” said Chum. “If I let Lana pick me up, I never would have any peace. Believe me, I know. I made the mistake of letting her pick me up just once, and when she tried to stuff me into a doll’s sweater, I knew once was enough.”
Chum also sat for long periods of time swinging gently on his wheel and staring with unblinking eyes at nothing at all.
“Why do you sit there like that?” asked Ralph, who liked to be busy when he was awake.
“I’m thinking,” answered Chum.
“Thinking about