Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [19]
Catso followed someone into the craft shop whenever he could, and whenever he succeeded, Aunt Jill said, “Someone had better put that cat out.”
Usually Lana was the one who picked up Catso and held him with his face over her shoulder as if he were a baby. “Poor baby,” she crooned, patting Catso on the back as if she were burping an infant. Ralph found the smug look on Catso’s face most annoying.
Garf was happy, but Ralph was not. The boy showed no signs of running away, and now that he abided by the rules, the two were never alone. The bars of Ralph’s cage enclosed a very small area, and no matter how fast he ran on his wheel, he remained in the same place. He began to sit motionless for long periods of time while he thought more and more about the freedom he had enjoyed back at the Mountain View Inn. He missed those long corridors and his exciting expeditions in search of food. What he had once called crumb scrounging now seemed a test of courage. He even came to admit that he missed his little brothers and sisters and cousins. They were nuisances, but they were livelier than a grumpy hamster. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind giving some of the little mice—boy mice, of course—short rides on his motorcycle after all.
Most of all Ralph missed that motorcycle. He clutched the wires of his cage and, recalling the nights he had sped through the corridors of the old hotel while guests snored behind closed doors, tried to pretend they were the grips on his handlebars. Pb-pbb-b-b. Pb-pb-b-b-b. It was no use. The wires remained what they were—the bars of a small prison, higher but not as long as an economy-sized Kleenex box.
Ralph grew listless. So great was his homesickness that choice tidbits from the dining hall tempted him less and less. He sometimes skipped meals, preferring instead to curl up in a corner under some shredded paper where he dozed, dreaming of dark nights, smooth floors, and speed.
“Cheer up,” said Chum. “You’ll get used to a cage.”
Ralph did not answer. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
Garf, on the other hand, no longer wanted to be alone. He came into the craft shop to tend Ralph while other campers were present, and soon he became interested in the tools in the shop and finally went to work with some other boys building wooden boats to float in the irrigation ditch.
One long morning Ralph passed the time by watching a girl named Karen. Karen was one of the older campers, a girl twelve or thirteen years old with long blond hair, which, that morning, was wet. All the older girls washed their hair several times a week. Karen was making an old plastic bleach bottle into a piggy bank. She turned it on its side so the handle was on top, glued corks in place for legs, cut a slit under the handle, and painted eyes above the spout, which was now the piggy bank’s snout. Ralph noticed that Karen paused from time to time to scratch her left arm.
Finally Karen set her paintbrush across the top of the paint jar and removed her wristwatch, which she laid on the shelf beside Ralph’s cage. He could hear it tick. She scratched the spot where the watch had been, returned to her painting, and then stopped to scratch again.
“Karen, let me see your arm,” said Aunt Jill, who was showing a boy how to lace together a wallet. “Why, it looks to me as if you have poison oak. You had better go see the nurse about it. And be careful not to scratch it.”
“But Aunt Jill, it feels so good to scratch,” said Karen, tossing back her hair.
“I know, but scratching only spreads the poison oak and makes it worse,” said Aunt Jill. “Now run along and see the nurse. I’ll wash out your paintbrush for you. It’s almost time for the dinner bell.”
When the bell rang for the noon meal and the craft shop was empty, Ralph felt his fur rise along his spine. Sure enough, just as he expected, there was the curious paw of Catso exploring the hole in the screen door. Then the pink nose appeared. Catso must have pushed hard, because the rusty screen gave way and the rest of his head appeared. Catso did not stop there.