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without being saddled with Isabel's violent deeds as well. Besides, she loves her name. So simple and unassuming. She likes it also for the musical oo sound of it. Sometimes when alone she used to sing her name over and over: Pooooooooch, Pooooooooch. Her only consolation now is that the name Isabel does have a real operatic flair to it. “Isabel the opera star” sounds better than “Pooch the opera star,” even if less musical. But she has thought that, if and when she does become an opera star, she might Italianize her name and spell it Pucci .
    "You may call me Rosemary,” the doctor's wife tells them after learning all their names. Then she leaves them alone for the night, locking them into their cages—quite spacious ones compared to the pound, with cot and chamber pot in each, plus a little shelf and chair and bedside table. The doctor's wife locks the main door, and after that the laboratory door and finally the door to the basement.
    Even though at first they were disappointed because they had thought they would be set free, this is, at least for the present, the next best thing. They decide to go to bed early, feeling relieved to be alive at all and in such a nice place as this, though many have their doubts. “It's still very much a prison,” they say, “no matter how good the food or how clean and new the place is.” Before they settle down, they have a short discussion about several things: Shouldn't the treatment at the pound be investigated? Might the kind gentleman help them with that? Why is the pound only for females? What animal does Rosemary remind them of (though no consensus on this)? Some say, won't it be rather dreary if we have to spend spring in a basement? But others remind them how brightly the late afternoon sun shone in even through those high little windows. What about the lack of exercise? And, most especially, when will they finally meet the kind gentleman into whose care they have been released and to whom they owe their lives? (Pooch is hoping he will be someone as worthy of loyalty as her former master, though perhaps because of what he's already done for them, saving them from certain death, she will be true to him anyway, no matter what sort of person he is.)
    They are all too tired to talk long so, though the clock hardly says eight, they soon fall asleep. Little do they dream that the basement is bugged and that every word they said has been recorded, to be listened to by the doctor at his leisure. He is well aware that the creatures have, some of them, acute senses of smell and hearing, and he will not be so foolish as to place himself behind some sort of peephole.
    In the morning the name tags are all ready. The doctor's wife had painted them the evening before, with flowers around the edges in red, white, tan, and green to match the decor of the dayroom. She is obviously quite an artist, though, as she tells them, she has had very little training. They all help tack the tags up on the cage doors and then stand back to admire their handiwork: Mary Ann, Basenji, Isabel (Pooch), then Phillip (they had maneuvered to get adjacent cages), Arista-cat (called Arista for short), Doris, Lucille, Dodo, Myna, Chatchka, Tootsie, etc. The doctor's wife has also made little flowered tags for them to pin on themselves. This they immediately do, and set about getting better acquainted with each other, the doctor's wife included, though she does seem rather the quiet observer. They have many questions to ask her, but she says she knows very little, that she really hasn't been paying much attention to the whole thing, but they suspect she knows more than she's letting on.
    Pooch is quite taken with Basenji (perhaps because she's so quiet and so young), and with Lucille in spite of her degeneration and stupidity, and with Dodo. Arista seems rather aloof, as might be expected, and Mary Ann is quite grotesque and unappealing, but Pooch knows appearances can be