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Moi? " A thin man wearing a denim jacket asked. "No way. I'm a cat person."
    Whose is he was a phrase that raised my hackles. Why is it that humans feel dogs belong to them? How can that be? Jack never felt that way, or treated me like property. We had chosen each other, Jack and I.
    If I were ready to choose another human—and I was not—it would not be this thin man who had already announced his preference for cats, a dubious species at best.
    Even as I was thinking about it, the man named Willy jogged toward me, carrying a leather case. "I'm just going to touch up your hair," he said cheerfully, and took a comb from the case. I winced. I didn't want my fur tampered with, and especially not by a man whose clearly professed commitment was to cats.
    But he was talking, it appeared, to the boy. He removed the hat, combed and arranged the boy's hair so that it appeared windblown and casual, and then replaced the unattractive hat so that the freshly groomed hair was hidden.
    "I can't get the dog to go away," the boy complained to him.
    "What about the dog?" the hair person called to the camera people. "I don't want to be the one to drag him away. He looks like a biter to me!"
    The dog: a phrase I loathe. A biter indeed. I wished Jack were alive. Jack would tell them where to go. There had been times in our past, Jack's and mine, when people had been apprehensive about "the dog" and Jack had been very firm with them, explaining that the dog had feelings and intelligence, that the dog had more integrity than most humans, and that, most important, the dog had a name and should be addressed accordingly. Sometimes people would drop money into Jack's outstretched hand and hurry away quickly, just to flee the lecture about mans best friend.
    "I love the dog," the woman with the notebook called. "Keep the dog. The dog works. "
    I wasn't entirely certain what she meant by that. Of course I worked. I worked at staying alive, finding food, guarding against rats, and tending Jack when things turned bad.
    "I'd like the dog's hair a little more disheveled, Willy," she called. "Think you can do that for me?"
    Willy was the man with the comb, the one who had called me a biter. He glanced down at me now, and I raised my lip a little. I murmured a warning. It wasn't a growl, really, but Willy didn't know that.
    "I only do humans," Willy announced. "Absolutely no canines. For canines you get a groomer."
    I lay down as they argued. By now I wished I had simply moved on and left these humans to their unfathomable tasks. But I was beginning to sense that there could be some rewards in this for me.
    "All right, places! Take your places!" The man behind the camera called, after the arguments seemed to die down a bit. "Let's get this done while we still have the light!"
    "Andrew, hit that pose again!" he called, and the boy went back to the stance I had seen at first, the grinning, self-confident pose that had attracted me from across the street.
    I stood back up, alert now. My ears went taut. My tail was a fringed banner behind me.
Beside the boy I stand! I pose!
Erect, my ears! Shine, my nose!
    "Great!" the photographer called. "Good dog! Stay!"
    So I stayed. It was a new beginning for me.

Chapter 7
    W HEN THEY FINALLY FINISHED taking photographs, everyone seemed to disperse quickly. Willy, the man with the comb, snapped his makeup case closed and got into a waiting car. The woman with the notebook snapped it shut and got into the car with Willy.
    Several other, minor people hailed passing cabs and disappeared into the traffic.
    The boy, the one I had thought so briefly would become the child I had wanted, snapped his smile off as soon as the camera closed down. His face became a frown, and he walked briskly off to a car with two adults who seemed to be his attendants. He never looked back at me. So much for my "boy and his dog" fantasy.
    I had been told "Stay" and so I stayed, partly out of curiosity and partly because I did not know what else to