Free Angus and Sadie by Cynthia Voigt Page B

what do you think she was doing with the moths?”
    â€œI told you. Dancing. You were having a good time, weren’t you, Sadie?”
    Yes!
    â€œDogs don’t dance,” Mister pointed out. “And not with moths, and they don’t chase insects either. I don’t get it, Sadie. What were you up to?”
    Dancing! I was dancing! They were dancing! Were they moths?
    I don’t get it either , Angus said, but Patches spoke up from his safe place above the sink and across the room from Angus. I do .

    Harvesting the hayfields took the men two days, but picking blueberries took only one, so on the second day Angus and Sadie stayed inside with Missus in the hot kitchen to get away from the noise.
    Missus made jam on the stove and poured it into jars. She then sealed the jars with paraffin. Everything she did made it even hotter in the kitchen, so hot that even Patches went outside. He went no farther than the porch, but still, for him, the porch was pretty far out. However, even though it was much cooler there, the horrible noise of the machine—cutting and baling, clanking, roaring, and occasionally screeching—drove Patches back inside. He went upstairs and found a closet to sleep in for the rest of the day.
    Sadie went up with Patches for a while, although Sadie went under the bed, not into the closet. She had a little nap, and then she returned to the kitchen to help Missus and keep her company. Then she went upstairs again, and then she came downstairs again, and that was how she spent the day.
    When he couldn’t take the kitchen heat another minute, Angus went out onto the porch. When he couldn’t take the noise another minute, he went down to the barn. The barn was shady and not as hot as the yard or the kitchen. The barn was noisy, but not as noisy as the porch. When he entered through the wide doorway, coming into the shade from bright sunlight, he couldn’t see anything at first. He only heard Fox. Fox said, Whatsa matter? Nobody got any use for you?
    Not right now . There was a sour, heavy smell in the air. Fox was over behind buckets and shovels and rakes and hoes. There was a crunching sound, smushing sounds, eating sounds. Angus could see Fox now, holding something between her paws.
    Got me a rat , Fox said. Have some .
    Now that he could see it, Angus said, That’s disgusting .
    My job is to catch them .
    And eat them, too? Angus’s meals were good brown, crunchy bits, topped with a spoonful of special soft food from a can, and eaten out of a bright metal bowl. How could Fox eat that thing?
    Eating’s part of the job .
    I’d rather have my job .
    You mean your job as Mister’s slave?
    What do you mean, slave?
    A slave does what he’s told, like Sadie’s your slave .
    I am not , Angus said. So what if I am? So are you .
    Oh yeah? Nobody tells me what to do or when to do it. I catch my own food .
    Crunch, smush, she went on eating while Angus thought about that.
    I could catch my own. I just don’t want to .
    Ha. Ha-ha. The way you let them tell you what to eat and what to do?
    You aren’t even allowed in the house .
    As if I wanted to .
    Angus walked away. You could never win an argument with a cat, even if you were right. He decided he’d go find Sadie and make her come with him to watch the big harvesting machine. It wasn’t good for her to be so afraid of everything.

6
How Sadie meets a skunk, dances with light, and locates two sheep
    A s summer came to an end, the days grew shorter and cooler. Then it was September. Mister used his tractor to bring in the baled hay, stacking it in the barn loft, and Missus no longer sold eggs and vegetables at the farm stand. Instead, in the morning she picked tomatoes in the garden, so that in the afternoon she could skin them and chop them and get them into the freezer for winter. Now that evening came earlier, Mister and Missus liked to sit together on the porch steps after dinner, to talk