The Kennels, Chapter 3

3.

Tom felt like being sick.
‘But it can’t be! It has eyes, and these are... teeth?’
‘Yes, teeth. And these are ears, and these here, legs’ said the man, as Tom traced the shapes in the screen with the tip of his finger, as if he needed to point at them to understand them.
‘But wasn’t your dog a male?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘But... these are...’
‘Yes sir, puppies.’
‘Puppies!’ Tom had a hard time reconciling those scrambled shapes with the furry, sweet, cute balls of hair that usually spring to mind when one hears the word ‘puppy’.
‘I was gobsmacked, I tell you. The thing is, you see, when he opened them... Well, he said they were tumours after all, with a... how did he put it? A whimsical shape. But he said they were definitely not faetuses, because they had no organs, no nothing. They were just odd clusters of ... cells. But to be honest, I would have preferred them just to be puppies! It’s even worse to think that tumours can grow to look like that!’
Tom agreed wholeheartedly.
‘You said the vet took these things to a congress?’
‘He said he would, and promised to keep me posted. Next thing I know, he never made it to the congress and the things had been destroyed.’
‘How?’
‘Well, the vet didn’t talk to me in person. When I rang he was always in a visit, and when I went there he was always out. I ambushed him one day’ laughed the man ‘cornered him in his own drive. He went pale and lied through his teeth.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That a clumsy assistant had left the freezer open on a Friday evening and everything in there went off. That the things had to be destroyed because they were rotten. Baloney! Then he had the nerve to say that he had decided against presenting them in the congress anyway. Upon reflection, he said, he had decided we had gotten overexcited about nothing. The nerve! By then I had already found out that the practice was very cosy with Ickfield Kennels.’
‘Cosy? How do you mean?’
‘That practice runs all the tests and checks for the kennels. They are breeders as well, you know, very successful. The practice gets very good publicity and a lot of regular money from Ickfield.’
‘You think the people at Ickfield had him destroy the things?’
‘I’d bet my house on it.’
‘But why?’
‘Look, it’s obvious that there is something fishy about that place. Your dog and mine, I can swear, they are only two out of many.’
‘What do you think they’re hiding?’
‘Oh, I’ll tell you what. The government must be conducting experiments there! With stem cells, perhaps. Genetics, whatever. Or maybe it’s some pharmaceutical company. It can’t be legal or else they wouldn’t need to do it in that place.’
‘But why use animals that have owners?’
‘I never said they intended what happened to our dogs to occur. I’m sure they were bad mistakes. God knows. But I tell you, there’s others out there.