I've been AWOL from this corner of the internet for a while, but thank toursies for pulling out my inner fansie again! So, I've come up with this craziness. Not even sure where it came from, but please enjoy anyway!
"Can we keep it?"
It was a question that Jack would later wish he'd never heard.
He'd wish even more that he'd never said yes.
"Pleeeaassse, Jack?" Crutchie begged, holding up the rather small gray kitten whose big eyes only were rivaled by those of the newsie that was holding it. "It's just a harmless little kitten! Look how cute it is!"
Jack sighed. "We don't need a cat, Crutchie. How're we gonna feed it?"
"It can catch mice or something. Tell me you haven't noticed all them mice runnin' around here at night."
Jack had noticed the endless army of mice that had infested the lodging house. They had kept him awake more than once. And chewed up one of his drawings, but he was not about to admit that.
"Okay, fine. Just make sure it pees outside."
They christened the cat Tom in a wholly uncreative manner after Race said, "Betcha it's a tom-cat, Crutch."
Crutchie carried it around in his pape bag all day, and the feisty kitten provided entertainment for all of them in the evening. All of the younger boys, and even some of the older ones, pitched in to help feed it. But pretty soon, Tom was doing a nice job of cleaning up the mice issue and Jack got a good night's sleep for once.
Crutchie claimed Tom was his cat since he had been the one to find it, after all. But it was really shared by all of them.
Race tried to teach it to smoke and Albert and Mush almost set its tail on fire ("It was an accident, Jack!") and they all took long-running bets on how many mice it would kill. JoJo tried to use it to pay for his papes, and Specs attempted to use its fur to polish his glasses. Once Jack realized that not only were the mice gone, but also that cats were fun to draw, he let it live inside. Tom slept with Crutchie, usually as his pillow, and had a pile of unsold papes in the corner as his litter box.
The second addition to the lodging house was brought by Romeo. How the littlest newsie had managed to find and tame the gigantic and fierce looking dog that almost was as big as him was beyond Jack.
"Jack, can we keep it?"
"All dogs have crawlers, kid. Do ya wanna get fleas?"
"I already have fleas," Buttons, overhearing the conversation, grumbled.
In response, Romeo stuck out his lower lip, and Jack saw tears in his eyes.
"Alright, alright. You can keep it," He relented, thinking he was really getting soft.
They named the dog Spot, and giggled about that to high heaven. The name was never uttered by any of them if there was even the slightest possibility that they could be overheard by any of the newsies from Brooklyn.
Jack decided he liked dogs after Spot chased the Delancy brothers away from Crutchie and Romeo. And when he realized that whoever slept with Spot stayed a lot warmer.
It was quite by accident that the next four animals arrived at the lodging house. All of them had thought Tom was definitely a boy, but that assumption was changed when the cat went missing for a day, and Crutchie found it holed up under the stairs with newborn kittens.
Thankfully, Spot didn't mind his feline companions. They didn't have the heart to change Tom's name, and Race named the kittens Corona, Pape, Kitty, and Erster. Specs was put in charge of naming all future pets after that.
Jack was pretty sure Henry and Finch let the squirrel that had been living on the roof inside just to be annoying, but he let it stay. Race wanted to name it Nuts, but Specs officially named it Pulitzer.
It wasn't exactly friendly, but Elmer tied notes to its tail and managed to converse with Finch across the room privately. Romeo tried to use him as a scarf, and Tom almost caught poor traumatized Pultizer, but Crutchie thankfully intervened.
The next set of animals caught Jack by surprise. It was evening, and all the boys were home and accounted for but Race.
He burst in a half hour late, yelling and screaming desperately for Jack.
"What is it, Racer? You hurt or something'?"
"What? Nah, I'm fine." He reached into his empty pape bag, which Jack realized for the first time was wriggling suspiciously. "But these little guys, on da other hand…" He pulled out a pair of ducklings that looked totally helpless. "We gotta keep 'em, Jack! We just gotta! Some bastard shot down the mama duck, and I rescued these two."
Jack blinked, stunned. He'd known Race since they were little, but he'd never pegged his friend as the sensitive, animal-lover type. But maybe he should have seen this coming when he found (and drew as evidence in case a need for blackmail arose) Race with the four kittens snuggled up in bed with him.
"They'll die if we don't help 'em!" Race continued, holding out a fluffy pile of feathers. "Can we keep them?"
Jack groaned inwardly, and realized that the rest of the newsies had assembled and were looking at him anxiously. "Fine, okay, whatever. Race, you're in charge. Keep them away from the cat." He turned to go, but realized what he'd just said. "Actually, Crutchie, you're in charge."
Race protested that since he had found the ducks, he should name them.
"Come on, fellas, let's name this one Lee, and this one Grant. They was generals or somethin'."
"Race, they're ducks."
Race was shot down, and Specs officially named the ducklings Bacon and Eggs, which wasn't much better.
Crutchie brought home a baby raccoon the next week, and Jack held out for about thirty minutes until he said yes.
Specs named it Delancy, although Race lobbied in favor of Bandit. The raccoon was barricaded in the attic and hissed at anyone who tried to get close to it. They brought it scraps, and it roamed around at night once it got older.
Henry and Romeo thought it might be lonely, and went out one night to "find it a friend". They came back with a possum when Jack was half-asleep, so he said yes just to get them to go away. As it turned out, having both animals in the attic didn't go well. Jack tried to kick it out, but the other boys wouldn't allow him to. They made so much noise fighting Jack figured if Spot Conlon ever came over he could pretend it was ghosts and scare him away or something.
In between Delancy and the possum (They couldn't think of a name, so it was called, "Possum") fighting and hissing up in the attic, duck excrement, Pulitzer the squirrel running around knocking things over, and the mice caught by the cats, the lodging house was a mess.
Elmer found a gigantic stockpile of acorns and other nuts hidden under his bed. On a barefoot midnight expedition for Race's cigars, Mush stepped in a nice surprise Spot had left and screamed about it for thirty minutes. Soon after that Eggs the duck attempted to fly south for the winter and broke a window. Spot started barking at all the noise up in the attic, and Tom very nearly poached Bacon the duck. Kitty and Erster were now full-grown female cats, and started attracting males. This resulted in graphic displays that made Jack run out and pull the younger newsies inside before he had to explain what was going on.
It was chaos, and sleep was getting to be rare. On the morning he awoke to find Corona chasing the frantically quacking ducks, and Race chasing after them screaming obscenities, he decided it was time for the animals to go. His suspicion was confirmed when the procession almost knocked Crutchie over.
"Get these animals out of here!" He yelled.
"Jack, we can't!"
"No way!"
"We love them too much!"
Protests came chorusing back, and the boys and animals managed to look innocent suddenly. Jack was beginning to think he was going insane. When the others threatened to run away if he made them give up their precious pets, he left the issue alone. He was responsible for them, and it was his job to make sure they stayed safe and had a place to sleep.
Later that night, he'd taken refuge on the rooftop. He could still hear chaos from inside, but it was better. Romeo came running after he'd only had a few minutes of peace. "Jack, Jack! You gotta come quickly!"
Jack rushed downstairs, and Romeo led him outside. He was thinking that he was going to have to break up a fight or possibly help another orphaned kid. Instead, he found Crutchie standing next to the smallest, shrimpy-ist horse he'd ever seen.
"Can we keep him?"
"No." Crutchie's face fell, and Jack almost wavered.
Race poked his head outside. "Aw, Jack, please? We could name it after you! It could be Jack the horse!"
"Have you been inside recently? It's like a war zone in there! And where are we going to keep the horse anyway? There's no room!"
"It's not so bad," Race said, shrugging.
Jack gaped at him. "Mush won't leave his bed anymore at night, none of us can sleep, Spot finds any food we bring home and eats it, JoJo's terrified of squirrels ever since Pulitzer chased him the other night, and won't walk under any trees anymore, there's ducks living in my bed and mating cats out here during the day. That's not so bad?" Jack threatened.
"I guess it is getting' pretty gross in there," Crutchie mumbled.
"And I ain't slept properly in three weeks," Romeo admitted.
"And Spot did chew up my cigars," Race said.
"Exactly. Normally you would have killed him but all this mothering stuff is making us soft," Jack threw in. "So if we don't fix this mess soon, I'm taking this horse to Santa Fe," Jack decided.
"No, you can't!" Crutchie protested, "We borrowed him from the police!"
"Jack, youse right. Youse always right." Race broke in. He turned charged back into the house yelling for Spot like a maniac.
Jack shook his head. "Crutch, we gotta take this horse back."
Three days later, Erster, Pape, Kitty and Corona had been taken to various other lodging houses in the other boroughs. Pulitzer and his nut cache had been dropped off in a dead tree. Possum and Delancy had been allowed to escape from the attic. Bacon and Eggs had been returned to the pond in Central Park that Race had rescued them from. Spot was left inside the Brooklyn lodging house while the newsies were working. They decided to keep Tom to help out with mice, if they ever came back, that is. The mess was cleaned up, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Jack got some sleep.
After a week of peace, Albert and Buttons showed up with a baby pig that they'd likely swiped from someone's backyard. "Can we kee—"
Jack all but threw them onto the street with an ultimatum that they couldn't come back until they'd gotten rid of the pig and swore to never bring another animal across the threshold.
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