Daddy was a cop. A tall, broad chested man with a booming laugh and a friendly word for everyone. He was my hero. He was Mommy’s hero as well. Literally. Someone tried to rob her at knifepoint and Daddy intercepted and chased them down and arrested them. For Mommy it was love at first sight. But her parents didn’t approve, wouldn’t approve. They had a decent sized kitchenware store on the North side of town and they refused to allow their daughter to step out with someone they felt was far too far beneath their station. It wasn’t that he was a cop, and they may even, at a stretch, have been able to overlook his being a Catholic because he wasn’t too much of a churchgoer. No, the reason they told their daughter that she would be disowned if she kept seeing him was because he was Irish. Literally, as he had come over on the boat in his teens. Mommy didn’t care. They loved each other and were soon married. She wasn’t much older then than I am now. It was legal though because the good people who want to protect the young hadn’t pushed through consent laws back then. Daddy and Mommy were blissfully happy together, and when I came along it was almost perfect for them (Daddy was insistent on a son or two as well). And the three of us were so happy together. Daddy used to take me down the Police Station and the other officers were so nice to me and gave me treats. Cops became my heroes.

I’ve kind of lost track of time since I’ve been on the streets but it must be at least three year, maybe three and half since a bootlegger shot Daddy dead. It was September 1929. I remember that because the stock market crashed the following month. We had never been rich, but that took away what little Daddy and Mommy had put aside.

Mommy took it badly. We both did. At first, Daddy’s buddies came by and some helped out a little, but everyone was hurting for money, and, well, Mommy was not taking it well. At first she just drank a bit, illicit booze of low quality but high price. She did sometimes manage to get a job, but she had no work skills and her grief and drinking soon saw her lose them. Plus jobs were in short supply. And she looked for a replacement for Daddy. Well not a replacement so much as someone to support us, provide for me. And she hated herself for it, and drank more. None of the men were really interested in taking on another man’s kid, but Mommy was good enough looking for them to stick around for a bit of fun with her before getting bored, or moving on to someone else, or falling on hard times themselves. I guess it’s the law of supply and demand. As the country got worse, good looking women needing a man to support them increased in supply and the amount of men who could afford a mistress fell. And Mommy wasn’t looking as good anymore.

She and I had grown more and more apart. I hated her for all the men and drinking and she hated me for being a weight that dragged her down from ever finding a new, permanent man but still being a mouth she had to provide for. And we hated each other because we reminded each other of happy times with Daddy. I will give her though that she did protect me from them. The men. Until the last one. Until Uncle Phil. He tried to get a bit handsy. I guess he figured if he was the one putting food on the table for me then I owed him. I didn’t let him do anything though. I ran and ran and ran and never looked back. What little money I had didn’t last long, nor the money I got from selling my few possessions until all I had were the clothes on my back. I tried to keep clean and nice looking at first, but on the street it’s not possible. Eventually I found a home in a Hooverville that’s grown up in the park, and when I say home, I mean a small lean-to made of a piece of corrugated metal up against a wall of a shack of a couple who don’t mind as long as I keep to myself. I made it myself and it’s opening’s very small. Anyone trying to get to me when I’m sleeping in there would have to break it up and hopefully wake me. Not everyone in Hooverville is a good person, heck many are not even if they once were. Poverty has a way of corroding the soul. I think I have been there around six or seven month so far. I used to try and keep track of the days but why bother. My days are meaningless. I walk the streets trying to beg some loose change or find some food in the trash to add to the thin stew that the good people hand out here in the camp. I sometimes find other stuff that others have thrown away. It’s how I got the dress I’m currently wearing. It’s a bit big for me but I used some string for a belt. I wish I could find some shoes to replace mine that finally became unwearable a week or two back.

Before you look down your nose at me and ask why I don’t find a job, well don’t say I didn’t try. I didn’t aim high, something in a shop or a factory or a maid in a house. I would have taken anything. But, well, jobs are already in short supply and for the ones that are hiring, an underage, underfed street urchin isn’t what they are looking for.

In the past I might have been able to snag a husband, but, well, the good and moral people who want to protect me worked hard to put an age of consent on the law books. I’m so darn grateful to them. They’re the same ones who made it so the poor can’t afford to drink as much and bootleggers can get rich. Bootleggers like the one who killed my daddy. Thanks to those good and moral people, my daddy is dead. And mommy is a drunk. And I’m on the streets. And, well, there’s really only one way for a young girl living on the streets to make money. And, yeah, even if I’m too young for a man to step out with, I’m not too young for, well, that. Yeah, it would put some men off, but, well, not all of them. And, well, it’s not exactly true when I say I don’t have anything other than the clothes on my back. I have my body and my youth and those are tradable qualities. The only things I have of value to anyone else. Well, I guess I can throw in my virginity, which might get me a little extra the first time, if anyone would believe I still have it having been on the streets all this time.

And, well, I do still have it. And, well, I, well, don’t want to put it up for sale. Look, I know you are probably thinking with me offering myself up as a ‘pet’ to a wealthy man I’m some sort of cheap whore, but, I’m not. Honest. Please believe me. If I were I would have tried to become his mistress or at least a roll in the hay though honestly, I’m pretty sure he can afford someone better. Sort of like the high-class call girl I made up.

You ever read the funnies? I used to love to when I was a kid. There’s that one in the Daily News, Little Orphan Annie who gets herself adopted by a wonderful kind rich man. And well I’m too old to be an adorable kid like her and too young to be an adorable young lady that a man might want to step out with. Especially if they want me to consent to anything. And, yes, I know this is the most stupidest idea anyone could have but well I saw this rich lady walking this pooch about a week or so ago, and saw how much much better fed it was than me. How much better groomed and cared for and, well, loved it was. And I felt this insane jealousy of that dog. I felt so jealous that it had a better life than me and thought how much happier if I could be an animal like it.

How terrible must your existence be to be jealous of a dog?

As I said earlier, my days are generally empty. Wandering the streets, or begging, or digging through trash cans in the hope of finding something to eat, or wear, or use, or sell. The lack of food makes me feel lightheaded and, living out here exposed to the elements, without proper shelter or warm clothes, with the summers sweltering and the winters so bitter, is hard. It’s getting to be winter now. I’ve had a fever for a couple of weeks now. Well, I think I do. It could just be the ever present hunger. And the despair. I lose track of where the day goes and where the days go. It’s like wandering through a living nightmare and feeling you can never wake up. And being propositioned by men offering me a trade for sex. And feeling the temptation to just give up and say ok.

I’m a good girl. I don’t want to prostitute myself. I want to save myself for a proper relationship. Like mommy and daddy had before, well, he died. No, no, that’s not true. I don’t want that. I want a do over. I want to go back to how it was when daddy was still alive. I want to be a kid again. Protected and taken care of by daddy and mommy, and laughing and happy. I want to properly finish up my childhood. As the good people have made clear, I’m too young to have to do stuff like that.

It was during one of my aimless wanders – and well I apologize if this is wandering just as bad. It’s hard to focus when you’re so hungry. Yeah, anyhow, it was during an aimless wander after seeing the uptown lady with her fancy dog that a crazy idea came to me – maybe someone would be willing to adopt me as a pet. It was a crazy idea, but somehow it seized my mind and my every waking thought seemed to pull me back to it. Perhaps I might have one other thing I could trade that someone might be interested in – my worth as a human being, my self. I was too old to be Little Orphan Annie, too young to offer myself up as a dutiful wife, but something in me convinced my befevered mind that I might find a man willing to adopt me as his pet so that he might elevate himself to the level of being the master of another living soul.

Do not think that I did not see the underlying risk. A man who would keep a young girl as a pet might have more carnal interests in her than just as an animal. But, well, that would put me in no worse a position than I would eventually fall to otherwise. Indeed to be the kept pet of a man and be used in such a way was no crueler a fate than to have to offer myself up to any number of men on the street.

Finding a man – a potential master – to offer myself to was the next problem. I happened to see Mr. Dervish walking into his bank but two days ago and selected him for no other reason than I knew his name. He was well known in the city, not least because his bank had bought up so much of the property that the luckless had been forced out of. He was older, and, from what I had heard, was currently between wives. Such a man might be in the market for such an opportunity.

And I knew that I wouldn’t get in to see him. Or if I did, he would kick me out in a rage. Or laugh at my ridiculous offer.

I knew it wouldn’t work.

What I didn’t expect was for him to tell me to return the following day at 08:45am sharp if I was serious about the offer. And to receive a handful of coins with instruction to purchase a collar – a pet collar – that would fit me. And to have it with me tomorrow, not worn, but in my hand, so that if I showed myself serious and worthy about becoming his pet, he might place it around my neck. A pet collar with my new name on it. And a hoop that might take a leash so that he might walk me like the owned pet that I would become. As an afterthought, he also instructed me to ensure that the collar had a small little bell attached to it, like one might put on a cat’s collar. “So that Twinkle will tinkle as she walks!” he exclaimed with a laugh.

I felt dizzy walking away from the bank, and not just from the candy’s sugar bouncing off my ever present hunger. As crazy as my idea had been, it had worked. It was hard not rushing to a food store and using some of the money to fend off my famishment, but I knew that would see me dismissed as an ungrateful wretch. And I was determined to be the very best, most obedient pet I could be. The very best version of Twinkle I could be. As instructed I found a pet store and going inside, inquired with shame if they had a collar that might fit my neck. They had thought it a joke at first, or that I might be mad, but the money I offered up was enough, more than enough, to win them over. The storekeeper had to make it specially for me, but a black leather collar that could be fitted snuggly but not too tightly around my neck was crafted. A shiny black leather collar with a a loop by which to connect a leash and which held a small bell, and a small silver plate that read “TWINKLE”. Bereft now of coins but in possession of a collar that would mark my transition from human to pet, I hurried out of the shop, not wanting to think about what the storekeeper must now think of me.

Because I had tarried so long in the pet shop, I missed the people from the church with their food handout at the Hooverville, and had I not found the remains of a baked potato near a curb, no doubt dropped and then discarded by some soul not yet at my level of destitution, the two pieces of candy fed to me by Mr. Dervish would have made up my entire day’s feast.

As I lay in my little lean-to that night I found myself unable to sleep because of a hellish convergence of circumstances. Most prominent was the giddy excitement of what tomorrow would bring. If I could make myself the very best version of Twinkle I could be I was sure I could win over Mr. Dervish, make him appreciate what a wonderful pet I could be. In my mind’s eye I imagined him praising me for my obedience, my perkiness, my docile willingness to obey his every command. Telling me what a wonderful pet I would make, and reaching around and fastening the collar that marked me as his pet, his property. Prominent, but on a more physical level, were the hunger pangs in my belly, leaving me unable to sleep but lacking for the energy to stay fully alert and dragging me into a fitful state where I was unsure if I was dreaming or awake. And behind both of these, hidden, or rather, hiding, was the shame and horror of forgoing my human status and devolving to the level of a beast, even if one that had a master and was called his pet. In the darkness I whispered my name, my human name, and knew that I was no longer her. I was Twinkle.

I reached the bank at 8am the following morning. It was not open, and no activity was to be seen but I knew he would be there. Somehow I knew, perhaps as the first step of my transition to becoming his pet, that Mr. Dervish had made a point to be there bright and early, ready to observe if I followed through. Not wanting to annoy him by being too early, however, I paced the streets around the bank until closer to the directed time, but always keeping an eye on the large clock on the bank’s stonework to make sure I was not a second late. As it grew closer to the time, more people began to congregate around the bank’s opening, Mr. Dervish’s employees and customers impatient to get inside. Some, such as the security guards had already gone inside through a side entrance.

At around 8:30am I felt light-headed and sat myself on a bench across the street, careful not to fall asleep and miss my time but close to fainting. I could only have been there but a minute or so before I felt the reverberations of a police baton hitting the back of the bench. Turning, I saw a mean looking police sergeant who gruffly told me to move along. It’s what happens now.

At 8:44 I began to walk towards the entrance of the bank, knowing that it would take me less than 30 seconds to cover the short distance. As the long hand moved up to point directly at the 9 I was already in place, a fleeting though of walking away easily chased away by the twin hounds of hunger and desperation. I felt myself shaking with both fear and excitement, and jumped when a hand came down on my shoulder, making me spin around with an intense feeling of guilt that I had not earned. It was Mr. Dervish’s secretary, who bade me follow him to the side entrance.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the bank’s great hall was how quiet it was, the only sound being Mr. Dervish’s secretary’s boots on the marble floor. My own bare feet made no such noise. Looking up, I saw my hoped for benefactor, my hoped for future master, Mr. Dervish, standing proudly on his balcony, looking down at me with a benign and indulgent smile. “Good morning, Twinkle.” he called down. My face sprang into a look of joy, my eyes and lips showing the most devoted of smiles, the happiness of a loyal pet upon her master returning after a long separation. “Good morning, Sir!” I called back, pausing a little when it came to what to call him – Mr. Dervish felt too formal and master too forward when he had yet to officially adopt me.

As I stood there gazing up at him with a look of adulation carefully held on my face, Mr. Dervish gestured to the doormen, and they unlocked the two large double doors that would admit the staff and early employees. Very quickly these flooded in, flowing around myself and the secretary standing in the middle of the hall.

“Ladies. Gentlemen.” Mr. Dervish intoned imperiously, looking on his balcony like a king addressing his people, “If I might have your attention, please.” The hubbub died down and they all stopped and looked up at him. The man who was their master in a different sense.

His secretary started ushering people back from me, so that the pair of us stood alone in the center of the hall. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mr. Dervish continued, “please direct your attention to the center space.” I felt dozens of pairs of eyes turn to appraise me, a dirty faced waif in a threadbare stained dress and no shoes. “Behold, Twinkle! Wave to my employees please, Twinkle.” I nervously waved, seeing the confusion and, in some cases, contempt in their eyes and feeling a warm flush redden my cheeks as embarrassment and shamed washed over me.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Dervish continued, “Twinkle visited me yesterday with the most…unique of propositions. Twinkle offered herself to me as a pet!” With this Mr. Dervish let out a loud and hearty chuckle that, while not overly unkind, was not kind either. “Is that not the most curious of offers! A young girl offering to renounce her status as a person and lower herself to that of a beast. To become an animal not even capable of fending for itself but rather needing a master to feed and shelter it! Is that not the most rum idea you ever heard! Twinkle! Twinkle, show the nice people the collar you had made! Hold it up to your neck so that they might admire it and shake your head from side to side so that they might hear the bell tinkle, Twinkle!”

My hands shook with humiliation as I held the collar up to my throat, held it so that they might see how it would look once in place, and shook my head from side to side, feeling tears starting to well up in my eyes as the bell gave out an audible tinkling sound. All around me were looks of distain. I could see it in their eyes. The most generous of them probably saw me as a debased whore, selling herself in a bizarre sex act, a catgirl if you will, if ever such a perverse taste should exist. The more judgmental probably heard Mr. Dervish’s description of my offer and wondered how a person could ever allow themself to fall so low that they were no longer a person but a beast.

“Oh Twinkle.” Mr. Dervish continued, clearly delighting in the pageant playing out before him, “Twinkle, Twinkle. How thin you look. How hungry must you be! Would you like some nice food, Twinkle? Shake your head if you don’t, but if you do…if you are so very, very hungry and would like some nice food, Twinkle…meow for me.”

I gazed up at the triumphant look on Mr. Dervish’s face. The haughty pride of the wealthy and privileged. This was a game to him, and one he knew I could only respond to a single way if I wanted to grasp that slim possibility of hope, that slim chance of – and I felt sick to my empty stomach to even consider it as a good thing, the best thing that could happen to me – being adopted by him. “Meow” I softly whispered.

“Speak up, Twinkle,” he called down merrily, “over the tinkling of your bell it was hard to hear you!”

“Meow.” I repeated, much clearer, much louder.

At a signal from Mr. Dervish, a man came forward, and with a sinking sense of dread I watched as he placed two bowls on the floor in front of me. In one was dry cat food. In the other was cream. “Why, is this not a great kindness I show you, Twinkle. The finest Spratt’s Cat Food and, as an especial treat, some fresh cream! My, I’m sure you will purr with being presented such a glorious feast!” He paused and looked me in the eye with the most challenging of stares. “Won’t you.”

I had lowered the collar from my throat. I’m surprised it did not fall from my loose grip as I looked back at him, tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t purr. I don’t think I could have. I just asked a single question, quietly, but audible to him up on his balcony so quiet was the hall: “Why?”

He laughed at that. “Oh, Twinkle, poor little Twinkle. One does not snatch up a stray from the street and take it home! One first has to get acquainted with it, see if it is domesticated, is something that you would be happy to have in your home. So Twinkle, please let us know you are delighted with such a bounty to feast on by giving us your loudest purr. Oh, and Twinkle, remember a pet eats directly from the dish, they don’t use their paws like a human eating finger food!”

I now understood his plan. Mr. Dervish did not look to adopt me, but to humiliate me, to make it clear to his staff how worthless this silly little waif who had asked him to adopt her as a pet, an animal, was. But as I understood him, so too he understood me. He knew that a part of me desperately wanted this to be part of a test, desperately wanted to believe that if I did as he told me, showed the utter loyalty and devotion he demanded, that he might still adopt me. And beneath that, closer to the beast that I had offered to be than any human sense of pride could overcome, I was desperately hungry. So very, very hungry that any food, even food intended for a cat, would do.

Making the closest approximation to a purr that I could make, I slowly knelt down, avoiding making eye contact with any of the shocked decent people around me, and began to eat the cat food straight from the bowl, lapping down the sickly cream to overcome the dryness of the meal. Both the food and the cream were heavily flavored by the salt of my tears. As I ate, I had no choice but to listen to Mr. Dervish addressing his employees and the slowly increasing array of customers that filled the hall, “See everyone, here is the truth about the ‘poor and downtrodden’ of the non-working class, those poor destitute inhabitants of that encampment that is blighting our fair park. Look at how willingly Twinkle lowers herself, eating like a beast because she can get the food for free rather than having to work for it like you and I do! That is the truth of these homeless, these beggars. She is clearly not feeble of mind or body. No, ladies and gentlemen, Twinkle here is feeble of moral spirit, feeble of a decent work ethic that would rise her out of her sordid life of filth.”

As his words washed over me, a could hear the soft murmur of agreement and condemnation of my self from the surrounding crowd. More than one tutted or otherwise expressed their distaste for the wretched creature before them. As I finished my hateful meal, I stood, my face turned down and my eyes fixed on the floor, ashamed of the bare feet that soiled the good marble.

“Did you enjoy that Twinkle? Did it make you happy to have a full belly, Twinkle? You may go now, Twinkle.” He continued with much mirth in his voice, “And don’t worry your silly little head, I’ll be sure to have more food and cream for you tomorrow, Twinkle, if you are here at 8:45am with your collar in hand. Don’t worry, Twinkle, you poor little stray, as long as you are here every morning on the dot at 8:45am, I’ll keep on putting down food for you to eat for free in front of these good people who have to work to put food on the table. Who knows, if you please me I may even adopt you!” With this he laughed loud and long.

I left the bank’s grand hall, my vision distorted by tears and my gaze downcast, not able to meet the sneers directed at me, my heart broken by the contempt shown to me. I may have given up my humanity for this terrible fate, but even the lowest of beasts has some sense of self.