At ten o’clock, I locked the front door of the animal shelter on Vorgebirgstraße and put the key in my pocket. I was twenty-four, a student volunteer, and this was my first night shift alone. I wanted to hand the key back at seven in the morning and say, truthfully, that I had managed everything myself.
The day staff had left a list beside the kettle: fresh water for the cats at midnight, one tablet for Bruno the beagle, lights off in the rabbit room. They had also written, in red pen: “Watch Lotte. She is clever.” Lotte was an old brown dog with white eyebrows and a slow walk, unless food or an open door was involved.
At half past eleven, I carried a bowl of water down the dog corridor. Lotte looked at me through her cage door, then lifted one paw onto the metal latch. I stopped with the bowl in my hands and watched her press the latch down, push the door with her nose, and walk out.
“Lotte,” I said, too loudly. She did not run. She turned the corner toward the dark part of the building, her nails clicking on the floor.
I put the bowl down and checked the dog corridor first. Then I searched every room: the cat room, the rabbit room, the laundry, the food store, the little kitchen, the bathroom, and the room with old blankets. I opened cupboards, looked behind the washing machine, and called her name in a quiet voice.
In the cat room, Momo hissed at an empty shelf. In the kitchen, the kettle clicked off, and I jumped so hard that water spilled onto my shoe. At one o’clock, I stood in the hall with a torch from the first-aid cupboard and looked at the last closed door.
It was the office. I had passed it twice because the light under the door was off. When I opened it, the torch showed the desk, two metal chairs, a stack of adoption forms, and my blue jacket on the floor.
Lotte was asleep on my jacket. Her head rested on one sleeve, and the other sleeve lay across her back like a blanket. I sat on the floor beside her and said, “You could have chosen the dog bed.”
One white eyebrow moved, but she kept sleeping. I stayed there until two, then carried the office chair into the dog corridor and kept Lotte beside me for the rest of the night. At six thirty, I gave her breakfast while the first tram on line 12 rang somewhere beyond the shelter wall.
When the morning worker arrived with a paper bag from Bäckerei Schmitz, she found Lotte sitting beside my chair. “Did she get out again?” she asked. I placed an adoption form on the desk, wrote Elif in the first box, and signed my name at the bottom.