‘I knew too,’ Snowball told me. ‘My family have already fetched their dressing-up box down from the attic.’ She scowled. ‘And Tanya thought it would be amusing to put a bonnet on me.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Tiger.
‘Scratched her, of course,’ said Snowball. ‘Really hard. She won’t try that again.’
Everyone chuckled, except for me. I wasn’t in the mood.
‘I don’t believe it!’ I grumbled. ‘You live in a house for years. They feed you, try to cuddle you and make you think that you’re a member of the family. And then they send party invitations all round the town without even mentioning it in front of you!’
Bella could tell my feelings had been hurt. ‘Perhaps you simply weren’t around to hear them talking about it,’ she suggested soothingly.
I thought back over the week. It’s true I had spent most of every day out scaring squirrels. And every evening out with the gang. In fact, when I thought about it, I’d only stepped inside to see what sort of grub they’d put in my dish before deciding whether I’d rather stroll down to the fish shop and knock the lid off their waste bin.
But still, I felt a bit sore. If my own family had decided to hold a party, you would have thought they might choose to celebrate my birthday, not stupid Halloween.
No. I was miffed enough to take a stand.
‘Right, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll have my party somewhere else. How about round the recycling bins?’
‘Bit dangerous,’ warned Bella. ‘All those cars backing up in the dark to dump their papers and bottles.’
‘Under the scout hut?’
‘You’re joking,’ Tiger said. ‘It’s really hard to squeeze in through that hole, and then it’s freezing.’
So that settled it.
‘All right,’ I told them. ‘We’ll hold my birthday bash in the Fletchers’ barn.’
‘That means we’ll have to invite the horses too.’
Everyone groaned. Horses. Just think about them. Cloppy great feet. Giant black nostrils you could climb up inside and then get lost. Legs as knobbly as Granny’s furniture. Basically, a horse is just a huge pudgy barrel on great long matchstick legs, with feet like upturned teacups.
Party animals? I don’t think so! But you can’t hold a party in someone else’s home, and not invite them.
‘Okay, then. Horses it is.’
‘What about dogs?’ asked Bella.
We all turned to stare.
‘Dogs?’ Tiger said, and shuddered. (He’d only just got down from the last tree young Buster had chased him up.) ‘No. Absolutely not.’
Snowball is more of a softie. ‘Not even that harmless little thing from Laurel Way that looks like a tiny toilet brush on legs, and is so soppy it can’t even jump off a bed?’
‘No,’ Tiger said. ‘Not even that one. If any dogs are invited, I’m not coming.’
So that was settled, then. No dogs.
4: Ghosts in the closet
ON THE WAY home, I hatched a little plan to pay my family back.
More fond of ghoulies and ghosties than of their own pussy cat, were they?
Well, I’d show them.
I sidled through the back door, then up the stairs and into Ellie’s bedroom. Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes was sitting up in bed, reading a book.
I jumped up beside her and snuggled.
‘Oooh, Tuffy!’ she said. ‘You are so nice and sweet and cuddly.’
I kept my temper. It nearly choked me but I even managed to cough out a purr.
‘Oh, Tuffy,’ she said again. ‘I love it when you’re all contented and cosy, and fall asleep in my arms.’
I kept my eyes closed and I counted to ten. Then, just as she lifted her arm to turn her page, I sprang to my feet and stared at the closet.
Ellie raised her eyes from the book. ‘What is it, Tuffy?’
I arched my back, and kept up the mad stare.
‘Come on, Tuffy,’ Ellie soothed. ‘It’s just the closet. The only things inside it are clothes and shoes.’
I gave her a quick ‘don’t you believe it’ blink, and made my hair shoot up on end.
Now she was getting nervous. ‘Tuffy?’
She slid out of bed and went towards the closet.
‘Yoooooowwwwwwwwllllll!’
It was the clearest message not to go a single step closer. You didn’t have to be a cat to understand: Whatever you do, don’t open that closet door!
Terrified, Ellie fled downstairs.
I took a break. Then, when she came up again a few minutes later, holding her parents’ hands, I sprang back into ‘Terrified Cat Staring At Ghosts In The Closet’ mode.
You could tell from the look on Ellie’s father’s face that she had dragged the two of them away from something rather good on telly. He gave the most perfunctory glance around the room, then glowered at me.
I kept up the arched back and the stiffened fur, and stared at the closet.
Ellie’s mother slid the closet door open. She pushed the clothes hanging from the rail to one side and peered in. ‘Nothing strange in here.’
‘Check the other side,’ begged Ellie. (She was really scared.)
Ellie’s mother checked the other side. ‘Nothing.’
‘Check both sides at once,’ insisted Ellie. So under her orders Mr Grumpy-Wumpy poked his head in on one side and Mrs A-Whole-Lot-Nicer poked her head in on the other, and they flapped all the clothes about.
‘Ellie, there’s nothing unusual in here.’
I gathered myself up, did a frantic little ‘I am terrified’ dance and spat at the closet.
Ellie burst into tears and shouted angrily, ‘Well, Tuffy doesn’t seem to think there’s nothing in there! And animals are famous for seeing ghosts.’
‘Because they’re stupid,’ Ellie’s father said, still glaring at me.
Oh, very friendly. So I spat again, taking good care to make it land on his trousers.
Ellie’s mother could see that, at this rate, we would be up all night. ‘You’d better come and sleep with me,’ she said to Ellie. ‘And Dad can go in the spare bed.’
Ha, ha. I spend a lot of time on that spare bed. But I can curl up. I wouldn’t care to sleep in it if I was long and thin like him. It’s just Lump City, that old bed.
He knew it too. On his way out, he gave me a pretty mean look. I put on a snooty air and tried to show him by the way I stalked past that that is what you get for choosing not to hold a party for your own precious pussy.
Ghosts in the closet and lumps in the bed. That’s what you get. And serves you right.
5: When poodles fly
THE COUNTDOWN BEGAN. If you’re a friend of mine, it was a countdown to my birthday. If you are not, it was a countdown to Halloween.
I did a good bit of sulking.
Okay, okay! So I did more than sulk.
I brought in dead things while they were eating lunch, and shed hairs over their pillow cases, and scratched great holes in all their precious carpets.
All in all, I had an excellent week.
Finally the big day came. Early that afternoon, the family drove off to get the stuff for their party. I’d seen the list. Food. Scary decorations. Halloween masks… I’d scoured it from top to bottom several times but hadn’t seen the very important words ‘A present for Tuffy’. And that could not have been because they didn’t have the money, because when they came back with armfuls of expensive shopping I saw they’d splashed out on something that wasn’t even on the list.
A floodlight for the front of the house.
He’s not the world’s best handyman. So when I saw him going to the tool cupboard to find the things he needed to wire it up, I thought it wiser to leave.
It was a bad time to be out and about. Just before dark. Dogs everywhere, all being taken out for the last proper walk before their families sit down to supper. That’s the worst thing about dogs. Everything they do makes trouble for others. Think about it. When they get bored with staying home and doing all the stupid things they do — ‘Come!’ ‘Beg!’ Fetch!’ ‘Down!’ —they have to make a nuisance of themselves fussing and whimpering to get their owners to take them out. Me? I just stroll out of the door.