‘Me first!’ insisted Bella.
Standing beside the little floodlight set in the grass, she stuck out her tail and curled it round, till just the tip was sticking up at the top.
Sure enough, inside the circle of light on the wall of our house fell an enormous shadow.
‘A Mister Softee ice cream?’ guessed Tiger.
‘Dog doodoo!’ I suggested.
I won that round. Then it was Tiger’s turn. He stepped in front of the floodlight and curled himself into a perfect oval. When he was steady, he stuck the very tips of his paws out at the top.
Bella and I stared at the silhouette he’d made on the wall.
‘A sack of coal?’ suggested Bella.
‘Two slugs having a race down a rubbish bag’ was my guess.
I think we might have stood there guessing all night. (It was an owl.) But just at that moment the hysterical barking and baying noise that had been getting closer and closer finally came round the corner.
‘Oh, oh!’ said Tiger, hastily unravelling himself. ‘Game over. Here comes Ugly Club.’
‘No, no,’ I reassured him. ‘None of that pack of ratbags is fit enough to jump over our fence. We’re perfectly safe.’
Forget playing Guess the Shadow. Let’s play Guess Who Was Superwrong.
Yes. That’s right. Me.
Because that rattlesnake-eyed Alsatian who thinks she’s such a star for winning gold cups at the Dog Agility Class swept over the fence, screeched to a halt, then, getting up on her hind legs, jammed her paw down on the gate latch.
And suddenly every dog in town was in our garden.
Ugly Club had arrived.
9: Terrifying Beast
OKAY, OKAY. so feed me worms all week. The dogs got into the house.
How is that my fault? How was I supposed to know that when I sprang back like that, with my claws sticking out and my hair up on end, this giant shadow of me would appear on the wall.
I didn’t realize I would end up looking quite so fierce.
And huge.
And scary.
I didn’t know my shadow was going to frighten all those wussie dogs that much.
Nor was it my fault that they all ended up running around in circles, yelping and whining. Bella and Tiger only leaned against the gate by accident. They didn’t know it was going to swing shut, and trap the whole pack. (All except Miss Dog Agility, of course, who made it back over the fence and home to her stupid collection of fancy gold cups.) As soon as the rest of them saw that they were trapped, they slunk on their bellies round and round our garden – a pack of wimperoonies, all desperate for any way to escape from that Terrifying Beast that was so Fierce and Huge and obviously coming out of somewhere to get them.
Okay, so spank me. How was I supposed to know that one of those great lard-butted Labradors was going to back up so hard against our front door that it flew open.
In they all rushed, to get away from the monster.
The whole pack.
Straight into the party.
There was some angry shouting, a good few screams and the ugly thump of overturned furniture. We heard a lot of breaking glass, and then the party guests began to tumble out of the house into the garden, to get away from the demented dogs.
I looked at Tiger and Bella. Tiger and Bella looked at me.
I glanced up at the silhouette. I had become a giant pussy cat.
Now that was simply boring.
‘What do you reckon?’ I asked the others. ‘Party on, dudes?’
‘Why not?’ said Tiger. ‘Once you’re on a roll …’
‘Absolutely,’ agreed Bella. ‘Go for it, Tuff. Command Performance!’
So I went for it.
10: The very best of shows
I DON’T THINK any group of people, ever, in the whole history of the world, can have been frightened so easily.
Of course, it helped that it was Halloween. What had Ellie’s father called it? ‘The time when everything evil and ugly and dangerous crawls out to stalk the land. A very suitable day indeed for Tuffy’s birthday.’
Well, it was a very suitable day indeed for Tuffy’s greatest performance.
Except, of course, that it was not day. It was night. Dark, with almost no moon. The trees were bending in the wind, and all those dogs howling and whining and whimpering made an excellent soundtrack.
So I stood in front of the little floodlight set in the lawn and I went for it. I clawed the air. I arched. I spat. I writhed. I bent my head sideways and gave a host of evil leers. I stood up on my back legs and scratched the air. I spun round. I bared my teeth.
My word, it was the very best of shows. Tiger and Bella kept up a soft, ethereal, other-worldly yowling that would have made my fur stand up on end if it had not been up on end already.
People and dogs spilled out of the door. They were all fighting one another like starved rats in a bag. It was the perfect moment, and down came the claws in my shadow like a velociraptor snatching at prey.
Snatch!
Snatch!
Snatch!
Snatch!
The party guests screamed. Everyone – people and dogs – took off in a shower of sparks, shrieking hysterically. There was much wailing and rolling of eyes. There was a lot of banging of the gate. There were a lot of terrified cries. We heard them growing fainter down the street.
Fainter and fainter.
Fainter.
FAINTER, STILL.
In the end, there was silence.
Out over the heaps of flattened sausages on sticks stepped Ellie and her father. I leaped aside, but it was just a shade too late. They’d spotted what I was doing – turning my last ferocious velociraptor pounce into a final bow.
Mr No-Sense-Of-Humour didn’t take it very well.
‘You!’
Tiger and Bella don’t much care for the man when he’s in one of his tempers. They scuttled off home, fast.
I was left eyeing The Master.
He’d worked himself into a frightful froth. He looked as if he’d like to take a cattle prod to me. He looked as if he’d rather like to tie me into a reef knot, and whirl me round and round his head.
‘You vile, destructive little beast! You’ve ruined our party! Absolutely ruined it!’
I was about to give him the blink, turn on my paws and stroll off – after all, I’d had my supper – when Ellie turned on him.
‘Don’t you blame Tuffy! Don’t you see? All he was trying to do was scare off those nasty dogs who burst in after the food!’
She scooped me up and buried her face in my fur. ‘Dear, kind, sweet, clever Tuffy. He saw the mess the dogs were making of our house, and then remembered all about the ghosts in my closet.’
‘There are no ghosts in your closet!’ Ellie’s father roared. ‘There are no ghosts at all! And there are definitely none in your closet!’
‘If Tuffy thinks there are, there are,’ said Ellie. (I will say this for the poor noodle-brain. She really is loyal.) ‘And if he thinks there aren’t, there aren’t.’
An excellent tip. I really hoped he would remember it. But, frankly, he didn’t look as if he was in the mood to try to remember anything while he was cleaning up after the party. It took all night. In the end, Ellie and I went off to bed, of course. But I was woken several times by all the tinkling and muttering and cursing and banging as he swept up broken glasses and pulled the furniture the right way up to shove it back in place.
But, let’s face it, Ellie’s father has never had much thought for others. Selfish and inconsiderate, that’s him.
At least, thanks to Ellie, I now have a good way of taking revenge on him whenever he’s mean to me. What did she say? ‘If Tuffy thinks that there’s a ghost in the closet, then there is.’ So if I feel like giving him a good night’s sleep, I settle down on Ellie’s bed and yawn and close my eyes. And so does she. Within a minute or two, she’s fast asleep.
And, if I feel like paying him back for any of his petty meannesses (like having a party to celebrate Halloween instead of my birthday), I stare at the closet most uneasily, until Ellie hurries off to sleep in her mum’s bed.
Then he gets sent along the hall to have a bad night in the Bed of Lumps.
And I feel great.