Even if it’s as small as a bus ticket, that’s where we’ll sit.
And this paper was full-size. I sat on it for quite a while. (OK, OK! So dip my paws in soap suds! I had been trying to spread the leftovers of my supper out a little bit behind her lupins and my paws were still chickeny. I made a mess.)
That’s why I glanced down at the paper I was sitting on – to see if there were any more tiny scraps of chicken that had dried enough to be flicked onto the floor.
That’s when I saw the word PASSPORT.
I looked a little closer and saw PET.
I lifted my bum and stepped back so that I could read the whole thing. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR PET PASSPORT APPLICATION.
Aha! The truth was out! Ms Whippy hadn’t taken me to get a photo simply because of my good looks. She wanted it for a passport so she could take me to her villa in Spain to be a mouser there!
I read the small print. It was nightmare stuff! First, there was a rule about carrying a letter from the vet that proved your pet was up-to-date with injections. (Injections! In case you live on Mars, I’ll have you know that that means needles. Not my favourite things. And vets! Not my favourite people.)
Then came a rule about the size of the wire cage. ‘Cage’, you notice. Not ‘comfy basket’ or ‘cosy box’. Wire cage!
There was a bit about how long your pet would spend in the baggage hold. The baggage hold! Like some old suitcase!
There was a rule about the photo of your pet having to be full-face.
A full-face photograph? Well, didn’t all that sweet-talking, ‘Pusskins, please look this way. Yes, that’s much better,’ sound a bit different now!
And then I read the last line, just above Ms Whippy’s flowery signature.
The date of travel.
5th May, she’d written.
5th May? I looked up at the calendar.
It was the 4th!
15 A Blur of Fur
Ever seen a tornado?
Even if the answer’s yes, you’ve not seen anything as fast as me getting out of that house. I was a rocket. I was a blur of fur that shot through that open window and up the garden path in less than half a blink. I moved so fast that I looked back to see myself pretty well still leaping out.
That was my big mistake. I should have kept my eyes ahead because, before I could even catch my breath, I felt myself being snatched up and heard a man’s voice. ‘Aha! Trying to make a getaway, are you, Pusskins? Well, tough luck! Gotcha!’
I swivelled my head round to look. Yee-ow! The man was dressed in one of those short white coats our vet wears at her surgery.
I wriggled frantically, but all he did was hold me even more tightly. ‘Stop struggling, Pusskins! No point in my driving all the way here for a special home pick-up if my patient has fled.’
Patient? Victim, more like! I’ve had my shots already! I don’t need any more. So I kept struggling madly. I scratched. I hissed. I yowled. I put up a tremendous fight. But this guy was clearly a master at hanging onto squirming animals. Before I even realized what was happening, he’d carried me round to Ms Whippy’s suntrap patio, and used his teeth to pull a towel down from her rotary washing line to wrap me up in it.
Me! Held fast in a roll of fluffy pink! I looked like a struggling sausage.
Small wonder I hate vets. They’ll get you every time. I bet they even take classes in rolling harmless little pussy cats up in old towels so they can shove pills down their throats and stick needles into them.
He carried me back to the front of the house and rang the bell. Ms Whippy must have torn herself away from packing all her fancy clothes because she came to the door.
My captor held me up. ‘Your cat’s a smart one. He was trying to get away.’
Ms Whippy clasped her hands under her chin. ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘Thank heavens you stopped him. If he doesn’t have his shots we can’t go, and the flight is tomorrow.’
‘No problem,’ smarmed our most unwelcome visitor. ‘I’ll have him back to you tonight with all the paperwork you need.’
I tried to tell them I had had my shots. All of them. Way back in March. But it came out as one enormous yowl.
And then a ghastly thing happened.
Ms Whippy leaned forward suddenly and kissed me on the nose.
Me! Tuffy! On the nose! A sloppy kiss!
Only one word for that. ‘Yee-uk!’
16 No Hope of Rescue. None.
Whistling cheerfully, the vet carried me back down to his van and unfurled me out of the fluffy pink towel into a cage. He dumped the cage down on the passenger seat.
So boil me in bunny juice. I hissed and spat.
‘Temper, temper,’ he said reprovingly.
We drove a mile or two and then his mobile rang. The vet pulled off the road and rang the number back. I only heard his side of the conversation. ‘Hi, Arif. What’s the problem?’
Arif must have explained because the next words were, ‘You need a cat?’
Excuse me? Was he talking to a madman? Who on earth needs a cat? I mean, we don’t do anything useful. We cost a lot to feed. We ruin the furniture. We do exactly what we want.
I ask the question again. Who needs a cat?
But clearly this Arif did, because when I tuned in again it was to hear the vet ringing Ms Whippy to check she didn’t mind if he lent me to some other vet he knew. ‘It’s only for half an hour, and I must say your Pusskins would be perfect for the job.’
Hear that? ‘Perfect’.
Obviously Ms Whippy agreed. So I admit that, by the time we met Arif somewhere around the park five minutes later, my head was already swelling.
‘Watch him!’ the vet warned as he handed my cage to Arif. ‘He’s in the foulest mood. But he’s the only cat booked into the surgery this evening. I have to give him all his shots tonight, so he can fly to Spain tomorrow.’
‘If the plane gets off the ground!’
I didn’t get the joke, but they still shared a laugh and then the vet climbed back in his van. ‘Be careful,’ he warned Arif, just before driving off. ‘That cat is horribly fierce so, whatever you do, don’t let anyone open his cage!’
Oh, thanks a bunch! What happened to my being ‘perfect’, I wondered as we set off down the street. I can’t say that Arif was the most considerate cat-cage carrier. He swung it till I was slipping from side to side like someone on board a ship in a gale. I paid him out by spitting through the bars and reaching out a paw to pull so many woollen threads out of his fancy jumper that I was practically hidden behind the tangles.
But my heart wasn’t in it. I was miserable. You know me. I am not one to wallow in despair and live my life in fear of what might lie round the next corner. But I admit that I was feeling really glum. I had set off with such high hopes: a better life, a nicer home and more appreciative company. People who recognized my true worth. People who saw me for the handsome, valiant, resourceful cat I am.
Now look at me. Stuck in a cage. Halfway to getting a heap of horrid injections I didn’t need, then lent out for all the world as if I were some rusty loft ladder, or a set of car jump leads.
Not to mention the insults. Ellie had never in all her life called me ‘horribly fierce’ or ‘in the foulest mood’. (She called me ‘spirited’ instead.) She’d never lent me out, or swung me in a cage, or wrapped me up like a sausage in a fluffy pink towel. Or threatened to take me off to Spain for ever, far away from my old friends.
My friends! Dear Tiger! Fun-loving Bella! Sweet Snowball! Where would they be right now?
Mucking about, no doubt, as happily as usual on Acacia Avenue.
Having a good laugh.
Without me.
Oh, how I wished I’d never got all huffy and run away! Why had I let that grumpy Mr Glad-To-See-The-Back-Of-That-Cat drive me away? How silly of me to have allowed myself to become jealous of that tiny fluff-ball Tinkerbell, and even that tiny human baby.
A baby! Why, the sweet little poppet had probably not been laughing at me at all. She had probably been laughing with me.
That is so different.
I had been so wrong! And I had nobody to blame but myself and my own foolishness. And now there was no hope of rescue. None.