And yes, okay, I spat a bit. But only a bit. Nothing you’d even notice unless you were waiting to pick on someone.
Well, how was I to know he wasn’t feeling very well? Not everyone waiting for the vet is ill. I wasn’t ill, was I? Actually, I’ve never been ill in my life. I don’t even know what it feels like. But I reckon, even if I were dying, something furry locked in a cage could make an eensy-weensy noise at me without my ending up whimpering and cowering, and scrabbling to get under the seat, to hide behind the knees of my owner.
More a chicken than a Scotch terrier, if you want my opinion.
‘Could you please keep that vile cat of yours under control?’ Mrs Fisher said nastily.
Ellie stuck up for me.
‘He is in a cage!’
‘He’s still scaring half the animals in here to death. Can’t you cover him up, or something?’
Ellie was going to keep arguing, I could tell. But, without even looking up from his worm pamphlet, her father just dropped his raincoat over my cage as if I were some mangy old parrot or something.
And everything went black.
No wonder by the time the vet came at me with her nasty long needle, I was in a bit of a mood. I didn’t mean to scratch her that badly, though.
Or smash all those little glass bottles.
Or tip the expensive new cat scales off the bench.
Or spill all that cleaning fluid.
It wasn’t me who ripped my record card into tiny pieces, though. That was the vet.
When we left, Ellie was in tears again. She hugged my cage tightly to her chest.
‘Oh, Tuffy! Until we find a new vet who’ll promise to look after you, you must be so careful not to get run over.’
‘Fat chance!’ her father muttered.
I was just glowering at him through the cage wire, when he spotted Ellie’s mother, standing knee-deep in shopping bags outside the supermarket.
‘You’re very late,’ she scolded. ‘Was there a bit of trouble at the vet’s?’
Ellie burst into tears. I mean, talk about wimp. But her father is made of sterner stuff. He’d just taken the most huge breath, ready to snitch on me, when suddenly he let it out again. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d spotted trouble of another sort.
‘Quick!’ he whispered. ‘Next-door is just coming through the check-out.’
He picked up half the shopping bags. Ellie’s mother picked up the rest. But before we could get away, Next-door had come through the glass doors.
So now all four of them were forced to chat.
‘Morning,’ said Ellie’s father.
‘Morning,’ said Next-door.
‘Nice day,’ said Ellie’s father.
‘Lovely,’ agreed Next-door.
‘Nicer than yesterday,’ said Ellie’s mother.
‘Oh, yes,’ Next-door said. ‘Yesterday was horrible.’
She probably just meant the weather, for heaven’s sake. But Ellie’s eyes filled with tears. (I don’t know why she was so fond of Thumper. I’m the one who’s supposed to be her pet, not him.) And because she couldn’t see where she was going properly any more, she bumped into her mother, and half the tins of catfood fell out of one of the shopping bags, and rolled off down the street.
Ellie dumped down my cage, and chased off after them. Then she made the mistake of reading the labels.
‘Oh, nooo!’ she wailed. ‘Rabbit chunks!’
(Really, that child is such a drip. She’d never make it in our gang. She wouldn’t last a week.)
‘Talking about rabbit,’ said Next-door. ‘The most extraordinary thing happened at our house.’
‘Really?’ said Ellie’s father, glaring at me.
‘Oh, yes?’ said Ellie’s mother, glaring at me as well.
‘Yes,’ said Next-door. ‘On Monday, poor Thumper looked a little bit poorly, so we brought him inside. And on Tuesday, he was worse. And on Wednesday he died. He was terribly old, and he’d had a happy life, so we didn’t feel too bad about it. In fact we had a little funeral, and buried him in a box at the bottom of the garden.’
I’m staring up at the clouds now.
‘And on Thursday, he’d gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes, gone. And all there was left of him was a hole in the ground and an empty box.’
‘Really?’
‘Good heavens!’
Ellie’s father was giving me the most suspicious look.
‘And then, yesterday,’ Next-door went on. ‘Something even more extraordinary happened. Thumper was back again. All fluffed up nicely, and back in his hutch.’
‘Back in his hutch, you say?’
‘Fluffed up nicely? How strange!’
You have to hand it to them, they’re good actors. They kept it up all the way home.
‘What an amazing story!’
‘How on earth could it have happened?’
‘Quite astonishing!’
‘So strange!’
Till we were safely through the front door. And then, of course, the pair of them turned on me.
‘Deceitful creature!’
‘Making us think you killed him!’
‘Just pretending all along!’
‘I knew that cat could never have done it. That rabbit was even fatter than he is!’
You’d have thought they all wanted me to have murdered old Thumper.
All except Ellie. She was sweet.
‘Don’t you dare pick on Tuffy!’ she told them. ‘You leave him alone! I bet he didn’t even dig poor Thumper up. I bet it was the Fisher’s nasty, vicious terrier who did that. All Tuffy did was bring Thumper back to us so we could make sure he was buried again properly. He’s a hero. A kind and thoughtful hero.’
She gave me a big soft squeeze.
‘Isn’t that right, Tuffy?’
I’m saying nothing, am I? I’m a cat. So I just sat and watched while they unnailed the cat flap.
2_The Return Of The Killer Cat
1: How it began
OKAY, OKAY! so slap my teensy little furry paws. I messed up.
Big time!
And okay! Tug my tail! It all turned into a bit of a one-cat crime wave.
So what are you going to do? Confiscate my food bowl and tell me I’m a very bad pussy?
But we cats aren’t supposed to hang about like dogs, doing exactly as we’re told, and staring devotedly into your eyes while we wonder if there is some slipper we can fetch you.
We run our own lives, we cats do. I like running mine. And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s wasting the days and nights when the family are on holiday.
‘Oh, Tuffy!’ fretted Ellie, giving me the Big Farewell Squeeze. (I gave her the cool blink that means: ‘Careful, Ell! Stay on the right side of cuddle here, or you’ll get the Big Scratch in return.’) ‘Oh, Tuffy! We’ll be away for a whole week!’
A whole week? Magic words! A whole week of sunning myself in the flower beds without Ellie’s mother shrieking, ‘Tuffy! Get out of there! You’re flattening whole patches!’
A whole week of lolling about on top of the telly without Ellie’s father’s endless nagging: ‘Tuffy! Shift your tail! It’s dangling over the goalmouth!’
And, best of all, a whole week of not being scooped up and shoved in next-door’s old straw baby basket and stroked and petted by Ellie and her soppy friend Melanie.
‘Ooh, you are lucky, Ellie! I wish I had a a pet like Tuffy. He’s so soft and furry.’
Of course I’m soft and furry. I’m a cat.
And I am clever, too. Clever enough to realize it wasn’t Mrs Tanner coming to house-and-cat-sit as usual…
‘… no, she suddenly had to rush off to her daughter in Dorset … so if you hear of anyone who could do it … only six days… well, if you’re sure, Vicar. Yes, well. So long as you’re comfortable with cats…’
Who cares if the vicar’s comfortable? I’m the cat.
2: Home not-so-sweet home
UH-UH! MR Houseproud!
‘Off those cushions, Tuffy. I don’t think you’re supposed to be lolling about on the sofa.’
Excuse me! Had the vicar not noticed it was me he was talking to? So what was I supposed to be doing? Mopping the floor? Tapping away on the computer? Digging the garden?
‘Tuffy! Don’t scratch the furniture.’
Hell-oooo? Whose house? His? Or mine? If I want to scratch furniture, I’ll scratch it.
Worst of alclass="underline" ‘No, Tuffy! I’m not opening a fresh tin until you’ve finished this.’