“What’s going on?” I asked.
But the corgis looked too stunned to respond.
Fr?ulein was staring at the driver, then stammered, “That’s not Bart!”
As if he understood, the man turned and smiled a yellow-toothed grin at us.“Brace yourselves, pooches—this is a kidnapping!” And to prove he wasn’t kidding, he stomped down on the accelerator and the car lurched forward.
We were being abducted—along with the Queen’s corgis!
Chapter 24
“Um, what’s happening?” asked Sweetie.
“I think you guys are being kidnapped,” said Harriet.
“Not just them,” I said. “We’re being kidnapped right alongside them!”
Oh, boy. This wasn’t good. I’d never been kidnapped before, but I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like it.
“Kidnapped?” said Sweetie as if the concept was alien to her. “What do you mean, kidnapped?”
“It’s when they take you against your will and then they ask money to let you go,” Dooley explained patiently. He glanced to me. “It was on the Discovery Channel. There was this rich girl who was kidnapped, and then she started to really like her kidnapper. I think she even wanted to marry him.”
I studied the driver, who was chewing gum with his mouth open and tapping the wheel with a dirty fingernail. No way was I marrying this guy.
“But… we can’t be kidnapped!” said Sweetie. “That just doesn’t happen to us. We’re the Queen’s corgis! The Queen’s corgis simply don’t get kidnapped!”
“Well, you are now,” said Brutus, who seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the fact.
“This is all your fault, cat,” Sweetie told him viciously. “We meet you and five minutes later we are being kidnapped. Coincidence? I think not!”
“We had nothing to do with this!” said Brutus.
“Yes, we’re victims just as much as you guys,” said Harriet.
“So how are we going to handle this?” I asked. I frowned at the door. “Does this thing open? Where’s the handle?”
“It’s fully automated,” said Fr?ulein. “There is no handle.”
Our jabbering must have alerted the driver, for he looked over his shoulder.“Hey, you’re cats,” he said.
“Well spotted, sir,” I said. “Well spotted.”
The guy wasn’t happy about this development, though, for he grabbed his phone and began tapping it furiously.
“Hey—no texting and driving!” Sweetie called out.
“I think we have bigger issues than road safety right now,” said Fr?ulein. “If these cats are right, we’ve just been dognapped. Which means they’ll want to ask money for us and they’ll lock us up until the Queen agrees to pay up.”
“Oh, but of course she’ll agree,” said Sweetie. “We’re her precious corgis! She’d never let anything bad happen to us. Would she?”
“Of course not,” said Molly.
“I’m not so sure,” said Fr?ulein. “Last time I checked the Queen is winding down her corgi-producing extravaganza. I’ll bet she is switching breeds.”
“Switching breeds!” cried Sweetie. “She wouldn’t!”
“She would. In a changing world it’s important for a public figure like the Queen to stay relevant. Keeping things fresh. Maybe she’d like to adopt a Chihuahua for a change? Or a Maltipoo? Or even a micro teacup Poodle. Those teacup dogs are all the rage right now. I hear Katy Perry has one.”
“Who cares what Katy Perry has!” said her colleague. “The Queen would never trade us in for a bunch of… dumb animals!”
“We’re animals, too,” Molly reminded her.
“We’re not animals! We’re corgis!”
“Listen, I got a problem,” the driver spoke into his phone. “No, yeah, I got the dogs, but there’s four cats in with them, innit? Yeah,cats. So what am I supposed to do with four cats? That wasn’t part of the deal. Throw them out?”
“I don’t like where this is going,” said Dooley, and I agreed. Being thrown out of a moving vehicle sounded like a perfectly painful proposition.
The driver glanced back at us.“You mean, just dump em. Great. Yeah, whatever, bruv.” He disconnected and drove on in silence for a while, then looked back at us, and said, probably more to himself than to us, “They’re telling me to dump you guys. But I don’t think I’m going to do that. I like animals, you see. I mean, it doesn’t look like I do but I do. Which is why I’m going to take you along and maybe keep you for myself. Or I could sell you. Nice-looking cats such as yourselves, I’m pretty sure you’ll fetch a pretty penny.” He turned to look at the road again, much to my relief. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sell them. And maybe keep just one. I’ll keep the fat red one. Fat red cats bring luck. Everybody knows that.”
I glanced at the others, suddenly panicky.“Is he talking about me?”
“Do you see any other red fat cats?” Brutus asked with a nasty undertone.
I looked around. A white Persian, a butch black cat, a gray cat and three corgis.“No, I don’t,” I said weakly.
“So?” said Brutus.
“But I’m not fat! I’m big-boned. And I’m not red, I’m blorange!”
“Tell that to the guy,” Brutus suggested. “I’m sure he’ll want to know.”
“What’s blorange?” asked Fr?ulein curiously.
“It doesn’t exist,” said Brutus, still on his nasty streak.
“It does! It’s pastel red with orange shades of peach and rose gold. Very popular with the influencers.”
“I’ll bet it is,” said Sweetie, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Who cares?!” Harriet cried. “Let’s focus, shall we? We’re being kidnapped, and they’re going to trade you in for a lot of money, and they’re going to get rid of the rest of us.”
“Except for Max,” said Brutus. “They’re going to keep him for luck.” Somehow his words seemed to suggest I was in cahoots with the kidnapper!
“I don’t want to be kept for luck!” I said.
“No, but you will—while he’s going to sell the rest of us on Craigslist.”
“Do they have Craigslist in England?” asked Harriet.
“Whatever! Our cushy lives are over, you guys! We’ll probably end up living with some toothless degenerate inbred pervert in the Cotswolds!”
“Breathe,” I said. “We have to breathe and think this through.” I tried to slow my breathing. In and out. In and out. It wasn’t working!
“And to think I dreamed all my life about meeting the Queen’s corgis,” lamented Harriet.
“You have?” asked Sweetie, sounding surprised.
Harriet nodded sadly.“And look where it got me. In the hands of a maniac!”
Chapter 25
“Oh, goodness me,” said the Queen, clutching a hand to her heart. “Oh, dear goodness me. My corgis! My precious corgis!”
She was on the verge of collapsing to the floor, and the people who formed her entourage quickly stepped to the fore and deposited her on the couch, where she was taking little gulps of breath and was trying to steady herself.
“My cats,” said Odelia, as she thought with a pang of sorrow of her sweet foursome. “They kidnapped my cats.”
The entourage, clearly afraid she might keel over, too, took her by the arm and deposited her right next to the Queen. Gran, viewing this with a touch of rancor, now said,“My cats! Oh, dear goodness me, my cats!” and clasped an arm to her brow, then dropped herself down on Odelia’s lap.
Odelia scooted over to make space, and now Gran was seated right next to the Queen.
“This is terrible,” said the Queen. “Horrible! My precious sweet babies. They won’t know what’s going on. They will be apoplectic with anxiety!”
“They’ll be fine,” said what appeared to be the Queen’s senior aide, a man with gray hair so sculpted it looked as if he’d actually created it out of bitumen and glued it to his head. He was wearing some of those fashionable glasses that would have met the approval of Sir Elton John.
“But how is this possible?” asked the Queen. “How did this happen?”