‘Hiya, Thump,’ I’d sort of nod at him as I strolled over the lawn to check out what was left in the feeding bowls further down the avenue.
‘Hi, Tuff,’ he’d sort of twitch back.
Yes, we were good mates. We were pals. And so it was really nice to see him looking so spruced up and smart when Ellie had finished with him.
He looked good.
‘What now?’ said Ellie’s father.
Ellie’s mum gave him a look – the sort of look she sometimes gives me, only nicer.
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Not me. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.’
‘It’s you or me,’ she said. ‘And I can’t go, can I?’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You’re smaller than I am. You can crawl through the hedge easier.’
That’s when I realized what they had in mind. But what could I say? What could I do to stop them? To explain?
Nothing. I’m just a cat.
I sat and watched.
5: FRIDAY
I call it Friday because they left it so late. The clock was already well past midnight by the time Ellie’s father finally heaved himself out of his comfy chair in front of the telly and went upstairs. When he came down again he was dressed in black. Black from head to foot.
‘You look like a cat burglar,’ said Ellie’s mother.
‘I wish someone would burgle our cat,’ he muttered.
I just ignored him. I thought that was best.
Together they went to the back door.
‘Don’t switch the outside light on,’ he warned her. ‘You never know who might be watching.’
I tried to sneak out at the same time, but Ellie’s mother held me back with her foot.
‘You can just stay inside tonight,’ she told me. ‘We’ve had enough trouble from you this week.’
Fair’s fair. And I heard all about it anyway, later, from Bella and Tiger and Pusskins. They all reported back. (They’re good mates.) They all saw Ellie’s father creeping across the lawn, with his plastic bag full of Thumper (wrapped nicely in a towel to keep him clean). They all saw him forcing his way through the hole in the hedge, and crawling across next-door’s lawn on his tummy.
‘Couldn’t think what he was doing,’ Pusskins said afterwards.
‘Ruined the hole in the hedge,’ complained Bella. ‘He’s made it so big that the Thompson’s rottweiler could get through it now.’
‘That father of Ellie’s must have the most dreadful night vision,’ said Tiger. ‘It took him forever to find that hutch in the dark.’
‘And prise the door open.’
‘And stuff in poor old Thumper.’
‘And set him out neatly on his bed of straw.’
‘All curled up.’
‘With the straw patted up round him.’
‘So it looked as if he was sleeping.’
‘It was very, very lifelike,’ said Bella. ‘It could have fooled me. If anyone just happened to be passing in the dark, they’d really have thought that poor old Thumper had just died happily and peacefully in his sleep, after a good life, from old age.’
They all began howling with laughter.
‘Sshh!’ I said. ‘Keep it down, guys. They’ll hear, and I’m not supposed to be out tonight. I’m grounded.’
They all stared at me.
‘Get away with you!’
‘Grounded?’
‘What for?’
‘Murder,’ I said. ‘For cold-blooded bunnicide.’
That set us all off again. We yowled and yowled. The last I heard before we took off in a gang up Beechcroft Drive was one of the bedroom windows being flung open, and Ellie’s father yelling, ‘How did you get out, you crafty beast?’
So what’s he going to do? Nail up the cat flap?
6: STILL FRIDAY
He nailed up the cat flap. Would you believe this man? He comes down the stairs this morning, and before he’s even out of his pyjamas he’s set to work with the hammer and a nail.
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
I’m giving him the stare, I really am. But then he turns round and speaks to me directly.
‘There,’ he says. ‘That’ll fix you. Now it swings this way –’ He gives the cat flap a hefty shove with his foot. ‘But it doesn’t swing this way.’
And, sure enough, when the flap tried to flap back in, it couldn’t. It hit the nail.
‘So,’ he says to me. ‘You can go out. Feel free to go out. Feel free, in fact, not only to go out, but also to stay out, get lost, or disappear for ever. But should you bother to come back again, don’t go to the trouble of bringing anything with you. Because this is now a one-way flap, and so you will have to sit on the doormat until one of the family lets you in.’
He narrows his eyes at me, all nasty-like.
‘And woe betide you, Tuffy, if there’s anything dead lying waiting on the doormat beside you.’
‘Woe betide you’! What a stupid expression. What on earth does it mean anyway? ‘Woe betide you’!
Woe betide him.
7: SATURDAY
I hate Saturday morning. It’s so unsettling, all that fussing and door-banging and ‘Have you got the purse?’ and ‘Where’s the shopping list?’ and ‘Do we need catfood?’ Of course we need catfood. What else am I supposed to eat all week? Air?
They were all pretty quiet today, though. Ellie was sitting at the table carving Thumper a rather nice gravestone out of half a leftover cork floor tile. It said:
Thumper
Rest in peace
‘You mustn’t take it round next-door yet,’ her father warned her. ‘Not till they’ve told us Thumper’s dead, at any rate.’
Some people are born soft. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘There goes Next-door now,’ Ellie’s mother said, looking out of the window.
‘Which way is she headed?’
‘Towards the shops.’
‘Good. If we keep well behind, we can get Tuffy to the vet’s without bumping into her.’
Tuffy? Vet’s?
Ellie was even more horrified than I was. She threw herself at her father, beating him with her soft little fists.
‘Dad! No! You can’t!’
I put up a far better fight with my claws. When he finally prised me out of the dark of the cupboard under the sink, his woolly was ruined and his hands were scratched and bleeding all over.
He wasn’t very pleased about it.
‘Come out of there, you great fat furry psychopath. It’s only a ’flu jab you’re booked in for – more’s the pity!’
Would you have believed him? I wasn’t absolutely sure. (Neither was Ellie, so she tagged along.) I was still quite suspicious when we reached the vet’s. That is the only reason why I spat at the girl behind the desk. There was no reason on earth to write HANDLE WITH CARE at the top of my case notes. Even the Thompson’s rottweiler doesn’t have HANDLE WITH CARE written on the top of his case notes. What’s wrong with me?
So I was a little rude in the waiting room. So what? I hate waiting. And I especially hate waiting stuffed in a wire cat cage. It’s cramped. It’s hot. And it’s boring. After a few hundred minutes of sitting there quietly, anyone would start teasing their neighbours. I didn’t mean to frighten that little sick baby gerbil half to death. I was only looking at it. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Can’t a cat even look at a sweet little baby gerbil?
And if I was licking my lips (which I wasn’t) that’s only because I was thirsty. Honestly. I wasn’t trying to pretend I was going to eat it.
The trouble with baby gerbils is they can’t take a joke.
And neither can anyone else round here.
Ellie’s father looked up from the pamphlet he was reading called ‘Your Pet and Worms’. (Oh, nice. Very nice.)
‘Turn the cage round the other way, Ellie,’ he said.
Ellie turned my cage round the other way.
Now I was looking at the Fisher’s terrier. (And if there’s any animal in the world who ought to have HANDLE WITH CARE written at the top of his case notes, it’s the Fisher’s terrier.)
Okay, so I hissed at him. It was only a little hiss. You practically had to have bionic ears to hear it.
And I did growl a bit. But you’d think he’d have a head start on growling. He is a dog, after all. I’m only a cat.