Notso Hotso - Anne Fine [5]
Come and Laugh at Ant!
Price: Top of the milk
(or a bit of cooked liver).
And what happens?
The weirdest thing. (Maybe a miracle.)
The cat doesn’t recognize me.
Does it slap on its usual snooty, Oh-Yawn, It’s-That-Wuss-Anthony-Again look?
No, it doesn’t. It looks as if someone has shoved a billion volts of electricity up its tail.
Does it arch its back and spit nastily?
No.
Does it hang about sneering?
No, it does not.
It vanishes.
Just like that!
Always good to see the back of that cat, but, really, this was spectacular.
It made up for a lot.
As soon as Her Ladyship had stopped calling ‘Anthoneee!’, I slunk to the door. (I wasn’t going to have her think I was obeying orders after the GBH she’d done to me.)
I had a listen. Excellent! She’d gone upstairs to give Joshua some grief for leaving a trail of crisps along the hall and up the stairs. I hoovered my way up after them, and passed his bedroom door while she was still spooning out her motherly lecture.
‘… bleh-bleh-bleh-told you once, must have told you a million times… bleh-bleh-bleh –’
Good thing I’d nearly reached the spare room. Already my eyes were glazing over, and boredom was making my legs weak.
But suddenly even the Nagger Queen lost interest in what she was saying. She broke off. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she told him. ‘Come down
and have some tea, and I’ll tell you all about this afternoon.’
Explain what a hoot it was, I expect she meant. Give you a good laugh. But there was no time to stand about being bitter. She was already backing out, and there was nowhere to vanish except through the door to her own room.
Abracadabra! I’m gone.
If I was quiet before, now I’m on serious tippy-toes. I know as well as you that anyone who has Yours Truly for a pet can cry ‘No worries!’ when they spot a bit of finger food at rest on the carpet. So if she was spooning out a ticking off to Joshua for the lightest of prawn-flavoured
crisp falls, I wouldn’t want to be the fellow standing with his head hung low at the moment she clocks yellow gloop on her nice scalloped curtains.
No, I gave the soft furnishings the widest berth. I stayed on tippy-toes. I didn’t wag. (No problem there.)
I just prudently removed myself to the other side of the bed.
Beside the mirror.
Aaaargh!
Talk about fright! I nearly died! I don’t think I’ve ever felt my poor heart pound so fast.
Put it this way. You’d guessed already that the vet had ruined your looks, and your social life, and any chance you had of making friends outside of Ugly Club.
But now you realize next-door’s cat didn’t hurry off because you had problem breath.
Oh, no.
She obviously legged it because she saw what I was looking at in Ms Vanity’s mirror.
And, four-square in the bedroom, that’s a huge lion.
5: Cat Test
I’M GOING TO speak up for young Moira now. That girl was sweet. After she’d finished screaming, and all had been explained, she settled down on the patio with Joshua, and started to stroke me.
Actually stroke me.
Not the sticky bits, obviously. (Unless she had mange too, that would have been silly.) Just my head and my ruff. But it was soothing. It was comforting. It made me feel less like a freak.
And it was Moira who put the idea in my head.
‘Hey, Joshua,’ she said. ‘Let’s take Anthony for a walk down the shops and pretend he’s a real lion.’
Down the shops, nothing! I hate down the shops. Over-confident toddlers poking their fingers in your eye. And children the same age as you crooning, ‘Oooh! What’s his name? Can I stroke him? Will he bite me?’ Or that old make-you-growler, ‘Is he a boy or a girl?’ (Do I look like a girl? Oh, yes, maybe. To someone with their head in a bucket!)
Even the get-aways are spoiled, with every shopkeeper making the same old tired joke. ‘You should get your Anthony to carry this lot home for you, Mrs Tanner.’
No. I hate down the shops.
But that ‘pretend he’s a lion’ bit – that made my ears prick up. First,