Notso Hotso - Anne Fine [6]
shake off the minders. I acted casual – you know the sort of thing: ‘I’ll just step out for a moment. Call of
nature, you understand. Back in a minute.’ They didn’t suspect a thing.
Neither did she. Miss Wasted-Enough-Time-on-You-Already-Today opened the back door with barely a word. (How fast sympathy shrivels.)
And I was out.
Cat test!
I must have done a pretty good job first time around, because the charmer wasn’t back on our wall as usual, acting the fur slug. The secret of tracking, of course, is: Know Your Enemy. So I thought back to last time Old Tub o’ Lard was in a major snit, and that was after it had come back from one of Stitcher Massingpole’s cages.
It spent that whole week in the garden shed, licking its wound.
I take a peek. Yes! Door a fraction
open. Tell Sherlock Holmes he needn’t come. Anthony’s on the case now.
Squeeze through the fence. (That scraped a bit of gloop off both the sides. Time to start watching my weight again!)
Then, creepy-creep-creep. Creepy-creep-creep.
(I’m loving this. As you have probably guessed, nobody calls me ‘Scary Anthony’. They don’t tremble when they see me. And once, when I overheard Bella saying, ‘Frightened of his own water bowl!’, I noticed that everyone was looking in my direction.)
I’m ready now. What noise do lions
make? I know they roar. But how does that go, exactly? In this house, we don’t get to watch much wildlife stuff. She’s into cookery and decorating
programmes. He has the snooker on until all hours. And Joshua prefers those cheap and tasteless American comedies.
I think the last time I saw a lion on television was Christmas Eve.
Yes. In The Lion King!
ROOOOAAAAAAAR!!!!!!!!!!
Not bad, for a first shot. And what with my appearing in the doorway suddenly, good enough for that cat. Another trillion volts! The thing shot up like something in a horror film. (We all watch those.) Practically hit its head on one of the unsanded two by four rafters.
Big shock, big noise. Right now, the thing was yowling fit to burst, trapped in its hidey-hole. (Not quite so cosy now.)
But I knew, if it caught sight of me again, terror might fuel enough of its little brain cells for it to catch on.
Hey! Notso hotso!
So, yes. Good practice. Excellent rehearsal.
But time to go now.
Time for the Big Show.
6: Fun-Time
I FOUND THEM smelling dustbins. Honestly! Would you – could you – imagine being bored enough to smell a dustbin? Nipping from under Miss Forsyth’s holly bush across to Mr Hall’s hedge, I made it to the park gates without being seen. And while the three of them were chasing a couple of pudgy squirrels back up their tree – as if, gang, as if! – I slid round the corner the other way.
Into the kiddies’ playground.
Hey! Not my fault! Moira’s mum says au pairs get bees in their pantyhose
about things like a spider in the bath. I grant you, seeing a lion staring out at you from behind the baby swings probably sucks big time; but that’s no reason to deafen everyone on your way out with your horrible screeching.
The gang came running. (No one likes missing a bit of tea-time fun.) But I was thinking this treat was far too good to waste on all of them in one big go, so I slid away between the compost and the gardener’s shed, towards the old bowling pavilion.
And that’s where I bumped into Old Nigel.
Clearly he’d only been let out to play about a trillion years ago, because he was still only halfway across the fifty yards from his own
house. He stopped for one of his little twenty-minute breaks in between steps. And tried lifting his head. And made an effort to focus.
And then he (sort of) saw me.
And (sort of) stopped.
Dead.
I chose my word carefully there. I don’t mean ‘froze’. There’s something
alive about ‘froze’. ‘Froze’ gives the idea of alert and ready.
Nigel was just… stopped.
I stood and waited. But really, it was about as exciting as watching Granny get ready for bed. So in the end I simply thought, ‘I’ll come back later,’ and rushed away, into the Quiet Dell.
I don’t usually take the shortcut through there, because