Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [63]
‘Well, boy, you seem pleased to see me,’ I exclaimed, ruffling his ears as his rump continued to thump from side to side against my legs. Yes, you could be a finalist, I decided, and was marking him down when I felt my left trouser leg go warm and soggy. I wheeled round to find the Boxer’s leg cocked against mine, a jet of urine still squirting out.
‘Why, you dirty bugger,’ I exclaimed, jumping out of range. One less for the list.
By now people were beginning to trail back in, the trail taken becoming more and more treacherous as more people came down it. A slippery slope that was crying out for an accident to occur. But it took the arrival of several more entries – two rabbits, a goldfish, some furry things in cages – before it happened. A short, buxom lady suddenly filled the entrance to the glade, her rounded bulk silhouetted against the sky. I could just make out the box she was holding in her arms. It was covered in a raised layer of chicken-wire from which peered a row of ginger kittens – three in all, each emitting a chorus of plaintive miaows. Dragging his heels behind her was a boy of about five; and it was his heels that brought both her and his downfall. He slipped on the slope, caught his foot in a tree root and grabbed at his mother’s T-shirt to stop himself falling. She was jerked back, her legs jerked forward and both she and the boy landed on their backs and skidded down the slope. The box sailed into the air, the mesh springing off to the right, the kittens springing out to the left.
The effect was like a dam bursting. The glade erupted in a swell of howls, barks, hisses and spits interspersed with a torrent of swear words as more owners poured in to cascade down the path and flood the glade, awash now with dogs leaping and twisting on their leads, a sea of canines tying themselves and their owners in knots.
Mortified, I shrank back against a tree, my hands clawing at the trunk behind me as if it were a life-raft. Could this really be happening? When I heard the band strike up ‘Bare Necessities’ from the film The Jungle Book I began to wonder whether Mowgli would suddenly appear in the glade with Baloo the bear waltzing down behind him wanting to be judged ‘Best Pet’. Nonsense. It was my imagination running wild, not the glade. Though that gorilla of a man shambling across the clearing did look like King Louie. And that hissing sounded more Kaa the cobra, than cat.
When things eventually settled down, the kittens recaptured, my notepad retrieved from the mud and wiped down by the girl, I had no option but to get on with the judging.
‘Phoebe wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ remonstrated the platinum-permed owner of the white-brown poodle. She, like her pet, had a red bow in her hair and matching white-trousered legs muddied up to the calves. Phoebe confirmed her position at the bottom of my list by baring her rotten teeth at me as I edged past.
‘Fine example of her breed, don’t you think?’ boomed the gorilla-owner of the Red Setter. Now I’d seen this King Louie before. Not in The Jungle Book but somewhere in Westcott. Now, just where was it? Ah, yes, of course … the dental practice. I’d gone there last week to register. He was the gorilla (dentist) who’d swung over the chair to check my teeth and found a cracked filling. He’d put in a temporary one while making a template for a ceramic replacement. I was due back next week. ‘Lucas’ was his name. And, yes, I’m sure he recognised me.
‘So what do you say?’ he asked, his piggy yellow eyes staring hard at me before he pulled the dog over and ordered her to sit. This she did without a murmur.
I lifted her muzzle and drew back the lips on one side to inspect her teeth. The back molars were encrusted with tartar.
‘Like you, she needs a bit of dental work,’ Lucas confessed. ‘But I guess we both know the drill.’ He gave a couple of earthy grunts which could have been construed as a chuckle. I was far from amused. He, of all people,