Notso Hotso Read online

  Talk about tough. Milady Massingpole wielded the shaver like someone in a horror film you’re too young to watch, and, get this, threatened me with anaesthesia, if I kept wriggling!

  And the Hand-Cream Queen pinned me down with her elbows. (I take as much care of my paws as the next pup, but really, these perfect fingernail worries of hers are truly getting out of hand.)

  Brrrr.

  Brrrr.

  Brrrrrrrrrrr.

  BRRRRRRRRR.

  I certainly hope nobody ever does anything halfway as brutal to you. When they’d finished, the floor looked like a hairdresser’s, the day girls with shiny skulls come back into fashion.

  And I was naked. My skin looked like plucked chicken.

  They broke off for a teensy-weensy discussion about where to stop.

  ‘Are you going to shave all the way down his tail?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll just leave the tufty bit at the very end.’

  ‘What about his head?’

  Cruella Massingpole inspects my head for more of whatever it is that

  has landed me in her den of shame. ‘He’s clear from the neck up. So let’s leave the head, and see how he goes.’

  See how he goes? Perhaps she means, see over which cliff he throws himself. Or see how, with all the stuffing knocked out of him, he takes to his dog bed and pines to death quietly.

  See how he goes, indeed! He goes exactly how you’d expect him to go.

  Dead fast!

  I wasn’t going to let those nosy parkers in the waiting room get an eyeful of this spring’s new fake-o-la oven-ready retriever look. No, sirree! The minute she’d finished rubbing that disgusting yellow gloop all over my poor shaven body and lifted me down from the table, I shot off.

  Taking the Maniac Massingpole utterly by surprise, I spun round and dashed between her legs, and out the back way, past all her shelves of fancy He-Won’t-Even-Notice-This-Needle-Going-in-Him syringes (Dream on! We’re not all half-dead like Old Nigel), past lines of cages stuffed with scowling cats busy licking their stitches, and out the back door to the car park.

  And there I waited, lurking behind a large PATRONS ONLY sign, in case anyone saw me.

  Finally, out she comes, all smiles and wheedling ‘Anthony! Anthoneeee!’

  She thinks I’m stupid?

  I give her a growl. Unlock the car! it means. Open the door! Let me in, out of sight, quick!

  ‘Oh, there you are, poppet!’ She’s smiling at me. Mrs Betrayal has the nerve to smile. ‘It’s all right, darling. You’re safe now. That nasty vet lady has finished upsetting you.’

  I see. She thinks my memory’s been shaved off too. Well, I don’t think so! I

  seem to remember two people bending over me, pinning me down.

  Working as a team.

  (And don’t think this doozie’ll be hurrying back for his boosters.)

  All the way home, I’m planning my next sharp move. If she thinks I’m

  going to pad up the garden path with my head held high, she has another think coming. For one thing, the gossip will get round this cul-de-sac like news in a rabbit warren…

  I can see it now. Straight from the headlines of The Bun:

  Huge, plucked, four-legged chicken sighted in Juniper Close.

  In this issue:

  Are We in Danger?

  And Our Science Man asks:

  ‘Has G.M. Meddling Gone Too Far?’

  See pages 2, 3, 4, 14 & 16.

  plus!

  Favourite chicken-leg recipes!

  Snatched photos in our special pull-out supplement.

  Completely FREE!

  No, thanks. I’ll nip up the side of the house under cover of the lilacs, hide in the rucksack under the bed in the spare room, and wait till I grow out.

  I’m ready. Like a highly trained member of some crack army team, I have my head down but I’m poised to fly. She flaps about a bit as usual, shovelling lipsticks back in her Parfumerie under the dashboard, and picking bits of used tissue off the floor.

  And then she gets out, slams her door, and comes round the back to open mine.

  I didn’t mean to shove her into the lobelias. That really wasn’t part of the plan. It’s just that, as we professionals so often say:

  HE WHO DARES, WINS.

  And only a greyhound could have come after me. I shot down that side entrance so fast, my slipstream very nearly set fire to the dustbin. I had my eye on cornering at Formula One speeds, jamming myself out of sight between the shed and the wall, and then, when she opened the back door and

  started with her pathetic greasy wheedling –

  ‘Anthony! Oh, Anthoneeeee!’

  – hurling myself past her so fast I’d look blurry.

  Who’s there to ruin the Great Plan? What’s the first thing I see as I come out of the straight?

  Why, next-door’s cat, of course,

  idling its life away as usual in one of the sunspots on our wall.

  That’s it, I’m thinking. Doomed. The whisper will get down the street so fast that even before Miss I’ll-Just-Put-the-Kettle-on-Before-IC all-Anthony bothers to stroll to the back door, that cat’ll be selling tickets:

  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,

  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 there’s a NO DOGS sign. But, hey! Today I’m a lion.

  And, strolling through, I cause a bit of a ripple.

  ‘Bertha? Is that a lion I see over there?’

  ‘It can’t be, Gladys. It must be a speck on your glasses.’

  ‘I really do believe it is a lion, dear.’

  ‘Well, if you say so. Do you suppose the poor lamb would like a bit of my sandwich?’

  I’m standing waiting to hear more – like, the answer is yes, if it’s ham or Marmite, but no, if it’s apricot jam – when, suddenly, into the dell stroll Buster and Hamish. I ask you, what is the point of having a NO DOGS sign if everyone ignores it?

  And dangling from Buster’s mouth was The Lost Bone.

  All right. I freely admit it. Lots of bones get lost. We have lost bones all

  over. (Somewhere.) But this bone was dead special. It was cooked. And meaty. And it dripped with marrow. And it had been lost for months, since the day Buster buried it because he couldn’t manage. (He’d been hoovering up after a party with pizzas and kebabs – I tell you, you watch those skewers: they are dangerous.) I’ll spare you the

  grisly details. Let’s just say that some of those half-eaten puddings left on the floor behind the sofa had waa-aaay too much sherry and coffee brandy in them.

  So Buster reeled out in the dark night to bury his bone, and could hardly remember a thing in the morning.

  For just a moment, I forgot the lion bit.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, friendly as a six-month-old spaniel. ‘You finally found the old trophy bone!’

  Buster’s not listening. One look at

  me, the bone’s on the grass, and Buster is running.

  And Hamish isn’t far behind.

  I pick up The Lost Bone. Excellent! More fun on Monday, when I am the only one who knows where to find it. I dig a little hole behind Gladys. (It turns out her sandwich is falafel and anchovy, and therefore definitely not for me.) And then I sashay off around the corner.

  Only to bump into Bella.

  Where flee turns out to get spelled f-1-i-r-t.

  She sees me and starts sweeping the path wit
h her eyelashes.

  And guess what she says. ‘Well, hell-0, Big Boy! Fancy a stroll round the litter bins?’

  My turn to flee! I made it back to the bowling green, where twenty

  Frost-Tops playing a big match scattered.

  ‘Lion! Lion on the loose! Lion!’

  ‘Are you sure, Gregory?’

  ‘Lion!’

  One of them threw a bowling ball. It kind of rolled up gently between my paws. I tried to roll it back. (Talk about heavy, I pushed my hardest and the thing got nowhere. These grizzled folk must be a whole lot tougher than they look.)

  Not wanting to trash the image, I slid away between the bushes – back into the clearing, where Nigel is still sort of standing there, still sort of stopped.

  ‘Nigel?’ I said. ‘Nigel?’

  He’s staring at me with those sad old sheep’s eyes. But nothing more. Not a flicker.

  ‘Come on, Nigel.’ I give him the tiniest of nudges. ‘Take a step.’

  He rocked a bit dangerously, but nothing else happened.

  I went back round the front. He was still staring at me, but he wasn’t blinking.

  Uh-uh! Notso hotso. I always thought, when there was nothing left to hold you up, you probably fell over. But that’s arthritis for you, I expect. It is a scourge. Nigel often said as much.

  He couldn’t stay there, could he? No, of course he couldn’t.

  And I couldn’t carry him.

  So I used subterfuge. I stood beside him and I howled. Pitifully! howled like the Lost and the Damned all herded together. I howled to bring people with stones for hearts running with stretchers.

  And, as soon as I heard all the footsteps getting closer, I nipped out of sight in the bushes.

  So then it’s Action Replay with the adults.

  ‘What’s up, old boy? What’s all this noise about?’