Paws and Whiskers (19 page)

‘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 Thompsons’ 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 Fishers’ 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 Fishers’ terrier.)

OK, 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.

And yes, OK, I spat a bit. But only a bit. Nothing you’d even
notice
unless you were waiting to pick on someone.

Well, how was I to know he wasn’t feeling very well? Not
everyone
waiting for the vet is ill. I wasn’t ill, was I? Actually, I’ve never been ill in my life. I don’t even know what it
feels
like. But I reckon, even if I were
dying
, something furry locked in a cage could make an eensy-weensy noise at me without my ending up whimpering and cowering, and scrabbling to get under the seat, to hide behind the knees of my owner.

More a
chicken
than a Scotch terrier, if you want my opinion.

‘Could you please keep that vile cat of yours under control?’ Mrs Fisher said nastily.

Ellie stuck up for me.

‘He is in a cage!’

‘He’s still scaring half the animals in here to death. Can’t you cover him up, or something?’

Ellie was going to keep arguing, I could tell. But without even looking up from his worm pamphlet,
her father just dropped his raincoat over my cage as if I were some mangy old
parrot
or something.

And everything went black.

No wonder by the time the vet came at me with her nasty long needle, I was in a bit of a mood. I didn’t mean to scratch her that badly, though.

Or smash all those little glass bottles.

Or tip the expensive new cat scales off the bench.

Or spill all that cleaning fluid.

It wasn’t me who ripped my record card into tiny pieces, though. That was the vet.

When we left, Ellie was in tears again. (Some people are born soft.) She hugged my cage tightly to her chest.

‘Oh, Tuffy! Until we find a new vet who’ll promise to look after you, you must be so careful not to get run over.’

‘Fat chance!’ her father muttered.

I was just glowering at him through the cage wire, when he spotted Ellie’s mother, standing knee-deep in shopping bags outside the supermarket.

‘You’re very late,’ she scolded. ‘Was there a bit of trouble at the vet’s?’

I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was six years old. As a child I read about authors with enormous interest. I especially liked reading about their own childhood, the books they’d liked to read themselves and, most of all, the pets they’d had.

So here’s a special selection of favourite authors telling you all about their pets.

TUFFY

Everyone loves Tuffy the Killer Cat, and I admit he is based on a pet we had for years and years. Usually we have huge and hairy Bernese mountain dogs, and I adore them. (I’ve always preferred a pet you bump into to one you trip over.)

But when we lived in California my younger daughter was so happy at school that she didn’t want to come back to Britain. We had to bribe her to cheer up about the idea. ‘As soon as we’re back home, you can have a cat.’

She held us to the promise. The cat was pleasant enough with Cordelia, but it was foul with us. (I expect it knew that both Richard and I prefer dogs.) Richard
disliked it even more than I did because he loves to garden and is fond of wildlife, and we all know what cats get up to in a freshly dug vegetable patch, and how they like to amuse themselves with vulnerable small creatures.

The years went by, and Cordelia went off to university, leaving us with this nasty-tempered and ungrateful beast. We did our best, but no one has ever been so glad to hear a vet say sadly, ‘I’m afraid this cat is on a high road to Nowhere . . .’

The day Tuffy was put down, we shared a bottle of champagne and swore we’d never, ever have a cat again. (I’d rather leave a child behind in California!)

And the joke is that these Killer Cat books – there are six of them now – are popular in over twenty languages, and more each year. That horrid pet is now repaying us for all our pains by pretty well single-handedly earning my pension.

I feel quite fondly about Tuffy now.

Anne Fine

OUR DOGS

We have had three dogs and many more cats. The dogs had more vivid personalities, and I think I loved them more because of it. Our first dog was a lurcher whom we called Daisy. She had the most beautiful and kindly nature of any animal I’ve known. Once, when a friend of ours was terribly unhappy, she (the friend) was sitting on our sofa and she began to cry. Daisy came and laid her head on the friend’s knee in a gesture that could only mean deep sympathy.