The Sausage Dog of Doom! (10 page)

The cats had the dogs surrounded in no time so Rocket jumped up on to the cage, using the furry stick to fend off any overhead attacks. Oscar couldn’t jump so high, so he remained at
ground level, looking helpless as the advancing army closed in.

‘What a cowardly captain you are!’ mocked Lady Fluffkins, slinking though the ranks of Siamese Samurai. ‘You leave your helpless mini fleabag to fend for himself, while you
take the only weapon.’

‘Oscar may look helpless, but he has hidden talents,’ said Rocket, tearing two lumps of faux fur from the stick.

‘No one can defeat the Siamese Samurai! And certainly not a dinky little dog that can’t even grow proper legs!’ scoffed the empress, laughing at the dachshund. ‘Their
minds are completely in tune through deep meditation . . .’

‘Oh, yes, the meditation,’ Rocket interrupted, stuffing the tufts of fur in his ears. ‘I expect they need lots of peace and quiet so they can focus on all of those martial arts
and deadly skills you mentioned?’

Before Fluffkins could answer, Rocket nodded to Oscar and then watched with delight as the little dog acted out the final phase of their plan by unleashing Armageddon in his own special way.
Having remained silent for almost an hour, the mini dachshund let rip with a torrent of high-pitched, ear-splitting, frenzied yapping.

‘YAP! YAP! YAP!’ yapped Oscar, racing round the cage as fast as his tiny legs could carry him. The noise blasted off the curved walls of the chamber that made it sound even louder,
and was immediately met by the strange and terrified noises of the startled Siamese Samurai!

‘WOWOWOWOWOOOONG!’ they squealed.

The cats leaped away to escape the deafening Dog of Doom, clinging to the walls with their razor-sharp claws and yowling with fright. A life of silent meditation had definitely not prepared them
for the yappiest yapper in the universe.

‘Get your claws out of my airship, you fools!’ yelled Lady Fluffkins, but the frightened felines could hear nothing over the wall of noise, so they didn’t even notice when tiny
hissing holes appeared in the rubber.

‘TIME TO GO, OSCAR!’ barked Rocket, but not even his booming voice could be heard above the yapping and yowling and increasingly loud hissing of air, so he leaped down from the cage,
grabbed the dachshund by the collar and bounded towards the exit.

With Oscar still yapping, Rocket hit the door release with a paw and bolted down the maze of hallways, walls sagging and shrivelling around them, while Lady Fluffkins tried to command hundreds
of hysterical cats to retract their claws.

But it was already too late.

The moment Rocket and Oscar leaped aboard the
Rover
and released it from the airship’s docking station, the bone balloon finally popped and spiralled away at speed, and it
didn’t run out of gas until Fluffkins and her shrieking Siamese Samurai were far across the galaxy.

Silent Sausage Dog

‘Do you think we’ve dealt with Lady Fluffkins once and for all?’ asked Oscar, as the Spacemutts returned to the Pooch Pound just in time for morning visitors.
‘Because then we can all behave ourselves and find new homes.’

‘I don’t think so, little one,’ said Rocket. ‘The feline forces are all over the galaxy. Someone will have picked up the empress and returned her to the Catnip Nebula,
where she will no doubt be plotting another invasion.’

‘But Earth is safe for now, thanks to you,’ said Butch.

‘How did you do it, Oscar?’ asked Poppy, having wondered about this all the way home. ‘How did you manage to stay quiet for so long, especially with so many cats
around?’

‘I remembered something the captain told me,’ said the dachshund.

‘What
did
I say?’ Rocket frowned.

‘
Sometimes it’s smart to be silent
,’ whispered Oscar. ‘And it worked so well that I’m going to try it out on the visitors today.’

‘Then I don’t think you’ll be here long,’ laughed Rocket. ‘And when you go to your new home, you can help the Spacemutts by saving up your yaps for any cats that
you see acting suspiciously.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ said the sausage dog. He tried to do a paw salute but his tiny legs couldn’t quite reach, so he wagged his tail instead.

Oscar kept wagging his tail all day long when the visitors arrived. He was excited by all of the happy people making a fuss over him, but managed to stay calm and greet them nicely, while
Rocket, Butch and Poppy were making a racket in their kennels.

By the end of the day the mini dachshund had caught the attention of one particular family with lots of noisy children who would never leave him alone for long or mind the odd yapping fit.
Because even though it’s sometimes smart to be silent, it’s also lovely to be loud from time to time.

When it was time for Oscar to go to his new home, the family led him past the other three kennels and chuckled with joy when Oscar gave each of his kennel mates a happy yappy goodbye.

As the warden closed the doors for the night, Rocket, Butch and Poppy settled on their blankets to sleep in peace and quiet. They were all tired, but very proud of how the deafening dachshund
had managed to become a silent sausage dog to save planet Earth.

The Spacemutts dreamed of capturing Lady Fluffkins soon, so that they could start behaving for the visitors and find loving families who would offer them a happy home too.

Maybe next time . . .