Loe raamatut: «Trixie Fights For Furry Rights»

“You know, those puppies are very sweet, but they’re getting bigger by the minute,” Mum said as she watched my little brother Tomato trying to get two spoonfuls of Krispy Popsicles into his mouth at once. If she was thinking there wasn’t much difference between Tomato and the puppies eating breakfast, I could see her point. But I knew what was coming next so I got ready to wail in my best tragic wailing manner.

“We really must find homes for them. The time has come,” concluded Mum.

“Nooooooooooooooo!” I wailed tragically. “You said we could keep them all!”

“When?” asked Mum.

“I can’t remember, but you definitely did. Didn’t she?”

I turned to my little brother Tomato for support, but he now had his face stuck right inside the bowl of Krispy Popsicles. He looked like he was trying to lick the pattern of Dalmatian puppies off the rim.

“But this is the puppies’ home! You can’t send them away! They might be made into fur coats!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Trixie, that sort of thing doesn’t happen any more.”

“Any more? You mean it really did happen?” I said. “It wasn’t just something that happened in stories?” I was shocked.

Dad came in, carrying a plank. He’s always carrying planks. He likes fixing things around the house. It makes him feel useful, and the noise he makes hammering and drilling stops him from noticing anything he doesn’t want to hear – like family rows, questions about whether he’s done the shopping, or if he has any money for once. That kind of thing.

“It’s true. You couldn’t keep a cat for five minutes when my dad was a lad,” he said, knocking the Krispy Popsicles off the table with the back of the plank. Tomato howled indignantly and the puppies all yapped as they fell over each other to grab some. Not that they liked it much when they got it. “Blokes would drive round at dead of night and catch ‘em in nets. Next thing you know they’d be fur hats. The cats, not the blokes.”

“Don’t be silly. And shush, you’ll scare Tomato,” Mum said.

Tomato didn’t seem very scared. He was dropping Krispy Popsicles on the puppies’ shiny noses and chanting: “Blokes in coats, cats in hats, dads and lads, poos in loos,” while sticking his tongue out in the effort to direct a Krispy Popsicle at Big Fattypuff’s ear. Big Fattypuff is one of the sweetest of the puppies, not that they aren’t all sweet of course.

“Remember to be home by four in case I’m late back,” Mum said, getting up. “That woman who might buy Gran’s china is coming round this afternoon – somebody’s got to do something to raise some extra money in this household. One day we might be able to afford to get the roof fixed.”

“Cats and prats, purrs and furs, paws on floors, dads are mad,” Tomato carried on.

I followed Mum around the kitchen as she got ready to go to school. She’s a teacher. “How can you go on about the boring old roof and boring old china when the puppies’ lives are at stake?”

“Don’t be such a drama queen, Trixie.”

“You don’t care!” I shouted at Mum’s fast-disappearing form. “Harpo’s their mum! She’ll be brokenhearted if her puppies leave home! You wouldn’t like it if someone stole YOUR children!”

Mum glanced first at me, then at Tomato, who seemed to have more cereal stuck to his outside than he had managed to cram into his inside. “I wouldn’t bank on that,” she said, whisking out of the door.

All this worry about the puppies made me late for school, of course. I slunk into class and, risking the evil x-ray eye of our demon teacher, Warty-Beak, I passed an anguished note to my best friend Dinah.

I watched Dinah reading it, then passing it to Chloe, my other best friend.

Chloe was busy checking her new pet ant that she carries around everywhere in a matchbox, so it took her a few seconds before she realised what Dinah was doing. But when they had both read my note they turned to look at me with agonised faces contorted in woe, as though they had just read about the End of the World. It was very comforting.

Warty-Beak was droning on about some project or other we all had to get finished by yesterday, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about were Little Marigold with her fluffy paws, Cheeky Eric with his naughty ways, Big Fattypuff with his huge soft eyes like saucers of honey, Tiny Gertrude with her curly-wurly tail and, worst of all, my beloved Bonzo, King of my Heart.

How would I sleep without Bonzo on my bed? And what about Harpo, their mum, who had brought them all up and cared for them since the day they were born? I must tell you that if I were a crying sort of person, which I most definitely am not, I might have shed a tear there and then on my empty page.

“Away with the fairies again, Patricia Tempest? You appear not to have written down a single word.”

I jumped. The gimletty eye of Warty bored like a dentist’s drill into the depths of my soul.

“Sorry, Warty…er, Mr Wartover,” I stuttered. “My pen’s dried up.”

“The originality of your excuses appears to have dried up too, Patricia,” Warty sneered. This is the kind of sneaky thing he loves saying, and he looks all pleased afterwards, as if he’s expecting a round of applause. Everybody groans of course.

Warty returned to the front of the class with a gloaty, beaky snigger.

“I want this project to be your very best work, as we are going to make a special display of it for parents’ evening. It must be at least six pages of writing with some nice illustrations. AND, as this is a very special parents’ evening, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of St Aubergine’s Primary School, you are all, in your groups, going to present your projects with a little speech.”

A chorus of further groans ran round the class. Groan groan groan groanetty groan. Warty paid no attention and ploughed on.

“The title, for those of you who may not have heard the first time,” he continued, glaring at me, “is ‘The Pride of Bottomley’.”

Just to put you in the picture, this is not some weird school anti-thin-awareness project to get us all to be proud of having bottoms. It’s a project about the town we live in, which is called Bottomley. You might wonder how anybody could hope to get taken seriously in life coming from a place called that, and I would agree with you, but that’s another subject. You probably know the kind of school project I mean. It’s one of those no-brainers where they get you to walk up and down the high street with a calculator, count the number of lorries going past and divide them by the number of fish and chip shops, that kind of thing.

“Why doesn’t Warty give us something interesting to do, like the Amazon Rainforest?” I muttered as we filed out after what felt like hours and hours.

“Yeah, or how many heads got cut off in the French Revolution?” said Sumil, bashing Dennis with his school bag. Dennis bashed him back. It’s the way boys show they’re friends.

Me and Dinah and Chloe headed for the quiet corner, but my archenemies Ghastly Grey Griselda and Orrible Orange Orson had got there first and were busy tormenting small shy Year Threes. They’d emptied out their bags on to the ground and were making stupid jokes about the contents.

“EEeww, a HANKY! Is that for mopping up when you wet yourself?”

“Yeeech, a MARMITE SANDWICH! Marmite’s made from dog poo, you know!”

That kind of thing.

“We ought to help,” said Chloe, stepping behind me and Dinah. Dinah’s almost taller than Grey Griselda and Orange Orson put together. And Chloe, for that matter. So we went over and glared at them.

“Haven’t you got anything better to do?” Dinah asked sarkily, drawing herself up to her full supermodel height.

“Like using old ladies as footballs?” I added.

Ghastly Grey Griselda and Orrible Orange Orson grumbled a bit but slouched off. We shooed the Year Threes away and sat down.

“Ohmigod, I can’t believe your mum’s going to sell the puppies,” Dinah said. “Doesn’t she have a heart?”

“It’s made of stone,” I said gloomily.

Griselda and Orange Orson hadn’t gone far. Griselda has big flapping ears that always hear anything you don’t want her to. She started carrying on at us, though obviously ready to run if Dinah or me took a step in their direction.

“Sell those mongrels? You’d be lucky to get a fiver for the lot!” she hooted. “Unless you’re selling them to make school dinners…”

We took a step and they ran for it.

“She’s got a point though,” Dinah said. “No offence, but don’t people only pay money for pedigree dogs?”

“That’s not the point,” I said furiously. “The point is my mum wants to get rid of the puppies. So she’ll advertise them and then people will come and take them away. Anyway they’re not mongrels, they’re crossbreeds.”

“They don’t look very cross to me. They look cute,” Chloe said.

For someone who’s a definite brainiac, Chloe has some strange gaps in her education.

“I’m sure you could sell them. Their dad is very posh, isn’t he?” she continued.

This was true: the puppies’ father, Lorenzo, the Dog-Next-Door and the love of Harpo’s life, is a red setter of amazing pedigree and Mrs Next-Door is always boasting about the prizes he wins at posh dog shows.

“Do you think puppies really get turned into food?” I asked, feeling a jelly-leg attack coming on. Griselda always manages to say the one thing that really gets to you. I have no regrets about that hot chilli sauce I put in her stupid lunch box with fairies on. Or the big fat slug. I hope it ate her stupid sandwiches.

“There are countries where people eat dogs, and ants too, covered in chocolate,”’ said Chloe, quickly checking her matchbox and looking at her pet ant anxiously. “I don’t think we do it here…”

“But we’ve got no idea what they put in hamburgers or sausages,” I said.

“Please, no lectures about how we should all be vegetarians,” said Dinah. “But we’ve got to find a way of keeping the puppies safe. We have to have a brainstorm.”

Dinah goes on about this all the time at the moment, ever since our headteacher Mrs Hedake told us how a brainstorm works. Apparently, if you have a problem, you should get a big bit of paper and just write the first words that come into your head. Then after five minutes you will have a solution. Hedake said it was better still if you did it with a friend because they would have different ideas. Of course, all the Year Sixes giggled and nudged about what kind of words they would write down, but Dinah was convinced. She had used it that very same evening for persuading her dad to let her stay up and watch a scary film.

So me and Chloe and Dinah sat under the tree in the playground and scribbled away.

This is what we wrote:

We got stuck after that. When I looked up there was a tall, lonely looking girl I hadn’t seen before moping about on the other side of the tree, looking at me in a shy but friendly way.

“Hi,” she said, smiling hopefully. She had the most enormous braces I’ve ever seen on her teeth. It was like looking at the front of a car.

“Hi. Are you new?” I said.

“Yeah, we’ve just moved here,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Brainstorming,” said Dinah, not looking much like somebody who wanted to be a friend.

“What’s that?” asked the girl.

“It’s where you say the first things that come into your head and it gives you the answer,” Chloe explained.

“I’ve tried doing that in exams,” said the girl, rather sadly. “But I don’t think it works. What are you doing it about?”

“Saving my puppies from being made into coats or sausages,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“Oh, yes!” said the girl. “I love animals! My dad’s got an amazing dog who does tricks—”

“Send the lickle puppeees to the science lab, make them smoke fags till they gags, then their fluffy tails won’t wag!” interrupted the voice of of Orrible Orange Orson, who had sneaked up on us again.

I lost my rag and went for him. Dinah and Chloe hauled me off.

“Who cares anyway?” laughed Orson, dusting himself down and backing away. “They’re only dumb animals.”

“You should know!” I yelled after him.

He turned round and gave me a sign that I can’t repeat in a family book, but Dinah and I gave it him back, and Chloe half did, before going red and putting her hand in her pocket instead.

“What a loser,” I said, panting. “He’s never even seen my puppies. Why doesn’t he get a life?”

“That is his life,” Dinah said. “He’s very happy with it.”

“Where’s that girl gone?” said Chloe, looking around. “She seemed nice.”

“I think Orson scared her off,” Dinah said. “Who wouldn’t run away, seeing his ugly face? Anyway, where were we?”

I looked glumly at the brainstorming.

“Who’s Cheeky Eric?” asked Chloe.

“He’s a puppy! You don’t even know their names. That shows how much you care.”

“Lay off, Trix,” said Dinah. “The only one you go on about is Bonzo. The others are always curled up on top of Harpo and it’s pretty hard to tell them apart.”

“But they’ve all got amazingly different characters,” I said. “Just like people. Eric’s mischievous and cheeky, Marigold’s cute and pretty like that actress who came to do puppet workshop, Fattypuff has big film-star eyes and is incredibly lazy, Gertrude is shy and kind, like Chloe, and her tail is just like a Curly-Wurly. And Bonzo…”

I tailed off. I could see I was losing them. It was a bit like Mum’s friend who pops in for a “quick cup of tea” and then bores on and on for hours about her horrible dribbling squawking baby.

“Of course, you never see them as individuals cos you’re not there all the time like me. And Harpo rules them with a paw of iron,” I added.

“Can anyone remember what any of this means?” said Dinah, turning our brainstorm paper upside down as though it might make more sense that way. “Looks like some of that poetry my mum writes when she’s in a mood.”

“Well, BEG and PLEAD were about trying to change my parents’ mind,” I said. “Oh, yeah, and DAD!!!! was because I can usually get round him so I had a brainwave of persuading him…”

“And PLAGUE and BITE were about telling people the puppies are dangerous, so no one will want them,” said Chloe.

“Excellent!” said Dinah. “That’s a good start. We’ll begin with you trying to persuade your dad to make your mum keep the puppies. If she won’t relent, you’ll do everything you can to make sure no one wants the puppies anyway.” She squinted at the piece of paper. “Oh yes, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll erm, either disguise the puppies as, erm, something else, or hide them, or run away from home with them! OK? This is the beginning of our campaign. We’ll get lots of support to save them from experiments. Let’s do a petition this evening and call it Puppies Are People Too.”

“YES. If we can persuade the whole neighbourhood your parents are trying to sell the puppies into slavery, we can probably get the RSPCA to help, or the police,” said Chloe.

“Don’t overdo it. If my folks go to jail, who’ll buy the dog food?”

“Of course, you couldn’t get anyone interested if you’d only lost your pet ant,” Chloe added sadly. I think since her last ant got hoovered up she is taking her new one, Anty, too seriously. She needs a new interest. And she needs to stop worrying about School.

“Maybe,” Chloe went on, “we could tie this in with our Pride of Bottomley project.”

There! What did I tell you??

“You have to be kidding, Chloe,” said Dinah, putting an arm around her. “Saving the Puppies will be an adventure. The Pride of Bottomley isn’t an adventure; it’s a punishment.”

“But Trixie’s puppies are part of the Pride of Bottomley,” Chloe protested. “She’s proud of them. We are too, even if we don’t know all their names.”

“Or which one can play the piano with its back paws, and which one can do Sudoko and speak Chinese,” cackled Dinah.

“Shut up,” I said. But an idea was beginning to hatch somewhere in the murky depths of my brain.

“We could bring in the science lab at Mandleton, where they do Animal Experiments and Testing,” Chloe said, getting excited. “That would come under ‘The Shame of Bottomley’.”

“Yeah,” said Dinah. “Animal rights. Save the Snail.”

I was cheered up, despite Dinah’s jokes. I knew that with Dinah and Chloe on my side, the puppies were in with a chance. And we were getting our Warty project done at the same time!

But when I got home, a nasty shock awaited me. A very flash car was parked outside the gate. And a very flash woman with bright pink hair and stiletto heels to match was teetering out of our house, carrying an enormous box and squealing to the driver, “They’re purrrrfect. Exactly what we were after! I’m taking them all!”

I couldn’t believe it! Mum had only just that morning mentioned the pups might have to go and she’d found a buyer already! They were going out of my life, squashed inside a cardboard box!

I flung myself in the way ofthe horrendous pink witch.

“Over my dead body!” I squeaked.

Unfortunately, what with the stiletto heels and the surprise at seeing a tiny furious girl barring her way, the pink witch tottered, squawked and then seemed to go in four different directions at once. One leg went south, one leg went north, her arms went out sideways, her pink hair blew off in a gust of wind revealing some quite ordinary hair underneath, and the box of puppies went soaring into the air.

“Ohmigod! The pups!” I squealed, leaping up to catch it on its way down.

“Ohmigod! The pups!” screamed Wigless Witch, struggling to get up and catch the box as well.

We collided of course, and the box landed on our heads with a horrible crashing, tinkling sound. Then it slid to the ground and split open.

I stared. There were no bruised, whimpering, terrified puppies to be seen.

There were a lot of cups and saucers and plates. Or what had once been cups and saucers and plates. What had once been, in fact, the valuable tea set belonging to my gran that Mum was selling for a lot of money. Even I could see that no amount of superglue was going to save it.

I looked at Wigless Witch accusingly. Why had she made me do that? Hadn’t she yelled “Ohmigod! The pups!” when she dropped them?

Obviously not, said another part of my brain. Obviously she’d said “cups”.

Dad came out looking miserable. He doesn’t really do cross, my dad. My mum does cross, but Dad does sad, which makes you feel worse. He took a wad of cash out of his pocket and picked up the witch’s once-pink-and-now-mud-spattered wig, and solemnly returned both to her. I looked shamefully down at the ground.

I was well and truly in the dog house. Bonzo came to comfort me as I lay on my Bed of Pain, but his warm furry presence only succeeded in reminding me of what I was about to lose…I didn’t have the heart to nag Dad any more about the puppies. He said Mum would see the funny side of it eventually, but I couldn’t see how.

Dinah and Chloe both rang me during the evening. I was supposed to be in solitary confinement, but Mum had either forgotten or relented, most probably the first. Dinah was her usual bouncy self, said it would have all blown over by morning, which I doubted. Chloe was sweet, and talked to me about the puppies as if they were hers too.

“I don’t want them to get turned into coats, Chloe,” I sniffled to her. “Tell me they won’t be.”

“They won’t. We’ll find a way,” Chloe said. “Don’t you worry. Most people usually buy puppies to play with, not to make into coats.”

“But I can’t bear to lose them!”

“No. And of course…” She hesitated.

“What?”

“It’s obviously a bad world out there for little animals. I saw a notice pinned on a tree in our street from somebody looking for their missing cat. That’s the third one I’ve seen round here in a week. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said glumly, remembering Dad’s words from this morning. “Thanks, Chloe.”

“Don’t mention it. Sleep tight.”

I didn’t, of course.