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“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