Lost! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog (5 page)

‘There’s an elephant-bee,’ I explained. ‘So watch out.’

‘There is no such thing as an elephant-bee except in your head,’ said Cat. ‘And if you carry on walking and spinning and not looking where you’re going you will —’

‘Crash into the tree you’ve just crashed into,’ Cat continued evenly.

I sat under the tree, nursing my bruised nose and chin. Life can be really horrible sometimes. There I was, trying to avoid an elephant-bee, and I get attacked by a tree instead. I glared at the trunk.
Raargh!
There. That showed it.

‘Come and look at this,’ called Cat. ‘I think we’ve reached somewhere.’

We had come to the edge of a huge pit. The ground just fell away from our feet. Cat and I stood right on the edge, staring down at the bustling scene below. A steady hum rose from the pit — the elephant-bee!

Crowds of pea-sized two-legs hurried about. They popped in and out of cars which swooshed and swished, pooping and parping at each other like hundreds of cross babies crawling round a giant playpen. In the middle of all this was a glittering glass city with a hundred doors that opened and shut, opened and shut, letting out crowds and sucking in eager throngs.

‘What is it?’ I whispered to Cat.

‘Have you never seen a shopping centre before?’

I shook my head, and at the same time a vague memory came back to me. Trevor and his parents used to talk about going to the shopping centre, though they never took me. Maybe it was the same one.

And if it WAS the same one then maybe I wasn’t far from HOME and MAYBE if we went down to the shopping centre we wouldn’t just find FOOD we might see TREVOR! What’s more, if we saw Trevor he would take me home and I’D BE WITH MY PUPPIES AGAIN! And I’d pull their ears and bite their tails and they are so yummy I could almost eat them because I love them so much.

‘Let’s go!’ I woofed and set off down the side of the hill as fast as possible. Funnily enough,
‘as fast as possible’ turned out to be very fast indeed, because it wasn’t actually the side of a hill at all, it was a cliff face!

‘Stop, you idiot!’

I heard Cat yell after me, but by that time I was already tumble-rumble-rolling down and down. And the tumble-rumble became a bouncy-bounce and all of a sudden I WAS FLYING!

Fantastic! And then, and then, and THEN I realized I wasn’t actually flying — I was FALLING!

That must have been my fastest crish-crash-crush ever. Wow! I got to my feet rather unsteadily and counted my legs to make sure none of them had fallen off and do you know something? I had five! But the fifth one was just my tail being sad and hanging down. So I wagged it and woofed: ‘Ta da!’ because I was so amazed at myself. A small crowd of two-legs gathered round.

‘Giraffe!’ cried a child, pointing at me. I shook my head sadly. Honestly, kids these days — they don’t know anything. I blame the schools.

‘You need glasses, I’m a dog,’ I snapped back, even though I knew they wouldn’t understand. Why is it that two-legs spend so much time teaching us to understand
them
, but they never bother to learn
our
language?

‘Psst!’

I swung round. It was Cat. He was lurking
behind a litter bin. He jerked his head to say I should follow him, so I did.

‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,’ I wuffled, trotting after him and a moment later we legged it for some cover in one of the car parks.

‘Do you make a habit of throwing yourself off cliffs?’ Cat asked.

‘I was flying,’ I told him.

‘You were not flying. If you want to fly you have to wear an aeroplane. You could have been killed.’

‘Well I wasn’t, so there. How did you get down then?’

‘I used the path that was right next to where you decided to make your Death Leap,’ Cat said icily.

‘I flew.’

Cat sighed and suggested we went on a food hunt. I said we could look for Trevor Two-Legs at the same time. I was certain that this must be the shopping centre that he came to with his parents, and I also knew in my heart of heart of hearts that Trevor would be LOOKING FOR ME!

We decided to begin our search round the back. Cat thought it would be safer if we kept away from the two-legs and he was probably right. Behind the shops it was pretty filthy. Shops looks clean and shiny from the front, but you should see the back. It’s all cardboard boxes and piles of rubbish thrown out every which way.

I could smell food so I followed my nose, sniff-sniffing until I reached a dark doorway. The door was open. I went in. Cat hovered behind me.

‘Is it safe?’ he asked.

‘Scaredy-cat,’ I threw back at him.

‘Not,’ he said, stepping inside. ‘I was checking my whiskers. Cats’ whiskers are very sensitive, you know.’

We headed up a short corridor and soon found ourselves peering into a huge glass palace. I hardly knew where to look there was so much to see. Everywhere you turned there was something different — clothes shops, food shops, kitchen shops, books, TVs, magazines, computers — all spread out on two levels connected by moving stairways and there were two-legs everywhere! It reminded me of an ants’ nest I dug up once by mistake, when I was trying to bury a bone.

‘I don’t like it,’ muttered Cat. ‘I don’t trust them.’

‘Listen, where there are two-legs there’s always free food. It’s Rule Number Two.’

‘What’s Rule Number One?’

‘Rule Number One is there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’

‘Doesn’t that contradict Rule Number Two?’ asked Cat.

‘Does it?’

Cat shook his head. ‘Dogs,’ he muttered.

‘Brains like mushy peas.’

I wasn’t going to let him get away with an insult like that! ‘Cats,’ I shot back. ‘Brains like triangles.’

Cat stopped dead. ‘What?’

Honestly! Don’t you hate it when you make a really clever remark but nobody understands? It happens to me a lot. I flicked my tail casually. ‘Oh, come on! Everyone knows triangles are stupid.’

Cat went on staring at me. ‘Really? Oh.’

He shook his head and I pressed ahead.

‘Come on, I can smell food.’

We soon found a really brilliant butcher’s, piled high with whopping great lumps of the meatiest meat ever, just dying to be gobbled up at once. My tongue was almost trailing on the floor. And guess what? They had a whole tray of salami sausages. My favourite. I love garlic!

I was about to tell Cat that he ought to do something to attract everyone’s attention while I sneaked up on the salami, when double guess what?

They were on the other side of the store, on the upper level! I jumped for joy. I jumped so
much I landed on top of the meat counter and woofed as loudly as I could: ‘I’M OVER HERE!’

Trevor turned and looked. Mr Two-Legs turned and looked. They saw me. They jumped for joy too and yelled back: ‘STREAKER! WE’RE OVER HERE!’

‘I KNOW YOU’RE OVER THERE! I SAW YOU FIRST!’

Then I realized that it wasn’t just Trevor and Mr Two-Legs looking at me — it was everyone and they were all staring at me standing on the meat counter. They didn’t look happy at
all. Somebody began to reach out with big red grabby paws and I thought:
I know what you want to do. You’re going to take me away from Trevor and my puppies and I shan’t let you.
So I went
woof-woof-raaargh!
and that scared them so much they looked like bananas in a liquidizer. Then all the two-legs began screaming and leaping up and down. It was time to scarper and we set off down the hall.