Lost! The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Dog (7 page)

‘It’s a picture of a two-legs,’ Cat said. ‘The two-legs is sitting down, so you can’t see his legs. What you can see is his very fat belly and his even fatter bottom.’

‘Yes. I can see that now, but it still doesn’t make
sense. What is the story about?’

‘It says
Two-legs is very cross because he has a fat orange belly and a fat orange bottom.’

‘It’s a funny story!’ I barked. ‘Tell me another!’

‘No. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.’ Cat closed his eyes and turned his back to me. I gazed at the wonderful story and my wonderful friend. Imagine being able to read stories like that! Cat was so clever. I closed my eyes.

Not for long. We were woken by the noise. I’d heard that noise before. It was the noise very soft feet make, like Trevor when he’s creep-creeping down to the kitchen to snaffle biscuits when he thinks nobody’s looking.

Cat’s eyes were wide wide wide now. I’d never seen them so big — great golden globes shining in the black. His ears flicked this way and that and went flat back against his head as he lowered his body closer to the ground. His tail went switch-twitch.

‘Sssh!’ he hissed.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ I pointed out.

‘You were breathing!’

‘Well, I am SO sorry. Pardon me for living.’

‘Sssh!’ he hissed again urgently.

So we listened to the noiseless feet outside.

Round the barn they padded and as the moon slid for a moment from behind a cloud WE SAW THE SHADOW — a BIG shadow moving across the open doorway and then it was gone, just leaving behind the strange scent of a faraway land. I was shivering. It wasn’t cold. It was terror. I looked across at Cat. He was pressed hard against the ground, every hair on his body on end. We waited, and we waited some more. Whatever it was had gone. We took deeper breaths and at last I whispered, ‘What was
that
?’

Cat’s voice croaked with fear.

‘The Beast. The Beast of the Night. It is a creature of the dark and uses night like a cloak of invisibility. It creeps upon its victim, seizes it and
that’s the end of it. Terrifying.’

That sounded familiar to me. ‘A bit like you catching mice?’ I suggested. Cat’s golden eyes slowly turned upon me and burned holes right through my skull.

‘Or maybe like you chasing cats,’ he suggested, slowly closing his eyes. ‘The Beast is not a joke,’ he went on. ‘The Beast will eat anything, INCLUDING DOGS.’

I swallowed hard. ‘Maybe I will have one of your mice after all,’ I said. ‘Then we can take
turns in keeping watch while the other sleeps.’ Cat smiled, flicked the second mouse across to me and went to sleep.

I gazed at the dead mouse. Yuck! I wondered what Dazzy Donut Dog would do. She’d never have the problem in the first place. She’d be out there, hunting The Beast. Then she would leap upon it, RAARGH! RAARGH! BITE! CHOMP! CHOMP! And The Beast would squeal like a baby pig — oink-oink-oink — like that, in a teeny-tiny voice. And The Beast would squeak:
Oh, please let me go, Dazzy Donut Dog. You are so big and powerful and scary and I won’t ever be nasty again, not to anyone, not even cats, not even worms, not even really eeny-weeny things like woodlice.

No. Dazzy Donut Dog would never-ever-ever-in-a-million-years eat a dead mouse. So I didn’t either. Well, not for ten minutes anyway, but then my stomach groaned with hunger. I shut my eyes tight and said to myself: I am Dazzy Donut Dog pouncing on The Beast and eating it all up. And I
went
raargh-raargh
and leaped on the mouse and sank my teeth into it and guess what? Cat jumped a billion miles into the sky because I’d missed the mouse and bitten his tail.

He was not impressed. In fact he swore at me. Yes, and very rude he was too. I didn’t think cats knew words like that. He hissed and he spat and he didn’t calm down until I’d said sorry about a trillion squillion times. Even then he went slinking off to a dark corner, jumped on to a rafter and slept up there, nursing his tail.

Which left me alone with the dead mouse. It was no good. I definitely could not eat a dead mouse. It was easy for Dazzy Donut Dog
because she had special powers and could do ANYTHING, but I was just an ordinary doggy-type dog. I could not eat a dead mouse. Not even if I was as hungry as a hippopotamus.

My stomach lurched again. I wasn’t as hungry as a hippo any more. Now I was as hungry as an elephant, maybe even as hungry as a blue whale. I bet an elephant or a blue whale wouldn’t worry about eating a dead mouse. So I ate it — one bite and swallowed it whole. Gulp.

Then I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, with the rain drumming on the barn roof and dripping on to the floor. And I thought about my pups and Trevor and home. Oh yes, and pies. Mice taste horrible.

A wide river — and no bridge. That’s what we had come to. Cat and I stared at the fast-flowing water. He asked me if I could swim. I carefully
explained, in woofs of one syllabark, that doggy paddle had been invented by dogs and that was why it was called doggy paddle. Cat took no notice of how witty I was being (which was VERY annoying of him) and carried on gazing at the rushing water.

‘Can
you
swim?’ I asked.

‘All cats can swim,’ muttered Cat. ‘Cats can do anything.’

‘OK then, let’s go!’ I shouted and we jumped in. I struck out for the opposite bank. From the corner of my eye I saw Cat swim rapidly downstream. He dived under. He reappeared. He dived under again. He came up. He went down. I thought maybe he had decided to go fishing, but he hadn’t. He had decided to go drowning instead.

Cat surfaced for the fourth time spouting fountains of water into the air and waving his paws frantically at me. I paddled over to where he had just disappeared for the fifth time, dived
down, grabbed him by the tail and towed him to dry land. We were back where we’d started.

‘You said you could swim,’ I pointed out.

‘I was. I was swimming downwards.’

‘You were sinking.’

‘I was diving.’

‘Drowning.’

‘I can swim,’ Cat insisted. ‘It’s just that I haven’t been taught yet.’

‘That’s nonsense. Admit it — you can’t swim.’

‘Can.’

‘Can’t.’

‘I just need one or two lessons.’

‘It’s easy,’ I told him. ‘You just doggy paddle.’

‘I’m a cat,’ he pointed out a trifle heavily.

‘In that case you catty paddle.’ I thought it was funny, but Cat didn’t like me rolling about on the grass in hysterics and he walked off in a huff, holding his bedraggled tail very stiffly so it might dry more quickly in the breeze. I followed him and offered to give him a piggyback.

‘You can’t,’ he snapped back. ‘You’re not a pig. It would have to be a doggyback. Ha ha ha. Isn’t that the funniest thing ever?’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘And you’re not laughing either.’

Cat sighed, sat down and eyed me in silence for a few moments. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t swim. You’ll have to go on without me.’

I wasn’t having that. Go on without Cat?

No way! I needed him to read road signs and
things. I needed him to tell me wonderful stories. I needed his company. He was my friend. Oh dear. A cat was my
friend
? I hope nobody finds out.