Meanwhile, on the other side of Bedlam, the chief was racing home in her police car. The lady was so covered in dog hair she looked like a Yeti.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

The chief had been humiliated. This could never, ever happen again. Her mind was racing as fast as her car. There must be another way!

As soon as she arrived back at her grand country house on the edge of a cliff – Fuzz Manor – the chief called for her wife. Instantly, the professor raced up from her laboratory and went to work with her roller to try to remove all the dog hair from the chief’s uniform. The professor was a boffin and dressed like one too.

The professor spent her days in a laboratory in the cellar of Fuzz Manor. It was a sea of test tubes, Bunsen burners and lengths of rubber tubing. The professor had become celebrated for inventing a super-duper washing machine that only took one minute to wash and dry your clothes. Still, she was always looking to build something bigger and better.

“Just a tiny bit more. Just a tiny bit more. Just a tiny bit more,” said the professor with each roll of her roller.

“You keep on saying that!” snapped the chief, still coated in a deep layer of hair.

“Hold still!”

“I am holding still! You are just moving the fur around.”

“No! I’m not! Look!” exclaimed the professor. She held up the roller, which now resembled a giant fur lollipop.

“Harrumph!” harrumphed the chief.

From the sofa, Velma looked on at the scene with disdain. Velma was a cat, or rather, a huge grey ball of fur with four legs and a tail sticking out of it. Like most cats, Velma ruled the roost at the home the two ladies shared.

And this cat hated dogs.

Cats and dogs had been sworn enemies since the dawn of time, but Velma was different. Velma was the evillest cat in the world. She wanted to rid the world of dogs forever. Velma spent her days perched dead still on the garden wall, waiting for any dogs to pass by. When they did, she would summon up the biggest, roundest furball and fire it straight at them like a missile.

COUGH!

WHOOSH!

“YELP!”

Then she would smirk and bare her fangs, and the dogs would scurry away in fear, howling.

“AROO!”

Velma was a clever cat. She knew dog hair when she saw it, and it had no place in HER home. So she waited and waited until the professor held the fur-covered roller aloft, and chose that moment to let rip a hurricane of a sneeze.

“ACHOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The force of the sneeze was so great that the mass of fur shot off the roller and landed right in the professor’s face.

WHOOSH!

It looked as if she had transformed into a werewolf.

“TEE! HEE! HEE!” sniggered the cat.

“I have been thinking,” began the chief.

“That’s not like you,” joked the professor as she plucked the hairs one by one from her face.

The two ladies had been together for all their grown-up lives. They loved each other deeply, but that didn’t stop them from teasing one another from time to time. It just made them love each other more.

“Harrumph!” harrumphed the chief again.

“Do go on…”

“When I was lying at the bottom of a tonne of dogs, I had an idea.”

“Oh! Pray tell!”

“As you know, at the police force, we have all these different breeds of dogs to perform different jobs.”

“Of course.”

“But why not just have one dog to do them all?”

“Because there is no dog in the world that can be a sniffer dog AND a guard dog AND a chasing dog!”

“No. Not yet! But you could make one.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You are a boffin, aren’t you, Professor?”

The professor looked down at her white laboratory coat, odd socks and sandals. “It appears so!”

“Well, my thought was that you could design and build a robot police dog!”

“A what what?” spluttered the professor.

“The cheek of it!” hissed Velma to herself. “The bare-faced cheek! A dog! In a cat household! NEVER!”

“A robot police dog!” repeated the chief. “One dog to sniff and guard and chase and do all the things a police dog can do and more. And we can call it… ROBODOG!”

The professor could not believe her ears. “I make washing machines! Not robot dogs!”

“Well, it’s all the same, isn’t it?” suggested the chief.

“Would you trust a dog to wash your smalls?”

“No.”

“If you threw a stick, do you think a washing machine would fetch it for you?”

The chief thought for a moment before answering: “No.”

“Then it’s not all the same now, is it?” replied the professor, folding her arms.

The chief paused and smiled. There must be a way to appeal to the love of her life. “Not exactly the same, no, but you are such a genius, my darling Professor, I just know you can do it!”

“But—”

“The president himself called me this morning to say that if I can’t sort out Bedlam’s crime wave for good, he would send in the army.”

“The army!”

“It is humiliating!” said the chief. “I have given this city my blood, sweat and tears!”

“No one has done more to fight crime in this city than you.”

“So will you please help, my darling, darling wife? Bedlam needs you!”

The professor sighed. “I will do my best.”

The chief wrapped her arms round her. “I LOVE YOU!”