Anne’s the author of many prize-winning books, some very funny, some very serious. Her prose is always immaculate, every single word selected with unerring judgement. Anne once said she wrote all her stories with a pencil in a notebook, rubbing out each sentence until she’d got it exactly right. I don’t know whether she still does, but her prose certainly reads like it.
Her Killer Cat books are wickedly funny – rather like Anne herself. She loves to tease. Wait till you read her comments about her own killer cat in the Pets’ Corner section!
THE DIARY OF A KILLER CAT‘Come out of there, you great fat furry psychopath. It’s only a ’flu jab you’re booked in for – more’s the pity!’
Would you have believed him? I wasn’t absolutely sure. (Neither was Ellie, so she tagged along.) I was still quite suspicious when we reached the vet’s. That is the only reason why I spat at the girl behind the desk. There was no reason on earth to write HANDLE WITH CARE at the top of my case notes. Even the Thompsons’ rottweiler doesn’t have HANDLE WITH CARE written on the top of his case notes. What’s wrong with me?
So I was a little rude in the waiting room. So what? I hate waiting. And I especially hate waiting stuffed in a wire cat cage. It’s cramped. It’s hot. And it’s boring. After a few hundred minutes of sitting there quietly, anyone would start teasing their neighbours. I didn’t mean to frighten that little sick baby gerbil half to death. I was only looking at it. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Can’t a cat even look at a sweet little baby gerbil?
And if I was licking my lips (which I wasn’t) that’s only because I was thirsty. Honestly. I wasn’t trying to pretend I was going to eat it.
The trouble with baby gerbils is they can’t take a joke.
And neither can anyone else round here.
Ellie’s father looked up from the pamphlet he was reading called ‘Your Pet and Worms’. (Oh, nice. Very nice.)
‘Turn the cage round the other way, Ellie,’ he said.
Ellie turned my cage round the other way.
Now I was looking at the Fishers’ terrier. (And if there’s any animal in the world who ought to have HANDLE WITH CARE written at the top of his case notes, it’s the Fishers’ terrier.)
OK, so I hissed at him. It was only a little hiss. You practically had to have bionic ears to hear it.
And I did growl a bit. But you’d think he’d have a head start on growling. He is a dog, after all. I’m only a cat.
And yes, OK, I spat a bit. But only a bit. Nothing you’d even notice unless you were waiting to pick on someone.
Well, how was I to know he wasn’t feeling very well? Not everyone waiting for the vet is ill. I wasn’t ill, was I? Actually, I’ve never been ill in my life. I don’t even know what it feels like. But I reckon, even if I were dying, something furry locked in a cage could make an eensy-weensy noise at me without my ending up whimpering and cowering, and scrabbling to get under the seat, to hide behind the knees of my owner.
More a chicken than a Scotch terrier, if you want my opinion.
‘Could you please keep that vile cat of yours under control?’ Mrs Fisher said nastily.
Ellie stuck up for me.
‘He is in a cage!’
‘He’s still scaring half the animals in here to death. Can’t you cover him up, or something?’
Ellie was going to keep arguing, I could tell. But without even looking up from his worm pamphlet, her father just dropped his raincoat over my cage as if I were some mangy old parrot or something.
And everything went black.
No wonder by the time the vet came at me with her nasty long needle, I was in a bit of a mood. I didn’t mean to scratch her that badly, though.
Or smash all those little glass bottles.
Or tip the expensive new cat scales off the bench.
Or spill all that cleaning fluid.
It wasn’t me who ripped my record card into tiny pieces, though. That was the vet.
When we left, Ellie was in tears again. (Some people are born soft.) She hugged my cage tightly to her chest.
‘Oh, Tuffy! Until we find a new vet who’ll promise to look after you, you must be so careful not to get run over.’
‘Fat chance!’ her father muttered.
I was just glowering at him through the cage wire, when he spotted Ellie’s mother, standing knee-deep in shopping bags outside the supermarket.
‘You’re very late,’ she scolded. ‘Was there a bit of trouble at the vet’s?’
