Ice Cream got to her feet, padded across to Dad, leaned gently against Dad’s legs and looked up at him. Ice Cream’s eyes didn’t go all soft and gooey and pleading as you might expect. She simply looked up at Dad and her eyes were asking a very intelligent question (for a dog!). What are you going to do, big man? Are you going to leave me behind or are you going to take me?
Irfan’s eyes were on Dad too.
Mum bent down and stroked Ice Cream’s head. ‘She is a lovely dog,’ she murmured and as she spoke Ice Cream rested one of her front paws on Mum’s foot as if she was trying to hold hands with her.
Even the twins had become silent, waiting to hear what Dad would say.
‘I think –’ Dad began, and Ice Cream shifted her paw to Dad’s foot and nudged her nose against Dad’s leg.
‘I think –’ Dad repeated, wrestling with his own mind.
Ice Cream was losing patience. She began to growl. She clamped her jaws round Dad’s ankle and gently chewed at it, growling softly. Come on, make up your mind!
‘Oh, OK, then,’ Dad growled back, trying to shake Ice Cream off the end of his leg.
Talk about wild cheering! And dancing! And running around madly! Not to mention Ice Cream jumping and barking and Irfan and the manager laughing and Mum happily crying and everyone patting the dog and Ice Cream looking as if she’d just eaten every ice cream from the ice-cream shop.
Just at that crazy, happy moment who should come strolling past – the Grubnoses.
‘Don’t look, Mason,’ said Mrs Grubnose in a loud voice. ‘It’s that horrible family and they’ve got one of those nasty street dogs with them. Just walk past quietly and don’t look.’
‘Ah!’ cried Arif. ‘Mr and Mrs Grubnose! The very people I would like to see. You seem to have made a mistake when you told me Irfan had started all the trouble at Hotel Kismet. We have proof, on camera, film! It shows how your son, Mason, deliberately tripped this lady here and that started the trouble. All that water and damage! It was your son’s fault. Please, come to my office so I can tell you how much you must pay me.’
Have you ever seen someone’s suntan disappear in a few seconds and be replaced by ghostly skin? That is what happened to all three of the Grubnoses. Then Mr Grubnose took control.
‘Oh, no,’ he said sternly. ‘I know what you people are like. You’re just trying to get someone to pay for the damage caused by your own staff. I’m not putting up with that!’
‘Please, my office,’ insisted the manager. But Mr Grubnose ignored him and turned to his wife and son.
‘Come on, follow me. We’ll have none of this.’
The family began to walk off at a brisk pace, but they hadn’t reckoned with Ice Cream. She shot out from behind Dad’s legs, raced after the Grubnoses, overtook them, then smartly turned, braced her legs, bared her fangs and snarled.
‘Urrh!’ shuddered Mrs Grubnose, clutching at Mason. ‘The dog, the dog! It wants to eat us! It’s probably got rabies! And Chinese rabbit pox, or something ghastly!’
Ice Cream moved towards the Grubnoses. They began to back away and bit by bit Ice Cream rounded them up and pushed them back like sheep, all the way into the manager’s office.
Arif grinned at us, walked in to join them and shut the door.
I could swear Ice Cream was smiling as she came trotting back to us and sat down on the pavement.
And so our holiday in Turkey ended. We are home now and it will be a month or two before Ice Cream gets here. We can’t wait. Maggie and Irfan send us messages and photos from time to time, to keep in touch and show us how well Ice Cream is doing with her injections and stuff.
We did have one more little problem on the way home. After all, wherever we go we always have Captain Disaster travelling with us.
It was when we were actually climbing up the steps into the plane to fly back to Britain. Dad suddenly stopped.
‘Oh, no! No!’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mum, thinking something awful must have happened.
‘I’ve left my paddleboard behind,’ gasped Dad. ‘My paddleboard!’
Mum gave him a big smile and an equally big kiss.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said, and got into the plane. We quickly followed her and Dad, and the plane door was shut behind us.
Not Quite the End
You are probably wondering what happened to the three kittens. They found a good home. It wasn’t with Irfan. It was with Arif, the manager of Hotel Kismet. He decided to keep them in the hotel and new guests would often find one, or the other, or all three, sleeping on their chair at the breakfast table and even, on the odd occasion, curled up neatly on their bed.
Author’s Note
My wife Gillie and I have been visiting Kalkan for several years. KAPSA provides street dogs and cats with food and veterinary care and has an impressive neutering and education programme that reaches out to the surrounding villages and arranges transfers of homeless dogs and cats to new homes all over Europe. Tourists frequently arrive in Kalkan and fall in love with a certain dog or cat and decide to give it a new home. If you would like to know more about the work of KAPSA, please go to:
kapsaonline.com
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My Brother's Famous Bottom Makes a Splash! Page 6
