by A. N. Wilson
Furball thought that she might – just might – get away with it if she ran back across the yard in the direction of Lundine. But although Furball was a rash little thing, and although she did not have a wide experience of life, she was not stupid. She was not going to take any unnecessary risks. Seeing the claws, with its sharp eyes focused on the brown fevvas, was a good reminder (if Furball needed reminding) that the whole backyard, and perhaps the whole of what ooms called Nature, is based on the idea of one creature trying to catch, and eat, another creature. The claws waited to catch the fevvas. The snarl chased the claws. The big fevvas fought off the little fevvas and grabbed their seeds. The fevvas ate the worms and the flies. No doubt the big flies ate the little flies. Only the ooms (if Buster and Nobby were right) killed creatures not to eat them but just for the fun of it. Could this be true – of the Giant and of the Giant’s mum and dad?
Furball stood there quivering at the hole in the bottom of the shed door, and looking at a hostile world. Why did they all want to fight and kill one another? It was a complete mystery to her. Surely there would always be someone to feed them if they were patient? She had the Giant to feed her – but weren’t there Giants to feed the snarls, snarks and claws? The Giant’s mum fed the fevvas. Other ooms fed the claws and the snarls. Buster and Nobby had told her that, for mokes and other animals, it wasn’t like that. They had no Giants. They had to fend for themselves. Furball thought this must be some kind of mistake. She thought that somehow, long ago, perhaps in a past which the mokes could not remember, a Giant had looked after them and fed them. Only, somehow, they had been separated from their Giant, or lost her, and that was why they had this idea of having to feed themselves. Or so Furball believed. It pleased her to find such a simple solution. In the shed, she and the mokes would be free. But of course there would always be a Giant. It never occurred to Furball that the Giant would not be there to feed her. She was sure that in the lovely new shed, she and the mokes could live in freedom but they would all be fed by the Giant.
All these muddled thoughts and ambitions played in Furball’s small head as she surveyed the yard and the other creatures in it. She must have scuttled back inside the shed, since after a while she opened her eyes and found herself curled up into a ball and lying underneath one of the deckchairs, right at the back of the shed. She had forgotten going to the back of the shed, forgotten curling up, forgotten falling asleep – but then, a hamster cannot be expected to think of everything. Falling asleep had somehow involved getting covered in dust, so that, being a clean-minded little hamster, she had to go through the washing routine all over again. Lick paws. Shut eyes. Wipe face. Wipe ears. Busy life, a hamster’s.
When she was clean once more, she padded towards the hole, and daylight. First nose, then whiskers were pushed outside. She looked towards the tree. There was no sign of the snark. No claws to be seen. Distantly, she could hear a snarl yapping, but distantly. There were other noises – ooms with their machines whirring and roaring and moving in their mysterious way. Two ooms in bright yellow shiny hats were calling to one another, as fevvas do. They had a small box from which more calling was coming – it was like the noise-box which the Giant’s mum and dad had in their kitchen. Overhead in the great Blue, more ooms roared about in their great metal fevvas. But the yard itself looked safe.
Furball had woken up with a terrible hunger. She had somehow expected the Giant to bring food to her in the shed. Now she knew there was something wrong with this idea. The Giant had not brought food. The Giant had probably put food in the cage but… No, it was all too complicated for Furball. And she simply never thought that the Giant might not know where she was.
The chief thing now was hunger. Food. Seeds. Must have food. She sniffed the air, and then, forgetting the dangers of the yard, she simply ran towards Lundine, hoping she’d pass the patch of ground where the snark had spilled so many seeds. Failing that, she’d run back to Lundine, though she had, for the moment, forgotten where to find the hole that led there. But first things first. Seeds, seeds, seeds.
She scampered all over the yard, moving as fast as she could. And she didn’t hear the heavy thud of oom shoes until a shadow fell over her. There was no way she could have escaped. A big oom hand came down on and squeezed her ribs tightly. Lifted high into the air, she heard an oom voice cry out, ‘What have we here!’
CHAPTER TEN
This is War
‘You can see how pleased I am, Mister Peter. This sandwich is truly delicious.’
The Giant was saying this in her high-pitched Chum voice, which made everyone laugh.
The hand which, some time ago now, had found Chum in the garden, had been Mum’s hand. Chum had been returned to her cage and to celebrate, Kitty had bought a huge hamster treat from the shop. A mass of seeds wedged together in honey formed something in the shape of a sandwich.
‘Thank you so much, Giant,’ squeaked Kitty to herself, and to Mum and Dad, in her Chum voice.
‘How on earth did you get out into the garden, Chum?’ The question was Dad’s.
‘I hope you weren’t worried, Mister Peter,’ was the high-pitched reply.
And they all laughed.
When Kitty had stopped speaking in her Chum voice, when she had gone upstairs to play on dad’s computer, Mum called after her, ‘No playing on the computer.’
‘It’s called homework, Mum. Like – I need to finish my project.’
‘I thought your project was observation – looking at the real world!’ Mum called back.
Kitty’s school project was a survey of the variety of birds to be seen in the course of one month in a small London garden. She had made a few notes based on what she saw from the window, and from Mum’s bird books. Mum couldn’t see why Kitty needed a computer for this project. Surely the whole point of it was to use her eyes and ears, to look at real birds in a real garden, to recognise finches and tits and robins for herself, not just look them up on a screen. But Kitty couldn’t imagine doing anything without a computer.
‘There’s always my encyclopedia,’ Dad called up the stairs, as Kitty opened his laptop and began to call up her friends on Facebook.
When Kitty’s parents were alone together, Mum said, ‘They’re back in force. You must have noticed.’
Dad grunted from behind his newspaper.
‘You saw all the droppings in the larder, and it’s started to stink in there. Last time we had to take out every single packet of food. They’d eaten their way through the pasta, and the biscuits. They’d even nibbled into the packet of porridge.’
The newspaper rustled. A sound like hrrumff came from behind it.
‘They won’t just go away, Peter.’
‘Oh, Alexandra.’ Dad always used Mum’s full name when he was annoyed.
‘It isn’t fair if I have to do everything. You and Kitty don’t clear up the mess. You and Kitty won’t move every single packet of dried food off those shelves, and wipe them clean, and disinfect the floor. It’s a mouse toilet that place.’
‘What do you suggest we do?’ asked Dad, at long last putting down his newspaper.
‘We have got to find where they live, how they get into the kitchen and larder. We must block up the holes.’
‘Starve them out?’
‘They’re a health hazard, Peter. They’re vermin. One of them came in and stood on my foot yesterday, while I was having coffee at this very table. It stared at me.’
Kitty’s dad held his paper up but couldn’t hide his snort of laughter.
‘Peter!’ shrieked Kitty’s mum. ‘This is war!’
The newspaper quivered. ‘War?’
‘Yes!’ Kitty’s mum stood up. ‘We’re under siege, Peter. The mice have to go! We need to set traps.’
‘That seems a bit drastic.’
‘Alan and Rupert put down sticky-traps. They say it’s the only way.’
‘How do they work exactly?’
‘The mice step on them and get stuck. They can’t move.’
‘And then you kill them?’
‘That’s your job,’ she said.
‘I don’t think…’ Dad began.
But Mum stood firm. ‘It’s us or them, Peter! It’s not just one or two of them – it’s an invasion.’
Kitty’s dad sighed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ooms Alert!
The mokes still visited Furball. But for some time now, she had noticed that Mokey Moke was getting fat. Unlike Furball, with the mass of fur that gave her her new name, the mokes were lean and their bones showed through their short grey-black fur. Their pointy faces were thin. But now Mokey Moke was swollen up and looked very fat indeed.
Buster and Nobby tried to explain things. But this left Furball even more confused.
‘Mum’s up the duff,’ Nobby said.
‘Got six to feed, she says,’ laughed Buster.
‘Who’s Mum?’ asked Furball.
She’d never thought about the mokes having relatives before. She herself had once had a mother, and brothers and sisters. Long ago in a pet shop. They had all nestled together in some straw until they were scooped out and sold to different human families. So Furball had grown up alone, with no idea what a big family might be like.
‘Are you in the same family?’ she asked now.
‘All are,’ said Buster. ‘Nobby’s me bruvver, inny –’
‘Sure fing, Furball,’ said Nobby. ‘And now ole Mum’s up the duff agin and there’ll be more of us like.’
‘Where is the duff?’ asked Furball.
The two young mice laughed. But they laughed at everything, even food. And now they looked expectantly at Furball’s seed sandwich.
‘We couldn’t elp noticing.’
‘Couldn’t elp it could we, Furb?’
‘You mean this huge sandwich?’
Furball had pouched, and then eaten, about a quarter of the seed sandwich the Giant had bought her. ‘Do you want to share it?’ she said kindly.
Nobby had come to the lower door of the cage. Its clasp had loosened since the days when Murphy lived in it. Furball could now open it with ease, and even Nobby and Buster with their mouse paws could push it open once Furball had done the difficult part.
‘Only,’ said Nobby, ‘like we say, six to feed, now Mokey Moke’s spectin.’
‘Specting? Inspecting? What is inspecting?’
‘Ex. Ex,’ said Nobby patiently. ‘Expectin – only –’
‘Might not be six. Might be four,’ said Buster.
‘Don’t know till they come, see.’
‘Yes,’ said Furball. ‘I see.’ But she didn’t.
‘If you was to help us eave some of that seed sandwich behind the dresser, like.’
‘Is that where the duff is?’
‘She’s a card,’ laughed Buster.
About half the sandwich was still stuck together. Furball opened her cage door, and hurled it out, so it fell with a clatter on to the kitchen floor.
‘Eave – eave!’ called Nobby and Buster. And Furball called back ‘Heave!’
The door of the cage, with its loose fastening, shut behind Furball.
When they had all three scuttered down from the ledge where Furball’s cage was balanced, Furball was the first to rejoin the sandwich in the middle of the kitchen floor.
‘That’ll keep Mum going,’ Nobby grinned.
‘Six ter feed,’ Buster squeaked.
‘Only she didn’t feel like coming out today – not with being near her time.’
Furball absent-mindedly bit a corner of the sandwich and pouched it. It was difficult to speak with her pouch full but she managed to ask, ‘Near what time?’
Nobby and Buster squeaked with giggles.
‘She don’t get it.’
‘Some as lives too long with ooms lose touch with ow the rest of us live, like.’
‘Stir rots yer brain.’
This could have been, but the mokes really liked her and were just teasing her, the way they talked to each other.
‘She can’t get out much now she’s near her time,’ said Nobby.
‘Mokey Moke’s knocked up,’ added his brother.
‘Got a bun in the oven,’ said Nobby, in a tone which suggested you could not get clearer than this.
If Mokey Moke already had a bun, Furball wondered why she would need this sandwich. But she didn’t ask any more questions because she didn’t want to seem foolish. She didn’t understand what Nobby and Buster were talking about, and she knew that they knew. She wished they wouldn’t tease her about it so much, though. Mokey Moke was her closest friend among the mokes. It was clear that something important was happening to her. And Furball didn’t like the sound of being knocked up, or up the duff, whatever this was. But if she had a bun, then this extra sandwich would be useful if she somehow had as many as six to feed.
‘Now for a good ole eave-o,’ said Buster.
‘Ere goes.’
‘It would be quicker…’ But Furball still had her mouth full of sandwich and couldn’t speak clearly. She wanted to say that she could drag the sandwich without help from the young mokes.
‘Wozzat Furb, ole pal?’
‘I said…’ But it sounded like – Mum – wah splursh mm wah.
‘Good on yer.’
‘Thassa girl.’
Nobby had clumsily grabbed one side of the sandwich in his paws, while Buster tried to hold the other side with his teeth. It looked as if they would end up having a tug of war with the thing, that it would come to bits and they’d end up making several journeys with crumbs and sandwich bits to the mouse hole under the dresser. Rather than explaining this to them, she picked up the whole sandwich in her teeth and pulled, and just as she feared – it broke into several pieces on the kitchen floor.
‘Now look wotcha gunnun dun.’
‘Blimey!’ Nobby was giggling as usual.
Ignoring them, Furball picked up the largest piece and ran under the dresser with it, placing it on the floor by the skirting board near the hole they came through to the kitchen. She clambered up the skirting board with the sandwich piece in her mouth, but it was too big to fit through the hole and she slithered down to the floor again, landing with a thud on her bottom. She pondered. She could either break the sandwich into smaller pieces and post them through the slit at the top of the skirting board. Or she could leave it on the floor under the dresser, hoping Mokey Moke would come down from the duff to eat. Or Furball could pouch the lot and make another attempt to squeeze through the hole. She didn’t think of leaving the sandwich piece where it was. The humans hardly ever cleaned under the dresser, so it would have stayed there until the mokes had eaten it. But Furball followed her instincts and, without further thought, pouched the large sticky slice of seeds.
This gave her the biggest ‘hammer head’ she’d ever had. She tried to clamber up the skirting board again to squeeze through the hole but when she reached the top she could sense, even in the darkness, there was no possibility she could squeeze through so narrow a slit.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the floor, Buster and Nobby had forgotten they were meant to be working. They had nibbled a few honey-coated seeds from the broken sandwich. That was nice. Then Nobby thought it would be fun to flick Buster with sticky crumbs.
And after he had been pelted with two or three of these missiles, Buster thought it would be much funnier to flick crumbs at Nobby. And Nobby flicked back at Buster and Buster at Nobby, while crumbs and seeds flew everywhere.
They squeaked so happily that Furball was tempted to join in. But something, some inner instinct, warned her they shouldn’t neglect the task in hand, that they ought to drag as much of the sandwich as possible to the safety and darkness under the dresser. By now she was too heavily pouched to speak, so she just watched the young mokes laughing and flicking and shouting.
‘You’re covered in it –’
‘Look at you, mate!’
It was true. Both young mokes had seed and honey stuck to their thin
backs and boney flanks.
They were enjoying themselves so much that they barely heard the heavy human footsteps in the hall, until Buster dropped his piece and squealed out.
‘Ooms alert – ooms alert!’
As the olive-green Converse several times larger than a hamster, and much larger than a mouse, came into view on the kitchen floor, the mokes knew they had been seen. Kitty’s mum was yelling.
‘MICE!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mice Rights
Kitty’s mum didn’t know the clasp on the hamster cage was loose. Or that Chum could leave it whenever she chose. Even the young mice could open it. Of course, when Chum left her cage, the door-flap closed and the clasp closed with it. So, the cage looked just as if Chum was safe inside it with the doors locked. If Kitty’s mum had been looking at the cage, which she was not, she would have seen nothing to make her suspect it was unoccupied. There were many hours of the day when Chum hid away in the dark and warmth and safety of the bedroom (a sort of plastic box with a lid on it), where she slept in comfort in Dad’s sock – a soft, green cashmere sock full of holes, covered with flecks of sawdust, with a comforting hamster smell.
But at that moment, Kitty’s mum had forgotten about Chum. She just knew she hated sharing her home with mice. Kitty’s mum wasn’t scared of mice, but she hated what they did. She hated them chewing through food packets on the larder shelves. She hated the mess this made. She hated them using her kitchen and her larder and the hall outside the kitchen as their lavatory. She hated the little mouse droppings and crumbs and bits of half-chewed cardboard which they left behind them. And she hated the smell.
At present there was a very bad smell – a pong, in fact, as Kitty said. And it pointed to two mouse areas: one just near a corner of the kitchen dresser and one near the bottom of the stairs.
‘They’ve obviously made an underground passage,’ said Kitty’s mum to Dad and Kitty at supper one day. ‘They come out of the hole at the bottom of the stairs and run into the larder. Then they run across the kitchen. I saw one of the little beggars on top of the fridge yesterday.’
