by A. N. Wilson
Fussing, as Kitty had known he would, Dad came back. ‘Chum got into the piano once – do you remember?’ He was still holding the piece of toast on a plate, and put it down by the open fireplace.
‘Dad – I don’t see how Radish could have got into the piano,’ said Kitty. ‘I just let him go for a few seconds…’
‘Hamsters move very fast,’ said Dad. He had already gone to the other end of the room where the upright piano was placed against a wall. ‘You remember – Chum climbed right down into the works. Lucky none of us play the piano very often or she’d have been beaten to death with the hammers or deafened by the strings.’
‘He won’t be there, Dad,’ said Kitty. But she loyally kneeled down with her dad and helped take the front off the lower part of the piano. As they did it, both of them had their backs to the fireplace.
‘Nope,’ Kitty said. She was unsurprised.
But dad had now opened the top of the piano and was calling down into the hammers. ‘Radish. Ra-a-dish!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Room Service
‘If you waz ter ask me,’ said Uncle Sid, ‘I’d say it was floor-food.’
‘Better than the snapper,’ said Frankie-boy perkily, to which Uncle Sid replied, sadly and truthfully, ‘You dunno whatcha talkin’ of, boy.’
For her part, Mokey Moke – with seven new Rivals to feed, as well as the rest of the family, not to mention Furball and Radish themselves – was very grateful to the hamsters for bringing home such a magnificent, large, buttery piece of toast.
It had been welcome enough when Furball had scurried up and down the chimney three times with her pouches full of chewed toast. But Mokey Moke had never believed the hamster’s prattle about the Giant putting the food out specially.
‘It’s every moke fer issel, Furba,’ she’d said. ‘Ooms don’t elp rodents. I keep tellin yer – it’s not in their nature.’
‘But the Giant,’ explained Furball, ‘has always put food out for me. And now she knows where we are, she will keep putting food out.’
Mokey Moke and the others hadn’t liked this talk of an oom who knew where they were. Some of them spoke in hasty panicky tones of moving on at once before the Giant oom could trap or kill them all. Others dismissed Furball’s ideas.
‘It’s jus food,’ said Buster. ‘Either it’s floor-food – in which case you an uvver-amster’d be dead by nar – which you ain’t. Or it’s jus food. It fell on the floor by accident. You got lucky. There ain’t no Giant wot puts out toast fer Furball and the mokes.’
‘If the Giant knew we were here,’ said Furball indignantly, ‘she would even save me the trouble of going down the tunnel. She’d bring the toast to this floor.’
‘I fought you said she does know where you is.’
‘She might not know exactly,’ said Furball cautiously. ‘But if she did, she’d bring me food.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Buster, ‘an put it on a neat little plate for you n all.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Furball.
It was satisfying to be proved right within a few minutes. While Mokey Moke and others devoured the few pouchfuls of chewed toast which Furball had brought for them, she was able to take Buster to the edge of the brick ledge in the chimney where they were living.
‘Love a duck,’ said Buster. It was the closest the perky young moke had ever been in his life to admitting he had been wrong.
‘Would you help me carry the toast which the Giant has so kindly brought?’ Furball inquired. ‘On a china plate,’ she added, perhaps unnecessarily.
‘You betcha!’
But then he froze.
‘Supposin.’
Radish, the strong silent type of hamster, who had not said a word, looked at Buster with particular attention.
‘Supposin it’s a trick? Supposin the Giant lets you nibble off a bit and then covers the floor-food with the killer dose. Jus supposin…’
But Furball didn’t have time for any of this. She scurried down the wall of the chimney, followed by Radish. Between them, the two hamsters were able to push the piece of toast off the plate and carry it back to the shadows of the fireplace. Buster helped them heave it up the sooty wall to their brick ledge.
‘Now that,’ said Mokey Moke, ‘that’s what I’d call room service.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sherlock Holmes, Otherwise Known as Mum
Kitty’s dad didn’t mention the toast. He couldn’t imagine a mouse being strong enough to carry such a large amount of food. So he concluded it could only have been taken by a rat. And he dreaded the upheaval if Mum thought there were rats hidden in the living room. He looked round in despair. What would she do? Block off the fireplaces? Install a new floor?
In the event, Mum was quite laid back about the disappearance of the visiting hamster. ‘Emma never looked after it properly anyway,’ she said.
‘I know, Mum,’ said Kitty. ‘But it’s one thing for Emma not to look after him, and another for me to lose him.’
‘They had a guinea-pig – do you remember? It was eaten by an urban fox.’
‘That wasn’t Emma’s fault.’
‘Their lizard,’ Mum continued, ignoring the plea, ‘died of cold when their electricity was cut off.’
‘It wasn’t Emma’s fault…’
‘And their tropical fish? Do you remember that disaster?’
‘Mum, I’d still rather not go to school on Monday morning and say Sorry, Emma – lost your hamster.’
Mum looked sharply round the room.
‘It disappeared in seconds, you say.’
‘Honestly, Mum – one second. Radish was beside me on the sofa. The next, he’d just vanished.’
‘Then there’s only one explanation,’ said Mum. ‘Sherlock Holmes: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
‘So,’ asked Dad, ‘where is he?’
‘He could have run out on to the landing,’ said Mum, ‘but then one of you would have seen him. He could have climbed into the piano, but he isn’t there – you’ve searched it. And you’ve looked under all the furniture and in the cupboard. So he must be hiding up the chimney.’
She lay down near the opening of the fireplace and peered up into the blackness. ‘I can‘t see him, but I’m sure he’s up there somewhere. If you put a dish of food down beside the hearthstone and a little dish of water, he’ll come when he’s hungry.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A Wonderfully Soft Sock
The noise made by the ooms at the entrance to the moke’s cave, and the thrusting of an oom head into the chimney, within inches of their brick ledge, flung the mokes and hamsters into confusion.
‘Didn’t I always say?’ asked Uncle Sid, ‘Didn’t I always say it was madness coming up ere? Madness.’
No one gave a direct answer since no one wanted to be rude to Uncle Sid. The truthful reply would have been no. He had never said it was madness to run up the chimney. He had scuttled up here, almost by accident, just like everyone else. But having got there, it was obviously sensible to ask themselves if it was safe to stay.
‘The ooms isn’t going ter stick their eds up chimblee every flippin minute,’ said Mokey Moke.
And yet while this was true, there were others who believed the ooms were too close for comfort.
‘I knew that food on a plate was too good to be true,’ said Buster.
‘Didn’t I always say?’ asked Uncle Sid. ‘I didn’t go an say it must be floor-food, but didn’t I say – it’s a trap, a low-darn oom trap.’
While the mokes discussed their position, Radish nudged Furball into the further recesses of the dark chimney, and the two hamsters went exploring together. They climbed up one floor of the house and found themselves, though Furball didn’t realise this at first, in another fireplace. From the living room fireplace they had climbed only a few metres and now found themselves in Kitty’s bedroom. As soon as they came cautiously out into the room
, Furball sensed that it was familiar. It felt like coming home.
There was the Giant’s bed where Furball – or Chum – liked to rummage among the toys and blankets. There was the row of books where she liked to hide. There was her old house, on the floor by the window – the house which Nobby had so contemptuously called stir, but which had always been so cosy and comfortable.
Radish didn’t say anything, but he ran across the carpet and in through the open door of the cage. There was still some water left in Chum’s old water-bottle. And it was Chum’s water-bottle, not Furball’s – it seemed important to think of herself by her old name now.
Radish was drinking eagerly.
‘Leave some for me,’ she squeaked.
His habit of not speaking, his absolute non-communication, was something, at the moment, which she liked very much indeed. He looked at her through the bars of the cage in a meaningful sort of a way, and he said nothing. She stepped into the cage gingerly.
It was good to be able to drink. She did so thirstily for some minutes and felt much refreshed. Then she scampered out of the cage. Although he was not saying anything, she knew what Radish was thinking. He was thinking: this is a hamster cage. We’ve got straw here, water, seeds, an upstairs for fooling about in, a downstairs, plastic tubes for scuttling in and a wonderfully soft sock as a bed. Why would we want to leave this behind, now we have found it? Why leave this for a dark, dangerous, sooty hole up a chimney to live with a lot of mokes?
Chum – for she would always be Chum to the ooms who didn’t even know about her life as Furball – asked herself these difficult questions, but she knew she couldn’t just abandon the mokes.
She wanted to tell Radish that she had experienced a number of wonderful things with the mokes which she had never known to be possible while she was just living in the cage and being the Giant’s pet (that word that Buster and Nobby had said with such scorn). She wanted to tell Radish that she had been in terrible danger and known awful fear, but it had been worth it. She didn’t use the word freedom, but she had been able to scurry anywhere and that made life a thousand times better than it could ever be in a cage – even if she was in a cage with another, very nice, silent male hamster like Radish. And the other thing was, she’d made friends with the mokes themselves and she wasn’t sure that was something she wanted to give up – tempted though she was by the safe world of the cage with its regular seeds and water and treats.
‘Nice to have a bit of a wash, eh?’ she said as Radish licked his small pink paws and rubbed them against his face.
He looked back at her as though he agreed, but he didn’t actually say anything.
‘Here,’ she said, moving towards him. She licked her own paw and wiped a bit of soot off his forehead.
Some time later, she decided it was time to go back down to the mokes. Radish didn’t appear happy about this, but he followed her all the same.
And, some time even later than that (hamster time is different from human time, remember), Chum persuaded the mokes to come and build a nest in the chimney of Kitty’s bedroom.
There were many objections. Uncle Sid, quite reasonably, pointed out that it was two floors up from the larder and the kitchen. To this, it was answered that the Giant quite often had snacks in her room, so they could help themselves to apple cores, biscuits and such.
‘You can’t live on apple cores and such,’ said Uncle Sid.
But as Mokey Moke told him, it depended how many mokes there were. Some of them scampered off, never to be seen again. Moke life was like that. Mokes are not sentimental. Mokey Moke didn’t seem bothered by their vanishing.
‘I knows why you want us up in the bedroom, Furball – course I does,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
Chum didn’t really know herself. It just felt right.
‘You always want to settle a bit at this stage,’ said Mokey Moke mysteriously.
Chum had no idea what the little moke meant. Mokey Moke nodded, and smiled, and rolled her eyes – know what I mean – no need to spell things out among friends.
‘Don’t leave us just yet – eh?’ said Mokey Moke. ‘Think about it – eh?’
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ said Chum, who was upset by her friend’s words. ‘Of course I don’t.’
‘I know we can’t offer the comfort what yer get in stir,’ said Mokey Moke. ‘But that don’t stop it being stir all the same. Like it or lump it, you’re locked in. Yer can’t get out, can yer – not in stir. And then – well, yer in their ands, arencha?’
Chum wanted to say that it was nice being in the Giant’s hands. She felt safe with the Giant. Why couldn’t she go back to the Giant and sleep in the sock and go on being friends with Mokey Moke and the others.
‘Cos,’ said Mokey Moke mysteriously. ‘Cos. Just cos. I’m not saying what Buster and Nobby said bout ole Murph was right. I’m not saying vat, am I?’
‘Of course not, Mokey Moke,’ said Chum, feeling a little confused.
‘I didn’t see them ooms put im in gardin and fer all I know they means yer no arm. All I know is – oh, I’m a moke. Yer wouldn’t get me locked up in stir even though they does give yer – what was it they give yer ter sleep in?’
‘A sock,’ said Chum with a sad little sigh, remembering how very soft, and how very cosy that sock was, and how delicious her sleeps were in it.
‘Course – Buster – Sid – well, they’re male, aren’t they?’
‘So it seems, Mokey Moke.’
‘So, course, they’re never gonna understand how yer feel, girlie – not like I do. Like I say – when I’m up the duff I looks round for a nest. A bit of stability, like. Course, I know ow you feels. It’s just – well, it is stir. They do lock you in. What does e feel about it all?’
Chum was even more confused by now. What was Mokey Moke saying? By e, she must mean Radish. What Radish felt about anything was a complete mystery. What he felt about it all was impossible to say. What was it all?
‘Only,’ said Mokey Moke, ‘with you being in an interesting condition, you’ll be looking for somewhere comfortable. I do me-sell. Looks rahnd for an extra soft bit of fluff, like, or somewhere I can be safe, quiet like.’
‘Really?’ asked Chum. She wasn’t aware of being in any condition and wondered why Mokey Moke should have said she was interesting.
When the other mokes heard that her condition was interesting, they all clustered round and made remarks which she didn’t understand.
‘You didn’t waste much time, didja?’ was Uncle Sid’s quite friendly observation. He even managed a chuckle with it.
Buster was just coming into the new nest. He was dragging a bit of carrot. ‘Don’t fink it’s floor-food,’ he gasped. ‘Found it down there by the cave entrance. Oo don’t waste time?’
‘Furball,’ chuckled Uncle Sid.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Buster. ‘I eard. Congratulations, Furball. You’re a dark horse.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Chum politely, ‘simply a brown hamster.’ And they all laughed more than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Home at Last
Sherlock Holmes, otherwise known as Mum, concluded that Radish was still up the chimney somewhere. ‘He took the bit of carrot I put out for him,’ she argued. ‘Who else do you think took it? Father Christmas?’
Kitty and Dad agreed that it was a good sign, though Kitty noticed Dad had gone a bit quiet when asked who else might be living up the chimney.
They were all together in the living room watching TV. Tomorrow was another school day, and they agreed that they shouldn’t go to bed too late. Still, there was the usual struggle – Dad telling Kitty to go to bed, and Kitty saying she would go but not yet – and eventually her agreeing to go upstairs to put on her pyjamas and clean her teeth.
Kitty’s mum and dad sat downstairs together.
‘We’ll give it a day or two more,’ said Mum. ‘Then we’ll have to give up poor little Radish for lost.’
‘We don’t have a very
good record with hamsters,’ agreed Dad.
‘I think,’ said Mum, ‘that I’m just going to throw the cage away. That catch on the door was broken – which was how Chum escaped in the first place.’
Both of them sighed and drank some wine. But the peace didn’t last long.
‘Mum! Dad!’ Kitty was calling down the stairs.
‘Come quickly. You’ll never guess who’s in the hamster’s cage! It’s not just Radish – it’s Chum! And, Mum, she looks really well – it’s almost like she’s got fatter. Oh, Mum – do come!’
Keep reading for
GAMES
PUZZLES
and
THINGS TO MAKE AND DO
MISTER PETER’S PUZZLE
Can you find all these words in the wordsearch?
Can you remember what all the words mean?
furball
moke
nobby
seeds
kitty
hamster
chum
fevvas
mouse
cage
sandwich
narks
MOKEY MOKE’S MOUSEY MAZE
Mokey Moke is hungry!
Can you draw a path to help her get to the bread?
