Rainbow Street Pets

by Orr, Wendy

  Lachlan and his mum put posters up on street corners for blocks in every direction from Terri’s Takeaway. They walked way down the beach where people had seen Bear the day before. They drove around the streets where Bear might have run when he left the beach. They stopped to ask people walking their own dogs.

  They never saw Bear, and no one they asked had seen him either.

  They phoned all the vets, and went to an animal shelter full of sad lost dogs, but none of them was Bear.

  Lachlan’s dad did all the same things going back towards the farm, but he hadn’t found Bear either.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ he said again on the phone. ‘Don’t give up hope.’

  ‘Just before Bear ran away,’ Lachlan whispered, sliding down in his hidey-hole between the bedroom boxes, ‘I told him maybe he should have gone to live with you.’

  ‘Bear didn’t mean to run away,’ his dad said firmly. ‘That dog knows you love him, even if you said something you didn’t mean. I’m guessing he jumped out that window to follow you, got himself scared in the car park, took off, and got lost. Wherever he is right now, he’ll be wanting to get back to you.’

  Lachlan tried to believe it, all through the next long day of looking and not finding, but it was getting harder to hope.

  The day after that was going to be even worse.

  It was the first day of school.

  CHAPTER 11

  achlan’s new school was about a hundred and eighty-five times bigger than his old one. He felt as lost as Bear just following the receptionist down the halls to his classroom. He wondered if he’d ever find his way to the front gate again.

  Although wandering around the halls would have been better than sitting in a class waiting for his turn to stand up and say who he was and the most exciting thing he’d done this summer. ‘Hi, I’m Lachlan and what I did this summer was lose my dog.’

  Another boy, then a girl, then it would be his turn. The boy had just moved here too. He looked okay. The girl stood up.

  ‘I’m Hannah, and the most exciting thing that happened to me this summer was last Friday my dad came home with a dog in the back of his ute. He must have jumped in but Dad doesn’t know where. He’s got shaggy black fur, a white neck, three white paws, and a really cute white stripe down his face. I call him Surprise, but—’

  Lachlan jumped to his feet so fast his desk tipped over.

  ‘His name is Bear!’

  ‘Lachlan!’ exclaimed the teacher.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lachlan, and picked his desk up. ‘But I lost my dog on Friday – and I think Hannah found him.’

  The teacher decided that a lost-and-found dog was so exciting they could sort it out right then. Lachlan jumped to his feet again.

  ‘Sit down, Lachlan,’ the teacher said. ‘You can’t race off to the animal shelter in the middle of class. What you and Hannah can do is make sure all the facts add up.’

  So they checked back and forth: ‘And his ears point forward when he’s listening—’

  ‘And he loves to play ball!’

  ‘But his name was on his tag!’

  ‘We’d never heard of a dog named Bear – we thought it was your last name!’

  The only thing they couldn’t explain was how Bear had got into Hannah’s dad’s ute, because Terri’s Takeaway where Lachlan had lost him wasn’t anywhere near where Mr Cooper had been working.

  And they still had to wait till after school to be absolutely positively one hundred per cent sure that it was really Bear in the Rainbow Street Shelter.

  Their mums were waiting at the gate at the end of the day. The teacher had called them earlier.

  ‘This is the girl who found Bear!’ Lachlan shouted.

  ‘This is the boy who lost Surprise!’ shouted Hannah.

  ‘We’ll go straight there!’ said Lachlan’s mum.

  ‘We’ll show you the way,’ said Hannah’s mum.

  Lachlan and his mum followed the other car through the streets towards the outskirts of town. They turned into ‘Rainbow Street’ and parked in front of the old house with the rainbow painted across the front and a three-legged goat grazing in the yard.

  Lachlan could hardly breathe as they walked up the path and into the shelter. His mum put her hand on his shoulder, but when she spoke to Mona her voice was as shaky as Lachlan’s hands.

  ‘We think our dog is here.’

  Hannah and Mrs Cooper stood at the shelter’s back door and watched Lachlan and his mum cross to Surprise’s run. But the dog wasn’t Surprise anymore, he was Bear, and when he saw Lachlan he began to yip and howl as if he was telling him all about the terrible time he’d had. Mona opened the gate, and Bear threw himself against Lachlan, and Lachlan threw himself down to hug Bear as if they would never let each other go again.

  Hannah went back inside. She was happy for Surprise, but she felt like crying.

  ‘You could still change your mind about the guinea pig,’ her mum said gently.

  Hannah thought about the labrador Sam, and the frightened little dog with the five puppies, and all the other animals that needed to be comforted and played with while they waited for their owners or their new homes. She shook her head.

  ‘I’ll keep on coming,’ she said.

  ‘We’d better call your dad,’ Lachlan’s mum said, but her phone rang before she had time to open it. She listened for a moment and smiled. ‘I think Lachlan would like to talk to you himself,’ she said, handing the phone over.

  ‘I’ve just talked to someone who was at a petrol station on Friday night,’ said Dad, ‘about ten kilometres up from where you lost Bear. He saw a border collie jump into the back of a ute.’

  ‘It was my friend’s dad’s ute,’ said Lachlan.

  Lachlan, his mum and Bear walked back to the office. Hannah and her mum were still talking to Mona.

  ‘Actually,’ Mona was saying, ‘the guinea pig went to a new home yesterday. But if you’re sure you still want to help, there are other dogs and cats who need the kind of care you gave Bear.’

  ‘Can I help too?’ asked Lachlan.

  ‘We don’t normally allow children—’ Mona began.

  ‘G’day, mate!’ shrieked Gulliver, as Bert walked in.

  ‘I give up,’ said Mona. ‘As long as you do exactly what Bert says, you can come too.’

  That night, curled up snug on his bedroom floor with Bear, Lachlan talked to his dad again.

  ‘Give him a hug for me,’ said his dad. ‘And one for you.’

  ‘One for you too,’ Lachlan said. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

  Bear licked the phone.

  Lachlan hugged him hard, just like his dad had asked.

  CHAPTER 12

  o, on Saturday mornings, and after school on Tuesdays, Hannah and Lachlan went to the Rainbow Street Shelter. Their mums took turns driving, and after the first week they stayed to help too. Lachlan’s mum said that every time she helped a lost animal it was another thank you for finding Bear.

  At first Mrs Cooper only wanted to help in the office, or wash things in the kitchen, but she always came out to see the dog that Hannah was feeding or playing with.

  The black labrador Sam went home with a woman who lived near the beach.

  ‘But I have another job for you,’ said Bert. ‘Those puppies will be old enough to go to new homes soon. We could start getting them used to kids.’

  Hannah sat quietly in the run with the puppies. The mother dog watched her suspiciously, but finally decided that Hannah was not a danger, and even let her pat and pick up one fat squirmy puppy. He had a brown bottom, brown shoulders and a white middle: ‘You look like a peanut!’ Hannah whispered into his tiny white ear.

  The next time she went, Bert and the mother dog let her take the puppies out to the playground. Hannah rolled on the ground with the puppies tumbling around her, but when the peanut puppy licked her face she stopped and sat under a tree to cuddle him against her. The puppy wriggled up and licked her face again with his pink tongue and
milky breath; he scrambled over her legs and chewed on her finger with needle-sharp teeth. Hannah felt a warm balloon of love swell up inside her as she rolled the puppy on his back and tickled his fat tummy.

  Lachlan was playing a tug-of-war with a bouncy Jack Russell. He waved to Hannah – and the dog yanked the toy out of his hand so that Lachlan tumbled over backwards, the Jack Russell leaping proudly around him with the toy in his mouth.

  Hannah felt a sharp stab of jealousy, because when Lachlan had cheered up the Jack Russell, he’d go home to Bear – but Hannah had to leave this puppy here.

  She bent low over the puppy to hide her face, and the puppy caught her drooping ponytail. Hannah laughed, picked him up again – and saw something she’d never imagined could happen.

  Her mother was in the run, squatting down to talk to the nervous little mother dog, patting and soothing her while Bert cleaned out the puppies’ piddly papers.

  Hannah and her mother were both very quiet in the car on the way home. Lachlan thought he knew why. He’d seen Hannah’s face when she held the puppy, and even though he knew there’d never be another dog as special as Bear, he knew that Hannah could love that puppy just as much as he loved Bear.

  ‘Do you want to come in and talk to Bear?’ he asked, when they dropped him off.

  Hannah shook her head no.

  That night, Hannah heard her parents talking after she’d gone to bed. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it sounded serious. She thought about how Lachlan and his mum had moved down here while his dad moved somewhere else, and all of a sudden she didn’t feel jealous anymore.

  The next day after school, Hannah’s mum called her out to the front when her dad got home.

  ‘Ready to go?’ asked her dad.

  ‘Where?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Wait and see,’ said her dad, but he was grinning and her mum was too.

  They drove down the familiar roads and turned at Rainbow Street. ‘But it’s Friday!’ said Hannah.

  Her dad laughed when they walked into the shelter and Gulliver screeched, ‘G’day, mate!’ But Hannah didn’t. All of a sudden, Hannah was hoping so badly she could hardly breathe, and she was trying not to hope it because she didn’t think she could ever breathe again if it didn’t come true this time.

  Bert and Mona met them. They looked serious, but Bert winked at Hannah. They all walked out to the dog runs, straight across to the scruffy little mother dog and her puppies.

  ‘Our fence isn’t tall enough for a big dog like Bear,’ said Hannah’s dad. ‘But it would be fine for a dog with shorter legs.’

  ‘And the puppies aren’t quite ready to go yet,’ said Bert. ‘There’s time to fix up anything in your yard that needs fixing.’

  Now Hannah couldn’t speak or breathe. Her mother squeezed her hand. ‘If you can come here to help these dogs, even though you thought they’d never be yours … we know you’ll look after one of your own.’

  ‘Is this the one?’ Bert asked, scooping up the brown-and-white puppy and putting him in Hannah’s arms.

  ‘The only thing is …’ said Hannah’s mum, ‘it probably won’t be hard for the puppies to find good homes.’

  Bert nodded.

  Hannah held the puppy tighter.

  ‘So what about the mother?’ asked Hannah’s mum.

  ‘That’ll be harder,’ said Mona. ‘She’s not a very pretty dog.’

  ‘She is so!’ protested Hannah’s mum. ‘I was just worrying about how lonely she’ll feel when all her puppies leave.’

  ‘You think I should take the mother dog instead?’ asked Hannah, and she knew she should feel happy to have any dog, but she belonged to this peanut puppy now and there was nothing she could do about it. The puppy squirmed closer to her face as if he thought so too.

  ‘Of course not!’ said her dad. ‘Especially if the puppy’s got anything to say about it.’

  ‘The mother dog’s for me,’ said Hannah’s mum.

  CHAPTER 1

  hen Nelly was a tiny, round brown-and-white puppy with short legs and a stumpy tail, she lived with a baby boy and his mother.

  Nelly and the baby were together all the time. They rolled and tumbled across the floor and around the backyard. They played tug of war, splashed together in mud puddles, and dug in the sandpit.

  When the baby cried, Nelly snuggled beside him till he felt better, fussing over him as if she were a mother dog and he was her puppy.

  But when the baby was a nearly two-year-old walking, talking little boy, and Nelly was an already grown-up dog, the mother got a new job in a country on the other side of the world. She and her little boy had to move, and they couldn’t take Nelly with them.

  She asked all her family and friends, but no one had a place for Nelly. There was only one thing she could do: ‘We’ll take her to the Rainbow Street Shelter and ask them to find her a good home.’

  Nelly walked happily under the painted rainbow and through the open door with the little boy and his mother.

  ‘Can I help you?’ squawked Gulliver.

  Mona came into the waiting room. ‘Gulliver likes being the receptionist,’ she explained.

  ‘Gulliver!’ the cockatoo agreed in his croaky old-man’s voice.

  The little boy laughed.

  But when his mother said goodbye to Nelly and lifted her into Mona’s arms, he threw himself onto the floor, kicking and screaming in the loudest, most ferocious tantrum of his whole life. He did not want to leave without his friend.

  With a wriggle and a squirm, Nelly leapt out of Mona’s arms. She snuggled in tight against the little boy’s side, licking the tears off his face until he had to giggle.

  Then his mother picked him up, Mona picked up Nelly, and they said goodbye. The mother felt like crying too, but she knew that this was the best place for the little stumpy-tailed dog to find a new home.

  Mona met lots of dogs every day, but she had never met one who worked so hard at making someone feel better.

  ‘Now you need someone to look after you!’ she said when the boy and his mother had gone. She stroked firmly down Nelly’s back, one hand after the other, over and over, till the bewildered dog was calm.

  Bert came in the back door and smiled to see Mona sitting on the floor with the dog. He had never seen his busy friend look so relaxed.

  ‘Will I take her out to a kennel now?’ Bert asked gently.

  ‘G’day, mate!’ screeched Gulliver, flapping his wings at his friend.

  ‘In a minute,’ said Mona, still stroking Nelly.

  But before she could get up, the door burst open and a man came in carrying a grey cat wrapped in a towel.

  ‘He was running down the middle of the road, scared out of his wits!’ the man said. ‘I don’t know where he came from.’

  He put the cat-bundle down on the floor. Nelly leapt towards it. The cat hissed, spat and backed into a corner.

  ‘Nelly!’ shouted Mona.

  ‘Sorry!’ said the man.

  ‘Can I help you?’ screeched Gulliver.

  ‘I think it’s okay,’ said Bert. ‘Look.’

  Nelly wasn’t chasing the cat. Even when he waved a scratching claw at her nose, the little dog just crept forward on her belly, her head down and bottom up, stumpy tail wagging.

  The grey cat stopped hissing.

  Nelly crept closer and started to lick the frightened cat. The cat twitched his tail crossly but let the dog go on licking.

  Finally, the cat gave himself a shake and jumped up onto the windowsill. He began smoothing his rumpled fur with neat grey paws, looking around the room as if he’d always been there.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like that!’ said the man who’d rescued him.

  ‘Neither have I,’ said Bert.

  ‘Nelly,’ said Mona. ‘I think you’ve found your home.’

  So Nelly became Mona’s dog and came to the shelter with her every day.

  The grey cat stayed too. No one ever came to find him, and he never wanted to leave the
office. Bert named him Minke, but even though Blanco loved Bert more than any other person, he never wanted to go home with him. He was happy just to curl up in his basket under the desk for the night.

  Every morning Minke mewed and rushed to greet Nelly when she came in. Nelly licked his face till Minke blinked and leapt up to his windowsill to smooth her kisses off. For the rest of the day he sat there, watching everything that happened, letting people pat him if they asked politely, and keeping out of the way of the other dogs and cats as they came through the waiting room.

  But Nelly liked meeting the people and animals that arrived feeling lost or worried. When puppies or kittens needed mothering, she stayed with them till they could be alone or were ready to be adopted. And if they were very young, Mona took them home at night so she could give them their midnight milk, and Nelly could snuggle them all night long.

  CHAPTER 2

  amantha had always wanted a pet. All her life she’d thought she couldn’t have one, because they lived in a flat high above the beach, and dogs and cats weren’t allowed.

  But on the second-last weekend of the school holidays, everything changed.

  ‘What do you want to do for your birthday, Sam?’ her mum asked, because Sam’s birthday was next Sunday, and school went back the day after. Last year Sam had waited till school started to have a party, to make sure everyone could come.

  ‘I don’t need a party,’ said Sam. ‘I just want a pet.’

  ‘WHAT?’ her mother and father both said at once, and so Sam said it again, because sometimes words didn’t come out of her mouth the way they were supposed to, and she thought maybe she’d said something wrong.

  In fact, Sam was so surprised herself at what had come out of her mouth this time that she nearly said ‘WHAT?’ too. She hadn’t known she was going to ask for a pet – it was like a secret that her mind had been keeping even from her, and all of a sudden it had to burst out.

  ‘I know I can’t have a dog, or a cat,’ she said quickly, before her parents could say it. ‘But there are lots of other animals. Small animals that could live in a flat and don’t have to go for walks.’