Furball and the Mokes

by A. N. Wilson

  What did he mean? His case rests? What case? The Giant had several huge boxes with handles which she called shoot cases. And there was a thing into which she stuffed her drawing things, and a bit of rubber – pencil case it was. But the case rests? Mysterious.

  Nobby’s special mate, his brother Buster, explained it later.

  ‘It’s the ooms,’ he said. ‘Like Old Uncle Barney and his kids. The ooms put stuff on it, know whaddeye mean?’

  ‘No,’ said Furball.

  ‘Stuff,’ laughed Buster. ‘Finish yer. Kaput. End. Curtains. Finito.’

  ‘Like when they put Murf in the garden earth?’ asked Furball.

  ‘They put it on yer food.’ Buster never answered a direct question. ‘They put it on yer food to get rid of yer. It’s one way.’

  ‘Another’s the old snapper,’ said Nobby. ‘Aunty Flo went the snapper way. Remember Aunty Flo? Chattering to us bout this cheese she’d seen – right – on the oom-floor. Cheese. Loved a bit of cheese, Aunty Flo did. Got all excited. Offered us kids a nibble. Run out to get it.’

  ‘She got it all right,’ said Buster.

  ‘Splat,’ said Nobby.

  ‘All in all I’d rather have floor-food than the old snapper,’ said Buster.

  Furball did not want either. She was silent. Was it possible that the mokes were simply wrong? Could it be that the various accidents which they described were simply that – accidents? Or were the ooms – all the ooms – even the Giant, whose warm hands had so often enclosed Furball’s furry little body (when she’d been Chum), even the Giant’s mum and dad, killing other animals, one after another?

  Furball had always felt safe in her cage, and safe with the Giant. The ooms had given her plentiful, various foods to enjoy – fruits and vegetables, as well as fresh water. Running away had been an adventure, but it had not felt safe – the opposite. And now she was very confused.

  If the mokes had the right way of looking at things, then the ooms only wanted to keep a hamster so that, one day, a day of their choosing, they would bury her in mud. Furball still wasn’t sure what killing meant, but she could not forget what one of the mokes had described to her – the ooms standing round in the garden putting old Murf in the ground, and water coming out of their eyes like the time that the Giant’s dad chopped up onions and dropped a lot on the floor. Now that wasn’t floor-food and no one died eating that and it really was delicious.

  Furball and the mokes had come to a long, low dusty tunnel at the end of which, very faintly, light could be seen. The further they walked towards the light, the wetter became the ground underfoot. In fact the fluff and dust soon became mud. Some of the mokes licked it, but Furball didn’t like to do this – it was so very dirty!

  ‘We’re coming to where Lundine stops,’ Mokey Moke told her. ‘Out there – well, yer on yer own out there, all right. Out there’s fevvas – there’s a claw what sits on the wall trying to catch the fevvas, there’s snarks and there’s narks. And that’s why, Furba, me ole mate, most mokes never leave Lundine. That Out There – it’s a jungle, that.’

  Furball did not doubt Mokey Moke’s words but, now they had come this far, she wanted to explore. So she edged her way forward towards the hole. The nearer she got, the dirtier she became, and she would dearly have liked to pause and have a good wash. But Mokey Moke and one or two of the other mokes were behind her. So she tiptoed as fast and as delicately as she could towards the hole.

  It felt good to put her nose through the hole and to sniff the good, fresh air beyond it. Furball pushed her nose further until her whole head had emerged from the hole in the brickwork. She was in the backyard of the house. On the green, slimy paving stones there were some huge watering cans. High, high above the watering cans was a tube with a lid on top of it. The Giant’s mum had hung it on a hook on the brick wall and it was half full of… seeds. A number of birds – coal tits and siskins – were clustered round this object, and as they pecked at the seeds which came out into a small tray at the bottom of the tube, many of the seeds fell down into the paved yard. In fact the birds were pecking so vigorously that they were knocking down almost as many seeds as they pecked into their beaks. It was as if it were raining seeds from the sky.

  ‘Watch yerself,’ Mokey Moke warned her. ‘You don’t wanna go out there on yer own, girly.’

  But Furball did. She wanted to go out there very much indeed. She wanted to pouch seeds, and this desire made her deaf to Mokey Moke’s warnings, and blind to all the dangers which would face a small hamster running out into a yard where these other creatures – the creatures the ooms called magpies, squirrels and rats – were living. They were creatures who were also hungry for seeds and they would fight and even kill for them.

  ‘Seeds,’ said Furball excitedly. ‘Seeds. Seeds. Seeds.’

  ‘Watch it, Furball,’ said Mokey Moke. ‘Careful, my girl.’

  ‘Seeds,’ gasped Furball, and she scuttled out into the yard.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kitty’s Daydream

  ‘And what words show us that Billy was frightened?’ asked Mrs Atkins.

  Some of the girls in the class giggled. They weren’t laughing because of what their teacher had said, but because she had the strange habit of scratching between her legs when she asked questions. She didn’t seem to know she was doing it. Normally, Kitty would have been giggling at the teacher too, but today her thoughts were elsewhere. The thought of the missing hamster gnawed at her heart. It was almost an actual physical pain, a numb pain in her chest.

  After the death of her first hamster, Murphy, Kitty felt a sharp sorrow that was like a grazed knee. It stung. But Mum and she had agreed that if Murphy died they would buy another hamster at once. So they had done. It didn’t stop her missing Murphy. But it made the pain much better. And in time, the pain went away.

  It was Mum’s jokey idea to name the new hamster ‘Murphy’s Dumb Chum’, or Chum for short. Everyone had loved Murphy, of course they had, and there had been tears at his garden funeral. But from the start, there had been something very special about Chum. She seemed to have a stronger personality. Her black curranty eyes were not just intelligent; they were friendly. They seemed to smile. She was so quick, so energetic. She was fun.

  The school lessons went on around Kitty. Mrs Atkins called what she taught ‘comprehension’. Chloe, a girl in glasses who was smaller than the others in the class, had her hand up, to show that she had spotted the words in the (incredibly boring) set passage which showed that a boy named Billy was frightened.

  ‘Chloe?’ asked Mrs Atkins brightly, showing a row of rather yellow teeth.

  ‘He trembled,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s where it says, He trembled…’

  ‘Good,’ said Mrs Atkins. ‘Anyone else? Freddie?’

  ‘Is it where it says there was a big bang outside the window?’ asked Freddie hesitantly.

  ‘Quiet, everyone,’ said Mrs Atkins, scratching between her legs with the energy of a flea-ridden chimpanzee. About six girls were giggling, partly because Freddie had given a wrong answer and partly because he had turned bright red.

  ‘The loud noise is one of the things which made Billy frightened,’ said Mrs Atkins. ‘But what are the words which show us he was frightened?’

  Chloe’s arm had gone up again. It looked as if she hoped, with enough stretching and straining, she could reach the ceiling of the classroom.

  ‘Maybe someone else,’ said Mrs Atkins, still scratching away. Her voice had taken on the cooing tone some grown-ups adopted to address a really young child or perhaps a kitten. Everyone in the class was eleven, but she spoke as if they were six.

  ‘What other words show he was frightened? Kitty?’

  Kitty was in a daydream. She was remembering the way she held Chum under her jumper. She remembered the feel of those little paws against her stomach, and the warmth of the little fur ball as it snuggled against her. Kitty didn’t want to cry in front of the rest of the class. But when she thought of Chum, missing, per
haps stuck in a mouse hole, perhaps being mauled by a cat, it was very hard to stop her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Any frightened words?’ said Mrs Atkins. Scratch, scratch.

  Kitty was silent.

  ‘I hope you are paying attention, Kitty,’ said Mrs Atkins sharply. ‘OK then, Chloe, another frightened word –’

  ‘Like when it says He trembled...’ said Chloe.

  ‘You’ve already said that,’ someone shouted as the whole class laughed.

  ‘He trembled but not just from cold,’ was what Chloe was saying, but by then there was too much noise going on for anyone to hear her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Bullying Snark

  As she came nearer to the shower of seeds, which fell so temptingly on to the paving of the backyard, Furball could see what had happened. An enormous animal, several times larger than herself, had managed to climb the wall and with its sharp teeth had bored a hole, also larger than herself, in the plastic tube which contained the seeds. A cluster of three green finches were taking advantage of the situation and had driven away the tits. But even as these birds pecked frantically, the animal came back. It had a big, grey bushy tail and a grey furry body. It was what ooms called a squirrel and Furball’s friends the mokes called a snark.

  It made an aggressive hissing sound and jumped towards the bright green birds so that they flew away. Then it continued destroying the plastic tub. As it bit, more seeds rained down into the yard beneath.

  Furball’s nose was raised tremblingly in the air. Her whiskers quivered expectantly. To say she was brave might be true. But it would perhaps be truer to say that she was torn between two enormously strong desires. One was the need to protect herself. The other was the need to get to those seeds, to fill her pouch with seeds, to eat seeds – seeds, seeds, seeds. In that moment it did not matter that she would have to do battle with a snark several times larger than she was herself, if she was to have even the smallest hope of a pouchful of seeds. The hunger, the need for seeds was so strong that her pink paws had scuttled towards the patch of birdseed in the yard by the back door long before she’d had the chance to think the matter over or decide whether it was safe. And the seeds were delicious. Mainly sunflowers but a few – mmm, mmm – she hadn’t – mm, mmm, oh they were so good! – a few she hadn’t tasted before. She had managed to fill her pouches almost to bursting before the very great danger of her situation became clear.

  ‘Mine – my seeds – mine!’ said the snark in truly threatening tones. ‘Drop – drop my seeds – vermin!’

  Chum’s currant eyes met the much larger eyes of the snark. From the ledge above their heads the finches were calling out, ‘Ours, ours, all seed ours,’ and the starlings were imitating, ‘Ours, ours’, and here and there were robins, blackbirds and pigeons – all the fevvas, in short – shouting, ‘Squirrels! Thieving squirrels, taking our food – ours – ours.’ And another fevva would call back, ‘See that little brown ball of fluff – yes, there, there, ball of fluff – it thinks it can eat our seeds now.’

  ‘Ours – ours – ours.’

  ‘Ball o’ fluff – ball o’ fluff.’

  ‘At least squirrel’ll tear its horn’d eyes out.’

  ‘Eyes out, eyes out,’ laughed the fevvas.

  Chum now saw what Mokey Moke had meant when warning her about the world outside Lundine. It was truly frightening. The fevvas were singing what amounted to a chorus calling for her blood. And the great grey snark had puffed up its huge fluffy tail and bared its enormous front teeth and was about to jump on her with its claws.

  Chum knew she would have no chance of winning a fight against the snark.

  ‘Drop those seeds now,’ warned the snark. But it had a particularly menacing way of speaking which meant that the words got repeated, ‘Drop, drop those seeds, seeds, seeds – now, now now.’

  The taste of the sunflower seeds was drifting from her pouches into her mouth. It was the best pouchful she’d ever had and she was not inclined to give it up for a bullying snark. On the other hand, the snark was clearly prepared, if necessary, to greedily tear the seeds out of her, as if the seeds were sweets and her pouches, and indeed her head, no more than wrapping.

  ‘Seeds, seeds, seeds,’ repeated the snark. And then it jumped.

  Chum could see its front claws and its savage teeth and its angry eyes as the snark threw itself towards her with a bloodcurdling leap. It was so frightening that it made Chum freeze to the spot, and this is what saved her. The snark had leaped too far, expecting Chum to run a little way ahead. This – just – gave Chum the chance to turn and run, as fast as her short legs and pink feet would carry her, in the opposite direction.

  The squirrel could leap and jump but it was a stupid animal, a fact upon which the younger finches, laughing above his head, were not slow to comment.

  ‘Missed the fluff!,’ they laughed, ‘missed the fluff’ This gave the fluff (Chum just had time to feel some indignation at this nickname) a chance to scuttle several metres across the backyard. By the time the squirrel had realised his mistake, Chum had a head start. She ran fast, away from the house and towards the small wooden garden shed where the ooms kept a few tools and a couple of deckchairs. It wasn’t a large garden – only about ten metres in length. Chum had run to the end of it in a minute. Only when she reached the shed, however, did she begin to realise what she had done. She had crossed into the great world outside Lundine. She had come into that frightening place which the mokes had told her of – the world of snarls and claws. She had left behind the house, the Giant, and all her security.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sticky Traps

  ‘I think we should just buy another hamster,’ Dad was saying.

  And Mum was saying – as if Kitty wasn’t even in the room, or as if she were a little kid who could not understand what grown-ups were talking about – ‘It would be a relief not having to clean out her cage every week. Maybe we should have a rest from hamsters for a while.’

  ‘Or there’s always the possibility of a D.O.G.,’ said Dad.

  ‘Dad!’ said Kitty. ‘I can spell dog, you know! I am eleven.’

  ‘If we had a dog,’ Mum said, ‘it might deal with the mouse problem. Have you seen the larder this morning? One of you left a packet of biscuits on the shelf…’

  ‘It wasn’t me, Mum,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Dad.

  ‘And they’ve eaten their way through the corner. There are little shreds of paper all over the larder floor, and crumbs and mouse droppings –’

  ‘How do you know they’re mouse droppings?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so annoying,’ said Mum. ‘And the smell. We must do something to get rid of them. If they keep on bothering us, I’m going to buy sticky-traps. Mum often discussed such problems as mouse – or moth – infestations with their neighbours. ‘Alan and Rupert say sticky-traps are the only way.’

  ‘They are so cruel,’ said Kitty. ‘The mouse gets its feet stuck on the trap. It can’t run away. It can’t move. It’s just trapped there.’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ said Mum grimly.

  ‘You could scarcely put one of those things down while C.H.U.M. was still at large.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Kitty, ‘I can S.P.E.L.L. – right?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Must Have Food!

  The garden shed was warm and dry. It was an ideal place for a hamster – or for mice. You could scuttle, if you were a hamster, round and round an area which was broad and wide. It was much, much bigger than Furball’s cage. Or ‘stir’ as the mokes called it. And in this place, she thought of herself as Furball. She did not think of herself as having a name given to her by the ooms. This was a place where a hamster could be herself. She could run about. She could hide in the dust and fluff balls behind the stacked chairs and garden tools. The mokes would love it, of that she was convinced. She could imagine her friends Nobby and Buster dancing about on top of the pile of flowerpots, or playi
ng hide-and-seek beneath them. There would be no need to run away from the ooms on this great floor space because – well – there were no ooms here. It had a safe feeling to it.

  Furball formed her ideas quickly – just as she ate quickly and ran quickly. She sat in the middle of the garden shed. The ideas came to her as she washed herself, licking her pink paws and rubbing behind her ears. This shed would be the ideal home for herself and the mokes. They would run away from Lundine and the ooms. They could live their own lives, free from danger. Every now and then they would have to hide – when the Giant put out food for them, for example. But for the rest of the time, they could lead their own lives, free from oom interference, free from worry, free from danger.

  Now that Furball had this wonderful idea she could hardly wait to return to Lundine to tell her plan to Mokey Moke. When she had told her friend about the shed and the freedom it would give them, only one difficulty was to be faced: how to organise all the mokes into one obedient party; and how to persuade them to make the dangerous journey from the hole in Lundine wall, across the wet paving stones of the yard, past the fevvas, and the claws – and past the snark. But Furball was an optimist. The journey across the yard might be dangerous. But once she and the mokes had made the journey, and avoided the snark, the claws, the snarl and the fevvas, they would be safe inside their shed forever and ever, and the only oom they need ever see again would be the Giant when she brought them their food.

  Furball squeezed under the door of the shed so that, once again, she was out in the yard. She raised her nose in the air and her whiskers twitched nervously. She looked this way and that. The snark was scampering along the lower branch of the horse chestnut tree which overhung the brick garden wall. The claws had abandoned his seat there and was prowling about at the other end of the yard, looking hungrily at the small brown fevvas that Buster called sparrers.