by Anna Wilson
‘Good,’ I said, thinking the book would say, ‘If you care for your puppy’s mental sanity, never go near men with beards ever again.’
‘Not good, actually,’ said Molly. ‘She’s decided that she has to get Honey used to beards, because she needs Honey so that she can go and see Nick Harris again. She thinks the only way she’s going to get Nick Harris to go on a date with her is if it has something to do with Honey, because that’s how they met each other in the first place.’
‘And how in all the earth is she planning to get Honey used to men with beards? I suppose with all your clever hovering and being invisible and everything, you will have heard that part of the conversation too!’ I said grumpily.
‘I did,’ said Molly. ‘You’re not going to like this.’
‘Tell me,’ I demanded fiercely.
‘She’s going to do what Monica Sitstill advises in the book. She is going to buy some false beards and get us all to wear them.’
I nearly almost fainted again.
10
How to Fight Like Cat and Dog
Luckily the beard-buying trip idea was not mentioned when Mum and April came out to say goodbye to Molly when it was time for her to go home. I decided that I did not want to hang around the house in case April did mention a beard-buying trip, so I went out into the garden to play with Honey. At least she was sane and normal. Or so I thought.
Actually Honey started doing something really strange with Cheese and Toast. She was creeping towards them on her belly and twitching her head to one side. I thought at first maybe she was ill. I had never seen her move like that before. Cheese and Toast were sitting staring at her, and you could tell they were also thinking this was strange. They were most probably thinking, ‘Who is this bizarre creature?’
Cats always look as if they are thinking this, whoever they are looking at. This is because cats think everyone except another cat is a weird creature. They are HAUGHTY and ALOOF – that’s what Molly’s mum, Mrs Cook, says. Mrs Cook does not like cats.
Honey then jumped towards Cheese and Toast, and of course they hissed at her and scratched her. They are always hissing and scratching. They even hiss and scratch at each other. They used to be good friends when they were kittens, but now they ignore each other or fight. I suppose that’s what sisters do in real true human life, so why should cats be any different? Anyway, Honey was frankly very upset by this behaviour. In fact she yelped, as Cheese and Toast have very sharp claws.
But whereas I would most definitely never go near Cheese and Toast again if they scratched me, Honey crept nearer them on her belly again.
Cheese and Toast looked really very miffed that Honey was not getting their message, and so Cheese pounced on Honey. Honey did not get this message either; she seemed to think it was a message that said, ‘Let’s play,’ but in cat language it of course meant the total opposite of that.
So Honey got scratched again. I decided I should call Mum to come outside as I was getting a bit anxious that Honey might get really hurt, and of course I was not really in the mood for taking her to the vet if she got injured, because I didn’t want to see Mr Be– Harris again.
‘Mum! Come and see what’s going on with Honey and Cheese and Toast!’ I shouted.
Mum came out. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘I’m worried Honey’s going to get hurt,’ I explained worriedly. ‘What can I do? Cheese and Toast keep scratching at her to get her to keep away from them, but Honey keeps trying to get closer to them. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. She is basically not getting their message.’
Mum watched the three animals rolling around and crouching and pouncing and then burst out laughing.
‘Honey, you daft mutt!’ she cried.
Honey had stopped rolling around with the cats for a moments and was looking up at me with her head on one side – what if she understood?
‘Look, Summer,’ said Mum, ‘Cheese and Toast speak a completely different language from Honey.’
I did not understand this. Animals do not speak. Unless maybe my mum had hidden talents like Doctor Dolittle and she could speak to the animals? I was pondering over this particularly strange idea when I realized Mum was still talking to me – in human language.
‘The cats lie flat when they are going to pounce and attack something – you’ve seen them do that when they are trying to catch a bird, haven’t you?’
‘Yes – so what?’
‘Well, when Honey lies flat she’s trying to tell the cats that she won’t hurt them, she’s just being friendly. It’s called being submissive,’ Mum explained.
‘I doubt Honey even realizes that Cheese and Toast are cats,’ Mum continued. ‘Frank didn’t have any cats at his house, did he?’ I shook my head. ‘She probably thinks Cheese and Toast are puppies like her, and she’s trying to work out how to play with them. I’ve been reading your Love Me, Love My Dog book with April – there’s loads of interesting stuff in there about how new puppies relate to pets that are already in the family,’ said Mum.
Yeah, I thought, there’s loads of interesting stuff in there about how new puppies relate to beards too. But I didn’t say anything as I was trying hard not to think about my sister kissing beardy guys, and anyway, Mum was sounding very pleased with her knowledgableness on the subject of puppies for the first time since we had got Honey, so I didn’t want to interrupt.
‘I think the only thing we can do about Cheese and Toast is let them sort things out with Honey in their own way. She’ll get the message eventually.’
I nodded, but secretly did not think this was a very likely thing, as I watched Honey trying to shake both cats off her back while they held on like their claws were superglued into her fur.
I am beginning to get seriously worried that Mum might in fact be right and that my dog might be one dog biscuit short of a full barrel – in other words, daft.
11
How to Desensitize Your Puppy
My sister, April Lydia Love, had just me.
‘You and your little friend have been spying on me!’ she was yelling. It was not an attractive way to behave, I thought, as it made her face go a tomatoey-ketchupy kind of colour.
‘What do you actually mean by “spying”?’ I said in a cool and calm way. (I was doing what Molly calls PLAYING FOR TIME, which is when you know you’ve been caught out, but you don’t want to have to admit it straight away as you are hoping there might be a way out of the Difficult Situation you have found yourself in.)
‘YOU KNOW WHAT “SPYING” MEANS!’ shrieked April in a scarily dramatical manner, flicking her hair around quite fiercesomely and huffing like a steam train.
If only Nick could see you now, I thought, a little bit meanly.
‘I HEARD MOLLY TELL YOU ABOUT ME FANCYING NICK AND ABOUT HIS BEARD AND EVERYTHING!’ April was really quite shouting by this point.
‘Oh,’ I said.
That was all I could manage to say. I was actually suddenly speechless with shock that my only sister could stoop so incredibly low as to spy on me and my best friend having a private conversation. (Even though I suppose Molly had been spying on her before. But then, April is older than us and really should know better.)
‘So, Summer,’ April said, in less of a shouty way (more of an ‘I’m your older sister, so you’d better listen up’ tone of speaking), ‘the cat really is out of the bag now. And to make it up to me, you and your little friend are going to come shopping with me for beards.’
‘WHAT?’ I almost nearly choked to death right there on the very spot. ‘You want us to go and buy a false beard together – and you’ve been keeping the cats in a bag as well?’ I wailed at my sister. How much more mad could a person get? If this was what love did to you, I for one was going to fall in it . . .
‘Are you really that stupid, or do you just enjoy winding me up?’ April asked.
I didn’t think I would dignify that extremely rude and unnecessary question with a grown-up response.
April drove us into town in Mum’s car as I said I absolutely did not want to be seen walking back from town carrying a bag of beards and that we would have to put them in the boot. April did at least see the sensibleness of this suggestion.
We went to a shop called Dressed to Thrill. It was advertised as a theatrical supplies shop, but actually in true life it was more of a fancy-dress shop, where everyone went when they wanted to get an outfit for a party or a school show or something. It was not really a proper theatrical sort of place where celebrities go. The costumes were all shiny and quite unreal and didn’t look at all how proper nurses/queens/firemen/Robin Hoods would dress. It was never very convincing when you got a costume from there. I knew this because I had to go there with Mum for parties and things. I never really felt In Character like a real actor would when I was dressed in something from there. Once I went to a party dressed as Cinderella and the rags from the dress kept falling off and I had to stick them back on again with bits of chewing gum as that was all I had with me at the time.
I think if you were in a play and you wanted to look like a true-life King Henry the Eighth, for example, you would have to write to the BBC and ask them for a costume, because they are the only ones who really know what a true-life King Henry the Eighth would look like. He most certainly would not wear shiny clothes made from nylon and plastic, which is all you get from Dressed to Thrill. I don’t even know why it’s called Dressed to Thrill, as I have never been thrilled in any way about anything I have ever seen in there.
So you can see why I was not at all sure that we would even find a beard in the shop that would look like a true-life beard. In fact, I was quite hopeful we would not.
In any case, the man who ran the shop was ‘the looniest of loony tunes on Radio Loony’, to quote Molly, and I was not looking forward to having to talk to him.
‘Hello, luvvies!’ he cried as soon as we entered his totally dodgy ESTABLISHMENT. The bell on the door played the first few bars of one of the songs from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which I found very annoying and showy-offy, and actually somewhat childish.
‘Now, luvvies, what are we after today?’ the man asked. He was dressed in an OUTLANDISH and frankly embarrassing-to-look-at outfit of a piratical nature. He had a huge white blouse instead of a normal man’s shirt and wore those big pirate-ish boots over black trousers. And he had a twirly black moustache, which I know wasn’t real as it wasn’t on straight. It didn’t bode well for the beards.
‘Hello,’ said April in her businesslike work voice that she uses if ever you call her in the office at Stingy and Gross or whatever it’s called. ‘We’ve come to buy some beards.’
‘Aha! In a lovely play together, are you, luvvies? One of those fabulous Shakespearian ones where the ladies get to dress up as men?’ he chortled in an overenthusiastic way, as if he got an immense amount of pleasure from selling beards to people on a daily basis.
‘Y-yes,’ stammered April. I was shocked that she was doing another one of her Bare-Faced Lies, but then I supposed she couldn’t really tell him the truth, which was of course: ‘No, we are desensitizing our puppy to men with beards, as I have fallen in love with a vet with a beard but the puppy doesn’t like him.’
‘Lovely, luvvies!’ cried the man, and he threw his arms up in the air in a very over-the-top dramatical gesture, which made his moustache detach itself completely on one side and nearly come off. He didn’t seem to notice though and swung round to face the rest of the shop, calling out to us to follow him to the Facial Hair section.
We spent the next hour trying on various different colours and shapes and sizes of beard. April was very fussy and critical the whole time and got exceedingly impatient with me and Molly when we had rather a long giggling session. I have found it is honestly very difficult not to have a rather long giggling session while trying on beards.
In the end we did find three small beards that were sort of like the one that Nick Harris had, and we paid for them and put them in a bag and hurried back to the car.
When we got home, April made us put the beards on in the car.
I was very dead set against this. ‘I’ll put mine on inside,’ I said firmly. ‘What if someone from school saw me wearing a beard? I would never live it down if I was known at school as the Bearded Lady or Beardy Weirdy or something cruel and unkind like that.’
‘No,’ said April, even more firmly, ‘it’s very important that Honey sees us with the beards as soon as we walk through the door. We’ll just confuse her if we go into the kitchen looking normal and then put the beards on in front of her.’
‘Heavens above forbid that we should look normal,’ muttered Molly in the sort of tone her mum uses when she is getting impatient with Molly’s dad about something, which is quite often.
I thought I might start a long giggling session again, but then I caught the look on my sister’s face – it was a very determined and angry look – and I thought perhaps another long giggling session was not a good idea just at that moment.
We put on our beards and scurried around to the back entrance of the house so that no one would see us. We went in through the kitchen and there was cute little Honey, sitting in her crate, waiting for us to come back. Unfortunately as soon as she saw us she went , barking like she’d gone totally mad, and started trying to eat her way out of the crate.
‘Quick!’ said April. ‘Back out again!’
We went back out.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘I thought you wanted us to go in with our beards on?’
‘I do, but we have to keep coming in and going out until she doesn’t bark when she sees us come in,’ said April. Talk about confusing – and to think I’d been worried about Honey getting muddled. ‘The minute she sees us with beards and doesn’t bark, we let her out of the crate and give her a big hug and a treat,’ April continued.
This sounded to me.
‘It’s what it says in Love Me, Love My Dog,’ said April. ‘It says, “Your puppy has to realize that Good Things happen around men with beards.”’
Molly sniggered. ‘That’s what you’re hoping, isn’t it, April?’
April glowered. At least I think she did. It was a bit difficult to see behind the beard.
So we spent what felt like hours going in and out of the house trying to get Honey used to the beards. Eventually we had to stop because we were all getting hot and sweaty in our facial hair, and I told April that I thought Honey needed to get out of her crate and go to the loo in the garden.
April went off in a huffy mood into the sitting room, still wearing her beard. Perhaps wearing it made her feel closer to Nick Harris, like she was already KISSING HIS BEARD or something. URGH! She turned on the telly and flopped crossly down on to the sofa.
I angrily shoved my beard into the bag we’d brought it home in and took poor Honey outside. She immediately calmed down and jumped up to lick my face.
‘The things you do for love, eh?’ said Molly, pulling off her beard as well and following us out to the garden.
‘Humph,’ I muttered. I was truly miffed and embarrassed by this whole palaver and determined not to do this beard-desensitizing thing ever again. ‘What are we going to do, Molly? We have to get April to stop wanting to use Honey to get to Nick Harris. Honey is my puppy. Why should April get away with upsetting her like this? I don’t care if Honey doesn’t like beards! I don’t like them either. I wish Mum would tell April to sort out her Romanti
c Problem on her own and leave me and Honey out of it.’
Molly nodded. Then she laughed.
‘Why are you laughing?’ I cried in an exasperated tone. ‘You are my Best Friend. Best Friends do not laugh in times of crisis like this one. You should be helping me.’
‘I know – that’s why I laughed. I have had an idea,’ she said. ‘Listen, what if we put Nick Harris off your sister once and for all so that he absolutely definitely totally does not want to go out with her?’
Now this was possibly quite an unkind thing to do, and probably definitely unsisterly. I thought about it for a split moment and then said, ‘OK. What do you have in mind?’
Molly told me her Masterly Plan.
And I laughed too.
12
How to Desensitize Your Vet
Molly persuaded me to put her Masterly Plan into operation straight away while my extremely annoying and embarrassing older sister was watching telly. I agreed at once in case I thought about it too much and decided to change my mind.
Molly used the kitchen phone to ring the vets’ surgery.
‘Hello, may I please speak with Mr Nicholas Harris the vet, please,’ she said. She put on a posh telephone voice which was extremely EFFECTIVE and made her sound older and definitely maturer. ‘Oh, he’s out making house calls? Actually, would it be possible to contact him and ask him to make a house call here to my particular place of abode?’ Molly was possibly slightly overdoing the posh telephone voice, but I thought she must know what she was doing. ‘Thank you so much. It’s my puppy you see – Honey. Yes, Honey Love, that’s the one. She’s ever so poorly and really I can’t see how I would get her in the car . . . so Mr Harris will be here shortly? Thank you so much. My name? Yes, certainly. It’s April Love.’