He always fought against getting a bath, but not this time: he knew he had to get the matted gunk out of his fur, and he couldn’t do it by himself. It tasted salty for a start – really salty, like the time his human left the shopping unattended and the first thing Rex stole turned out to be a box of sea salt crystals. The taste had stayed with him for days.
The three humans around him were discussing how best to tackle his dilemma. He didn’t bother to pay any attention to what they were saying: it was all bad news. They came at him with a hose first. They took off his assistance dog harness and once his coat was wet, another of them started to apply a pinkish detergent. He didn’t like the smell but it was better than some soaps he’d had to suffer.
Shutting out the experience and going to his happy place; the one where he got to chew a large bone while lying on a bed of squirrel mafia he’d recently triumphed over. He tried to focus on the taste of the imaginary bone, but the sound of the cat laughing cut through his daydream. Snapping his eyes open once more, he spotted the cat. Unlike him, there wasn’t a trace of flour on its fur.
‘Dogs,’ the cat muttered, idly licking a paw, and wiping it around his ear. ‘So graceful, so lithe, so elegant. Wait, no, that’s cats, isn’t it? Dogs are little more than noise covered in dirt.’
Rex, despite having two set of hands on him lathering his coat with soapy suds, elected to kill the cat. The firefighters had positioned him so he was standing on all four paws, which made the transition from stationary to running a simple one.
However, the firefighters were not new to this game and had pinned his lead to the ground. Rex threw his weight forward, startling all three firefighters, but just as he left their hands on a straight-line trajectory to moggy murder, his lead reached its limit and his head stopped moving. There being nothing to equal out the kinetic energy of his forward thrust, his body spun around on the end of his lead to splat back down on the wet grass.
Ignoring the pain coming from his neck where his collar bit in, and from his hip where it hit the ground, Rex twisted around to curse the cat. Mr Fluffikins was no longer where he had been because his human had picked him up again.
‘Where did you get to, you naughty cat?’ cooed the cat’s human. ‘Oh, I can’t stay mad at you, you are just too gorgeous.’ The human was making kissy noises and stroking the cat’s head.
Rex was about to get back to his feet and bark his rage once more, but a whiff of something caught his nose and caused him to stop. He concentrated, drawing in a deep noseful of air which he held. Closing his eyes, he blocked out everything else and searched his memory. He knew the smell and it turned his stomach. It was coming from the cat’s human but hadn’t been there before. It was new, suggesting the human must have come into contact with it recently.
When he opened his eyes again, the cat and his human were gone, and the three firefighters were picking Rex up to finish the job of cleaning him. Obediently, though the cold water was beginning to penetrate the inner layer of his coat, he stood and let them finish the job. His canine brain generally thought in straight lines; conspiracy and intricately woven plots were beyond him. It had never stopped him from working out who the bad guy was though and there was something about the scent he just detected that tripped a switch in his head.
He would need to tell his human about it.
The Pudding Messiah
That it was salt got challenged and confirmed by only two of the bakers who refused to believe it and chose to dab their fingers in the crystals. Their opinion was sufficient to convince everyone else. The pallet of flour that had been on the forklift truck had not survived the ordeal of the marquee being washed down, but they had plenty more of it stored outside. They would have to open every bag to know if they were all the same, but it seemed likely they were.
Beefy, who appeared to be either the boss or just a spokesperson, said, ‘We’ll order new. Right now. And we’ll collect it ourselves.’
‘Who’s going to pay for that?’ wailed a ginger-haired man in the same baker’s white jacket and checked trousers. ‘I don’t think the venue is going to stump up the extra cash with that horrible midget Pumphrey in charge now.’
Beefy hadn’t thought of that, but while his eyes darted wildly about and he tried to stay on top of the situation, he said, ‘I’ll pay. At least … I’ve got a little set aside.’ He looked panicked suddenly, as if he’d blurted his initial response about paying for fifty-five yards worth of ingredients and was only now thinking about what that might cost.
‘I can put some money up,’ volunteered the calm woman. She was looking around at the rest of the bakers. ‘Come on
