Энн Файн: The Killer Cat Strikes Back

Ellie said nothing. I think, if I’m honest, the painting frightened her a little.

Then Ellie’s mother started wondering where to put it. (Pity she didn’t ask me. I would have told her, ‘How about straight in the dustbin?’)

But, no. She looked around. ‘What about up on the wall in here?’

I stared.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘It will look splendid. And everyone who visits the house can admire it.’

(Oh, yes. At their peril. )

But that’s what she did. She found a hook and nail, and hung her ‘Portrait of Tuffy’ just above the back of the sofa where everyone could admire it.

And where I could just reach it.

If I really stretched …

Whoops!

3: One little biff

OKAY, OKAY. SO clip my claws. I scratched the cat to pieces. For pity’s sake! If anyone had the right to scratch that painted cat’s eyes out, it was me.

And it was an accident. All I did was put out one of my sweet little paws to give the painting one little biff. Just to make myself feel better about it, you could say. How could you argue it was my fault that one of my claws caught in the thread of the canvas?

And got stuck.

No one could blame me for trying to pull my own paw free.

Over and over…

The picture did end up looking a bit of a mess, I have to admit. But I felt a whole lot better.

I sat on the wall outside and waited. The explosion came soon enough.

‘Look at this mess! My “Portrait of Tuffy” has been torn to bits!’

‘It’s in shreds! There are bits of painting all over the carpet!’

‘Not just on the carpet! Isn’t that a painted ear up on the dresser?’

‘And a bit of tail hanging off that lamp?’

‘I’ve found a paw on the window sill!’ wailed Ellie.

Oh, I certainly spread that ‘Portrait of Tuffy’ about. If anyone was ever going to hang what was left of it on the wall again, they’d have to give it a new name.

They’d have to call it ‘Battle’s End’. And guess who won?

Ellie picked up the frame with all the stringy bits hanging down. ‘Tuffy!’ she scolded as sternly as she could. ‘Look what you’ve done to Mummy’s very first painting! You’ve destroyed it.’

What a tragedy – I don’t think. And if you want my opinion, they won’t be howling with grief down at the Art Gallery, either, when they hear the news. Ellie’s mother might be clever enough to bring a dead car back to life for long enough to drive to her art class and back, but she can’t paint for toffee.

I can paint better than she can with my paws. And next time she leaves one of her nice new expensive blank white canvases about, I might just prove it to her.

Oh, yes. Indeed I might.

4: ‘A riot of beauty’

SO WHITEWASH MY whiskers! I took a short cut over her precious new canvas. I was in a hurry. How was I to know she’d left it for only a minute while she went back in the house to look for her paintbrush?

There it was, lying on the patio, all nice and flat and neat and white and clean and – well, yes – blank.

Ready to go, you could say.

I expect I just wasn’t thinking when I stepped in the tub of blue paint – by mistake – before running over the canvas to the gate.

And anyone could have been clumsy enough to knock over that tub of red paint when they ran back to check out that smell of fish round the dustbins.

How could it be my fault that one of my paws slid in the tub of yellow before I took a swipe at that butterfly? How was I to know I was going to get paint droplets all over?

And you certainly can’t blame me because my tail just happened to flick in the tub of green before I prowled round the ruined canvas a few times, dragging my tail behind me as I worried about the splatters.

Colourful, though. Cheerful. Rather fresh and ‘modern’.

Mrs Famous-Artist-To-Be wasn’t at all pleased. A brand-new canvas! Totally spoiled! Look at this mess! And I was planning to paint a lovely sunset on a lake under a hill of buttercups!’

Ellie stuck up for me. ‘Tuffy wasn’t being bad. He just got to the canvas first.’

I took a look at my handiwork. Ellie was right. Fancy a sunset? I had that giant streak of red. You want a lake? I had a splodge of blue. Buttercups? Plenty of droplets of yellow in that painting. On a hill? No worries. Tons of green.

I gave Our Lady of the Paintbrush a lofty stare. ‘That’s not a mess,’ the look said. ‘That is proper art.’

And Ellie clearly thought so too. She didn’t dare say a word until Mrs Picasso had driven off to her class. (Bang! Rattle! X@%∗%$! Phut! Cough!) But then Ellie said to her father, ‘I really like it. Can we hang it on the wall?’

Usually, he’d have more tact. But he’s still mad at her ladyship for not taking useful ‘Fix Your Rubbish Heap Car’ lessons instead of art. And he hates wasting anything, even a hook in a wall. So he picked up the painting and hung it up over the sofa.

Ellie stared at it with her hands clasped in wonder. (You have to hand it to that girl, she may be wet, wet, wet – but she is loyal.)

‘I’m going to call it “A Riot of Beauty”,’ she said.

I turned a critical eye on my first-ever work of art.

Not sure about the ‘Beauty’ bit. But liked the ‘Riot’.

Yes. Liked the ‘Riot’.

5: A droplet of advice

SO MRS Watch-My-Fingers-Weave-Enchantment comes home that afternoon with three manky lumps of dried mud.

(I kid you not. Dried lumps of mud. If they’d been green, you would have thought of them as giant bogeys.)

‘I didn’t have a canvas,’ she explained. (Frosty look at me – I just ignored it.) ‘So I moved on to pottery.’