Guinea Pigs Online (2 page)

2

Guinea Pigs Wanted

T
he next morning Coco was rudely awoken from her beauty sleep by the sound of singing. She peeped out from under the straw and stared in amazement.

After what Ben had said about Fuzzy’s cooking, Coco had expected
to find him moping around the hutch, feeling sorry for himself, but instead he was racing around the rug, squeaking away loudly to a tune on Radio 2 as if nothing had happened. The Blisses had left the radio on by mistake.

“I wish to goodness,” she complained, reaching out a delicate paw and helping herself to a dainty morsel of fresh grass, “you would stop. One feels a headache coming on.”

“I can’t stop,” Fuzzy squeaked, dancing a little jig in time to the music. “Something wonderful has
happened. Something marvelous. Something I’ve always dreamed of.”

“The Queen has a new hat?” Coco suggested, stretching her toes and clambering out of bed.

“No!” Fuzzy tried not to sound exasperated. “Better than that.”

Coco gasped. What could be better than the Queen’s new hat?

“Scarlet Cleaver”—Fuzzy rubbed his paws together in glee—“the world’s greatest cook, is opening a restaurant, right here in Strawberry Park. It’s going to be called the Meat Cleaver.”

“That’s a horrible name for a restaurant,” Coco said. “And it’s a stupid idea. Strawberry Park’s got about three thousand restaurants already.” She strongly disapproved of Scarlet Cleaver who, unlike the Queen, always wore very revealing dresses.

“
And
,” continued Fuzzy, ignoring her, “she wants guinea pigs.”

“Rubbish!” retorted Coco, who suddenly felt a little jealous.

“It’s not rubbish. I saw an ad on the newspaper under the hay.” Fuzzy was beginning to feel quite cross with
Coco. “‘Guinea pigs wanted: Good money paid’—that’s what it said.”

“You’re making it up,” Coco sneered.

“That’s rich, coming from you!” Fuzzy chattered, almost losing his temper. He took a deep breath. “Don’t you see, Coco? It’s my chance to learn to cook things properly for Ben and Henrietta. I’m going to volunteer!” He turned the radio up and wiggled his bottom in time to the music.

“Hush!” Coco sat back and scratched her rosettes. She had the feeling something wasn’t quite right. “One can’t think straight with that racket!” Fuzzy was being deliberately
annoying. He
knew
she preferred harp sonatas.

Fuzzy groaned. Reluctantly he turned the radio, which was on the floor next to Henrietta’s yoga mat, down a bit, twisting the volume knob with his paws.

Coco was quiet for a moment. Suddenly she started giggling. “You are silly, Fuzzy!” Coco laughed. “Scarlet Cleaver doesn’t want
real
guinea pigs; she wants
people
to be ‘guinea pigs.’”

“How can a person be a guinea pig?” Fuzzy asked, puzzled.

“Being a ‘guinea pig’ means trying something out.” Coco let herself out of the cage and sauntered toward him, fluffing her whiskers.

“So why get a human to be a guinea pig when a guinea pig can be a guinea pig?” Fuzzy couldn’t understand it.

Coco looked at him with some sympathy. He really wasn’t very clever. “It’s an
expression
, silly. Humans use them all the time. It’s like when Henrietta calls us chalk and cheese. We’re not really chalk and cheese, are we? It just means we’re completely
different.” She helped herself to some of Henrietta’s special hand cream, which was lying on the floor next to the yoga mat.

“Of course,” she added, “when one is brought up at Buckingham Palace, that’s the sort of thing one learns. Rather like the harp.”

Fuzzy bit his tongue.

“Anyway,” Coco continued unkindly, “you can’t cook. Ben said so, remember? So even if Scarlet Cleaver
did
want guinea pigs, she wouldn’t want you. Now let’s forget all about it, and listen to something decent”—
she twiddled the tuning knob—“like a harp sonata.”

It was too much for Fuzzy. “Stop going on about the harp!” He snapped the radio off.

“I beg your pardon!” Coco cried, offended.

“I said, stop going on about the harp. And the Queen. And her hats.” His nose was twitching furiously. “Face it, Coco, you never lived at Buckingham Palace. You’ve never met the Queen. You can’t play the harp. You come from a normal family and you were dumped, just like me.”

Coco stared at him in dismay. “Fuzzy! How could you say such cruel things?” Her voice quivered. “You’ve hurt my feelings.” (It didn’t occur to silly Coco that she might have hurt Fuzzy’s feelings as well.)

Fuzzy didn’t apologize. He started pulling the jump toward the computer desk.

Coco followed reluctantly with the squashy cushion. She didn’t ask what he was doing.

“Bounce me up,” he ordered.

“Bounce me up,
please
,” she said sulkily, taking a running jump.

“If Scarlet Cleaver wants guinea pigs,” Fuzzy muttered crossly, arriving on the desk and surveying the computer screen, “that’s exactly what she’s going to get.” He started to tap at the keys.

Coco didn’t hear him. She had retired to the hall closet to dry her eyes on the stack of quilted toilet paper rolls Henrietta kept there.

That night, instead of snuggling up beside each other as they usually did when the Blisses got home, Fuzzy and Coco, both still not
squeaking to each other, went to bed at opposite ends of their hutch.

3

Gone!

T
he next morning when Coco woke up and felt the sun warming her back through the window the first thing she decided was to let Fuzzy apologize to her. She’d had a horrible dream about him running away to become a chef and leaving her all alone, which had
made her feel quite miserable.

“Fuzzy?” she called.

There was no reply.

She looked around the hutch.

He wasn’t there.

Coco got up and opened the door of the hutch. “Fuzzy?” she called again. “Fuzzy?” She peered out. He wasn’t on the rug or beside the yoga mat.
The radio was off. “Where are you?” Perhaps, Coco thought, Fuzzy was still asleep and she hadn’t noticed him. She rummaged in the hay where he usually slept.

Fuzzy wasn’t there either. Instead she found herself gazing at a newspaper advertisement.

Scarlet Cleaver gazed back at her, a chopping knife in her hand. Coco’s heart missed a beat.

“Guinea Pigs Wanted,” she read. “Any variety.
Good money paid.” The rest was torn off.

So Fuzzy was right, Coco thought. Scarlet Cleaver
did
want real guinea pigs. But why on earth would she?

Suddenly she felt really anxious. “FUZZY?” she cried. She waited a few minutes, but there was no reply. Coco’s whiskers drooped. “He’s gone,” she whispered.

Desperately Coco checked to see if perhaps Fuzzy had gone off to sleep in one of his favorite places. But no, he wasn’t curled up on the beanbag where Henrietta sat talking to her
mother during the summer. (Her mother was an Antarctic explorer and couldn’t be contacted during the winter.) Neither was Fuzzy dozing in the sack of new hay, which stood by the back door. Nor was he snoozing in the basket in front of the fireplace. (This was almost Fuzzy’s favorite place in the entire world; it could only be improved on when Ben was on the sofa and then Fuzzy could doze on Ben’s lap.)

Coco looked, but she knew in her heart that Fuzzy wasn’t in any of these places. She knew that he was
no longer in the house. Feeling glum, she made her way to the cat door, which had been put in by the previous owners of the house and was the guinea pigs’ passage to the garden. Hoping that Fuzzy might just have
gone for a walk, she pushed her way out. Soon Coco was out in the open and sniffing the fresh spring air.

It was not a very well-kept garden. The Blisses were not exactly
keen
gardeners. They felt keen when they woke up on a sunny Sunday morning and they would rush out and buy some pretty plants and pop them into the soil, but by coffee time they would have flopped on the old wooden bench, gazing into each other’s eyes. As a result the garden consisted of drooping flowers, uncut lawn and a wild hedge. The guinea pigs didn’t
mind about the mess. When they got the chance to sneak out into the garden they would snuffle around, looking for comfy spots and tasty morsels.

Today, though, Coco didn’t feel hungry, not even for dandelions. She had to find Fuzzy. But she knew even as she looked in all their favorite places, it was no good. He wasn’t in the garden either.

Memories of the day before filled her mind: Scarlet Cleaver . . . guinea pigs wanted . . . She had laughed at Fuzzy and said unkind things. Now
he had disappeared. He’d gone to Scarlet Cleaver’s new restaurant; Coco was sure of it. That’s what he’d been doing at the computer—looking up the directions. It was all her fault! It didn’t matter anymore that Fuzzy had been unkind too. All she wanted was for him to come back. He was her best friend.

She had to go after him! But she had no idea where the restaurant was, except that it was somewhere in Strawberry Park, along with the other 2,999 places to eat. Fuzzy had torn off the address from the
newspaper in the hutch—she had seen that already.

Suddenly she had an idea. She scuttled over to the garden fence, which, luckily, had a panel missing.

“Yoo-hoo!” she called into next door’s garden.

“Is that you, Coco?” cooed a honeyed voice in reply.

“Yes, Banoffee, it is one. Have you got a minute?”

Banoffee was the guinea pig who lived next door. She had gotten her name because she was banana-colored
on her back and toffee-colored on her tummy. Her hutch was up against the fence and had a loose panel at the back, so Banoffee could slide it back whenever she wanted a chat with Coco.

“Do you want me to do your hair?” asked Banoffee excitedly as soon as she saw Coco. (Banoffee
loved
doing hair.)

“No, thanks, I’m growing it for a change,” said Coco.

“A quick plait then?” Banoffee suggested, whipping out her comb.

“Look, I don’t have time to talk hairstyles today, Banoffee!” Coco exclaimed impatiently. “I’ve got a terrible problem: Fuzzy has gone!”

And she quickly explained to Banoffee about Scarlet Cleaver and the ad in the newspaper, and how Fuzzy had answered it thinking it meant real guinea pigs, although she left out the bit about her teasing him and being mean because she was embarrassed.

“One feels he’s in danger and one must go and help him.”

“Absolutely,” said Banoffee sagely. “Do you want me to act as your double while you’re gone?”

“No, no,” said Coco quickly. Ben and Henrietta would never fall for that. Banoffee looked nothing like her. “But I do need your help.”

“Of course,” said Banoffee. She grabbed one of Coco’s front paws. “Do you want me to do your nails? I’ve heard you should always look your best at a restaurant.”

“No!” squealed Coco, nearly
overbalancing. “I need to borrow one of your children.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” replied Banoffee cheerfully, letting go. “That’s easy. Who do you want? I’ve got fourteen here at the moment.”

Banoffee was a wonderful mother, which was just as well, because her owners were very keen on her having children. They sold some of them
and kept others, so at any one time Banoffee had at least a dozen children living either with her or in the next hutch.

“I need one who’s good at technology,” Coco explained grandly. “I need to get on the In-ter-net—like Fuzzy does—to find out the address of the restaurant and how to get there.”

“I see,” said Banoffee. “Well, I can’t
let you have any of the little ones. They were only born last week and their feet won’t be strong enough to work the keyboard. How about Terry? He’s a wizard at computers. He’s managed a Wi-Fi connection in the hutch.”

From the house came the sound of music. It was Wednesday—the Blisses’ day off—and Ben and Henrietta always played a few tracks while they
were getting dressed, to get them in the mood for the cha-cha-cha, which they were learning at the town hall. Coco knew she had to get back in the hutch before they discovered that BOTH their beloved pets were gone.

“Thanks, Banoffee! Send him over later,” she said hurriedly, scampering away. “After Ben and Henrietta go out for their dancing class.”

Coco raced across the garden, back through the cat door and dove into the hutch. She pushed a pile of hay into the corner of the hutch, hoping the Blisses would think Fuzzy
was still asleep. Ben would be terribly upset if he found out he was missing. Coco lay next to the pile of hay, pretending to sleep, trying to hide her breathlessness.

Ben approached the cage, frowning, but he barely even looked inside. Instead he called out woefully, like a man who’s just got a parking ticket:

“Oh no. Not this. Please . . . Henrietta!”

(Obviously not everyone who has a parking ticket calls out “Henrietta!,” only those with wives named Henrietta.)

“Fuzzy’s gotten out!”

Coco thought Ben must be awfully clever to know that Fuzzy had gotten out without looking.

It was then that she realized that she’d forgotten to shut the door of the hutch.