when his face was round the door. In spite of his rage, he knew something was not right here. This door should have been shut. Tibbles must have opened it. She must be trying to tempt him inside for reasons of her own. The prudent thing would be not to be tempted. But he had always wanted to explore the shop, and he was still very angry. To see what would happen, he pushed the door further open and let out another great throbbing growl at Tibbles.
At the sight and sound of him, Tibbles became a paper-thin archway of a cat, and her tail stood above in a desperate question mark. Was this a puppy or a monster? She was terrified. But she stood her ground because this was her chance to get rid of it.
Her terror gave Sirius rather an amusing sense of power. Slow and stiff-legged, he strutted into the room. Tibbles spat and drifted away sideways, so arched that she looked like a piece of paper blowing in the wind. Sirius saw she wanted him to chase her. Just for a moment, he did wonder how it would feel to take her arched and narrow back between his teeth and shake his head till she snapped, but he was sure she would jump out of reach somewhere before he could catch her. So he ignored her. Instead, he swaggered across the dusty floor to look at the objects piled by the walls and stacked on the shelves.
He sniffed them cautiously. What were these things? As curiosity gained the upper hand in him, his growl died away and the hair on his back settled down into glossy waves again. The things had a blank, muddy smell. Some were damp and pink, some pale and dry, some again shiny and painted in ugly grey-greens. They were something like the cups humans drank out of, and he thought they might be made of the same stuff as the dish labelled DOG in which Kathleen gave him his water. But Sirius could not have got his tongue into most of them. No human could have drunk out of any.
Then he remembered the thing on the living-room mantelpiece Kathleen had smashed that morning when she was dusting. It had held one rose. Duffie had been furious.
Sirius understood now. These things were rose-holders and they broke. Let a dog chase a cat among them and the result would be spectacular. Duffie would certainly carry out all her cold threats. It was clever of Tibbles.
Cautiously, carefully, walking stiff-legged in order not to knock anything, Sirius explored the two rooms thoroughly. He sniffed at rows of hand-thrown pottery. He nosed glaze. He investigated damp new clay. He put his feet on a stool to examine the pink and dusty wheel on which Duffie made the things, and snuffed at the oven where she fired them. That was a better smell than most. It brought a queer tinge of homesickness.
He went into the shop itself, where rows of shiny pots in dull colours waited for people to buy them. He did not find it very interesting. In fact, the whole place was rather a disappointment. It astonished him that even Duffie could find things like this important. But he was sure she did. The cold dusty smell of the place matched her personality.
Tibbles followed him about like a drifting outraged shadow. How could the creature resist chasing her to go sniffing about like this? But Sirius took no notice of her at all. When he had seen enough, he turned carefully and carefully pit-patted towards the open door. He was going back to the sofa.
It was too much for Tibbles. Determined to carry out her plan, she dashed at Sirius and clawed his face. Then she leapt for a high shelf in the place where pottery was stacked thickest.
That was her undoing. She was in too much of a hurry to judge her jump properly, or perhaps she was simply confident that Sirius would be blamed for anything that broke. She missed the space she was aiming for and collided with a mighty purple vase. Slowly and imposingly, the vase tipped over, knocked Tibbles sideways and fell into a heap of pots beneath. Tibbles just managed to hook her claws into the very end of the shelf, where she hung, scrabbling underneath the shelf for a foothold. Sirius bolted, with the smash ringing in his ears. He had a last sight of Tibbles desperately hanging and scrabbling, and the other end of the shelf tipping sharply upwards.
Sirius shot soundlessly across the living-room carpet. His hind legs were instinctively lowered and his tail wrapped under them. Duffie was pounding downstairs. From the shop came smash after crash after smash. Pots were sliding down the sloping shelf, over the helpless Tibbles, and breaking one upon another in a heap by the doorway.
As Duffie burst into the living-room, Sirius shot into the kitchen, shot across it to the space under the sink and crammed himself in behind the waste-bucket. Romulus was hiding there too. He spat half-heartedly at Sirius, but both of them knew the situation was too serious for fighting. They both crouched, trembling, packed side by side into the slimy space, listening to the dreadful noises from the shop.
In the heat of the moment, Sirius and Romulus found they were communicating with one another.
“What happened? What went wrong?”
“It was her fault. She jumped on a shelf. Everything fell off it.”
“She’s being killed. Do something!”
“You do something.”
It certainly sounded as if Tibbles was being killed. There was more heavy crashing, and cold high yelling from Duffie. After that came a dreadful screech, half cat, half human. Remus shot into the kitchen, a fat stripy streak of panic, and made for the waste-pail too. When he saw Sirius and Romulus already there, he stopped, looped into a frenzy, glaring.
“Help! Let me hide! She’s killing us!”
Duffie was now raving round the living-room. “Where’s that flaming CAT?”
At the sound, Remus somehow packed himself in beside Romulus, quivering as if there was a motor inside him. Sirius found himself being oozed out on the other side. “Hey!”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” shivered Remus. “Oh, ye gods!”
There was a scream like a steam-siren from the next room. Something crashed, probably a new rose-holder. “Damn!” yelled Duffie. “Got you, you fiend!” It was clear Tibbles had been caught. A heavy, sharp thumping began. It was as strong and regular as the noise Kathleen had made when she hung the carpets on the clothesline and beat them with a beater. Duffie yelled in time with the thumps, “I’ll – teach – you – to – break – my – pottery!”
Sirius found he could not have this. Whatever Tibbles deserved, it was not being beaten to death. His dog’s hatred of strife in his family fetched him out from under the sink. That, and a strong green sense of justice, sent him scampering to the living-room, followed by a gust of amazement from Remus and Romulus.
Duffie had her sandals planted wide apart on the hearthrug. She had Tibbles dangling wretchedly from one hand, curled as stiff and small as possible, while the other hand clouted away at Tibbles, hard and rhythmically. At the sight, Sirius’s green sense of justice became mixed with anger. He would dearly have liked to plant his jawful of white teeth in the bulging muscle of Duffie’s calf. He had to tell himself she would taste nasty, he wanted to bite her so much. He launched himself at Duffie instead, and managed to land hard against her stomach before he fell on the floor. Duffie staggered.
“Drat you, animal! Get away!”
Sirius got up and began to leap about Duffie, reaching for Tibbles and barking excitedly.
