The Killer Cat Strikes Back

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’.