"Look after my Pixiebell, won't you Andrew?"
   "Yes, Mrs Hoggett."
   "Don't let anything happen to her while I'm away. Ooh, you are such a cute little thing, yes you are, yes you are." Mrs Hoggett blew raspberries on the little kitten's tummy before handing her over to Andrew.
   "I'm sure we'll be fine."
   "Yes, I'm sure you will. Train her to use the litter tray, won't you?"
   "Everything will -"
   "And keep her away from the furniture. I don't want to have to teach her again when I get back."
   "She'll be the most -"
   "It should only be a few weeks; such an awkward time for my father to take a turn."
   "I hope he's feeling -"
   "Goodbye, Andrew. Goodbye little schnookumwoo. I'll see you when I get back." And with that, she was gone.
   Andrew closed the front door and held the little kitten up in front of his face. It looked at him with big eyes and beeped. Andrew smiled.
   "Well, hungry? How about some PAL? We'll make a man out of you yet, Pixiebell."

   Her gaze followed the moth around the room until it landed on Boris, sound asleep under Andrew's chair as he typed. She crept behind Andrew's typewriter, rubbing her tabby tail against the back of the old machine, and fell silently to the floor. Boris twitched and mumbled in his dog-dream and the moth spread its wings flat, trying to blend its bark colour into the coarse whiteness of Boris's coat.
   Pixiebell pounced.
   Boris yelped awake and snarled a vicious bull-terrier snarl he inherited from his mother. Pixiebell looked at him, moth flapping in her mouth.
   "Boris," Andrew warned. Pixiebell defied Boris with her huge green eyes, teasing him, daring him. "Leave her alone."
   Boris snapped at the little cat, teeth only barely short of her face. Pixiebell stood there, calm as the dead moth in her mouth - which she ate. Boris growled.
   Andrew picked her up by the scruff of the neck and looked into her enormous green eyes. "Leave Boris alone, or he'll eat you, I'm not kidding. Gee, you're getting big!" He set the little cat back on the windowsill so she could keep bug-duty and noticed his hand was covered with cat fur.

   "... a toddler saved from a burning caravan and, later in the news, where have ALL the little dogs gone?"
   "Boris, Pix, suppertime!"
   Boris arrived on cue, skidding sideways on the linoleum as he rounded the corner, ready to devour anything in a red bowl. The television suddenly changed channel.
   "Pix!" Andrew walked into the lounge room to pull her out of his chair, where he'd left the remote control. Only a chair coated in cat fur, no Pixiebell, no remote.
   "Pix?"
   "...just don't understand why so many pets have gone missing. Towser wouldn't run away, he loved it here. Why would someone want to..."
   The channel changed again as Andrew crouched to see under the sofa. He could see her eyes staring back at him. "I hope you're not chewing that. Come on you." Andrew reached under and dragged her out. The difference in her had really become noticeable in the past week. Her eyes were swollen, and she'd become very skinny. Andrew placed Pixiebell in front of her food and watched her eat, worried about the greenish patches of skin showing through her thin coat. Tomorrow, he decided, would be vet day.
   Boris growled in his bowl.

   Andrew's breath hung in his mouth like sewerage. He didn't understand why he kept dreaming about chemical warfare, but he hated it - the screams, the agony. He wouldn't be able to sleep for hours now.
   Voices were coming from the lounge room. Andrew crept quietly out of bed.
   "...with no alarm can be so easy to break into."
   "But my house has locks on every window."
   "It doesn't matter. Have you ever locked yourself out of the house, and had to find..."
   Andrew picked up the hall phone to use as a weapon and gently opened the door wider. The television lit up the room with flickering blue light.
   "...revolutionary ShadowGuard 2000, the most effective home security device today, can be yours for ten monthly instalments of..."
   He was sure he'd turned it off before he went to bed. As he reached down to hit the switch the channel changed. Andrew glanced around in the gloom and saw a shape sitting in his chair. "Pix?"
   The shape moved and Boris's face turned to look at Andrew.
   "Boris, not the home shopping network, it's bad for your brain." Andrew flicked the light on.
   Pixiebell blinked, eyes like enormous peas on the side of her head, and continued digesting Boris's crushed body. His dog head flopped lifelessly.
   Andrew let out an uncontrolled animal scream and threw the telephone at the cat. She leapt up, spindly and insect-like, onto the back of the chair, then sprang into the kitchen. Andrew howled after her, but the dog flap swung back and forth, signalling escape. He stood with the door open and screamed grief into the night.

   It was daylight by the time he finished burying Boris in the back yard. Andrew tapped the bowl of rat poison and PAL, calling for Pixiebell one last time and returned to the lounge room to clean up the blood.
   A strange frothy mass hung from the side of the television. Andrew at first thought it was Pixiebell's vomit or faeces, but on closer inspection he could see tiny things moving inside it. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He picked up the pewter-framed photo of Boris from the TV and stabbed the mass experimentally.
   Half a dozen mantis-like creatures fell onto the floor, some of which were obviously dead, but one flicked up like a flea and bit hard into Andrew's hand. He flicked it off and stomped on it, but it refused to crush. Andrew ran into the kitchen and returned with a can of insecticide.

   Mrs Hoggett looked obviously upset.
   "A lot of pets," Andrew continued, putting the shopping bag full of cans on his verandah. "Police seem to think the thieves have been getting in through pet flaps."
   "I'm so sorry about your dog. It must have been awful."
   "It was." Andrew flexed his aching hand and put the keys in the door.
   "My God, Andrew, did you hear that? Open the door!"
   Andrew carefully opened the door and peered in through the gap. A little ball of fur escaped past his feet and he pulled the door shut quickly.
   "My darling little thing!" Mrs Hoggett swept the kitten up in her arms. "You haven't changed a bit!"
   Andrew couldn't believe they could grow so fast. "Mrs Hoggett -"
   "Oh Andrew, she must have came in through the back." But he made sure everything was sealed up.
   "Yes, of course."
   "Schnooky wooky woo, aren't you? Yes you are."
   "Mrs Hoggett -"
   "Come around tomorrow, Andrew. I'll give you some money."
   "But -"
   "Schnookumwoo, wooky schnoo," Mrs Hoggett babbled at the kitten as she got back in her car.
   Andrew removed the cans of insecticide and pulled the tab on the first flea-bomb before quickly throwing it inside. He thought about how he was going to break into Mrs Hoggett's house tonight, and he felt for the gun in the back of his jeans. Where are you, Pixiebell?

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