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they had bought a cat.
    Rincemangle saw it first. He looked up from the football game and saw a big green eye watching them through the partly open door. He didn’t know it was a cat, but it looked like a fox, and he knew what foxes were like.
    ‘Run for your lives!’ he bellowed.
    Everyone saw the cat as it pushed open the door. With shrill cries of alarm several gnomes rolled back the carpet and opened the trapdoor to their underground homes, but they were too late. The cat trotted in and stared at them.
    ‘Stand still now,’ hissed Rincemangle. ‘He’ll get you if you move!’
    Fortunately, perhaps because of the way he said it, the gnomes stood still. Rincemangle thought quickly, and then ran to one of the toy cars the gnomes had been using. As the cat bounded after him he drove away.
    He wasn’t very good at steering, but managed to drive right out of the toy department before crashing the car into a display. He jumped out and climbed the stem of a potted plant just as the cat dashed up.
    Rincemangle the gnome climbed right up the potted plant just as the cat came scampering towards him. From the topmost leaf he was able to jump on to a shelf, and he ran and hid behind a stack of china plates – knocking quite a few down in the process, I’m sorry to say.
    After half an hour or so the cat got fed up and wandered off, and he was able to climb down.
    When he got back to the gnome home under the floorboards the place was in uproar. Some families were gathering their possessions together, and several noisy meetings were going on.
    He found Featherhead packing his belongings into an old tea caddy.
    ‘Oh hullo,’ he said. ‘I say, that was pretty clever of you leading the cat away like that!’
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Well, we can’t stay here now they’ve got a cat, can we?’ said Featherhead.
    But it was even worse than that, because very soon the nightwatchman who usually stayed downstairs came up and saw all the broken things on the floor, and he called the police.
    All the next day the gnomes tried to sleep, and when the store emptied for the night the head gnomes called them all together. They decided that the only thing to do was to leave the store. But where could they go?
    Rincemangle stood up and said: ‘Why don’t you go back and live in the country? That’s where gnomes used to live.’
    They were all shocked. One fat gnome said: ‘But the food here is so marvellous. There’s wild animals in the country, so I’ve heard tell, that are worse than cats even!’
    ‘Besides,’ someone else said, ‘how would we get there? All three hundred of us? It’s miles and miles away!’
    Just then two gnomes burst in dragging a saucer full of blue powder. It smelt odd, they said. They’d found it in the restaurant.
    Rincemangle sniffed at it. ‘It’s poison,’ he said. ‘They think we’re mice! I tell you, if we don’t leave soon we’ll all be killed.’
    Featherhead said: ‘I think he’s right. But how can we leave? Think of the roads we’d have to cross, for one thing!’
    As the days passed things got worse and worse for the gnomes. Apart from the cat, there were nightwatchmen patrolling the store after everyone had gone home, and the gnomes hardly dared to show themselves.
    But they couldn’t think of a way to leave. None of them fancied walking through the city with all its dangers. There were the lorries that delivered goods every day, but only a few brave gnomes were prepared to be a stowaway on them – and, besides, no one knew where they would stop.
    ‘We will have to take so much with us!’ moaned the Head Gnome, sitting sadly on an empty cotton reel. ‘String, and cloth, and all sorts of things. Food, too. A lot of the younger gnomes wouldn’t survive for five minutes in the country otherwise. We’ve had such an easy life here, you see.’
    Rincemangle scratched his head. ‘I suppose so, but you’ll have to give it up sooner or later. Where’s