Read The Dog that Dumped on my Doona for Free Online

it stopped, its stomach wobbled on for another two or three minutes.
    I had a theory. Beneath the cat’s obese exterior a slim and supple beast was trying to get out. Given its size, maybe two or three slim and supple beasts. I had visions of before-and-after photographs. One looking like a tortoiseshell cow-pat, the other on a beach with a six-pack and a bikini. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But I reckoned someone should care about the strain being placed on the cat’s heart by its unnatural girth.
    Maybe Mrs Bird felt that way occasionally, because she had been known to pay to have the cat exercised.
    I knocked on the door and waited for her to answer. This took ten minutes. Like her cat, Mrs Bird was not known for quick or sudden movements. Finally though, the door creaked open and her face appeared, her hooked nose like a blade arcing towards me from a nest of wrinkles. She smiled and the wrinkles writhed like something insane.
    â€˜Hello, Sonny,’ she said. She called everyone Sonny. Maybe because she was so old, it was the only name she could keep in her head.
    â€˜Hello, Mrs Bird,’ I said. ‘I wondered if you’d like me to take Tiggles for a walk.’ That was the cat’s name. Tiggles.
    â€˜I think I might be short of cornflakes,’ said Mrs Bird.
    That was the other thing about Mrs Bird. Short. Birdlike. And stone-deaf. It took me another five minutes to make her understand what I meant.
    â€˜That is very kind of you, Sonny,’ she said. ‘I will pay you, of course.’
    â€˜Only if you insist, Mrs Bird,’ I replied.
    â€˜About half-past eleven,’ she said.
    I sighed. You couldn’t afford to worry too much about time when you were having a conversation with Mrs Bird.
    I snapped the lead to the front frame of the treadmill in our garage, keeping my fingers well away from Tiggles. It couldn’t waddle two paces if you put a fresh salmon in front of it, but if your flesh was within striking distance of its paws it’d lash out at the speed of light.
    I had a theory about that as well. I reckoned that its size made it unhappy and depressed. It couldn’t be easy being a slim and supple beast trapped inside the body of a walrus. I’d lash out as well.
    Once the mog was secure I plugged in the treadmill and put the machine on a programmed incline. When I pressed the start button, the cat moved down the belt until the lead started to choke it.
    I had done this before. It was an idea born out of desperation. The first couple of times I had walked it, the cat didn’t move. Went limp and unresisting. I hadn’t taken it for a walk. I’d taken it for a drag. The animal was so heavy it was like dragging a furry cannonball along the street. I ran out of energy while Tiggles didn’t use any at all. This was not the idea.
    Then I remembered the treadmill in our garage. It was never used. When I first stuck the cat on the moving treadmill, it just slid down the belt and got dumped on the floor. I had worked on the idea it wouldn’t like ending up as a splat on the tiles, but I hadn’t realised how stubborn it was when it came to exercise.
    So I kept it attached to the lead. Now it had a choice. Walk or die of strangulation.
    I know what you’re thinking. This is cruel. This is nasty. Normally, I’d agree.
    But wouldn’t it be more cruel to allow it to slowly inflate like a cat-shaped balloon? At some point it would explode and I didn’t want to be around when that happened. The mess would be spread around the entire neighbourhood. Buildings within the blast radius could be destroyed. No. Enforced exercise was better than no exercise at all. The way I looked at it, I was saving its life.
    I didn’t give Tiggles more than half an hour. I was worried its heart would give out. When I switched the machine off it slumped down on the mat into what looked like a coma. But I was prepared for this as well. I got a large