About a year after Mummy went nuts, Walker began to sneak out of the house at night.

“Chicks to see,” he explained to me one day, as we lay sprawled and lifeless across the couches, listening to the lilting sounds of Mummy’s oral self-flagellation, echoing up the stairs.

“You?” I snorted. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t know what to do with a female if she ran up and bit you.”

Walker smiled from where he had hung his head upside down over the edge of the couch, showing all his white teeth. “Most of them do just that.”

“You don’t say,” I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t have the energy to move. When had we last been fed? I wondered idly.

Walker, though, didn’t need any food to fuel his excitement that night, as he prepared for his date. Despite my following him from room to room, keeping up a non-stop diatribe of just how stupid I considered my older brother to be, and how Mummy would wake at any hour of the day or night and would no doubt notice his absence from our home that very evening, Walker refused to recant his amorous intentions. As midnight neared, my nagging took on a frantic tone, but I couldn’t reign it in. I continued to follow him and yap out my censure.

Suddenly, Walker turned on me, a growl tearing from his throat as he pinned me to the ground.

“Dezi,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m going. And you are keeping your pampered little mouth shut while I’m gone. Got it?”

My eyes bulged in terror. I unconsciously licked my lips repeatedly and tried to smile my acquittance up at him. He just glared and waited.

“But Mummy is going to wake up and see that you’re gone,” I wailed, and he released me in disgust, before shaking his hair back into place as though nothing rough had just taken place.

“If she comes up the stairs,” Walker called over his arse as he strode purposefully to the front door, “just pretend you can see me. No doubt, she’ll see me, then, too.”

I ran to the window and watched as my idiot brother ran to meet up with a beautiful blonde girl, crouched hidden behind Mummy’s car. I gasped as I recognized her pretty face. It was Zoey! Mummy used to care for her, back when she was healthy, before she lost her mind.

Fucking Zoey, I fumed. She knew our Mummy was sick. What was she doing here?!?

I could tell by the way Walker was tiptoeing around the beautiful blonde that he had no idea who she was. What an idiot, I thought to myself as I watched them through the window. I thought dogs never forget a smell? Well, this one did. The twat.

As they ran off to play in the park together, I sank alone into my dog bed, growling at one of the cats to get her arse out of my bed before I tore out her throat. She didn’t budge, of course, so I crawled in with her and heaved a giant sigh.

“I hope you get caught, Walker, you asshole,” I whispered into the dark living room. The cat rested her head on my shoulder, purring contentedly, and before I could help myself, I was asleep.