Hamster shuffled up to the podium and peered over it to look at the sparse audience that had gathered. Rabbit was nursing a cloudy pint in one paw, and loosely holding a smouldering cigar in the other – making small efforts now and then to look over at the stage to feign interest. Goldfish, who had just been wheeled into the auditorium in her glass bowl, was swimming in anxious circles, stopping only to let out a gulping sigh. Snake was coiled round a bag of nuts, the dark slits of their eyes fixed on the clock on the wall.

Cat was the only one who seemed interested, her ears turned towards the podium where Hamster stood leafing through a stack of papers, his pink nose crinkling as he eyed certain pages. His searching hands came to rest on one of the papers, and he plucked it from the stack before clearing his throat.

“Thank you all for coming to this weeks Pet Peeves assembly! I know it is quite a hassle for some of you to get here, especially those of us with little ones – congratulations on the litter Rabbit!” He said, smiling over at Rabbit who just shrugged and took another swig from his pint and a languid drag from his cigar.

After pausing to wait in vain for a response from Rabbit, hamster continued, “Anyhow, let us get straight to business. I have the write up here from some of your letters that came in last week – and let me tell you we have some very alarming points to cover tonight. Firstly, we have a complaint here from Snake about their owner, a little boy – Timmy is it?” Snake hissed in confirmation, “yes well, Snake, it says here that Timmy has been taunting you?”

“Yesss” Snake hissed, eyes narrowing from the mere mention of the boy’s name.

“May I ask…taunting you how, exactly?” Hamster said.

“He leaves the lid off my enclosure sometimes…and sometimes I want to eat him. I’ve only sized him up a few times, and all I’ll say is that I could definitely eat that boy if it came to it.”

“If it came to it?”

“Yes, if he continues to taunt me.”

“Right, have you considered, Snake, that maybe the boy is a little forgetful in his duties as an owner? I don’t think Timmy is challenging you to eat him, wouldn’t you say that is a bit of a stretch?”

A sly grin spread across Snake’s mouth, “The only stretch is the one I’ll be doing to get my jaw ready to unhinge for that little–”

“Okay I hear you loud and clear, Snake!” interrupted Hamster, searching his notes hurriedly for the next entry. He turned to Cat, who was the nearest to him in the audience, and gestured to her as he adjusted his reading glasses.

“This is from, Cat, who has written in to raise an issue regarding food shortages in her house, and she has requested me to open this up to the club to hear of any similar experiences?” Hamster said, looking from one disinterested face to the other in the crowd.

A few murmurs, but not much else. Cat sighed quietly and gingerly preened the fur on her shoulder, stopping after a few licks to speak.

“It’s quite awful,” she took a moment to gaze expectantly behind her at the others, “you see they feed me in the mornings, but even then, I have to wait for them to wake up, which is sometimes as late as 6am!

“And you wouldn’t believe how slowly the hours go by before I even catch a whiff of lunch, sometimes it feels like bloody weeks, I tell you! And yes, dinner does come eventually but oh do they make me beg for it. They’ll have me meowing and begging like some common alley cat looking for scraps. Well, this is why I have concluded that there simply must be a global food shortage of some sort, if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt that is.”

She was looking at Hamster now, expecting some sort of affirmation he supposed, but while she had been nattering on, he’d drifted off in thought. Being the head of the Pet Peeves Club had been a long-held dream of his, a point of pride in truth, but it had never left much room for his own qualms to be aired. He had to be the ear and the voice of this community, and that meant shelving his own sorry business. Namely his wheel dilemma.

Almost a year to the day, his beloved wheel had stopped spinning. His life had quite literally revolved around that apparatus, and when it broke – well, life had stopped for him altogether. He drank his water and ate his pellets every day, but without his wheel he had grown bitter and resentful. He looked out at the sorry gathering of pets before him and in that moment found some faint resolve, some beginnings of an idea. He pulled a paper clip from the stack of papers, and absent-minded began to straighten out the metal to a point.

All they need is a purpose, and someone to give it to them. Once they have that…well who will need owners then?