AniMalcolm. David Baddiel

      “Well, Malc …” said Jackie.

      “Mum!”

      “Sorry.”

      “I’ve told you, Mum.”

      Malcolm didn’t like being called Malc. He wasn’t sure why. Possibly because it rhymed with talc, and thus made him think of talcum powder, which was something he had once seen his grandpa putting down his pants.

      “Sorry, M.”

      That was what his mum, who liked to give her children nicknames, sometimes called him instead of Malc. Malcolm was all right with that.

      “He’s a chinchilla,” she continued.

      “And not just any chinchilla!” said Stewart. “He’s an Andean Lanigera!”

      “Pardon?” said Malcolm.

      “That’s the breed. It means he’s from the Andes, in South America. That’s the best type! The ones that make perfect pets!!”

      Malcolm looked down at the little creature.

      It was mainly white, with bits of speckled grey round its nose. It had round, sticky-out ears and a big fluffy tail. It was sitting up on its back legs looking up at him, hopefully.

      The chinchilla, like Malcolm, had very blue eyes. Those blue eyes seemed to widen as they saw Malcolm, like the animal had realised, instinctively, exactly whose pet it was meant to be.

      Malcolm looked back at the chinchilla.

      It could have been a special moment. A moment when boy and chinchilla, chinchilla and boy, could really have bonded.

      Time stretched, as blue eyes met blue eyes, through the bars of the little cage.

      But then, Malcolm turned away, shaking his head and tutting.

      “Right … OK …” he said. “So where’s … my Apache 321?!”

      

      “Your what?” said Malcolm’s dad.

      “My laptop that I asked for! I wrote it on my birthday list and everything!!”

      “Sorry, Malcolm,” said his mum, “what birthday list?”

      “The one I stuck up on the kitchen wall!”

      “Oh …” said Malcolm’s sister, Libby, in her bored voice, which was the one she used most of the time, when not cooing over cute animals. “I think Ticky may have ripped that down a few days ago. When she was play-fighting with Tacky …”

      “The cats ripped down my birthday list? So where is it now?”

      “I think … Chewie may have eaten it …?” said his dad.

      “The dog ate my birthday list?”

      “Either the dog or the hamster.”

      “Marvin wouldn’t eat that,” said Grandpa. “Would play havoc with his digestion.”

      “Actually, I think I may have put it on the floor of the iguana’s cage. Sorry, Malc … olm,” said his mum. “Only I didn’t realise that’s what it was. I just thought it was some bits of paper. And you know how ’Nana likes to scratch around in bits of paper.”

      “But …” said Malcolm, getting more and more frustrated, “… we’ve already got loads of animals! We’ve got two cats, a dog, a hamster and an iguana. Which most people would say is enough pets.”

      “M!” said Jackie. “You can’t have enough pets.”

      “Exactly! I agree!” said Stewart.

      “Yeah. YOLO,” said Libby, who used a lot of these acronyms.

      “Yes, siree!” said Grandpa Theo.

      “I want to eat him!” said Bert.

      Even the chinchilla seemed to nod, its enormous ears flapping up and down as it stared quizzically at Malcolm from inside its sparkling new cage, which had a water bottle attached to the outside, and a running wheel and a mirror inside.

      “Right,” said Malcolm. “Let’s just look at that statement for a moment. You can’t have enough pets. So … if we had 700 cats, and 800 dogs, and five – I don’t know if you can keep them as pets, but I imagine if you could, you, Mum, would soon be off to the pet shop to get them – giraffes … would that be enough pets?”

      “Well,” said Stewart. “As long as they were all house-trained.”

      “I don’t think we could get a litter tray big enough for that many cats and dogs, Stewart,” said Jackie. “To say nothing of the giraffes.”

      Grandpa frowned. “I wouldn’t like to see a giraffe use a litter tray, even if it was big enough.” He shook his head. “Bottoms too far off the ground.”

      “TD,”¹ said Libby.

      “Hello?” said Malcolm. “Are we seriously discussing the pros and cons of getting 700 cats, 800 dogs and five giraffes now?”

      But this question was never answered. Because the chinchilla – who later that day would be christened Chinny Reckon, by Stewart, after a funny phrase he used to say at school, in the 1970s – started running on the running wheel.

      “OMGTT!”² said Libby, crouching down next to the cage. “That’s soooooooooooo cute!!”

      “Look at his little nose!” said Stewart.

      “And his adorable enormous ears!” said Jackie.

      “Actually, he doesn’t look much like Lord Kitchener …” said Grandpa Theo.

      “I want to eat him!” said Bert.

      Eleven-year-old Malcolm watched the chinchilla running in its wheel for a moment. The chinchilla looked back at him, but kept running, almost as if it wanted Malcolm to be impressed.

      “Look!” said Jackie. “He loves you!”

      Malcolm looked at his family, clucking and cooing over the new pet. A part of him wanted to join them, to be in that group hug round the cage. But another part of him couldn’t.

      “Yes,” said Malcolm quietly. “Thing is, I don’t love him …” And, for extra emphasis (a bit like The Terminator, in one of Malcolm’s favourite films, does when he says Hasta la vista), he said it again, but in Spanish, a language he had just started to learn at school: “Yo no lo amo.”

      As ever, when he tried to tell his family how he felt about animals, no one seemed to hear him. So he sighed and turned away, and walked down the hallway towards his bedroom, passing on his way the family’s two cats, Ticky and Tacky, their dog Chewie, their hamster Marvin and their iguana, Banana.

      As it happened, someone in the living room had heard him. Someone with enormous ears; someone who could hear words even when they were said quietly. Someone who, when Malcolm said, “Yo no lo amo,” stopped running on his wheel, got off, and went and sat in the corner of the cage, facing the wall.

      

      Malcolm lay back on