I, Houdini

I first tried this out when he had me in his bed one night. I think I dimly realised even then that he was disobeying his Mother, when he stealthily carried me up the darkened stairway into his room. There he switched on a torch under the bedclothes and trained it on me while I scurried about in the soft, warm caves, looking, as ever, for a way out. Finally he tired of this game and scooped me up in his hand, dangling me over the edge of the bed. That was when, sensing his slight uneasiness, I tried out my little jump.

It worked splendidly. In another moment I was on the floor – I landed quite well for a novice, rolling over once to break my fall – and the next second I was bolting for the fireplace.

What made me go for that, I don’t know. In a newer sort of house (such as I spent some time in later) I would have found my way blocked by some gas or electrical barrier. But this was an old house, and the original fireplaces were still there. No fire, of course; but a grate, and the iron bars the fire is made on. I got down through a broken bar and lay in the ashy darkness while poor Adam scampered round with his torch, fruitlessly hunting for me. I heard him desperately whispering, “Goldy! Goldy!” My sympathy was aroused, for I knew he would get into trouble; but I was not going to let myself be ‘binned’ again just for that.

I lay still. I’d learnt that they could often locate me by sound. After a while, the poor child crept back into bed. I heard him sniffing to himself a bit. Then the torch went off, and all was quiet.

I quietly climbed through the gap on to the bars, and from there I made my way to the corner at the back of the fireplace. The bricks were rough and covered with old soot and cinders clinging to the wall. Just for fun, I began to climb, all my four feet outspread, clinging with all my claws – rough surface or not, it was sheer. Up and up I climbed, until I found myself on a little sloping ledge. I didn’t realise I was right up inside the chimney. I could feel cold air coming down and, by looking up, I could see vast distances into a starry sky. I’d never seen outdoors before, even through a window. It frightened me – yes. But it intrigued me too.

I couldn’t sleep on this ledge, and I didn’t fancy climbing any higher, so I slid down again into the grate. Then I began to explore the room.

Young as I was, I knew where the entrance to the room was because of the draught of air blowing under the door. I knew that through there lay absolute freedom. I snuffled the length of the draught and, finding a crack that led upward, decided that was the place to chew. I settled down to it. The carpet was easy and I soon had a pile, almost as big as myself, of red fluff heaped around me. Finding this didn’t open the door, I began on the wood of the door itself.

A grown-up would have woken at the gnawing noise I was making, but Adam slept placidly on, snoring slightly. It was lovely to gnaw. I hadn’t realised the joy of it till I really got down to it. I loved the feeling of the hard, resistant wood, gradually being worn away by my teeth, and wearing the teeth away at the same time – something that must happen if my teeth, which grow all the time, are not to grow right through my cheeks and lips. I had no notion, of course, that I was doing any wrong. I gnawed until I had quite forgotten what I was trying to do. The gnawing became an end in itself.

At last I sensed that morning was coming. I was healthily and happily tired – and frightfully thirsty of course. I could smell water in the room and soon traced it to its source. It was on a wooden chair beside Adam’s bed. That chair was no easy matter to climb, for its legs were smooth and it had only one bar. Four or five times I fell back before I finally made it to the seat, but there was my reward – a mug of water. It was too tall for me to rink out of easily, so I stood erect and put my front paws on to the rim.

In another moment I was on the floor, soaked to the skin.

It gave me a fright, I can tell you. Of course I know better now than to tip a full mug of water over myself. And I hadn’t even had a drink! Luckily Adam sleeps like a log. Despite the clatter he just grunted, rolled over – and silence fell once more; so I was able to creep back to the leg of the chair and drink as much as I liked from the little trickle that was still pouring from above like a hamster-sized waterfall.

Feeling, despite my few blunders, quite satisfied with my night’s work, I now returned to the grate and made myself a scratch-nest among the ancient ashes, which were remarkably snug and comfortable. I could have done with some protection overhead when full daylight came and I can’t say I slept well. In any case I was soon woken by the most fearful hullabaloo. This was because Mark had found I was not in the bin. Suspicion at once fell on Guy (suspicion always tends to fall on Guy because he’s naturally mischievous) but Adam, though, as I’ve said, not an entirely truthful boy, was not one to stand by and see his little brother falsely accused. I’m pleased to say he owned up. After that the entire family descended on his room – and then the real ructions began.

I had already picked up some of their speech, so I can give more or less verbatim the scene that followed.

“Crumbs, what’s all this mess by the door?”

“Look at the carpet! He’s gnawed it right to the backing!”

“Never mind the damn carpet—” (this was the Father, fairly roaring with rage). “Look what it’s done to the wood!” (The Father always, I found, referred to me as ‘it’.) “Wasn’t it enough that we had to spend a fortune getting the telephone wire replaced? Are we going to have to have new carpets and new doors all over he house?”

“Adam, how could you?” (The Mother, very reproachful.)

Adam began boo-hooing. “I only wanted to play with him—”

“So why did you let him go, stupid?” This was Mark, very superior.

Then came the lie direct. Well, I don’t blame him. He was right on the spot, poor lad. “He bit me and I dropped him!”

“Let me see the place,” said the Mother, instantly concerned.

“Yeah, let’s see it – if it’s there,” said Mark in quite a different tone.

“It’s – it’s healed in the night.”

“Huh! A likely tale,” said the Father. “Now you children listen to me! That wretched little housewrecker (he meant me!) is to be found, caught and put in the bin. Furthermore it is to stay there until a cage can be bought for it.”

“Fanny’s giving us a proper hamster cage for Christmas,” said Guy. Fanny, I was to learn, was their grandmother.

I’d been trying to ignore the whole row and get to sleep till that point, but now I pricked up my ears. I didn’t like the word ‘cage’ one bit. Still…It had to be better than that vile bin.

“CHRISTMAS!” yelled the Father. “That’s three weeks away! The little beast (me again!) will bring the whole house down around our ears if we don’t do something about it before then!”

“Maybe we could ask Fanny to give it to us now.”

“Good. Do that. Buy it today. But meanwhile nothing – no playing, no television, no food – until that thing’s been caught and incarcerated in the bin where I can keep an eye on it!”

Well!

There wasn’t much option for me after that but to scuttle across the floor and let them catch me. Very self-sacrificing of me, wasn’t it? Still, knowing that a proper home was in the offing, and that in all probability my stay in the bin that day would be my last, I decided to be decent and spare the poor kids the useless agony of hunting for me.

I was rewarded for my noble action with the most ear-splitting shouts the moment they saw me. If only hamsters could cover their ears!

“Holy Mackerel! Look at him!”

“He’s not golden any more – he’s black!”

I hadn’t stopped to think what I must look like. All my fur was stained with soot and thick with ashes. The water had just made me look more filthy and bedraggled. Of course I should have taken time to clean myself before settling down to sleep. It was another useful lesson for me, and never since have I let a day pass without giving myself a thorough licking and grooming.

Mark was holding me in his hands and scolding me.

“You bad, bad hamster!”

I stared at him defiantly.

“We can’t call you Goldy any more. You’re not worthy of such a nice name.”

“I know what we ought to call it,” said the Father grumpily as he went out. “Housebreaker.”

“No,” said the Mother. “I know! Let’s call him after the great American escapologist – Houdini.”

And that’s how I got my true name. And when I found out about my namesake, believe me I was proud of it.

Chapter Four (#ulink_582b1103-b943-50fe-bc88-ef57a40e879f)

Of course the children wanted to know all about Houdini, and so did I, as you may imagine. The Mother put them off for the moment, but that night, when they were ready for bed, she told them about him like a story. Fortunately I had given them the slip again by then and was under Guy’s bed (a nice low one, with a frill-thing right to the floor which he hates but I love) and heard all about my namesake.

Houdini, in case you don’t know, was an American of Italian parentage who began by doing conjuring tricks and ended up as the most famous escapologist of all time. An escapologist, of course, is someone whose profession is escaping. It’s an act, like an act in a circus or on the stage. His helpers would tie him up tight with ropes, chains and handcuffs, and so on, then they’d put him in a thick sack which they’d fasten at the neck; after that they’d wrap more chains round the sack, padlock them, and then – if you can believe it – they’d often hang him up by the feet a couple of yards off the ground. Then they’d give him the old ‘ready, steady, go’, the drums would roll, and in a matter of a few minutes somehow or other he’d have wriggled free. Don’t ask me how. Nobody ever really knew his secret. Of course he must have had flexible bones, and joints that would bend backwards, and he had a few obvious tricks like swelling himself up while they were tying him so the knots wouldn’t be so tight. Still, there was more to it than that – more than anyone ever found out.

One of the most extraordinary things he ever did was to go over a waterfall, tied up in a barrel. He even survived that, though he was bruised.

Naturally it was hard for me to understand all this at the time. I hadn’t then watched all the television, and seen all the pictures that I have now, which meant I really didn’t have a clue about handcuffs, chains, waterfalls, etc. But I realised that this human had been world-famous for the very thing I had already decided to dedicate my life to. I shuddered at the idea of being tied up or dangled in mid-air, and hoped nothing so terrible would ever happen to me; but I determined then and there that no matter what challenges faced me in the future, even those, I would try to overcome them. After all, I had one priceless advantage over the human Houdini. I had rodent teeth. Ropes would be nothing to me. And when it came to flexible bones, and being able to make oneself look bigger and then squirm through places you’d think a snake couldn’t get through…I betted I could hold my own in that respect with the greatest escapologist ever.

I was able to prove this, and a great deal more, very soon.

My new home arrived the following day. The boys came charging into the house with cries of “Where’s Houdini? We’ve got his cage.” But I was nowhere to be found, having, as I mentioned, got away the previous evening. I was, in point of fact, exploring a new room – Mark’s – and when I heard them tramping about looking for me I dived into a very small hole I’d noticed earlier, in the floor by the fireplace. I swear a fair-sized mouse might have got stuck in it, but I made myself into the merest thread of my former self and in a moment I found myself huddled in the deep dust between the joists.

These are long planks standing on edge which you’ll find between the floor of an upstairs room and the ceiling of a downstairs room. Between them are long spaces, roadways to someone my size, and as there were plenty of places where I could climb over the tops of the joists I had what then seemed like a huge playground.