crooked.
âThat was revolting . I knew you were faking. Why would you do that?â I ask.
She gazes up at me, lovingly, like weâve just exchanged wedding vows, like Iâve just kissed the bride.
âGimme my rabbit,â I demand, holding out my hand.
âCanât,â she says.
âWhat do you mean âcanâtâ? Yes, you can. You got your kiss. Now fess up the bunny.â
âIn here,â she says, pointing to her belly and laughing. âYum, yum, yum! Happy Easter, Tommy!â
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So, I went to my Nanâs last night and she served a very sloppy, rank-smelling beef and vegetable curry for dinner. I think it may have been out of a can. I didnât have the heart to tell her that Iâm allergic to sloppy food so I ate it.
Then, to heal myself, I went home and wrote this list of reasons why sloppy food should be banned.
Sloppy food is for babies and old people, both of whom scare me with their gummy smiles and nappies.
Sloppy food usually has at least one hair of unknown origin in it.
I like snappy words like âcrispâ and âpopâ and âcrackleâ and âsharpâ. âSloppyâ is not a snappy word. Itâs more like âoozeâ and âsquelchâ and âsquidgyâ and âgloopâ.
When I was five I found Nanâs false teeth in my potato and leek soup. Soup should not smile at you.
The word âsloppyâ makes me think of sloppy joes â the shapeless, itchy green sacks they make us wear to school in winter.
Sloppy food reminds me of a horror movie I once saw where creamed corn squished out of a guyâs belly button. Any food a filmmaker can use as a special effect for human gizzards should not be eaten.
Underpaid kitchen hands and angry waiters can spit or wee in sloppy food and stir it in without you ever knowing.
Soup is sloppy. Soup is a very bad food. Especially when it contains any of the three most repulsive substances known to humankind: pumpkin, eggplant and zucchini.
Sloppy food does not solidify as it travels through your body. Sloppy in. Sloppy out.
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My mum bought a cat. Heâs ginger. His name is Gordon. And heâs the weirdest cat in the world. I know that everyone says their cat is weird but Gordon is YouTube weird. He makes other bizarro cats seem normal. And heâs kind of creepy, too. Here are just a few reasons why Gordon Weekly is the worldâs freakiest cat:
Last night, in the darkness of my bedroom, he smiled and spoke to me. Not in a good way.
My mum has taught him to use a human toilet. There is nothing more frightening than sitting down on the toilet in the middle of the night and realising youâve sat on a cat.
His favourite place to sleep is on my face.
He has a pocket on his front right side where he keeps miniature throwing knives and a short length of rope.
Last week, I caught him smoking a cigar late at night on the back veranda.
He uses one paw to stop the bell around his neck from ringing and then walks on three legs so that he can sneak up on birds and eat them.
If you tease him and say the words âI tawt I taw a puddy tat,â he scratches you. I used to think it was funny until I had to have the eye operation.
He licks his own bottom.
Then he licks me.
He sometimes sleeps in my clothes drawers and, last night, he vomited inside my favourite undies. But I didnât have a spare pair so I had to wear them to school. Luckily Tuesdayâs canteen special is fish burgers, which helped hide the smell.
His favourite food is M&Mâs (chocolate is supposed to be poison for cats, but not for Gordon) and he wonât drink milk â only pineapple juice.
He likes to leave little presents for me. On his second day in the house, he dragged home a chihuahua and dumped it on the front doorstep.
He sneaks out late at night and, once, I followed him to an alley off the main street where there were a dozen other mean-looking cats
Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan