House Hippo

All was quiet as the shadows of the evening crept through the house. Everyone had gone to bed except for the cat, Henry. He was convinced there were creatures moving about the house and he was determined to find them.

"He acts like such a good mouser, but I swear I have never seen him catch anything," Charlie said as he watched the cat slink off into the shadows.

"Don't worry about him. He'll entertain himself," Sheila said patting his arm.

Charlie shrugged as he turned off the lights and followed his wife to bed.

Henry listened to them go. He sat by the window pretending to be absorbed in cleaning his whiskers.

When the house was completely silent, Henry's ears strained for the sounds he knew would come. On soft padded feet he made his way into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter in search of anything that might draw the creature out.

He found a chip bag and batted it around until it hit the floor. Walking to the edge of the counter he listened to make sure he hadn't awakened his humans. They would never understand.

Satisfied he jumped to the floor and worked at the bag until it was opened. Then he lay down to wait.

It wasn't long before a small dark shadow appeared along the kitchen's baseboard. It moved slowly. Careful and timid. It would stop and sniff the air. After a moment it would trundle on another few feet before stopping to sniff again.

Satisfied the coast was clear, it began to amble across the kitchen floor in the direction of the bag of chips.

Henry lay beside the chip bag watching as the tiny house hippo climbed into the bag and began munching on the broken up bits. Wanting to play with his new friend, he poked at the bag with his paw before laying his head down to watch the little creature chomp away on the tortilla chips. His huge jaws grasping the chip and crushing it in his steel trap of a bite. The little creature almost seemed to smile as he attacked each chip.

When he had had his fill he slipped out of the bag and headed for Henry's water dish. As requested, Henry's dish was filled to the brim. He knew the hippo liked to wallow in his bowl. Henry made sure to drink his fill before the hippo got in. He had found out the hard way that his water was not worth drinking once the creature had been stomping around in it.

Apparently it liked to spray its poop around to mark it's territory and Henry was only too happy to oblige because his human, Sheila, was always careful to wash it out and refill it each morning.

"What do you do to your water each night Henry? It's like you dump your food in it or something." She would say this each morning before cleaning it up. She'd pick him up and cuddle him making sure he was okay before giving it back to him.

Henry made sure to follow the little creature at a safe distance. It could get a little territorial every so often. He'd made the mistake of getting too close one night and had almost got bitten by the hippo's wide mouth and chomping teeth.

A respectable distance was good.

The little guy would eat his fill, check out Henry's water dish then roam the laundry room in search of soft material like the fleece from the big dryer or any lost, lonely socks or mittens.

Henry also took care to move some of the excessive things it collected when it got too grand a nest. The last thing he wanted was for his humans to discover the little beast. There was no telling what they would do.

He'd seen plenty of critters make their way through the house and not all of them survived. At one point there had been Ralph. He was an older cat, the boss cat. He loved to throw his weight around and made a point of catching anything that moved.

Henry had seen plenty of mice attacked, but also a few of the other pets had gone missing. Ralph had always been eager to get his jowls on the gerbils and hamsters his humans had set up in cages. There had even been fish.

Henry closed his eyes and flipped his tail. He was a lover not a fighter. He had no intention of letting any harm come to this wee hippo.

Since it seemed to sleep more hours than he did, he felt pretty certain no one would ever see it, but there was always the chance someone would get up and wander into the kitchen at night for something.

Henry loved those midnight snack sessions, but he was also careful to make sure his little friend was hidden and out of sight.

He was never sure when the little guy had first arrived, but it was shortly after Ralph had gone that he noticed him one night on one of his late night prowls. Ralph had gotten too old to do them anymore. So Henry stepped up.

He'd chased off the mice, but the hippo intrigued him. It was like having a little buddy. In a weird way he missed Ralph's company, but he was also happy not to have the older cat put him in his place so often. Getting jumped on, swatted at or chased had not been his thing, but Ralph took pleasure in keeping him on his toes.

Now he ruled the roost.

Until one day Charlie yelled, "Sheila. I got us a new puppy!"

Henry sat up and felt his hair twitch and stand on end. A puppy. What kind of vile creature was that? .

It was not long before Henry lost his hippo friend. The excessive noise was too much for the little guy and it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.



Word count = 999 words.

Notes ▼

Writer's Cramp: Tomorrow is February 15, which for Canada is Flag Day and for the Writer's Cramp's prompt it is National Hippo Day. Write a story or poem involving a hippopotamus. One of the genres must be Nature.

So a hippo. All I can think of is that commercial that used to run when I was a late teenager. A commercial from 1999.