Agatha Armitage: the entrepreneurial fox

Featuring a return, a burglary and a Renter,

Dear Friend,

I’m growing increasingly concerned that my last letter never arrived… You see, the Donkey Dignity Association is known to intercept letters which “disregard the dignity of donkey-kind”, and now I’m worried that I disregarded Sarah’s dignity. Really, though, I was only being truthful. I mean she is very pedantic.

Anyway, trusting that this letter HAS reached you and hasn’t been intercepted by the DDA, you will know that I recently (and finally) arrived home.

The fox was overjoyed to see me.

“I thought the day would never again come,” the fox sobbed. “I was sure you’d left me for good.”

You might be wondering, dear friend, why the fox thought I wasn’t coming home — and that’s because the fox cannot read.

You see, Vulpine does not have an alphabet and is quite different from human languages. It is purely oral, which makes it quite difficult to communicate through letters (letters, if you didn’t know, typically require some form of writing).

I did try sending little pictures to explain where I was (the fox loves illustrated books, after all!), but he put the elephant in charge of collecting post, and the elephant accidentally ate all of my letters.

After a few weeks, the fox started to panic - and you can hardly blame him for taking matters into his own hands. In my absence, he has become quite the entrepreneur.

For one, he has taken in a renter — a young lasagne-chef called Andrea who is scared of wooden spoons. Andrea has been living in my bedroom for the last month, and is quite adamant that she won’t be leaving. This is why I am currently sleeping in the shed.

The fox has also started his own business…

You might remember that the fox relies on me for cat food (indeed, this is how I first made his acquaintance). Without me there, the fox grew very very hungry — ‘famished’ is the word he used (well, this is the best translation from Vulpine).

Thus, the fox had the ingenious idea to dress up like a cat and steal cat food from our neighbours. It’s actually quite an impressive act. He has a collar and everything, and has become a proficient meower.

The only (obvious) problem is that this is slightly immoral, and absolutely illegal.

Every evening, the fox sneaks through cat flaps and eats all of the cat food he can find. The pigs wait outside with a small red trailer which they fill to the brim with unopened cans.

They are so good at it that they have become known as the Cat Food Burglars, and have even been mentioned on National Television (there’s a warrant out for their arrest, I hear).

“So that’s why there is so much cat food everywhere,” I noted (there were tins of cat food on every speck of floorspace).

“Don’t worry, Agatha, we don’t keep it all ourselves,” the fox assured me. “We’re waiting on a pick-up. A man in St. Ives just ordered three hundred cans from us.”

“Why didn’t he just buy it from the shop instead of from you?”

“Because he wanted to support a small business, of course,” the fox shrugged. “Plus, we accept payment in yarn, and he has a lot of yarn lying around.”

(The yarn-payments worked very well for the fox because he has also started knitting manically in my absence. He is very good and is particularly skilled at making knitted fish slippers. He has made some for the pigs and the elephant and Andrea and sells the excess for a premium profit).

Don’t worry though, dear friend — now that I’m home, the fox has stopped his cat food burglary business. This was after I explained to him that stealing cat food is wrong (he was quite embarrassed to learn this).

They declared bankruptcy this morning.

Anyway, I’m going to leave things here and go and make myself a cup of earl grey tea. I’ll pour a little extra in the envelope too in case you’re parched.

Your friend,

Agatha

P.S. It’s just occurred to me that, in future, I can send tape recordings to the fox instead of letters… That way, we will never run into such complications again, and the fox will never be forced to start several immoral money-making schemes. I’m sure I can find a tape recorder somewhere (the problem will be finding room for it in my already-very-full bag).