Cats

Elin dismissed her familiar spirit of years. She was sick of the ghostly cat coughing up lumps of ectoplasma on the carpet, or leaving half-eaten imps on the doorstep.

Surely summoning a dog would be better.

When the dog brought home an unscathed imp that wrecked the living room before she could dismiss it, she realised she should have made sure not to get a retriever.

The girl had been pouring her heart out to the cat for a week when her mother found out.

"Don't touch that useless beast, it has fleas!"

"No, he doesn't! And he's not useless, he'll find Daddy, he said!"

Her mother sighed. "Your Daddy is gone and won't come back, no matter how much you wish it. And cats can't understand what you say, let alone talk."

The girl took refuge in sullen silence, and her mother shooed the cat out of the window.

The small ginger tom met up with a bigger grey cat who had been waiting nearby. Instead of a greeting, he said, "My, humans are so silly. She didn't even think to ask me if I could talk."

"The girl believing your promises isn't exactly clever, either."

"Well, no." He stretched. "I have better things to do than chasing some guy. Nothing, for example."

Pixies look cute, all right.

They're not so cute anymore when they decide to redecorate your garden, replacing tomatoes with nightshade, the plastic chairs with toadstools, and apples with dead fish - something about pretty glittering scales, my neighbour thinks. Or when they cut holes into your tyres to turn them into pixie nest boxes.

That's more than annoying, but then they ate my cat.

I'd been trying to get rid of the gluttonous fleabag for years, but it kept coming back. The pixies hadn't pissed into my briefcase, so it might turn out a good trade. Maybe even cheaper.