Livi Michael

“Irma Nail, who lived next door to Gordon, was setting off as usual for her morning paper. She was not easily distracted from her routine, even by the apocalypse. She stepped out of her house in her purple rain boots, muttering about the freakish weather, and glanced up at the sky just as a wolf fell out of it.'Outrageous!' She snorted as it lay stunned at her feet. 'I've heard of it raining cats and dogs, but this is ridiculous!' and she stepped over the stricken beast, putting her umbrella up in case more wolves should tumble, uninvited, from the sky.”

“Now rainbows, as you probably know, are bridges between the worlds. Which is why, whenever you see a rainbow, you can never really tell where it ends. It ends in another world. The rumor that there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow was started by trolls in order to lure beings from different dimensions into their own- where they would promptly mug them- thus creating their own pot of gold.”

“... she just had time to reflect that of all the many ways in which she had anticipated her final moments, crashing airborne into a pack of flying wolves seemed least likely...Meanwhile the pack of flying wolves had noticed something unusual.'What's that boss?' Said one of them, who was near the front. But their leader, Skoll, was too intent on opening his jaws wide enough to swallow the sun to hear.'Looks like a flying pink poodle,' the wolf went on, and this time Skoll did hear.'A flying pink poodle?' He said, with vast contempt. 'Give me a break Garm."'No boss, look,' Garm protested. 'It is a flying pink poodle...''I told you what would happen if you didn't take your altitude tablets.'But by now the other wolves were joining in... Skoll heaved a sigh of absolute exasperation. 'First of all,' he said, 'poodles can't fly. And they ain't pink. I-oh.' For now that he had turned he could see Flo, careening erratically towards them upside down with her eyes firmly shut... He had become, over the millennia, almost jaded to novelty. But now he was genuinely astonished. 'Wow," he said.”

“It's not a cat!' Flo insisted. 'It's a horrible stripy- thing - and it's got fangs, and... and...''She calls it Henry,' she said, as though this was calling the Prince of Darkness Fred. 'She says her sister left it to her in her. In her will!”

“Bathing Checkers was a strenuous occupation and not to be lightly undertaken. Checkers hated being bathed, partly because he couldn't see where he was going afterward. No one knew what kind of dog Checkers actually was. He had a mass of black hair, and when he was bathed, it was impossible to tell one end of him from another until one end bit you.”

“He's a gentle soul,' he told her. 'I can't see him put down, he wouldn't hurt a fly.' Indeed Boris wouldn't hurt a fly because in general flies were too fast for him.”

“Gentleman Jim [dog] was cheerful enough, partly because his owner was so well trained... He had alsot trained him to get up when he didn't want to, simply by climbing slowly and painfully on top of him and squeezing all the breath out of him as he slept. On the occasions this didn't work and Gordon seemed to be simply lapsing into a coma, Gentleman Jim would unroll his massive tongue, containing over a half a pint of drool, and dribble it slowly into his ear until Gordon finally awoke...”

“He couldn't wait to get home from school, to play with Jenny 'till bedtime, when she went to sleep on his bed and both of them dreamed wonderful dreams all night, about a boy with a face like the sun and a small white dog gleaming like a star through the early-morning mist"-Sky Wolves, Livi Michael”