Kelton Elias

Gardner, G
9/24/2019

132. I have decided to number this chapter 132 and not a prime number because

Siobhan said it would be good to mix things up a bit in my book to keep the reader listening.

Although 132 isn’t a prime number, I guess it is still OK because the number 3 is in the number

which is a prime number.

I also realized there was something I forgot to mention in the previous chapters. Before I

got Toby, I had a pet snake named Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was my only pet for a while and

served as my companion for when Father and Mother weren’t home. I used to place his snake

pellets on top of the heat radiator and watch how he climbed up the metal rods to get his food. I

remember tracing the path he took each time to get to the top and drawing them in my

sketchbook my parents got me for my ninth birthday. Then I calculated which way was the

fastest to the top which took him 34.23 seconds. Here’s what it looked like

When winter came, I had to stop sending Holmes up the radiator because Father said the

heat from it could burn him, so I stopped. Holmes still ended up burning himself while trying to
find food because I had forgotten to feed him so we had to take him to the veterinarian. I like

veterinarians because they wear cool uniforms and do good things for animals. When we got to

the vet, they took Holmes to a room where they did a bunch of tests and told us they would have

to put him to sleep. I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked Father and he said that they would

have to kill him so he stops feeling pain. I was sad that Holmes died, but it was OK because I

knew he wasn’t feeling pain anymore.

Eighteen days later, Father told me to get in the car because we had to go shopping for

some things. Once we got to the shopping center he told me to stay in the car and that he would

be right back. It took him 29 minutes to come back into the car and when he came he had a cage

in his hand and a small cardboard box in the other. The cage was about 50 x 80 cm with ramps

and one of those little running wheels. It looked like this

When he got into the car, he told me he had a big surprise for me but we would have to

wait until we got home. When we arrived, he told me to go wait in the living room and watch

TV. 16 minutes later he told me to go upstairs to my room because he had a surprise for me.
When I got there, there was the cage I saw Father carry before, along with a small rat cuddled in

the corner. I decided to name him Toby after the actor Toby Jones.