The Storyteller sat [?] in his chair. His thirteen cats bounced [?] onto his lap and sat there purring [?]. This, of course, meant that The Storyteller could no longer breathe and his red bobbly nose began to turn [?] blue!

Luckily, just at that moment, someone knocked loudly on the door and the cats jumped [?] down. The Storyteller had to sit [?] for a while to catch his breath and the knocking became louder and louder.

When The Storyteller opened the door at first he could see nothing. There was no-one there. Then he looked down and his eyes grew wide behind his lop-sided glasses. There, on the mat, looking [?] up at him, was Sidney the Snail. A very strange looking Sidney the Snail at that. He was quite bare! Quite, quite bare! Not a shell to be seen. Just a rather skinny-looking shiny grey body.

"Um...er...um, excuse me," Sidney said [?]. "I...er..um...seem to have mislaid my house somewhere...I had it just a minute a go...and now it has gone. Can you help me?"

The Storyteller looked [?] around him and [?] spotted a clump of sticky-leaved bushes in the corner of the garden.

"Where have you just been, Sidney?" he asked [?].

"Oh...um...er... over there..." whined Sidney [?], and pointed to that very clump of sticky-leaved bushes with one of his horns.

The Storyteller marched [?] over to the clump and peered [?] into the depths. There, stuck firmly to a low branch was a shell. Now, The Storyteller had no idea if it was actually Sidney's shell (a further glance showed him that there were, actually, rather a lot of odd shells strewn about the place) but he plucked it firmly from the branch and marched [?] back to Sidney.

Sidney, by now somewhat panicky, snatched the shell from The Storyteller, slipped himself [?] into it and hotfooted it back down the path shouting [?]:

"Oooer...thanks, Storyteller, I'm just fine now!"

Well, I suppose he was kind of fine. In fact he looked a little strange. Perhaps he should have looked more closely at the shell The Storyteller had found. It was, in fact, an old shrimp shell which one of the thirteen cats has carefully placed there for later (they just loved sucking the odd shrimp shell in a quiet moment you see) and Sidney can still be seen, in all his glory (shrimp shells are see-through you see - as well as somewhat pink) galloping [?] around the garden singing [?] and feeling "just the bee's knees" in his bright pink see-through shell!