1. SOLOMON’S TALE
FINDING ELLEN
I sat down in the middle of the road to think about why I had left home on that summer morning.
I was only a black kitten, eight weeks old, but I had a tough decision to make. Should I stay in my comfortable home and live a boring predictable life, or should I set out on a long journey to find the person I loved best in the whole world? Her name was Ellen, and I had been Ellen’s cat in another lifetime, when she was a child. She’d called me Solomon and I was her best friend. I wanted to find her again.
Suddenly a lorry was coming towards me. The road underneath my paws started to tremble. I could feel it vibrating along my tail and tickling the fluff inside my ears.
It loomed closer. Two glaring eyes, a forehead made of glass, and a name emblazoned across its chin. SCANIA. It had massive wheels and was roaring like fifty lions.
Hypnotised, I stared into its eyes, thinking that if I acted like an assertive tiger, the lorry would stop and let me finish washing my paws.
My angel didn’t usually shout at me, but she did now.
‘Run Solomon. RUN!’
I took off so fast that I left skid marks in the gravel. As I sailed into the hedge, the lorry thundered past in a gale of gritty air. Hissing, it pulled over, stopped, and was finally silent. A man climbed out and disappeared into a nearby building.
Being a very nosy kitten, I crept out to inspect the giant lorry while it was quiet. I sat in the road and looked at it. The sky darkened and icy hailstones came pinging down into my fur. Underneath the lorry was a good place to shelter. The wheels were hot and I sat close to one, watching the hailstones bouncing on the tarmac. I’d been outside for a long time and I needed to sleep.
I crawled into a hole at the front of the lorry. Inside, it was toasty warm. The stink of oil, the heat, and the chorus of hailstones made me drowsy. I curled up on a little shelf close to the engine, wrapped my tail around the tip of my nose, and fell asleep.
Hours later, I was jolted awake by an ear-splitting clatter. Every bone in my body was being banged up and down as the engine hammered into life. Terrified, I scrabbled to get out but saw only a chink of speeding wet road. I climbed higher, onto an oily ledge, my white-tipped paws ruined and stinking. Through a crack in the metal was a view of fields and bridges racing past.
I clung there, trying to communicate with my angel. But all she said was,‘your journey has begun, Solomon’.
I understood.
And I remembered how, before I was even born, I had agreed to make the perilous journey to find Ellen.
It all began when I was a shining cat, living in the spirit world between lifetimes.
In the spirit world we cats are shining cats, and we live in a way that is impossible on earth. We are invisible to human eyes. There is no meowing or yowling, but we do purr, and we communicate by telepathy. Lots of other creatures live there, shining dogs and shining horses, even shining guinea pigs. There are shining people too. No one argues. There is no pollution, no illness, and no war.
Ellen’s mum had died when Ellen was young, and now she lived in the spirit world with me. She knew how much Ellen missed her and it was her idea to send me.
‘I’d like to send Ellen a cat,’ she said, ‘a special cat to love and support her. She’s going to need it with that husband of hers.’
My response was immediate.
‘I’ll go.’
Ellen’s mum took me onto her lap, where I did lots of purring, and together we sent the idea out into the light. Then we waited until an angel appeared.
Thousands of angels live in the spirit world, and they are all different. Some of them are immense and glittering warriors of light. Others change colour like holograms. My favourite ones are the comfort angels who are more like people, and their robes are soft and swishy. They shine so brightly that their faces are almost invisible.
The angel who came to us introduced herself as the Angel of the Silver Stars. I’d never seen her before, but as soon as her twinkling robe billowed around me I felt special.
‘I’ll be your angel for this lifetime, Solomon,’ she said. ‘It will be a tough assignment, but I will be there to advise you about the choices you make. Of course you will make mistakes, but that is part of your learning, and I will still be there for you. My light is so bright that I become almost invisible on earth, but if you remember to look at sparkles whenever you can, you will see me, especially if you study the sunlight glittering on water.’
‘I’ll remember,’ I said, and hoped that I would.
‘There will be times when you are upset or lost or hungry,’ said my angel as she covered me in stardust. ‘That’s when you might forget me, but I’ll be there, and from time to time other angels will come to help the humans in your life. But don’t expect it to be easy.’