She picked me up and let me nestle into her shoulder. I rubbed my soft fur against her bare neck, and we sat together in a calming silence. The ultimate surprise was that it made me feel better too.
‘It works every time,’ Solomon had said.
Encouraged by my unexpected success, I listened to this angry woman’s heartbeat. It sounded like tired footsteps.
A young kitten doesn’t usually experience sadness, but it wasn’t new to me. Already, in my short life, I’d had a bucketful. Yet it hadn’t touched my spirit. I could play and cheer myself up, any time, and I was glad to be a cat and not a human. So I decided to try and comfort Janine with my love, the way I’d comforted Vati. Janine was huge of course compared to a kitten, so I focused on her neck and shoulder, giving her little licks and purrs.
‘You’re a poppet …’ As she stroked me she began to talk, the words tumbling out of her as if they couldn’t wait to escape. ‘It’s no fun, being a single parent,’ she confided, ‘and Leroy’s a nightmare … an absolute nightmare … always has been. I am at my wits’ ends with him, and I know I shouldn’t hit him, but I can’t help it. I get so desperate.’
I listened, not understanding most of it, only sensing some bond I had with her, some undiscovered reason why I was there. Why me? And then it washed over me like the cold night air. I heard the word‘dump’, and saw the light from the window shining through the slow-moving tears on Janine’s cheeks. ‘I’m so scared,’ she said, ‘of those social workers. They’re gonna take my Leroy away … I know they are … that is, if I don’t dump him in care first.’
I got the picture. Dumping. Abandoning. How well I understood that!
‘Sometimes I just want to end it all,’ Janine continued. ‘Take a load of pills, or pack my bag and get the hell out.’
Was that why I had been sent? To be Leroy McArthur’s cat?
Leroy’s tantrums happened several times a day, and usually involved a dispute with his mother. I became an expert at finding places to hide in the cluttered house. It made the time I had spent in the hedge with Vati and my sister seem happy, a time of sunshine and discovery. Here in this house, there wasn’t a world. I had no contact with living creatures, no chance to observe their ways and learn. I was a kitten in prison.
Leroy couldn’t leave me alone. He’d pick me up and put me in some bizarre place so that he could watch the effect it had on me. Once it was high up on a top shelf where I felt unsafe so wanted to get down. He stood there laughing while my meows got more and more frantic. Another time he picked me up whenI was asleep and put me into a deep stone urn. I woke up cold, and looked at the circle of light above me. Not yet strong enough to jump out, I panicked, screaming, and scrabbling on the slippery surface.
Instead of rescuing me, Leroy looked into the urn and shouted,‘Boo.’ Then he tapped the urn with a spoon and the sharp ringing noise really upset me and hurt my sensitive ears. When Janine heard me wailing, it led to yet another row between them.
‘Either you stop tormenting Timba, or he goes back. Angie said she’d give him a home if things didn’t work out.’
‘I’m not tormenting Timba,’ Leroy argued. ‘I’m just entertaining him.’
‘No, you’re teasing him. Can’t you see the difference?’
Leroy shrugged. He picked me up before Janine did, and held me against his bony little chest.‘He’s my kitten, aren’t you, Timba?’
‘Well he won’t love you if you treat him like that.’
‘He does love me.’ Leroy clenched his hand until I squealed.
Janine shouted at him furiously.‘Stop squeezing him. He’s not a toy, Leroy. You’ll hurt him. Stop it, you stupid boy.’
‘I ain’t stupid.’ Leroy glared and pouted.
I felt the pain rush through his young body, and it was a new experience for me. Whatever Leroy did to me, his pain was worse than mine, and it was attacking his heart.
I climbed up to Leroy’s shoulder, and saw the pulse beating hard in his neck. I rubbed my head against it, and purred into his ear. He peeped round at me and smiled. For the first time I felt it was possible to love this desolate boy who seemed to be disliked by everyone, especially his mother.
Later that morning I escaped into the garden. It had long grass, piles of boxes and broken bikes. Out in the sunshine I felt alive again, smelling and listening, my whiskers twitching, my eyes following every movement. The sky felt like a blue umbrella, a friendly sheltering dome above me, and the breeze ruffled my fur. I tried to sense my brother and figure out where he was, but a different animal smell came to me from a tunnel. Intrigued, I ventured inside, following the curve of it, hoping it might be a way out of the garden, a chance for me to run away from Leroy and search for Angie.