The evening passed without incident. Leroy watched me constantly. He even sat beside me on the floor as I ate my supper, with his own plate of food in his hand. He let me wash, and then played with me, chuckling in delight at my performance with a fuzzy ball tied on a string. I enjoyed it. We watched each other’s faces and I learned to guess when he was going to move the string, and he learned that I liked it best when he moved it slowly. He gave me a white ping-pong ball which was brilliant fun. Light and fast, it sped across the floor and Leroy’s laughter was encouraging. ‘Timba’s playing football!’ he squealed.
The atmosphere was altogether lighter and more carefree. In a few hours of happiness, trust began to grow. Maybe it would be OK. I was stronger now. My back legs felt like frustrated springs and my mind alert and mischievous. Leroy wasn’t quite equal to another kitten, but he was getting there.
Janine was oddly quiet. She seemed preoccupied, and she didn’t shout at Leroy once, but stared at the television.
‘I’m going to bed now, Mum. Timba’s tired,’ he said.
‘Yeah. OK. Night night.’
Surprisingly she didn’t try to stop him taking me to bed, and I spent a peaceful night, glad to be close to the breathing warmth of another being. We slept together, a troubled boy and a lost kitten, under the wings of his angel.
Sitting on the windowsill in the glow of dawn, I turned to look back at Leroy’s bedroom, and got a shock. There were pictures all over the walls, and at first they looked like scribbled lines and splodges, but suddenly I saw they had eyes. Fierce yellow eyes, watching me. And teeth! Long, hooky fangs and gaping jaws. Spooked, I sat bolt upright, too scared to move, hoping that a hard stare from Solomon’s best kitten would make them leave me alone.
‘What are you looking at, Timba?’ Leroy must have sensed my fear. He got out of bed and picked me up. I was like a wooden cat in his arms, still trying to outstare those creatures on the wall. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said, ‘those are my pictures of lions. Mum won’t let me have paper, so I draw them on the wall. I get into trouble for it, but I don’t care.’ He carried me over to the biggest one and patted the wall to show me the lion wasn’t real. ‘See this one, Timba?’ he said. ‘See this big word coming out of its mouth? It says “ROAR”, and I did a load of Rs to make it loud.’
The spooky feeling subsided, but I couldn’t ignore the lions. So many of them. I kept seeing different ones, and I crept around the floor, looking up at them, checking them out. Would I have to live with these strange, unreal images?
Leroy picked up a box of pens from under the bed.‘I’ll draw a picture of you, Timba!’ he said. And I sat mesmerised as he made black marks on a bare patch of wall. ‘This is your thick fur … and now your whiskers.’ He did my eyes very big and coloured them yellow. ‘You’re very small, Timba,’ he said, ‘but I’ll look after you. I won’t let the lions get you,’ and he took me back to bed for a cuddle.
He was trying so hard to be my friend.
In the morning Janine was still unusually quiet. Leroy fed me and got ready for school.
‘Look after Timba, Mum,’ he said.
Janine hardly glanced at him.‘Whatever,’ she muttered, and I sensed something ominous about her silence.
I washed thoroughly and had a little play. Then I slept in a patch of sunshine that was pouring through the grubby window onto the sofa.
Sometime in the middle of the day, Janine picked me up and cuddled me.‘Sorry about this, Timba … but you’ve got to go.’
Where had I heard THAT before?‘Sorry about this …’
Then she put me in the cat cage and walked out into the street with me. I meowed in fright.
Now what?
Janine marched along in the sunshine, and went down the street where Leroy had pushed me in the trolley. She turned into the lane with the hedges, and passed the spot where we’d been abandoned. Was she going to dump me in the hedge again? I began to feel angry. Hadn’t a kitten like me got any rights?
She walked on, looking at the ground, not seeming to notice the blue sky and the wind zigzagging through the cornfields. Past an isolated cottage where a dog was barking, and on towards a low building with a flat roof and lots of glass. A group of women with pushchairs were outside the gate, but Janine tightened her lips and wove her way around them.
‘Can’t you stop that meowing?’ she hissed, but I wailed even louder. I was kicking up a fuss, telling the universe how these humans were messing up my life. The idea of being a wild cat rather appealed to me now. Mixed up with the anger was a longing, an ache in my heart. I wanted to be free to explore the amazing world, to know its creatures, its plants and its mysterious energies that cats can sense.