The horse was not impressed. She blew a blast of hot air at me, ruffling my fur, and sent me a message back.‘I’m Angie’s favourite horse. Try not to get under my feet.’
She started to walk away, her nose skimming the grasses, then stopped and looked at me.
‘You do realise that Angie is an earth-angel,’ she said. ‘And earth-angels always take on more than they can manage.’
I watched her meander across the field towards a group of smaller horses. I was a lucky cat. An earth-angel, and a Spirit Lion, and now a polite horse. I must be someone really special.
It felt good to rest in the barley grass at the edge of the field in the mellow sun of late afternoon. I needed to keep absolutely still, like an Egyptian statue of a cat, for I sensed a miracle was about to happen, which would link me with Vati. Stillness. Waiting.
It came silently. The air above the grass shimmered with millions of the tiniest imaginable spiders, each on a thin thread of gossamer, each beginning a magical journey. The grass was bedecked with a network of silver, and the sun made a pathway of gold stretching far away across the fields.
I wasn’t sure what it meant, but Vati would know. Vati was like the other half of my consciousness. Somewhere out there he too might be watching the sun glisten on gossamer. Vati would know where the secret roads were, and how to find them when the sun went down. He would know how to feel the energy beneath his paws, and use it to bring us home … to each other.
Chapter Six
ANGIE’S CAT
‘It’s only for one night. I promise,’ Angie said, stroking me protectively as I lay beside her on the sumptuous pillow. I snuggled into the crook of her neck, my little paws buried in her sweet mane of hair.
‘You know I don’t like cats in bed,’ objected Graham who was sitting up reading a leathery black book. Its fat wad of gold-rimmed pages fluttered tantalisingly when he turned them, and he noticed me watching. I bobbed back nervously, hoping he wasn’t going to ‘sing’.
‘But Timba’s just a poor lost baby. Mmwha!’ Angie gave me one of her kisses.
Graham glowered and pushed his glasses back up his nose.‘Don’t let him get his claws into the satin duvet.’
‘I won’t. He shall be a model kitten!’ said Angie, and I got another kiss.
Feeling pampered and important, and with a full tummy, I drifted off to sleep.
As the morning sun rose over the woods, I sat in the window and thought hard about Vati.‘Talk to me,’ I pleaded. ‘Where are you, Vati?’ I visualised his wistful face with the white dot on the nose.
A golden thread glinted in the sun. In the night a spider had swung out from the edge of the roof, spinning her silk ever longer, wilder and wilder, until she touched a leaf on the apple tree and clung there, leaving her lifeline stretched through the dawn as if to remind me how to find Vati.
I sent him a golden thread of love, and waited. His eyes looked into mine from across those fields where the badgers were. East, into the rising sun … and he wasn’t far away. But in front of his wistful face were squares of wire. Vati was in a cage. He wasn’t free like me. I felt his longing. I’ll find you, I vowed. We shall be together again.
So profound was my stillness and concentration that I did not notice Angie close to me, sharing the sunrise. She must have understood I was in a trance that was not to be broken … except by food of course!
We headed for the kitchen, and I realised that Angie was dressed in an old shirt, jeans and long brown boots. While she mixed my kitty milk she talked to me.
‘I’m an early bird … like you, Timba! I have to get up and help Laura with the horses, and the rabbits and chickens. Then I grab toast and coffee, shower, and go to work. You’ll have to stay here with Graham while I’m at work … then you’ll be on your own for the afternoon when he goes to the theatre.’
I lapped the milk while she sailed to and fro across the kitchen, watering plants and putting silver spoons and shiny plates on a table. Then she flung the door open and stepped into the dew-spangled garden. She stood in the sun and lifted her arms and face to the sky.
With the door wide open, I thought some of the night creatures might want to come crowding in and share my kitty milk. So I finished it quickly and dragged my fat tummy to the doorstep. It proved to be a brilliant place to sit washing myself and observing. A doorstep was a‘between place’, offering choices and helping me to establish territory.
I was learning how to smile. When Angie turned to look at me and said,‘Timba!’ in a loving voice, I noticed how her long Egyptian eyes sparkled just because of me! So I put my tail up and tried to smile by tilting my head from side to side to make my eyes twinkle in the sun.
‘You are the BEST little cat in the Universe,’ she said, and picked me up tenderly. ‘The Universe has brought us together, don’t you think so, Timba?’