The sun warmed the brick chimney, and scorched my glistening black fur. My whiskers felt hypersensitive, and the tips of my ears burned. I, Solomon, was a failure. Being a cat was too difficult. Sometimes my sleek black body was enjoyable, when it belted up and down stairs or flopped blissfully into a chair, especially when Ellen was stroking me. But inside I was a big shining lion of a soul, too big to fit inside a small black cat.
When I heard Joe’s car squealing to a halt outside the house, I sat up anxiously. He got out with a slam that sent flakes of rust flying from his car. His brows glowered at the bailiff’s shiny van in passing, and his aura was purple.
After he’d gone inside, an ominous silence followed, with not even a murmur of voices audible.
‘Look at that cat on the roof!’
‘Perhaps he can’t get down.’
The children were coming home from school, a group of them who often stroked me. Just now I really needed their love and it was tempting to go down. But the front door was opening and Joe appeared, looking like an unexploded bomb. The bailiff was with him, and Ellen was there with her shoulders hunched. She still had John’s towel in her hands, twisting it into a rope.
‘We’ll expect your settlement in seven days,’ the bailiff said, handing Joe a white paper. Joe passed it roughly to Ellen.
‘YOU had better have this.’
The‘you’ was filled with hateful energy. Joe was on the brink of a storm. Sure enough, as soon as the bailiff had gone, the shouting began.
‘YOU get inside!’
‘It’s not my FAULT,’ Ellen screamed as the door slammed shut.
I crept close against the chimney, moving around onto the cool shadow. Thunder always scared me. Now the thunder was inside the house. Even the roof trembled. People in the street paused to listen, turning frightened faces towards the house.
‘He’s at it again,’ said Sue-next-door to a woman who was walking past. She rolled her eyes. ‘Poor girl. I don’t know how she puts up with him, and she’s got that lovely baby too.’
It was worrying to think of little John in there. Maybe I should have gone into his bedroom and given him some love. And poor Jessica. How wise she had been to have her kittens under the bed. Ellen had moved them twice, and Jessica had determinedly moved them back again one by one. What guts. I imagined her cowering under the bed, suckling my children and reassuring them, during my lonely vigil on the roof. Jessica needed extra food and support at this time. Maybe I should catch a mouse and take it up to her. The sun was turning amber, it must be round about teatime.
‘That cat’s still up there.’
‘If he’s not down before dark I’m going to knock their door.’
The two women marched past with a dog trailing complacently behind. Gazing at the blue hills brought me to dreaming instead of worrying. In my meditative state I remembered the heaven world, and suddenly in my mind I was back there, sitting on iridescent cushions of grass and purring out millions of stars. Then I purred them in again. Power stars. Love that would be needed. And they were all for Ellen, every single one.
The sound of the front door opening jolted me back to earth. Joe was leaving– again. He was hurling books and clothes into the car, and pairs of boots and a kettle. There was no sign of Ellen. Not a sound. Not a cry from John or a meow from Jessica.
The car wouldn’t start.
Joe sat there fuming, turning the key repeatedly, but there was not a spark of life. I worried that Joe would go inside again and take it out on Ellen.
Eventually he started to push the car on his own. Curtains twitched at windows but no one came out to help. The car gathered speed down the sloping cul-de-sac, with Joe lumbering behind. Anger really fires humans into athletic improbability. In a jumble of legs and elbows Joe overtook the car and leaped into the driving seat. The car fired up with a bang, roared down the cul-de-sac, turned and roared back even faster, and was finally gone, almost airborne, heading for the motorway.
The first door to open was Sue-next-door. I hurried down from the roof to be with her as she tapped nervously on Ellen’s door. Sue’s legs had jeans and pink fluffy slippers. We both stared at the door, as if staring would make it open. The fur on my tail started to bristle because I was so anxious. It was embarrassing.
‘Solomon, what a great big tail!’ Sue had a kindly voice, very reassuring. She bent down to stroke me, but I couldn’t concentrate on responding. The silence from the house was so spooky.
‘Supposing he’s killed Ellen,’ I thought.
Sue was calling through the letterbox.
‘Ellen! It’s Sue-next-door. Are you all right?’
We waited, listening intently, and at last there was a sound from inside the house, a tinkling of glass, and Ellen came slowly to the door. She stood there trembling, looking up and down at both of us with eyes like mouse holes.
‘I’m all right,’ she sighed and lifted her tired face into a defiant smile. ‘And I’m glad he’s gone!’
‘Is John all right?’