The next-door neighbour, Issy, got involved, and her cat came out too, and sat glaring at me. He was a portly tabby with one ear folded down, and he hadn’t made friends with me, even though we’d been through each other’s cat flaps.
‘Leroy’s such a wild impulsive child,’ Angie told Issy.
‘You can’t take yer eyes off the little buggers these days,’ Issy said. ‘Especially boys. I’m glad my lot are grown-up. They all had bikes, and skateboards, and I spent half my life in A&E with’em. But sometimes you just have to let ’em go and let ’em learn, that’s what I say.’
‘You’re right,’ Angie said, but her eyes still searched up and down the road. ‘But Leroy had such a bad start. I have to protect him from himself.’
‘Let’s put the kettle on,’ said Issy kindly. ‘And by the time we’ve had a coffee, he’ll be back, Angie, you’ll see.’
Angie looked tempted, but she shook her head.‘Thanks, Issy, it’s kind of you, but I can’t. I must find him. I’d better get the car out.’ She put me down on the garden wall. ‘Will you keep an eye out for him, Issy? I’ll drive to the park and other places he might go. He can’t have gone far.’
I did a purr-meow. Leroy was already far away, I knew that, and I so wanted to tell Angie. I had to watch her drive off in totally the wrong direction. I went to sit on the energy point by the big stone, and called the Spirit Lion by sending a silent message into the light. He came instantly, filling the garden with radiance. I asked him why humans were so limited in their ability to communicate.
‘Centuries ago they took the life out of language,’ he said, ‘by carving it into stone. Now they scribble it with pens, and tap it out on keyboards. All they want is to see it, to read it, and to them that is truth. In doing so they condemned telepathy and called it witchcraft.’
‘Witchcraft?’ I asked, and felt my spine turn to ice. Had I once been a witch’s cat? The memory sailed into my mind. A proud memory. I had been a witch’s cat, and the witch had been Angie! We had talked wordlessly to each other. We had healed animals and plants, and we had teleported along the golden roads. It was my best lifetime.
The Spirit Lion saw my thoughts.‘Humans can still do it,’ he said. ‘They have only to remember … and some of them do. That’s why cats are so important. Cats are fascinating to humans. Cats are wordless communicators, and teachers.’
‘So how can I teach Angie? How can I reach her now?’
‘When she wants to learn, she will sit with you,’ said the Spirit Lion. ‘In the meantime you can only be there for her, let her make her mistakes and just love her. Some of her mistakes, like going in the wrong direction, are meant to happen. It is part of the plan. She can’t control Leroy. What he is doing right now is part of his destiny.’
‘What is he doing?’ I asked, and the Spirit Lion fell silent. His eyes met my questioning stare. ‘Merge with me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you.’ I became one with him as my aura blended with his radiance where he shared his thoughts wordlessly.
First he showed me Leroy’s bike. It was lying in the dappled sunlight under an oak tree, and Leroy’s red helmet shone in the piles of leaf mould and mossy roots. Leroy was nowhere to be seen. But my hackles were up, my whiskers twitching. That smell! A stench of confined animals … their droppings, their hot fur,the tang of fear, and the smoulder of desperation.
Once the smells settled into our consciousness, there were sounds to identify. Unfamiliar, strident bird cries and the flutter of wings, the clank of rusty metal, the high-pitched chattering of active, hyped-up creatures I couldn’t identify. We listened, and heard the wind teasing petals from blossom and sweeping it into corners. Then the scrape-scrape of a lion’s paws on rough concrete, an endless rhythm, a hopelessness as he padded to and fro, never going anywhere except from one wall to the other.
And then we saw Leroy.
He was clinging to the outside of the boundary wall, his feet wedged into the cracks between bricks, his eager eyes searching upwards for a way through the strands of wire along the top. I felt moved. Leroy was brave. Braver than me, and I was a cat!
Safe in the haven of my Spirit Lion, I watched, and hoped, and tried to send Leroy love. Painfully he climbed on, helped by a sturdy ivy plant, dragging himself up and up until he was looking down at the padding lion with an awestruck smile. The lion glanced up at him, sniffed, and continued padding as if he didn’t care. He’d been there, done that, and didn’t want to be bothered with humans.
Leroy’s hands stretched towards the wire. He touched it, and all hell broke loose. A deafening siren started, sending the animals into panic, and a man burst out of a door, a shovel in his hand. His angry eyes scanned the top of the wall, and saw Leroy clinging there.
‘What the HELL are you doing?’ he bellowed. ‘Get down off that wall right now or I’ll come out and drag you down.’