I listened, hoping to detect the last calls from Angie and Leroy, but now I was too far away, lost in the roar of a town I had never bothered to explore. I’d been a home cat, my territory modestly limited to the surrounding gardens. The listening seeded an ache in my heart, a yearning to hear the voices one last time: ‘Timba. TIM … BA.’ Who would call me Timba now?
No one would know who I was. I’d chosen to leave my home; now it became clear I was leaving behind my identity. I was any old cat now. Nameless and shameless. If I was going to live without love, then I’d have to be tough. The hunter instinct surfaced alongside the hunger now growling around my belly. I surveyed the strange garden and the imperious blackbirds hopping about on the lawn. My tail twitched. Catching one would be easy. But less convenient than the tasty supper Leroy would have been giving me right now.
But, hey, this house had a cat flap! I was powerful and bossy. I could deal with any cat who might be in there. Go for it, I thought. Stealthily I prowled up the path, low to the ground, and glided through the cat flap. Inside was an array of dishes on the floor, and one had a substantial dollop of fishy-smelling cat food. Nobody was there so I scoffed it down.
‘You cheeky cat! OUT!’ came the voice, and a woman who looked like a toad came at me with a squeegee mop. No one had ever treated me like this! I half put my tail up and tried to cat smile at her, but my friendliness seemed to enrage her even more. ‘That’s my cat’s food!’ she shrieked. ‘OUT … go on … OUT!’
I’d never been afraid of a human, and I wasn’t now. A few minutes of tail up and rubbing lovingly round her legs would soon melt her cold heart. But it didn’t work out.
With a scrabble of paws, a beefy little dog charged into the kitchen, almost airborne in its rush to get to me.
I looked at it disdainfully, and wished I knew how to laugh. The entire dog was vibrating with its hysterical barking, even its ridiculously short legs and flippy little ears.
You don’t turn your back on dogs. Your back end is vulnerable, especially the tail. My mum Jessica had perfected the art of reversing through a cat flap, but I hadn’t tried it, and hadn’t needed to until now.
I arched my back and made a savage snarly face. Predictably, the dog ran out of steam and stopped a few feet away from me, its white body trembling, its eyes uncertain. Majestically I crab-walked towards the cat flap, my tail lashing. I whipped round and dived out through it, and felt a horrible tearing sensation as the dog ripped a tuft of hair from my tail. What a cheek!
I fled down the garden and straight across the road into the path of an oncoming white van. There was a screech of tyres, and a volley of swearing. I changed my mind in mid-air, my whiskers brushing the hot rubber wheel as I turned and dashed back. Thoroughly frightened, I crept, black-eyed, under the same evergreen and stayed there. The tip of my tail was sore and bleeding, and it looked awful. Tails are sensitive and important, and that feisty little dog had ruined mine. I attended to it immediately, licking and cleaning and rearranging the fur that was left.
My nerves were shattered and I remembered what Angie had said when Leroy had squeezed me.‘His little bones are like matchsticks.’ An unexpected flood of respect for my body came to me now. I needed to rest. Yet something pushed me onward. I wouldn’t stop until I found the edge of the noisy town.
Many streets later I finally reached the quiet. Stubble fields stretched away from me, the edges cushioned with tussocks of wild flowers and grasses. My tired paws sank into the softness and found it still warm from the sun. So welcome, now that the twilight had a taste of cold, as if winter might arrive in the night.
I made myself a round nest under an ash tree. Vati had taught me about different trees and their effect on cats. Ash trees were stabilising and healing. This one splayed its leaves over me like a guardian of the plant world. I slept under it for hours, and when I awoke, my fur felt damp.
Against the night sky the fields and hedges were the colour of blackberries. Above me the stars seemed to be entangled in the ash tree’s branches.
At midnight at home I would usually walk around on Leroy’s bed, loving him while he slept. Or I’d go downstairs and find Angie still awake at the table, her head bent over a pile of children’s school books, a red pen in her hand. Or she’d be in the kitchen baking midnight cakes. We’d have a cuddle and, if the night was clear, she’d carry me outside to look at the stars. Those same stars I was looking at now.
The thought made me unbearably homesick. What had I done? How had my love for Vati taken precedence over everything I treasured? I vowed that, when I found him, I would bring him home, home where he belonged with me and Angie and Leroy.