I stepped carefully around the dead pheasants and put an exploratory paw on Alf’s knee. A smile glistened in his eyes. ‘Come on then,’ he said, and patted his heart where he wanted me to sit. I crept up his tweedy jacket and arranged myself, stretching out, resting my chin over his sturdy old heart so that he could feel my purring. I wanted to cry like Leroy. After my long, lonely journey, it was such a relief to be close to another being.
‘Oh … you’re a healing cat,’ he murmured and his hand stroked and stroked my fur, giving me a beautiful head-to-tail massage. We were healing each other. He didn’t care that my fur was in such a state. He loved me for who I was. Timba.
Alf stroked the dead pheasants with his other hand, his eyes sad.‘Sometimes I wish I hadn’t shot ’em,’ he confided. ‘Sometimes I wonder if, when I die, they’ll all be waiting for me at the pearly gates … all those birds I shot.’
My greatest gift, as a cat, is unconditional love, so I turned the purring up a notch and, when Alf looked down at me, I did a cat smile right into his soul. Then Alf said something amazing.
‘I tell you what, puss, since you’re so loving … I’m going to drive you across the bridge and take you home to my missus. Will you come?’
I felt like royalty as Alf drove me down from the forest across the bridge, despite sharing his magnificent car with some dead pheasants. They were dumped in the back and I sat on the front seat. Alf didn’t seem to care that he hadn’t got a cat cage for me. He asked me to sit still, and I did. The car was quiet and high up off the road so it didn’t vibrate like Angie’s car.
This time the river crossing wasn’t so scary. I’d watched the bridge from the hills at night when it was all lights, and nobody fell in the river. The water was so far below that it seemed we were flying across the sky like the starlings I’d envied. I thought of Vati, and felt he would be proud of me for getting myself a lift. Smart cat!
After the bridge, Alf drove on over the next hill, and the next, and my heart leapt when I saw the tall metal tower that Leroy had wanted to climb. In the dark afternoon, it had a light flashing at the top. It would guide me, night and day, nearer and nearer to Vati.
My intention was to say goodbye, nicely, to Alf when he let me out of the car. Then I’d run on, across the blue-green countryside towards the metal tower. Surely my journey would soon come to an end.
It didn’t work out like that. Alf swung the car into a yard with straw and chickens. He picked me up and carried me in his arms to the open door of a house.
Immediately my fur started to bristle, and a voice rang through my mind.‘Don’t go in there, Timba.’ It was insistent, and it was the voice of the Spirit Lion. I wanted a meal so badly. Something easy and tasty on a plate. I wanted a fire to warm my belly on that chilly day with the twilight deepening over a land that was strange to me. I deserved a bit of comfort. So I clung to Alf’s shoulder as he carried me inside. A woman was sitting in a chair by the fire, knitting, but I hardly saw her.
I froze, and dug my claws into Alf’s jacket.
A fox was looking at me. A real fox with his eyes glassy and his teeth bared. He wasn’t moving, but I swear his fur was bristling and his black nose smelling me.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Alf. ‘He’s been there twenty years. I call him Bert. Don’t worry, he’s only stuffed.’
Stuffed? I didn’t dare move in case the fox leapt down and savaged me.
‘Oh what a lovely cat!’ I heard the woman saying, but I heard her through a glaze of terror. It wasn’t just the fox. All over the walls were the glassy-eyed heads of creatures, a stag, a hare, and more foxes.
I couldn’t stand it.
With a thrust of my back legs I escaped from Alf’s grip, and landed on the floor. In my terror I hadn’t noticed where the exit was, and I ran through an open door into another room. On the floor was something even more horrific: it made my back go up and my eyes turn black with fright.
‘Leave him. He’ll get used to it,’ I heard Alf say.
If Angie had been there, she would have screamed.
Stretched out in the middle of the room was an enormous tiger skin, lying flat with the beautiful colours glowing. At the far end was its head. Compelled to see its eyes, I inched my way round it, my back arched, my ears flat. And when I saw the tiger’s face close up with its gleaming teeth and outraged golden eyes, I hissed and growled. The tiger didn’t react. Like the fox, it had been dead for years. Overwhelming grief was for ever locked into its hard glass eyes.
I looked sadly at its paws. The sensitive pads were gone, and the claws. Only the skin with its lush, richly coloured fur was splayed across the carpet, never moving. And it was a cat. It hadn’t been rescued and pampered like me. Why? I wondered. The question ruffled my fur like a freezing wind.