‘I LOVE it!’ Angie said. I wondered what she would say if she knew that Lisa had called me a smelly old cat. ‘Hang on a minute, Graham … I’ve got to wake Leroy.’ We listened and heard Angie’s swift footsteps, and the squeak of Leroy’s bedroom door. She didn’t yell at him, but whispered, ‘Wake up, Leroy. Fantastic news. You’ve got to wake up.’
There was a subterranean grunt of protest.
‘Graham’s got Timba. And he’s OK.’
‘Aw! Is that true, Angie? No kidding?’
‘No kidding. Timba is BACK.’
We heard them bang their hands together and shout,‘YES!’
‘Gimme the phone,’ Leroy said, and then I heard another sound I’d longed for on my lonely journey. A scratchy voice saying, ‘Hello, Timba.’ I did purr-meows then, a whole stream of them. ‘Where you been, Timba? I missed you. I cried lots,’ Leroy said.
‘He’s kissing the phone,’ Graham said, laughing at me.
I imagined Leroy’s bright face. The ache in my heart had gone, and I felt the love from both my humans. I felt like the luckiest cat on the Planet.
‘He’s purring now.’ Graham was still beaming from ear to ear, and he let me purr into the phone. I knew it had to be loud. That purr had to go rippling across the miles, over the shining river, through the dark forest, to reach my loved ones.
‘Can you come and fetch him, Angie? Or shall I bring him up there?’
‘Of course I’ll come and fetch him. Wild horses wouldn’t stop me,’ Angie said. ‘Thank goodness it’s a Saturday. What’s the snow like at your end?’
‘It’s thawing,’ Graham said, looking at the window. I followed his gaze and saw the morning sun shining on melting crusts of crystal, diamond bright, sliding down the glass.
Graham didn’t stop smiling until he saw Lisa, her spine straight like an icicle, her face stiff with hatred. We all looked at her, and the energy changed. I moved myself between her and Vati, and hooked my claws into her sofa. Smelly old cat, was I? Then a smelly old cat I’d be, proud and magnificent, and fierce.
No one, not even Angie, was going to separate me from Vati. So what would I do when she came to fetch me?
Graham tried to take me to the vet before Angie arrived. I didn’t want to go, especially after what Vati had told me. Lisa might have me de-clawed too! So once again, I dug myself into the sofa, and as fast as Graham tried to unhook my claws, I clamped them in again.
‘You really are being very difficult, Timba,’ he said, exasperated. But when I looked at him and wailed plaintively, he got the message. ‘I know, you don’t want to leave Vati, do you? Well, he could come with us.’ Vati threw Graham a withering look and went straight under the sofa. Graham sat down and put his head in his hands. ‘My life is full of difficult cats … and difficult women,’ he complained, eyeing Lisa who was supervising from the doorway, with Heidi bright-eyed in her arms.
‘Well, I am not … repeat am not … getting lunch for HER,’ Lisa said, and I knew she meant Angie. Odd that Angie also referred to Lisa as HER. ‘And I want a new sofa. Tomorrow.’
Graham persuaded the vet to come to us. It was Rick, and I remembered him. He was a radiant being of light. Even Vati came out to inspect him, and once he saw that Graham had put the cat cage away, he crept back into his corner of the sofa. Rick sat down on the sofa with his long legs stretched out. I arranged myself over his heart, and he didn’t seem to mind my tatty fur. ‘You are a loving old boy,’ he said.
‘He’s only a young cat,’ Graham said. ‘And he’s just been on a journey … two hundred miles … to find his brother. That’s why his fur is such a mess.’
‘It will have to be cut, and allowed to grow back,’ said Rick, stroking me with his long translucent fingers. ‘But I won’t do that. I’ll leave you a leaflet about long-furred cats, and I suggest Angie does that for him when she gets him home. We need to go one step at a time with Timba.He’s had a huge trauma.’
Rick was a genius of a vet. A secret healer. He managed to love me and give me two injections which were over before I knew it. He put some drops on me to make the fleas go away, and put stuff in my ears to stop the ear mites, all the time loving me and talking to me.
When he had finished, he didn’t just dump me, but let me stay stretched out on his body so he could feel my purr and my gratitude. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Vati was sitting up and looking intently at Rick.
‘So, what’s wrong with this little cat?’ he asked. ‘Vati, is it?’
Graham looked guilty.‘My wife had him de-clawed,’ he explained. ‘He’s a sensitive cat and he was a real personality… but it changed him. He’s never been the same since. He doesn’t play, he hardly eats … as you can see.’
Vati held out his paw to Rick, his green eyes shimmering with pain. The two men looked moved. Silently Vati put his paw down and held out the other one. Rick took it gently and closed his hand around it.‘Poor Vati,’ he murmured, and his hand shone with celestial light. It changed colour, from blazing white to soothing emerald green, bathing Vati’s hurt paw in healing love.