Times were tough, but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to finish my job, and my job was to love Ellen. I hurried back down the tarmac lane but soon realised I was exhausted, my paws were sore, and I was soaking wet. At the edge of a field was an old wooden shed. I crawled underneath it and slept for hours curled up in a hollow of dry earth.
In the morning I emerged to find a thin layer of snow lying over the fields. It made it difficult for me to hunt, and I was starving hungry, so I had nothing to eat. My energy was low as I headed towards the woods, and I couldn’t remember which way to go. On and on I trotted, following winding animal tracks between the trees, and late in the day I was horrified to find I’d been going round in circles.
After a second night under the shed and still nothing to eat, I was desperate, and missing Jessica so much. Together we had survived and supported each other. Alone I began to feel I had no chance.
Just before dawn I heard the sound of another creature squeezing itself under the shed. I sat up quickly. I hadn’t got the strength to fight or even defend myself. In the grey-pink light of sunrise I could see the shape of a badger, and to my surprise he came right up to me. He stood looking at me with wise old eyes.
I hadn’t forgotten how to be polite so I stretched my head towards him, and we touched noses. I smelled him and, miracle of miracles, it was the old badger from the copse. I’d worked hard to make friends with those badgers, and now, in my hour of need, the old fellow had come out in the snow and found me. He wasted no time but turned around and set off through the fields. He turned just once to make sure I was following, and I was, our paws crunch-crunching over the frozen snow. He had come to lead me home.
The badger hole felt surprisingly warm and welcoming as I crawled in out of the snow. I could still smell Jessica on the floor where she had slept next to me, and a tuft of her fur clung to the dried moss. It must have come from her tummy, for it was pure white and soft. It looked like a delicate white moth in the dark hole. I lay down with my nose touching it, my paws stretched over the empty place where she had been. Where was she now? Jessica had shared lots of wisdom and fun with me but she’d never mentioned the spirit world. Had her memory of it been blanked? Was she there now? Could she see me there in our oldrefuge, hungry and grieving?
Then I thought of our tabby and white kitten I had loved so much. She’d be a cat now. I wished I could find her. I wished she would magically appear at the badger hole, all fluffed out, her eyes shining like lamps in the shadowy wood.
I had lost everything.
That first night alone in the badger hole was endlessly dark. I had only my memories.
Ellen used to read me stories when she was a child. I knew them all by heart and most had happy endings. Ellen would read faster and faster, her eyes alight, racing through the scary bits so that she could read the last page with a smile. As she got older the stories were longer and deeper, and one day she showed me a book calledThe Diary of Anne Frank, about a girl who had to hide away for years during the war. Like me, she was in a desperate situation, but every day she wrote it down in a diary. It made her feel better, and it helped people to understand, years later, what she had been through and how she had coped.
I remembered that book, and the sad girl on the cover. If I was able to write, then I would keep a diary now. I’d start today, and it would go something like this.
THE DIARY OF A DESPERATE CAT
I am all alone now and still sleeping in the badger hole. I’m in there most of the day as it’s so cold. Today there is more snow whirling across the landscape. It piles higher and higher around my hole. My dinner is a small mouse, which I had been saving, and when I want a drink I lick some of the cold snow. My body is so thin that my ribs hurt when I lie down. Even my paws, which used to be soft and glossy, look bony and rough.
A fox comes by in the night and sticks his pointed nose right into my hiding place. The snow crystals on his whiskers glisten in the moonlight, and his eyes gleam as he looks in at me. I am too weak to fight, but the memory of Jessica confronting Paisley gives me courage. I puff myself up, flatten my ears and yowl ferociously. I smell the fox’s musky breath. I attack his surprised face with claws of steel. He backs away. But he doesn’t go. He skulks around, pacing to and fro, always looking at me with that rusty stare. He’s hungry too. I crouch in the hole, glaring back at him, but the energy of being constantly on guard is draining me. I can read the fox’s mind. He is waiting. And when I am weak, he will have me.