She turned into an alleyway, and paused under a lamp. She lit a fag and I could see her hands shaking as the smoke curled upwards in the orange light. She had put the bag down. I peeped round the gatepost where I was hiding. I stared at the bag on the floor.
And then it moved.
Something inside kicked and wriggled, rustling the plastic. That really spooked me. With my soft fur brushing the ground, I crept nearer. Grizzly little cries of distress were coming from inside the bag. Some kind of creature in there was lonely and desperate.
The girl responded by snatching up the bag and marching on with it.
‘Shut up,’ she hissed. ‘Just SHUT UP, will you?’
Even in the dark, her aura looked like cracked glass.
I dashed after her down a long footpath to where the streetlights ended and a white moon shone over the common, glinting on hummocks of rough grass and bramble leaves. I could smell the dogs who were walked there, and it sharpened my awareness. Scared now, I hid in the long grass and watched the girl’s shadow. There was danger. A tang of water, a sound that rushed and babbled through the night, a sense of mysterious river creatures who lived there and emerged when it was dark. I could see the glimmer of water, and the arch of a high bridge. Horrified, I watched the girl walk over it, andstop right in the middle. She opened the plastic bag.
I knew what she was going to do, and I remembered how it felt to a living creature to be tipped out like rubbish. I ran closer, and sat majestically on the path, staring at her, using my cat power and meowing.
The girl turned and saw me. Then her crying started again in loud sobs.
‘I can’t do this,’ she howled, and came down from the bridge, hunched over with the crying, the bag clutched against her body. Nearby was an elder tree growing out of a wall, and she disappeared under the shadow of its branches.
Minutes later, she emerged without the bag, her arms wrapped around herself as if every bone in her body was hurting.
‘Fluff your fur,’ said my angel, ‘put your tail up and run to meet her.’
So I did. It wasn’t difficult. I knew how appealing I would look, a silver and white cat with long fur and golden eyes that shone in the moonlight. Like a spirit cat.
We met on the path and I gazed up at her and meowed in a friendly way. She froze. Then she reached down and stroked me. I patted the gold and silver bangles that jangled round her wrist. I sniffed her finger, and it had that smell on it, the salty tang of something newly born.
‘Hello,’ she whispered. ‘Magic puss cat.’
I liked that name. Better than‘Fuzzball’, which is what my human had called me. I mean – Fuzzball? – for me, the Queen of Cats! And I liked the way the girl looked so deeply into my eyes. I looked into hers, and what I saw was pure beauty ensnared in suffering, like a lacewing caught in a spider’s web.
‘Remember her,’ said my angel softly. ‘One day, you will need to find her again.’
So I kept staring, fixing the essence of her soul into mine. No matter how much she changed her hair and clothes, I would still know her by the blend of pain and magic in her eyes.
‘Don’t follow me,’ she said, moving on restlessly, her heartbeat loud, her tears glinting in the moonlight. I jumped onto the wall and ran along beside her with my tail up. I meowed until she stopped again and turned her face up to me. We touched noses. I had bonded with her.
‘Don’t follow me, magic puss cat,’ she said again. ‘If you knew what I’d done, you wouldn’t want to know me. Don’t follow me, I’m BAD NEWS. Evil. That’s what I am.’
I purred and purred, pouring my love into her and my purring was a stream of healing stars. Weaving to and fro, I rubbed my whole body against her crying face until she smiled just a little and told me her name.
‘TammyLee.’
Fascinated, I listened to the rhythm of the name. I patted the gold bead in the side of her nose, and played with a wisp of her hair. TammyLee. I didn’t care what evil she had done. In that moment, my job was to love.
We ran on together through the night, me on the wall and she on the path, and we were wishing I could be her cat. But when we reached the orange streetlights again, a change came over TammyLee. She stopped crying, lifted her head, and began marching along with her shoes clonking. Her aura hardened to a shell and I noticed a man walking rapidly towards her.
‘Where the hell have you been, TammyLee?’ he asked.
She shrugged.
‘Nowhere, Dad. Don’t FUSS.’
‘We’ve been worried sick. You’ve got school in the morning, my girl.’
‘Who cares?’
‘We do. You rushed out of the house complaining of stomach pains, then you disappear for FOUR hours. Why was your mobile switched off? Your mum is getting herself in such a state worrying about you, and it doesn’t help her illness, does it? And I don’t need to be out here combing the streets all hours of the night, TammyLee. You’re only fourteen, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I’m fourteen and I need a LIFE,’ TammyLee shouted.
‘Don’t you get bolshy with me, my girl.’