‘Don’t take on so, Gretel,’ said her mother, but Gretel had only just started, and seeing me made her worse.
She grabbed me with bony hands, and chucked me out into the garden. It was freezing fog. I went to the puss-flap to come in again, but she had jammed it shut. I meowed and scrabbled but she banged her fist in the door and shouted.
‘You’re not coming in here, you demon cat. You’re going back to that cat home. I’m not keeping you any longer.’
‘But she’s such a lovely cat.’ Gretel’s mother professed not to like cats, but she was defending me. I sat outside in the fog, listening to the loud conversation and the sweeping, tinkling sounds from the kitchen. Then Gretel’s mother said, ‘Can’t she live in the shed? When I was a girl, our cats lived outside.’
‘Today’s cats don’t.’
‘Well, she’s got to go somewhere. It’s Christmas.’
‘I do know that.’
In the end, Gretel did try to put me in the shed. She set up a cardboard box with a rug in it, while I purred round her ankles, trying to make peace. She put me in it and I jumped out immediately. I didn’t like that rug. It felt bad and scratchy, as if a bad-tempered person had used it and left their anger in every fibre of the wool. And the box smelled of vinegar.
I didn’t want to be in the shed. It was cold and dusty, and there were fierce-looking tools on the walls, and no space for me to play, and no fire to warm my bones. Gretel had left the window open so that I could come and go, and the freezing fog drifted in, making everything damp. It was my first Christmas, and I was so lonely and miserable. I meowed and meowed through the night at the sealed-up puss-flap. Eventually, Gretel opened the door in her dressing gown, and I shot past her ankles, headed for the rug by the fire.
‘Oh no you don’t.’ She picked me up. ‘You are driving me UP THE WALL. Meowing all night, keeping me awake.’
I tried to be loving and friendly, but she ignored my love and carried me out to the shed again. She shut the window, and the door.
I was a prisoner.
‘It could be a blessing,’ said my angel. ‘Wait and see.’
She was right in a way. Gretel eventually melted and let me back into the bungalow. But I was never left in there alone again, and, when she went out, she left me in the shed, if she could find me. I got wise to it and hid, so when she did go out, I had freedom to explore.
And that was how I came to be sitting on the wall on a summer evening when TammyLee walked by and my angel said,‘Follow that girl.’
Chapter Three
A BABY CALLED ROCKY
The experience of being out all night was new to me. I’d never seen the stars before, or watched the dawn. The sun didn’t snap on like a lamp, but took its time. Once, I had sat and watched a water lily opening on Gretel’s pond, and it was like that – slow and pink, unfurling petals across the sky until it exposed the centre disc of burning yellow. The burr of moths’ wings on the scented elderflowers was replaced by the hum of bees, and above me on the top branch, a blackbird started singing. I listened and absorbed his pure melody into my heart. So that’s what birds were about. Pure joy.
When I got up for a stretch, the blackbird changed his song to a harsh whit-whitting alarm call, warning the other birds that I was there.
I was hungry for my breakfast, and needed to move, but when I did, the baby boy started to cry. I ran back and kissed his tiny red nose and he opened his eyes. They were the brightest turquoise blue, and full of astonishment. He responded to my purring with a sort of chuckle, and I arranged myself over him again, keeping him warm. I nudged his arm with my head, trying to get him to stroke me, but it felt floppy and weak. Was he dying? His aura was thin now, just a fuzzy line of aqua and lemon. His angel was there, and she was a rainbow swirl in the air.
The baby gave little grizzling cries, intermittently, but the crying seemed to suck the remaining energy out of him. All I could do was watch over him and purr. He needed a human. He needed food and milk, but he couldn’t crawl out and help himself. I had to find someone, or he would die.
Anxiously, I watched the common from under the canopy of elder trees, and in the distance people were walking their dogs. But no one came past the elder tree.
I listened to the burble of the river rushing over stones, and at last I heard footsteps clonking over the bridge. Shoes. Like TammyLee. Had she come back?
I bounded out with my tail up, and saw a woman with a scrap of a dog on a lead. It flew into a frenzy of yapping when it saw me, but I wasn’t fazed. Then it cowered and wound its lead round her ankles as I approached.
‘Well, you’re a brave cat,’ she said, bending down to stroke me, ‘and aren’t you beautiful! I hope you’re not lost.’
I meowed and meowed, sitting on the path in front of her. If only the baby would cry. What could I do? She stood there, watching me, the dog tucked under her arm. He was twitching his nose and looking towards the tree.