Without giving him any warning, I went from being a loving softie to a fighting tiger. I kicked hard with my back legs, thrashed my body around, and managed to reverse out of his grasp, a long thread of police uniform caught in my claw. I hit the ground, bounded, and fled, my tail kinked cheekily.
‘Follow it, will you!’
The other policeman thundered after me across the common. I was fast, and smart. His boots crashed through the bushes but I soon evaded him, diving into some nettles, up a fence and into a garden, over a garage roof and into the street. Through the front gardens again, I ran stretched out like a fox with my tail streaming. A few dogs barked at me, and blackbirds flew up from lawns as I escaped into the town.
Satisfied, I sat on a busy corner, watching the traffic and the children going to school, and wondering where my home was. I didn’t know. None of the roads looked familiar. I couldn’t locate any of the scent marks I had left as I followed TammyLee.
Being lost didn’t faze me. There were so many nice people around, and the town looked interesting with its bright windows and lovely smells of bacon and toast. Intrigued, I trotted down the busy road, pausing to sharpen my claws on the magnificent lime trees.
I crossed the road with a bunch of children and a bleeping noise, and the cars magically stopped in a neat line. For me? I heard laughing, and people saying,‘Look at that cat.’ But when I sat down to wash my face in the middle of the crossing, the bleeping stopped, someone screamed, and a young man bounded into the road, picked me up and carried me the rest of the way.
‘Stupid cat!’ he said, and I flicked my tail in annoyance, and the traffic made a terrible noise, blowing horns and swearing.
‘Keep that bloody cat off the road.’
‘It’s not my cat,’ yelled the young man.
I jumped up onto a massive flower pot full of pansies, and sat there to wash my face. It had to be done. But humans don’t understand what it’s like to have fur and the need to keep on washing it. And why not sit somewhere pleasant like in the middle of a pot of yellow and purple pansies? They were scented and had wistful faces like kittens. I must have looked beautiful there in the morning sun.
‘Get off, cat!’ A woman who looked like a bulldog gnashed her teeth at me. ‘You’re squashing the flowers.’
I stared at her. Obviously, she didn’t know I’d just saved a baby’s life.
‘Aw, leave him,’ said a kinder one.
‘Him!’ I thought, indignantly.
I settled down to wash in the lovely pansy pot.
Next, I followed some people into a shopping mall and had a mad half hour on the slippery floor. It was like a skating rink for cats. I twirled and skidded, figuring out how fast I had to run to slide a long way on my belly. After the night of guarding the tiny baby, it felt amazing to be having fun and making people laugh. I chased a paper cup down the mall, under benches and into doorways. I pretended it was a mouse and hid round a corner, then pounced on it, and skidded.
When I was tired, I strolled down to the pavement caf? and arranged myself on a chair, and the couple who were eating breakfast there gave me some crisp curls of bacon and corners of buttery toast. I padded round the tables with my tail up, and was given a saucer of warm milk, some bits of sausage and a kipper’s tail, before the staff noticed me.
‘We don’t encourage cats,’ said the waiter, hovering over me with an armful of plates. ‘Go on. Shoo!’ He stamped his foot and hissed at me, and the plates slipped alarmingly.
My hunger satisfied, though, I walked on down the shopping mall. I went into a clothes shop and swung from a rail of T-shirts, pulling them onto the floor.
‘OUT!’ shouted the shop assistant, and she ran at me clapping her hands. ‘You’re wrecking the place, you shouldn’t be in here, you crazy cat.’
Miffed, I walked on with my tail waving elegantly, and into the shop next door, which was full of televisions. And there I had the shock of my life.
I was on television … well, on a whole shop full of televisions in different sizes. I sat down in front of a big one that made me look like an enormous fluffy tiger on Linda’s shoulder.
‘The baby was discovered by this woman, Linda Evans, who was walking her dog.’ Now the picture was of a reporter lady sitting on a red sofa.
Then I sat up even straighter. There was the tiny baby, Rocky, in the arms of a nurse. He’d got a little white hat on and a blanket wrapped round him, but I could see the mole on his cheek and the glint of astonishment in his turquoise eyes. It was definitely him. My baby. My Rocky.
I went up to the screen, to touch noses with him, patted it and jumped back, not liking the crackle of static through my fur. I couldn’t stop looking at Rocky and wherever I looked, he was there on every screen, and people were walking past the shop, ignoring him.
‘We are hoping his mother will come forward,’ the nurse was saying. ‘She may need medical help, and Rocky needs his mum. He’s a dear little chap.’