The humans looked after me beautifully, and stroked me a lot, but their talk was gloomy.
‘This cat is borderline,’ I heard the man saying. ‘We don’t know what long-term effects the heat stroke will have. She could suffer from multiple organ failure and have to be put down. A pity. She’s only a young cat.’
Every day they stuck a sharp needle in me and, yes, they took some of my blood! I could see it in the syringe. Then they put something in through another needle, and I felt better afterwards. Clever stuff. But I knew what I needed, and it wasn’t available.
‘What’s happening to me?’ I asked my angel.
‘It’s a window,’ she replied.
‘A window?’
‘A time of waiting, a time of transition between two life times.’
‘Am I going to die?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘But you are like a cat sitting in the window, watching what is outside. You can’t move on to the new life we have planned for you until you help yourself to get better. You will need to be a strong healthy cat to cope with what is ahead.’
‘Help myself!’ I was surprised. I thought I could just lie there and let the humans work their mysterious magic with those needles and tubes.
‘All the purring and the medicine can’t make you right again,’ said my angel. ‘You need to HELP YOURSELF to find the healing you know you need.’
How could I FIND anything? I was lying flat in an animal hospital. Angels can be so unreasonable, I thought, and twitched my back and tail. My paws quivered in frustration. I stretched each of my front paws, splaying my toes and letting my claws curl out, then in again. Bits of me were working. It seemed a good time to wash, so I lifted each paw to my mouth and began licking and brushing my pink pads and the downy fur between my toes. It felt good.
‘Oh, she’s washing!’ exclaimed one of the nurses who was walking past. She stopped by my cage. ‘Good girl!’ she said, like Gretel. Then the vet came and looked at me.
‘I think we’ll let Roxanne look at her later. Has she eaten anything?’
‘Little bits. She still doesn’t want to stand up.’
‘But she’s washing. That’s a start.’
Later that day, the animal hospital went uncannily quiet. I wondered why. Then the main door opened and in came a girl in a blaze of light. Was she real? I stared, and found I could see a human in there, inside that blaze of light, just an ordinary lump of a girl with a long dark plait over one shoulder. I wanted her close to me, immediately. I couldn’t wait.
My angel had told me to help myself, so I managed an echoing meow and at once the girl came to me and looked in with the most beautiful eyes.
‘We thought you should start with the dogs, Roxanne,’ said a nurse.
‘No.’ said Roxanne. ‘This cat. She needs me now. She’s right on the edge. I’ll do her first.’
First. I was first! I meowed in welcome as Roxanne came right up to me, and the light from her aura flooded into my cage. She unlatched my door, and looked deeply into my eyes, like TammyLee had done.
‘I’m Roxanne,’ she whispered. ‘I’m an animal healer, darling.’
As soon as I heard her voice and felt her touch, I wanted to cry, and I sort of did by sighing and making little mewling sounds in my throat.
‘Is it OK to take her out?’ Roxanne asked the nurse, who hovered beside us, watching and learning.
‘Sure. She’s not going anywhere. She’s just laid there for days.’
Roxanne picked me up and sat down with me flopped on her lap.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked.
‘She hasn’t got one.’
Again, Roxanne looked deep into my eyes.‘Then I shall give her one,’ she said, ‘it will come through to me.’ I tingled all over. This girl of the blazing light was going to give me a name, a new, beautiful name, something I had longed for. I went on sighing and mewling, and with every sigh a stream of energy seemed to leave my body, as though my fur had been full of heavy dust weighing me down for all of my young life, and now, under Roxanne’s healing touch, it was leaving.
I saw her hands, and they were full of colours as they moved over me. She went to my head first, and it felt like a soft cocoon of pure light was being woven around my skull, wrapping my face, my long whiskers, my ears, my nose.
‘This cat is depressed,’ Roxanne said to the nurse.
‘Depressed!’
‘Oh, yes, and deeply so. She’s been hurt and it’s never been healed. That’s what is stopping her getting better.’
She knew. She’d looked into my soul. The relief was huge, it left my body in waves as her hands shone colours into me, deep emerald greens, hot white and glowing pink.
‘That’s it, darling. You let go of it all,’ she whispered to me, and my emotional pain shuddered through me, and began to leave. I saw it all. The very first hurt of my mum cat not liking me, the terrible shock of Joe tipping us in the hedge like rubbish. Then Gretel. Calling me Fuzzball. Calling me a BAD CAT. Calling me a DEMON. Shutting me out in the freezing fog. Locking me in the shed. And then leaving me to die in a hot car.