I snuggled down in her arms and stretched my chin over her neck so that she could feel my purr vibrating through her. I wrapped my paw round the other side of her neck, hugging her like a human. She started smiling, and two dimples appeared in her cheeks.
‘I’m speechless. Speechless,’ said Penny again.
‘Thank God for that,’ said TammyLee wickedly, and the two women smiled at each other.
‘Her name is Tallulah,’ said Penny.
‘Tallulah! That’s lovely. It’s like a song. Tallulah. I’ll sing it to you one day, magic puss cat.’
I cuddled deeper into TammyLee’s neck and throat, feeling as if I’d come home. I looked at Penny, and sent her a strong message. She got it.
‘Well, it looks as if Tallulah knows you. She’s certainly loving you,’ said Penny.
‘We do know each other. She used to run along the wall with me, in the moonlight, when …’ The sadness in TammyLee’s eyes rose to the surface, the deep ache of the mother love, like my mother’s last look at me when we were ripped away from her. A forever pain.
‘Please, please don’t let anyone else have her,’ pleaded TammyLee, suddenly vulnerable now, not arguing, not being bolshy, just appealing to Penny. ‘Only I was going to take her home today.’
TammyLee sent me a picture of a lovely home with a fire, and a wide back door that opened into a sunny room made of glass. Beyond the glass was a back garden with a weeping willow and a view of the mountains. It was perfect. But Penny was looking serious and shaking her head.
‘I’m sorry, my luvvy, but I can’t let you take her.’
There was a silence. I clung tighter and purred harder round TammyLee’s neck. I watched her aura turning to cracked glass, the way it had been that night. Grief and anxiety manifesting as anger. The anger flared through her like a bonfire, and I saw her looking at the gate. I saw she was thinking of making a run for it, with me in her arms.
‘I know how much you want her,’ said Penny kindly. ‘You can wait a couple of days, can’t you? Isn’t Tallulah worth waiting for?’
I patted TammyLee’s face and made her smile again as she fought against the anger.
‘I can come tomorrow and look at your home,’ Penny offered. ‘And if it’s OK, then I’ll bring Tallulah to you in my car. She’ll be safe, and I’d like to see her settled in. And I’m sure you’d like to know more about her, wouldn’t you? She had a very nasty experience before she came here and you need to know about that, and know what to do if she shows any symptoms.’
A rush of sympathy changed TammyLee’s defensive stance into softness and vulnerability. I sighed with relief as she said, ‘OK then, if that’s what it takes. So – can I really, really have her?’
‘I hope so, my luvvy,’ said Penny warmly. ‘I do hope so.’
TammyLee put me down reluctantly and I wove myself around her legs as she and Penny went out through the two gates.
‘Bye for now, Tallulah.’ TammyLee looked down into my face. ‘Don’t look so anxious. I’ll see you soon, magic puss cat.’
I bounded up to the highest perch and saw her walking away down the farm track, getting smaller and smaller. She turned once to blow me a kiss and her bangles flashed in the sun. I watched her get on the bus that came grinding up the hill every day, and I followed it with my eyes so that I would know which direction to take to find her, if I had to. The bus turned right, away from the mountains, and headed along the road beside the river, the road that led into the town where I had lived with Gretel.
I ran round and round the pen, meowing, searching for an escape route. And again, I was distraught. TammyLee had come to find me, and Penny wouldn’t let her take me!
Learning to wait, learning to trust, was a hard lesson for me. The pen seemed to be getting smaller, and my panic was like a whirlwind, engulfing me. When it reached an unbearable intensity, I noticed the black tomcat sitting close to his fence, watching me in concern. He meowed and reached out a paw to me. We touched noses through the fence, and it was the first time I’d communicated with him. I’d dismissed him as a boring, fat, switched-off cat.
I sat still for a moment, to see if he would communicate, and he did, telepathically. First, he leaned his solid black body against the fence, so that I could feel his warmth, and encouraged me with little purr-meows in his throat. We pressed against each other through the wire, and I sensed the words he was sending me.
‘Be still,’ he was telling me. ‘Be still and listen.’ Hearing and listening are different things for a cat.
Hearing is physical– hearing the wind in the trees, the traffic, the footsteps, the creak of doors. Listening is going inside a balloon of silence, sitting perfectly still and waiting.
The black cat joined me in this, and I felt his serenity and his wisdom. Why hadn’t I done this before? All I’d done in that pen was sleep, play and panic, sleep, play and panic. In the black cat’s benevolent presence, I was aware of him staring at my aura. What was he looking at?