Colours. He was showing me colours that flickered through my aura like those of a dragonfly in the sun. He was staring at a light in the air above and around me. He was showing me my angel!
‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘It’s been so long.’ It seemed a lifetime ago when I was ‘Fuzzball’, that I’d talked with my angel. Well, I didn’t talk; I listened, soaking up her words like the soothing heat of the sun.
‘Tallulah,’ she said, and it sounded like a song. ‘Tallulah! All is well. You will go to TammyLee on the right day, when the sun is a deep gold. But first, you must wait, and trust. We have set this up for you so that you can begin your true work as Tallulah – a strong, wise and loving cat. The work will take many years, for TammyLee is a beautiful soul caught in a difficult life. She and her family will need you.’
‘I wish I had a friend,’ I said, ‘like this black cat, or like the dog, Harriet, who rescued me when I was tiny. I’ve never had a friend, only a human. I’ve been lonely.’
‘You will have a friend: Amber. Wait and see. Amber is waiting for you, and she is lonely too.’
‘Who is she?’ I asked, but my angel wouldn’t tell me. She wanted to say something else.
‘I’ve tried so often to talk to you, Tallulah,’ she said. ‘And you’ve always been too busy. Your life will spiral out of control if you don’t practice stillness regularly.’
I agreed that I would and, as the colours of my angel muted into the night, I slept, right there against the wire, with the black cat still pressed against me on his side of the fence.
The sun was golden as Penny drove me past the fields of sheep, along the babbling river towards the town. I sat up smartly in the cat cage, noticing everything, my whiskers quivering with excitement.
‘Here we are, Tallulah – your new home.’ Penny swung the car away from the big roundabout, down a leafy lane and into a driveway. As soon as the tyres crunched over the gravel, I heard a dog barking deep inside the house. And I could hear another sound – the burble of water rushing over stones. The river was very close.
TammyLee came running across the lawn. I meowed as she reached the car, breathless, and full to the brim of love for me. I kissed her bangled arm through the wire mesh.‘Don’t let her out yet,’ warned Penny as she took my cage out of the car. The air smelled of sweet apples, and sheep and the briny river. After my time in the pen, I so needed to be on the grass and in the trees.
‘I’ll bring her in.’ Penny seemed reluctant to let go of me. ‘I want to see her reaction to Amber. And there’s some papers to sign.’
She carried me into this awesome house, which smelled of roast chicken and oranges, and, yes, it smelled of damp dog as well. The barking started again, a man’s voice yelled, ‘QUIET,’ and it stopped.
‘Here she is,’ said TammyLee. ‘This is Tallulah. Isn’t she a darling?’
A man and a woman were looking into the cage at me, and I immediately observed that the woman was ill. Her aura was bright but fragile, and she sat in a wheelchair.
‘This is Mum,’ said TammyLee, and I did my best to smile there in the cage, giving a little purr-meow and dancing my eyes at the poor sick woman with the sweet face. ‘Her name is Diana.’
Penny unfastened the cage door. I paused, fluffed my fur, and swanned out, looking round at everyone with my golden eyes full of joy. My family!
‘And this is Dad.’ TammyLee showed me the man, and he looked at me kindly under bushy eyebrows. He was obviously important, and powerful, his aura had an orange glow. I rubbed myself around his legs and felt him touch the tip of my fluffy tail.
‘Hello, Tallulah,’ he said, ‘I’m Max,’ and immediately I sensed he was holding something back, some secret he was bursting to tell me.
‘Shall we do it?’ he asked eagerly. ‘Shall we introduce them?’
‘No time like the present,’ said Diana in a thin squeak of a voice.
‘Best get it over with,’ said Penny.
Max got up and opened a glass door into the conservatory.‘Now you be a good girl, Amber. Don’t you dare even THINK about barking.’
I stared in utter joy. A dog! My own dog! And what a beauty. Amber was golden, silky and magnificent. She stood in the doorway with the light shining through the silver plume of her wagging tail. Her eyes were anxious and she went stiff when she saw me there with my tail up. I ran straight to her and kissed her on the nose.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ cried Penny.
Amber looked down at me like a goddess. Then she lay on her belly and sniffed at me, and whimpered.
‘It’s all right, Amber,’ said TammyLee. ‘Tallulah wants to be friends with you.’
Amber turned her head away from my kisses. She shivered all over and started creeping along the floor towards TammyLee.
‘You great big coward.’ Max laughed at Amber, loudly, and the dog looked hurt.
‘Don’t laugh at her. Poor Amber,’ said TammyLee, ‘she’s frightened of doing something wrong.’