Miffed, I sat washing, and Amber must have sensed my sadness, for she crept towards me and touched me with a big soft paw. I deliberately continued washing. I could manage perfectly well without a dog who didn’t like me, thank you.
Amber listened to the sound of Max’s car rolling over the gravel, then leaving with a smart zippy sort of roar. The house was quiet, and I was alone with my beautiful goddess of a dog, and she didn’t like me.
Once the car had gone, Amber relaxed. She started sending me messages, in the way that animals do, by telepathy. It’s so much easier than trying to actually speak like humans do, and it changes so smoothly from images to words and back again.
The first message Amber sent me was that she loved Max, but he dominated her too much. She was a more confident dog when he wasn’t there telling her what to do. She did want to be friends with me, but she’d never had a cat friend before, and she was nervous.
She gave me an experimental lick on the top of my head, and I stopped being huffy and let her lick my back the way Harriet had done. When I’d had enough, I gave her a pat on the nose, being careful to keep my claws retracted. She lay down on her side, and let me cuddle up to her and she wanted me to purr right next to her ear. She lay there, thumping her tail, and I even dared to play with it.
Suddenly, Amber sat up and listened attentively, her nose twitching. It made my hackles rise and my tail bush out in the spooky silence, not knowing why she was listening. Something was going to happen. I heard a bleeping noise from upstairs. Then I was almost knocked over as Amber took off in a whirl of wispy fur. She skidded through the hall and thundered up the stairs, her tail wagging furiously. I heard a squeal from TammyLee’s room, and Amber reappeared with her aura on fire, her ears flying and her mouth smiling. She charged down the stairs, grabbed a shoe from the mat, and did a wild circle with her back all bunched up. I leaped out of the way onto the back of the sofa with my bottlebrush tail kinked in the air.
I watched in disbelief as Amber lolloped upstairs again. I peered up there and saw her skid round the doorway into TammyLee’s room. I heard the clonk as she dropped the shoe and loud laughter from TammyLee. The laughing seemed to add fire and speed to Amber’s performance. She lolloped down again, did another mad circle, pausing to snatch the other shoe, before belting upstairs again like an earthquake. By the time she had done it about six times, my fur had gone flat again, and I understood this was a game she played. Every morning, she told me as she flashed past, every morning she heard TammyLee’s alarm clock and galloped up the stairs. It started the day with peals of laughter, even the china in the kitchen was ringing with it.
It filled me with joy. Before long, I knew, I would join in the game, if I could keep out of the way of those flying paws. I’d hide under the stairs and leap out at Amber’s tail as she soared past. Ah, I was going to have fun in this house!
I wondered if there would be a postman.
I waited until Amber ran downstairs for the final time, puffing and snorting, and too hot. She flopped down on the cold tiles in the kitchen, and I arranged my fur, put my tail up and walked upstairs nicely, to say good morning to TammyLee.
She was sitting in front of a mirror, fixing her hair, dragging some of it back and some of it forward, then pulling out curly strands to hang round her face.
‘Tallulah!’ she breathed, and picked me up as if I was the most precious treasure. She put down the comb and the funny-looking strand of pink hair that she’d been trying to add to the hairstyle.
I sat on her lap and stared into her eyes, and what I saw there told me it was time for serious stuff. It wasn’t the time to purr, or to play. It was time to listen.
TammyLee said some nice things to me first, the sort of blanket comments people offer to cats, like,‘Aren’t you beautiful?’ and ‘You’re SUCH a lovely cat.’ Then it moved on to, ‘I can’t believe I found you again. I knew it was you, and I saw you on TV.’
I maintained my searching stare, and her voice dropped to a whisper.‘I don’t deserve you. I’m a bad girl. And you know, don’t you, Tallulah? You were there when I … did what I did.’
I responded with a mini purr-meow, and sat still, watching and waiting.
‘You know what I did … that terrible night.’ TammyLee was stroking me with her hands, one each side of me, her slim fingers buried in my fur. ‘And you went back, didn’t you? You saw my baby – my Rocky. I think about him all the time.’
I licked the tears from her cheeks, but more and more came and she moved her hands to press hard against her temples. I watched the deep, dark pain rise to the surface, and sink back again into the green depths of her eyes.