Ellen went quiet. She went limp against the wall, and slid to the floor, her hands over her ears. Joe stamped his foot, and grinned when she jumped. It startled me too, so much that I wailed in fright. I thought Joe was going to kill my lovely Ellen.
I had to do something.
So I walked out from under the chair and sat between them, facing Joe. I yowled and looked right into Joe’s eyes, a hard cat stare, a power stare that I didn’t know I had until that moment. I could feel my angel filling my aura with a burning light.
‘Don’t get nasty,’ she said. ‘Just sit there.’
Joe turned and left, slamming the door so hard that the whole house vibrated and the remaining shards of glass crashed into the hall.
‘I’ll kill the pair of you,’ he bellowed as he headed out.
Ellen picked me up and wept into my fur.
‘What are we going to do, Solomon? What are we going to DO?’
I just kept my head down and carried on purring into Ellen’s heart. She seemed frozen. Nothing I did made any difference. Perhaps that first row was the most difficult, at least it was for me anyway. And through it all Jessica was out in the garden, shamelessly chasing butterflies. For once I envied her ability to detach herself from family upsets. I made a mental note that detachment was a skill to be acquired in another lifetime. Right now I felt hopelessly inadequate, especially when Ellen put me down and picked up John, who was crying.
‘What did Daddy do?’ he was wailing.
‘He kicked the door in.’
‘It’s broken!’ John wailed even louder. ‘And the foxes will get in.’
‘We can mend it darling. Calm down. Daddy’s gone out now.’
‘Has Daddy gone away forever?’
‘No.’
‘He said he was.’
‘He won’t. He’ll be back. You’ll see,’ soothed Ellen, but her eyes were sad and frightened.
‘Jessica’s got a butterfly!’ shrieked John. He wriggled out of Ellen’s arms and both of them rushed into the garden. I didn’t understand why Ellen felt she had to rescue a butterfly when her own wings were broken.
Exhausted by the rowing, I crawled onto my favourite cushion to doze through the morning. Blessed sleep took me quickly into the spirit world.
‘How are you doing, Solomon?’
The sight of my angel’s beaming face stopped me moaning too much. The feelings of inadequacy and the pain in my ears melted into a stream of bright stars that healed my confusion. It was hard, my angel agreed, but warned me it would get worse, and in between the bad times I must concentrate on eating, playing and building myself into a strong cat.
Refreshed and brave again, I awoke at noon to the silence of an empty house. I yawned and stretched, and walked into every room with my tail up, expecting to find Ellen. Even Jessica was nowhere to be seen. A plate of cat food was in its usual place in the kitchen so I ate most of it, thinking it had an odd metallic flavour. Rabbit, it said on the tin. Tin-flavoured rabbit. Well, it was different.
I considered braving the cat flap, but it was too heavy for a kitten like me, only three months old, and it had a way of snapping shut on my tail. I decided to go upstairs to look for Ellen.
The hall was full of broken glass, and the door had been mended with a piece of cardboard and parcel tape. John’s room was empty, and so was the bathroom, but Ellen’s bedroom door was shut. I sat outside it staring, trying to use my psi sense to find out if she was inside, but apparently she wasn’t. A few meows brought no result so I ran downstairs and jumped onto the lounge windowsill, and there, to my amazement, was Ellen. My fur stood on end, my tail bushed out like a bottlebrush. What I saw was so strange.
Ellen was inside a silver door, about the size of the puss flap. She had shrunk to the size of a blackbird. I stared and stared, not daring to move in case it happened to me. It was definitely Ellen. She had blonde hair and she was smiling, her eyes were full of light. Then I noticed something that made my fur even stiffer.Only her head was there in that silver door, the rest of her was missing. Spooked, I looked carefully behind the silver door andnothing was there. I tried to touch noses with her but a glassy screen was across the door. I sat down, feeling I mustn’t take my eyes off her, and waited for her to come out.
I heard the puss flap slam and Jessica came in with a dead starling in her mouth. She dumped half of it in the kitchen and half of it under the sofa before seeing me up there staring at Ellen in the silver door.
‘What are you all blown up about?’ she asked. ‘You look like a hedgehog.’
‘Something terrible has happened to Ellen.’
Very few cats ever master the art of laughing. I certainly couldn’t. But Jessica knew exactly how to curl up her mouth, spark her eyes and roll on the floor as if she were laughing.
‘That’s apicture,’ she explained. ‘It’s not really Ellen. It’s a flat image on a piece of something.’
‘I don’t understand.’