‘There is a reason,’ she said. ‘You have been hurt to make something happen, to help you with your mission, Tallulah.’
Grumpy and tired, I didn’t respond the way you should do to an angel.
‘What mission?’ I growled, despite knowing perfectly well what it was.
‘Remember, you came here to reunite TammyLee with her child.’
‘I wish I’d never come here.’ The words heaved out of me like a cloud over the sun. It was an old familiar feeling – depression. The last time I’d had it was after Gretel left me in the car.
‘If it was an accident, I could deal with it,’ I said to my angel. ‘But I feel it’s bigger than that. I’m carrying the cruelty from across the world … all the hurt … it’s not physical. It’s coming to me from thousands of cats who’ve been tormented by humans.’
‘Purr,’ said my angel. ‘Come on, purr yourself to sleep, and I will take you on a celestial journey. You will awake with new knowledge.’
‘Knowledge!’ I moaned, and another wave of despair engulfed my spirit. ‘I never needed knowledge before. A cat knows everything it needs. But I don’t know HOW I can possibly do the mission I agreed to. How can a cat manage to reunite a mum with her baby? I can’t tell TammyLee where Rocky is.’
‘This knowledge will be given in spirit,’ said my angel. ‘Now, do as I asked. Purr.’
My first purr came out as a complaint, and it hurt right through my body.
‘Listen,’ said my angel. ‘Listen to the shining cats purring out there in another dimension.’
Relaxing a little, I listened, and, at first, heard only a murmur of voices from Diana’s room, and, from downstairs, the sound of Amber’s tail banging against the fridge and the snip-snip of scissors as Max cut off bits of bacon for her.
My angel began to hum a lullaby to me and a delicious drowsiness melted my pain into slumber. In my sleep, I heard the heavenly purring, saw the thistledown faces of spirit cats, their eyes like lamps burning around me, illuminating my dreams with an incandescence that was both healing and inviting.
‘Am I dying?’ I asked, but there was no answer except the humming, the purring and the whirling colours of the scarf. My angel kept repeating something like a mantra: ‘There is a reason, a reason …’ Her words became a cushion of stars, carrying me high above the house and the garden, above the river and the hills, then through the sky, faster and faster. So fast that the stillness of my sleep was tightly tucked around me, keeping me safe.
My spirit was intact, yet I felt like two cats who were separating. One was flying gloriously through endless sparkles, the other was lying limp and lifeless on TammyLee’s bed. From some distant place, I watched TammyLee come back into her bedroom and look closely at that tabby-and-white cat. ‘That’s me,’ I thought. ‘But I’m not supposed to die yet.’
Her long fingers slipped through my fur, the witchy-green nails shining. Her hand was suddenly still and she seemed to be listening, her face going pale like one of the cream roses in the garden.
‘Don’t die on me, Tallulah,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Tallulah.’
I saw the panic in her eyes, but I was detached, still in that distant starry place, no longer flying, but floating, closer and closer to the sequinned edges of my true home, the spirit world, where I was the Queen of Cats. Why had I ever left? I yearned to go back.
‘Why can’t I go in?’ I asked my angel.
‘It is not your time,’ she replied, and I searched her silver eyes for an explanation. ‘You are a brave cat, a bright spirit and you CAN complete your mission. Help is on the way. Feel the hand that is touching you.’
I focussed on TammyLee’s hand and it was trembling as she caressed the silky fur over my heart. She lay down and put her ear against me, the bobble of her earring pressing into me. She was listening for a heartbeat.
‘Purr,’ said my angel, but I couldn’t. I gazed at her. In her full colours, she was dazzling. ‘You are very ill, but remember, there is a healer for you. She gave you your name, Tallulah.’
A face drifted into my mind, manifesting through the web of stars, the girl with the long dark plait and the blazing light: Roxanne!
‘Send out the call,’ said my angel. ‘And she will come.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I can’t even purr.’
‘You can. You can think. And thinking has power. Think of Roxanne. Hold her face in your dreams. Tell her you need help.’
‘But it doesn’t work like that with humans,’ I argued.
‘Thinking has power. Just do it.’
I held Roxanne’s face in my mind, tightly in my dreams as the angel had said. At the same time I watched the pandemonium in the house as TammyLee flew into a panic. She carried me downstairs.
‘Dad … DO something. She’s dying.’
‘Don’t be RIDICULOUS.’
‘WHY can’t you believe me, Dad?’
Max came and looked at my limp body, and Amber came creeping along the floor, whimpering. I felt Max change from being angry to being the organiser.
‘Put her in the car. We’ll take her to the vet. Now,’ he said. ‘It might not be too late.’