The sky was blue now and the flood had settled into a vast sheet of water. I could see the reflection of the helicopter and the trees. Loud and scary as it was, I worked out that this iron giant was actually under control. In the midst of the thunderous noise, there were voices, and they were calm, giving clear instructions to each other. I understood that a man in goggles and a helmet was in the cockpit, and he was OK. Two more men, clad in bright orange, were in the side door, and one of them began to descend, on a string, like a spider!
Down and down he came, and stopped level with Diana’s bedroom window. Max was holding on to her tightly, and Diana was being brave, smiling and making jokes as the man fixed a harness round her. She was whisked up into the sky, with the man in orange holding her firmly. She looked down at me as I sat in the window, and then she was lifted into the helicopter. Max went next, his body rigid, his face grim as he was winched to safety.
‘What about us?’ I thought, expecting the men in orange to come back with a cat cage and lift me up there too, and Amber, and take us to a lovely place where TammyLee would be waiting. I wanted her so much in that moment. I wanted her love, and the special way she talked to me and explained things, the way she’d put her face close to mine and call me ‘magic puss cat’.
But it didn’t happen like that. A cold shadow of betrayal crept over me as they closed the door of the rescue helicopter. I meowed and scrabbled at the window. I wailed and cried, but the helicopter rose heartlessly into the sky and set off at speed, carrying Max and Diana away from us. I watched until itwas a tiny speck against the western sky.
They had left us behind.
Max’s words rang in my head. ‘Our home is RUINED.’ What did he mean? It seemed OK to me, except that there was water downstairs. I wondered where my food dish was.
Amber crawled out from under the table, still shivering. I tried to comfort her by winding myself round her legs with my tail brushing her face, but all it did was make her sneeze. My attempt to tell her about the helicopter was a waste of time. She couldn’t get her head round it. She stood at the door, pawing it and whining, her tail hanging limp like rope. Her fur had mostly dried except for her ears, and she was cold, and, like me, hungry.
Outside, the sun was setting and pink light reflected in the water. Amber wouldn’t talk to me, so I sat in the window and watched it getting dark. Boats were going up the flooded road, laden with people wrapped in blankets. One woman had a cat in a cage and I could hear it meowing. The other cat I saw was all alone and clinging to a wooden table that was being swept along fast by the surging water. I searched the sky, but the helicopter didn’t come back, and in the deepening twilight there were blue lights flashing everywhere.
It was the longest night of my life, thinking I’d been abandoned, wanting TammyLee, wanting my supper and the warm bright fire. Amber didn’t sleep either but stared at the door all night, her nose twitching, and her tail didn’t wag once.
When dawn came, I noticed her looking up at the door handle and getting more and more agitated. She seemed to be hyping herself up for something she was planning to do. Then, cleverly, she got the handle between her teeth and pushed it down. It didn’t work, but she tried again, and I ran to sit beside her and encourage her, thinking we could get down to the kitchen and find our food. Amber growled and jerked the handle harder, and at last the door swung open. Amber dashed into Diana’s room, and came out again, looking puzzled. She ran up and down the landing and in and out of the bathroom.
‘Max and Diana are gone,’ I said, ‘and TammyLee.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Amber. ‘They’re out there somewhere.’
She sat at the top of the stairs, sniffing the air and thinking.
‘Don’t go down there,’ I said. ‘It’s flooded.’
The water was deep. Stuff was floating around in it, and only the top of the sofa and table were visible. Sticks and straw had been washed in and was drifting around with lots of paper and plastic bottles. We could see into the kitchen, and the window was open, and once Amber saw that, something even more terrible happened.
‘Don’t go … please,’ I begged, but Amber wasn’t seeing or hearing me.
With a sense of foreboding, I watched her pad down the stairs. She entered the water quietly, not with her usual joyful splash. She swam around in a circle, and looked up at me, and clearly she was saying,‘Goodbye.’
Devastated, I meowed and meowed, but Amber swam into the kitchen, and dragged herself over the worktop and out of the open window. Frantic, I tore back into TammyLee’s room, to see what happened, and glimpsed the shine of Amber’s wet head as she swam across the flooded garden and into the swirling current that was the road. I meowed my loudest. What chance did a lone dog have in that vast and swiftly moving flood?
Now I was truly alone.