Solomon's Kitten (5 page)

I crossed the road with a bunch of children and a bleeping noise, and the cars magically stopped in a neat line. For me? I heard laughing, and people saying, ‘Look at that cat.’ But
when I sat down to wash my face in the middle of the crossing, the bleeping stopped, someone screamed, and a young man bounded into the road, picked me up and carried me the rest of the way.

‘Stupid cat!’ he said, and I flicked my tail in annoyance, and the traffic made a terrible noise, blowing horns and swearing.

‘Keep that bloody cat off the road.’

‘It’s not my cat,’ yelled the young man.

I jumped up onto a massive flower pot full of pansies, and sat there to wash my face. It had to be done. But humans don’t understand what it’s like to have fur and the need to keep
on washing it. And why not sit somewhere pleasant like in the middle of a pot of yellow and purple pansies? They were scented and had wistful faces like kittens. I must have looked beautiful there
in the morning sun.

‘Get off, cat!’ A woman who looked like a bulldog gnashed her teeth at me. ‘You’re squashing the flowers.’

I stared at her. Obviously, she didn’t know I’d just saved a baby’s life.

‘Aw, leave him,’ said a kinder one.

‘Him!’ I thought, indignantly.

I settled down to wash in the lovely pansy pot.

Next, I followed some people into a shopping mall and had a mad half hour on the slippery floor. It was like a skating rink for cats. I twirled and skidded, figuring out how fast I had to run to
slide a long way on my belly. After the night of guarding the tiny baby, it felt amazing to be having fun and making people laugh. I chased a paper cup down the mall, under benches and into
doorways. I pretended it was a mouse and hid round a corner, then pounced on it, and skidded.

When I was tired, I strolled down to the pavement café and arranged myself on a chair, and the couple who were eating breakfast there gave me some crisp curls of bacon and corners of
buttery toast. I padded round the tables with my tail up, and was given a saucer of warm milk, some bits of sausage and a kipper’s tail, before the staff noticed me.

‘We don’t encourage cats,’ said the waiter, hovering over me with an armful of plates. ‘Go on. Shoo!’ He stamped his foot and hissed at me, and the plates slipped
alarmingly.

My hunger satisfied, though, I walked on down the shopping mall. I went into a clothes shop and swung from a rail of T-shirts, pulling them onto the floor.

‘OUT!’ shouted the shop assistant, and she ran at me clapping her hands. ‘You’re wrecking the place, you shouldn’t be in here, you crazy cat.’

Miffed, I walked on with my tail waving elegantly, and into the shop next door, which was full of televisions. And there I had the shock of my life.

I was on television . . . well, on a whole shop full of televisions in different sizes. I sat down in front of a big one that made me look like an enormous fluffy tiger on Linda’s
shoulder.

‘The baby was discovered by this woman, Linda Evans, who was walking her dog.’ Now the picture was of a reporter lady sitting on a red sofa.

Then I sat up even straighter. There was the tiny baby, Rocky, in the arms of a nurse. He’d got a little white hat on and a blanket wrapped round him, but I could see the mole on his cheek
and the glint of astonishment in his turquoise eyes. It was definitely him. My baby. My Rocky.

I went up to the screen, to touch noses with him, patted it and jumped back, not liking the crackle of static through my fur. I couldn’t stop looking at Rocky and wherever I looked, he was
there on every screen, and people were walking past the shop, ignoring him.

‘We are hoping his mother will come forward,’ the nurse was saying. ‘She may need medical help, and Rocky needs his mum. He’s a dear little chap.’

Then they showed me – again! – and the policeman who’d tried to hold me, and he was saying, ‘If anyone sees this cat or knows where it lives, please get in touch with us.
There could be a connection.’

I knew who Rocky’s mother was. TammyLee. How could a cat give that information? But even if I’d been able to talk, I wouldn’t have told. It was a secret I shared only with
TammyLee. We had been drawn to each other, I had felt her sadness, and she had called me ‘magic puss cat’. TammyLee and I were soul mates.

I had to find her. The time had come for me to grow up, stop playing, and work. I’d search to the ends of the earth for TammyLee.

But just as I was making this momentous decision, a man’s voice shouted, ‘THAT’S THE CAT!’ An agile young man, who’d spotted me watching myself on TV bounded to the
shop doors and slammed them shut.

And I was a prisoner. Again.

I searched the shop for an escape route, but there wasn’t one.

‘You stand there, Dave,’ the manager called to his mate.

Both wore smart white shirts, like tuxedo cats, black trousers and shiny shoes. Obviously, they weren’t used to cats, it made me nervous, but my angel’s voice rang in my aura,
keeping me calm and still. Self-control was something I needed to work on. It was hard. My instinct was buzzing like a bee, telling me to run wild in the shop and not be caught.

‘Get it some milk from the back, Kyle,’ said Dave. ‘Shut it in the kitchen and we’ll call the cops. Bit of free publicity, eh?’

There was no way out. A quick look around the walls and ceiling told me that. So I had to be pragmatic and trust these two young men, Dave and Kyle. I could see that Kyle had a fiery
intelligence as he warily approached me, so I was polite, standing up and putting my tail up. A silent meow and eye contact had him transfixed in seconds. Gingerly, he picked me up, and airlifted
me into the kitchen, kicking the door shut.

‘Got him!’ he shouted. ‘You can open the shop now, Dave.’

Why did everyone think I was male?

Kyle stood with his back to the kitchen door, brushing my fluff from his black trousers and watching me lapping the milk he had given me. I’d hardly got room for it after my
street-café breakfast. I was fine until the police turned up with a cat cage. Then I panicked in the small kitchen and squeezed myself behind the fridge.

‘Come on, darling. It’s all right. We’re only going to scan you and take you home. Come on, my lovely.’

I didn’t like it behind the fridge, so eventually, the policewoman’s honeyed tones coaxed me out and into the cage where she’d hidden some cat treats and, hey, a catnip mouse.
She kept talking to me kindly.

Bad memories of being a tiny kitten in one of those cages haunted me, so I kept still and quiet as I was carried into a police car and driven away with the blue light flashing. I thought about
the friends I had made. The couple who had fed me at the street café, the lady who’d let me sit in the pansy pot, the young man who’d risked his life to get me off the road. In
my search for TammyLee, I planned to return to that shopping mall, and see my new friends. A cat who is alone and searching needs the support of friends.

It turned out that I
had
got a ‘microchip’, and the police took me home to Gretel, even though I didn’t want to go.

Since the Christmas tree disaster, Gretel had changed her mind and decided she did want to keep me. She still shut me in the shed, usually with the window open to give me
access to the garden. I used those times of freedom to roam the streets looking for TammyLee. I sat on the wall and waited for her to walk past, but she never did. I followed groups of children to
school and sat watching the playground, but TammyLee was never there, and no one spoke her name. She seemed to have vanished.

Living with Gretel wasn’t working. I tried to love her, but it wasn’t easy. She loved me only when I was good and boring, not when I ran up the curtains or swung from the birch tree
in the garden, or caught the orange fish from the lily pond. But she did teach me stuff that turned out to be useful, like going in the car. Instead of shutting me in the shed, she took to putting
me in the car and taking me with her. At first I was petrified. But I soon got used to it. The car was warm and comfortable, and Gretel had set it up with a wire grill to stop me going into the
front while she was driving, a cosy cat igloo where I could hide, and even some toys for me to play with. She talked to me a lot while we were going along, and sang me songs and played the radio.
The trips were interesting. I learned to recognise places. Corners and buildings and parks. Even the shopping mall and the river bridge where TammyLee had stood with baby Rocky. I glimpsed the
elder tree where I’d spent the night guarding him, and I sensed the wild country beyond the town, which I longed to explore.

So I became a car cat. I quite enjoyed it. Until one terrible day that changed my life.

It was a summer day, many weeks after I’d found the abandoned baby. The weather was so hot that it hurt my paws to walk on the patio. I was rolling on my back on the lawn, enjoying the sun
on my belly and dabbing at passing flies.

‘Come on, Fuzzball.’ Gretel appeared in a flimsy blue dress, twiddling her car keys. ‘We’ll go to the supermarket. At least they’ve got air conditioning in
there.’

If I’d known what was going to happen, I’d never have let her pick me up, tuck me under her arm and put me in the car. It was hot in there, but she drove along with the window open.
Lovely, except for the smell of a crowded town, the exhaust fumes, lawns being mown, the bakeries and the pubs. Far away was the briny tang of the river and the heather-covered moorland beyond the
town, a scent on the wind that stirred a deep ancestral longing in me. Being a domestic cat was OK, but I had a wild streak in me that wasn’t satisfied with fluffy cat beds and cat-nip
mice.

There was a bad atmosphere in town. A sense of something simmering, about to erupt. People looked knocked out by the heat. Children were crying and dogs were being dragged along on leads on the
hot pavements.

‘I’ll bring you an ice cream,’ said Gretel, turning into the supermarket car park. She found a parking space, shut the windows and got out. ‘I won’t be long,
Fuzzball.’

I sighed and settled down for a snooze. Used to being left in the car, I curled up, wrapped my tail around myself and closed my eyes.

Within minutes I was too hot. It wasn’t like lying by the fire and having to move away from the heat. I was trapped in it, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Alarmed, I climbed up onto
the back of the seats, but it was worse up there near the roof of the car. Outside, the car roofs shimmered in the heat, dazzling me. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I was frightened. I clawed at the
window, hoping to open it and get some air. It was so hot I had to breathe with my mouth open like a dog.

I longed for water but Gretel hadn’t left me any. Desperately, I licked a few drops of condensation from the window glass, then worked my way round each of the windows, licking what
moisture I could find, and all the time getting hotter and hotter.

There was no way of cooling myself down. I tore at my thick fur, trying to get some air on my skin, but nothing worked. I dug and scrabbled at the floor of the car, trying to find a hole or a
crack I could make bigger with my teeth and claws. Soon my feet were burning, my claw sheaths sore, and my throat so dry. I was being dried up, cooked alive in that oven of a car.

Where was my angel? Where was she?

I listened. I kept still and called her name in my heart. The Angel of Secrets. Angel of Secrets. Angel . . . I was giddy now, and her voice came to me from far away. My body was collapsing and
I just lay there panting. All I could hear was the alarming echo of my heartbeat, the rasp of my breath, and the distant whisper of her voice, repeating over and over again, ‘Don’t give
up. Don’t give up. Meow and someone will come. Meow. You must meow.’

I fought to stay awake, but I was losing consciousness, sinking into a boiling black darkness. I did meow, and it was loud, and painful. Yet my body seemed to take over and meow by itself,
draining my last dregs of energy, calling, calling for help.

As I finally lost consciousness, I saw a face looking through the glass at me, and it wasn’t Gretel.

I drifted through the dark, and reached the shoreline of the spirit world. A high fence of the brightest gold sent out beams of light spangled with pinpoints of intense colour. I sat before it
and gazed through into the world I had loved so much, the spirit world where I was the Queen of Cats. Telepathically, I begged for the golden fence to open and let me through, let me go home, let
me leave this body of pain lying in the hot car.

The voices I heard were muddled.

‘Come back, Queen of Cats. You still have work to do.’ That was my angel, and from beyond the golden fence I could hear purring. Loud, vibrational purring from the shining cats who
had purred with me in the spirit world. They weren’t welcoming me, but sending me back, floating on a carpet of purring.

I drifted back to the sound of human voices around the car. Someone saying, ‘That poor cat in there!’ and ‘We have to get it out. NOW!’

My world exploded with a bang. A storm of broken glass scattered over me, into my fur and all over the car. Dazed, I saw the emerald green of the broken pieces. The air rushed in, and a pair of
long arms reached through the hole in the window. I felt my limp body being lifted out.

‘I’ve got him.’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Not quite. And it’s a she cat. She’s beautiful.’

Someone ran with me to the shade of a big plane tree and laid me on a bench. I felt the slats of wood under me, and the deliciously cool canopy of the great tree. But I couldn’t move. My
breathing was laboured, my eyes wouldn’t shut, and I was salivating.

‘There’s no time to get her to a vet.’

‘Water. Get some water from the shopping bag.’

I heard running feet again, then the rustle of plastic and the soft pop of a bottle being opened. I hate water, but they were pouring it over me! It trickled round my neck, into my fur, along my
back, over my parched face. I licked the drops and felt the healing cool of it soaking my hot body.