For a few days, things were more settled in Sarah and Martin’s house. But I was so worried about the suggestion of a new cat, I decided I’d better try harder than ever to make myself irreplaceable. Since being told off for leaving the headless sparrow in the lounge, I’d tried leaving a few gifts of mice and birds by the back door, but Sarah hadn’t seemed particularly thrilled. So this time, I spent a while stalking the stupid pigeons who dominated the bird feeder a few gardens down the road. They’re not particularly hard to catch, but they’re big and cumbersome to carry off. I chose the biggest, plumpest one, and just to make sure it was properly appreciated, left it on the front doorstep.
Sarah was indoors, working in the study. I went in to keep her company, jumping up on the desk next to her computer.
‘Hello, Ollie,’ she said, but she seemed to find the screen of the computer more interesting than me. I tried to lie across the part where she tapped out writing – it was nice and warm from her hands – but she sighed and lifted me off. I really didn’t feel very welcome. Was she getting bored with me? I toyed for a few minutes with a funny-shaped thing lying next to the computer, but then she reached for it herself and sighed again.
‘Ollie, please don’t play with the mouse,’ she said, sounding tired and fed up.
Mouse? I stared at it. If it was a mouse, it had been dead for a long time, that was for sure.
‘I’m very busy,’ she said. ‘This is a tricky piece of work and I need to concentrate. I think you’d better get down.’
And she lifted me off the desk, putting me down quite firmly on the floor. I was mortified. She must be getting bored with me! Was I going to be expelled from the family even sooner than I’d feared? I slunk off to my bed in the kitchen and curled up tight, burying my head under my tail, and consoled myself with a little nap.
When I woke up, there was pandemonium in the house. The children were home from school, they were both shrieking at the tops of their voices and Sarah was trying to calm them down.
‘It’s gross,’ Grace was shouting. ‘I nearly trod on it.’
‘Its eyes were staring at me,’ Rose cried. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘Why does Ollie do it?’ Grace said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t. Sooty never did it, did he, Mummy?’
I sat up in bed, horrified. What had I done wrong? I tried my best to please them, and I just got compared unfavourably with Saint Sooty. How could I compete with a ghost?
‘Sooty did do it,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘You don’t remember, because you were too little when he was a young cat. He got too old to hunt in the end. All cats like to hunt – it’s normal. I agree, it’s not very pleasant for us, but it’s part of living with cats, and there’s no point making all this fuss. I’ll clear it up. Now, calm down, and go and get changed out of your uniforms.’
I stayed in the kitchen, sulking, feeling unappreciated. A little while later, both girls came in to talk to me.
‘I know you can’t help it, Ollie,’ Grace said very seriously, squatting down to stroke my head. ‘But really, it isn’t very nice.’
‘Next time, Ollie, leave it somewhere else,’ said Rose. ‘A long way away.’
‘Yes, as far away as possible,’ Grace said, and they both giggled.
At least they didn’t seem cross with me anymore. I sighed. Humans could be so hard to understand at times.
* * *
The next day, Sarah took Rose to the hospital and they both came home with big smiles on their faces.
‘Look, Ollie!’ she shouted, running into the room, waving both paws at me. ‘My plaster’s off! I can cuddle you properly now. Can we do the decorations now, Mummy?’
‘Yes, when Grace gets home from school,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t want any more arguments about it.’
There was a much better atmosphere in the room this time, with both girls happy and excited about climbing on a chair to put the sparkly stuff and the shiny baubles on the tree.
‘You can put the angel on the top, Rose,’ Grace said. She’d been particularly kind to her sister since the trouble at the weekend. ‘I’ll hold the chair steady for you. Be careful you don’t fall.’
Nothing more was being said about a new cat. But as I’m sure you can imagine, I had my ears up constantly, listening for any talk about one replacing me. It had brought home to me how precarious my position was, as a foster cat in the family. Thank goodness I’d got a back-up with Nicky and Daniel next door, even though I suspected they might prefer their new baby to me when it arrived. Oh, how I wished I could be back in my pub, where I had George all to myself and didn’t have to compete with anyone else.
* * *
I tried to console myself with the new friends I’d made at the Big House. It was so nice to see Caroline looking so happy when I arrived, and in fact the next time when Laura let me in and gave me her usual little cuddle before putting me on Caroline’s lap, she said:
‘You’re doing Caroline so much good, you know, Oliver. You’ve really cheered her up since you’ve been coming here. I can’t see how Julian could possibly object.’
I guessed Julian must be Caroline’s father. It was good to hear that he couldn’t object to me. I decided now that he couldn’t be the same person as the angry man with the stick that Tabby had gone on about. I’d still never seen any sign of the father, and I guess I was getting a little bit complacent. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder when I ran up the driveway and meowed at the glass doors. I should have known it was too good to be true.
* * *
It happened on another Saturday, the one after the argument about the Christmas tree. Looking back, I suppose until then I hadn’t been going to the Big House at weekends, because there was always so much more going on at my two foster homes. Daniel and Nicky were at home, Martin and the children were around, and sometimes the Brownie Foxes turned up to do their important study of my behaviour. Having so many people to play with, I didn’t get bored and lonely like I sometimes did during the week. But now I’d started seeing Caroline every day, and because Laura had told me I was doing her good, I didn’t want to miss out any days anymore.
I bounded down the drive as usual and called out to Laura from my normal place at the glass doors. For a minute I thought nobody was there. I put my ear against the glass and heard Caroline calling out to Laura: ‘Oliver’s here!’ She sounded a bit startled.
‘Oh!’ Laura had rushed back into the room and was staring at me in surprise. ‘He’s never come at the weekend before. We’d better not let him in,’ she said, looking back over her shoulder. ‘It would have to be one of the Saturdays that your dad works from home.’
‘Oh, please, Laura!’ Caroline said.
‘Yes, please, Laura!’ I meowed in Cat. It was cold outside.
‘Just for a little while? I can keep him under my blanket,’ Caroline was pleading. ‘Daddy’s in his study. He’ll be in there all morning, won’t he?’
‘Well…’ Laura sighed, looked back through the door of the room again, then quietly closed it behind her. ‘All right, then, but only for a few minutes. If he makes any noise, he’ll have to go straight out again.’
She opened the glass door for me and I dashed over to the sofa and jumped up next to Caroline. She giggled and pulled me onto her lap, putting the blanket right over me.
‘No noise, Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve got to be a very quiet, very secret cat today.’
I quite liked the idea of being a secret cat. It wasn’t easy to keep from purring, though, snuggled up like that under the warm blanket with Caroline giving me a nice stroke.
‘Can we have the TV on?’ she asked Laura. ‘Then if Oliver does start meowing, Daddy won’t hear.’
‘OK.’ Laura smiled at her. ‘Just this once.’ I heard the television being turned on and for a while, I settled down and closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth and comfort and letting Caroline’s stroking soothe away my worries about being displaced by a new Sooty.
‘I’m just going to the bathroom, Caroline,’ I heard Laura say after quite a while. ‘And when I come back, Oliver’s going to have to go. No fuss, please, otherwise he’ll have to stop coming altogether.’
‘OK,’ Caroline said reluctantly. ‘Sorry, Oliver,’ she whispered to me as the door closed quietly behind Laura. ‘She’s worried about my dad, you see. Maybe I should get brave enough to tell him about you, but since I’ve been ill he tends to get upset about things.’
There was the sound of the door opening again. Laura coming back, I supposed. I made the fatal mistake of getting up and having a stretch, before turning round to settle myself back down again. To my surprise, Caroline pushed me down quite hard under the blanket, giving a little gasp.
‘Daddy!’
I froze. I had a horrible feeling my tail was half out of the blanket. A frightened little mew escaped from my lips.
‘What the hell?’ came this loud, cross voice. Footsteps thumped across the floor. The blanket was lifted off us, and a huge paw grabbed me round the back of my neck. I was suddenly reminded so horrifyingly of being grabbed in the same way by that very first scary man in my life, when I was only a tiny kitten, that I screeched in terror and dug my claws into the skin of the man’s other paw.
‘Ouch! Let go, you horrible, vicious thing.’ He flung me off himself and I landed, shaking with fear, on the floor near the glass door.
‘Let me out! Let me out!’ I cried out to Caroline in Cat, but even if she could have understood me, she was too busy crying herself.
‘Daddy, you didn’t have to do that. You’ve hurt him.’
‘I’ll hurt him a lot more if I ever see him in this house again. What on earth was Laura thinking of, letting you have an animal in here with you? LAURA!’ he shouted – and she came running in, red in the face and trembling almost as much as I was.
‘I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t think it’d do any harm – he’s a nice clean little cat, he has a collar on…’
‘I wouldn’t care if he had a dinner jacket on. You know perfectly well I do not allow animals in my house, and especially not on my daughter’s sickbed.’
‘It’s not a sickbed, Daddy, it’s a sofa. I’m not as sick as I was, I’m getting better,’ Caroline cried.
‘You’re still susceptible to germs, you know that. Your immunity is low. You’re not supposed to mix with people, never mind dirty, flea-ridden animals.’
Flea-ridden? If I hadn’t been in a state of such abject terror, I’d have jumped up and clawed him again for being so rude.
‘Julian, I really think you’re overreacting,’ Laura started to say, but he turned on her angrily.
‘Overreacting? Can I remind you that this is my daughter, my only child, the only person I have left to care about in my life? Wasn’t it enough that she had to have this bloody awful illness and go through months of treatment that made her sick and weak and…’
‘And she’s getting better, Julian. Yes, she’s still weak, but she’s getting stronger every day. You’ve got to stop treating her like an invalid. She wants to make friends, she needs company. It’s only people with colds and germs she needs to keep away from, not everybody. She was going crazy with boredom until Oliver started visiting.’
‘Oliver? That animal? You mean to tell me this has been a regular occurrence – he’s been coming here all the time, encouraged by you, behind my back?’ For a minute I thought he was going to grab hold of Laura by the neck like he did with me, but Caroline spoke up.
‘It’s not Laura’s fault, Daddy. I made her let him in. It’s true, I was bored. It’s been lovely seeing Oliver every day. I feel better because of him.’
The man just ignored her, though, and carried on shouting at poor Laura.
‘I employ you to care for my daughter, not to put her health at risk by letting cats into my house. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. I’m very sorry, Julian. I won’t let the cat in again.’
Everyone seemed to have forgotten I was still in the room.
‘You’d better not,’ he said in a quieter voice that somehow sounded even more dangerous than the shouting. ‘Or you’ll be out on your ear. Plenty of other nurses would jump at a nice little job like this.’ He glanced across the room and finally noticed me quivering in the corner by the doors. ‘Let that cat out now and don’t let me ever see it here again.’
Caroline was still crying, and I could tell Laura was shaking as she opened the door for me. But I’m afraid I was too terrified for my own life to stop and give either of them a purr or a tail-wave in goodbye. I shot straight out of the door and round the other side of the house. I wasn’t even going to risk running back down the driveway until I was sure that angry man was nowhere around – I’d feel too exposed out in the open. There was a wooden shed just round the corner of the building that gave me a vague memory of the place I was born in. The door was ajar, so I crept inside, found a dark little spot behind some flower pots, and lay there panting and mewing softly to myself, waiting for my heartbeat to settle back down.
* * *
You’ll find, as you get older, little Charlie, that stress does funny things to us cats. Once I’d calmed down a bit and felt relatively safe, I must have gone straight off to sleep. The next thing I was aware of was a man’s voice. I stiffened, immediately scared again, but soon realised this was a different man, a younger one with a quieter voice.
‘So he didn’t actually throw the poor little cat out of the door?’ he was saying.
‘No. But he grabbed him round the neck.’ I sat up in surprise. It was Laura, the nurse. I could see her in the doorway of the shed, but I could only see the back view of the young man. ‘And when the cat dug his claws in – you couldn’t blame him! – Julian dropped him. He wasn’t hurt, but it must have really scared him.’ I heard her sigh. ‘And it was all my fault.’
‘Oh, don’t say that. You were only trying to do your best for the child, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I was. The cat was giving her so much pleasure. If only Julian would relent and let her have some company – other than me, I mean. She needs other youngsters to chat to.’
‘She doesn’t know any kids round here, though, does she? I mean, she hasn’t been to school since they moved here. She was in hospital, and since she came out, she’s been…’
‘Lying on the sofa, poor little love. No, I thought it’d be good for her to meet some of the children in the village. But when I suggested that to Julian, it was almost as bad as when he found the cat. Anyone would think all the kids in Little Broomford are carriers of some deadly disease.’
‘He’s being unreasonable, if you ask me.’
There was a silence for a moment.
‘Well,’ Laura said, ‘I know that’s how it seems. And he did really upset me – and Caroline – about the cat. But you know, it’s only because he’s been so frightened of losing her. He told me, when he first took me on, that since his wife died, Caroline is all he’s got, and the shock of her cancer nearly killed him. I know he seems like a bully sometimes but the poor man’s been through a lot.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ the man said. ‘And as for threatening you with the sack – he’s an idiot. He’d be lost without you caring for his daughter. Six days a week, while he works in London. Not many people would do it. He should be grateful you haven’t walked out on him.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she replied quietly. ‘I care too much about Caroline. And he pays me well. I shouldn’t have gone behind his back with the cat. But he won’t really get rid of me, you know. It was just bluster.’
‘I certainly hope he won’t, Laura. Well, I’d better get on with mending that fence over the other side of the paddock. Was there anything you wanted or did you just come out for a chat?’
‘Oh, I just came to look for a box of old jigsaw puzzles Caroline’s asking for. She thought her dad might have put them in here when they moved in, and forgotten them.’
‘I haven’t seen anything like that,’ he said, turning round and scratching his head. ‘But you’re welcome to have a look through those boxes at the back.’
‘OK, Harry. Thanks. See you later.’
He went off, whistling, and Laura came into the shed and started lifting lids off boxes. I hopped out from behind the flowerpots and meowed a hello at her.
‘Oh – Oliver!’ she said. ‘You made me jump! What are you doing still hanging around here? I’d have thought you’d have run a mile, after our telling-off.’
I probably should have done, too. The last thing I wanted was for that Julian to come out and find me here. Now I’d slept off the stress, I needed to get going. I walked round Laura’s legs a couple of times to say goodbye, and to my surprise she sat down suddenly on one of the boxes and picked me up, holding me close to her.
‘What am I going to do, Oliver?’ she said softly against my fur. ‘I must be crazy to care about him like I do. He can be so mean sometimes, but I know that’s not the real Julian. He’s just beside himself with worry all the time about Caroline. I wish I could tell him how I feel. All I want is to be able to look after him and make him happy again. But he’s not interested in me, or anyone else, apart from his daughter.’
To be honest I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. I know humans can be quite peculiar in the way they choose their mates, but surely this nice female could find someone kinder and gentler than that bad-tempered cat-hating Julian? I felt quite sorry for her, though – she must have had some kind of problem in her head. He’d been really nasty to her and she was still making excuses for him. Sometimes, Charlie, I wonder if I’ll ever understand humans at all.