by Joe Cawley
We became accustomed to these episodes as they became more frequent. Once or twice she would knock over an ornament as she leapt behind the TV, but on the whole little damage was done and we deduced that this new quirk was either attention-seeking or demonic possession. Neither caused too much concern or surprise at the time.
It did, however, when she strolled into the kitchen one morning after having been absent all night.
‘Ew! What the…?’ My spoon clattered into my cereal bowl. Joy followed my gaze.
Fugly’s cute pink ears had been replaced by two blobs of blood-red liver. She threw me the usual disdainful glance, then rubbed her ears back and forth on Joy’s bare shins, leaving a wet trail of blood and pus. Joy retched.
We assumed she had been in a fight, but there were no signs of teeth or claw marks anywhere on her white fur. Over the next two days, the fleshy protuberances dried up then scabbed over. On the third day, they turned a crispy black and we rushed her to the vet’s.
Skin cancer was the diagnosis. We were told it was very common in white cats as they had little protection on the ears and nose. We were also scolded, quite harshly, I thought, when quizzed as to why we hadn’t been applying sun cream to her ears daily.
There was only one thing for it. Her ears had to go. After a couple of check-ups following the amputation, we were informed that the cancer had been caught early and hadn’t spread. We were lucky, the vet said, which couldn’t be said of Fugly, who now sported knobbly stumps where once her ears had stood. It’s safe to say that her new thug look better suited her personality, but any attractiveness that we had imagined as her loving guardians had now been fully quashed. Hideous was too strong a word. But not by much.
The months, then weeks, then days leading up to B-day were passed with controlled trepidation. I really didn’t know what to expect. Well, you don’t, do you? So when I peered through the viewing window at the row of cots in the Playa de las Américas hospital on October 20th, 2002, any number of emotions were involved in a mass brawl inside my head. Wondrous amazement was trying to free itself from a suffocating headlock of fear, while self-doubt cowered in a corner sucking its thumb. And all because I knew that one of the Jelly-Tot noses protruding from the woollen tea-cup hats and pink or blue bedding was alive because of me.
The nurse glanced up, carefully picked up a bundle of blankets and left the room. The next thing I knew, a tiny face was squinting at me from the folded wool in my arms. I squinted back. Damn, this was something I’d made! Not a something like the Airfix Spitfires that my brother and I ham-fistedly forced together in our early schooldays, though it weighed the same and felt like it too would shatter if dropped. This was… hell, a person that I’d made! Well, Joy and I, to be precise.
I was speechless. Absolutely dumbfounded. How had I made this? There had been no cursing at printed instructions, no stark warnings about using sharp knives without adult supervision, no written cautions about not placing plastic bags over your brother’s head. It had been made without fuss or study… but I guess you knew that already. Me? My head was all over the place. If this really had happened, anything was possible.
I softly swept the bobble hat off its head to get a clearer look at its face. And nearly dropped it. A tuft of thick black hair sprang from its head like a rabbit from a hole. Jesus! What the heck was that! The beautiful, priceless gem was crowned with a magnificent Elvis quiff. I looked round to see if anyone had noticed my shock.
The quiff would not be tamed, despite efforts to pat it down with a licked palm. Nonetheless, I was already pitifully in love with this dot of (near) perfection and almost became engaged in a tug-of-war when the nurse returned. I watched her lowering my child back into her tiny bed, silently urging the woman to be so, so careful, and I knew then that life would never ever be the same again.
Four days later, Joy, the baby and I stood outside the glass front door of our house in the hills, waiting to show off the family home to our new arrival. The baby wasn’t actually standing, just to make that clear. I’d already decided she was going to be advanced, but not that much!
While Joy was pregnant, Fugly had been strangely serene, as if she knew that changes were a-coming. In the lead-up to the birth, I’d had many a serious man-to-cat conversation, diplomatically explaining that we would both have to adapt, and that the last thing anybody needed right then was trouble. Or claw marks. Fugly listened intently, curled cosily on the back of the settee. Then, without opening her eyes, she flicked out a paw, Freddy Krueger-like.
‘Thanks for your understanding,’ I muttered, dabbing a sleeve at the bridge of my nose.
Back outside the house, Joy and I looked down at our bundle with all the pride and love you’d expect from new parents.
‘How do you think she’ll be?’ said Joy.
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘She’ll love her little cot and new bedroom.’
‘No, I mean Fugly. How do you think she’ll be?’
‘I’ve had a word,’ I said reassuringly. ‘We came to an understanding.’ I touched the scab on my nose. ‘First sign of trouble and she’s on the next bus.’ I pushed open the door and paused, waiting for the attack. There was none. But there was the worrying sound of a cat scuttling to gain an advantageous position.
As it was, Fugly avoided the baby at all costs. Perhaps my words of warning had hit home. More likely she was in observational mode, stealthily watching and planning the best way to do battle. So far, so good, but time would tell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I don’t know why, but I thought that the paperwork involved when a new person checked in to this world would be easier to get through than other bureaucratic demands in Tenerife. In the normal scheme of things, the island’s administrative department would surely try to make it easier for mothers, whether single or with a partner, now that they had the trifling matter of keeping a baby alive to add to their day-to-day duties – wouldn’t they? They would give consideration to those who had just endured possibly the most painful and traumatic ordeal they would ever experience. They would go out of their way to provide sympathy and support to those mothers who might still be suffering mentally or physically, to those finding it difficult to walk or simply unable to find any spare time for crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s.
So what does the Tenerife state department do? It obliges all new mothers to present themselves at the local registry office within ten days of giving birth. Not only that, they have to bring a baby with them, preferably their own. On top of that, only fifty mothers can be seen per day, and to be one of those mothers, you have to make sure you’re in receipt of one of the first fifty tickets handed out each day.
And how do you ensure that you’re the fortunate holder of said golden ticket? Armed with a baby and a bundle of paperwork, and walking like you’re astride an invisible horse, you have to queue up at 7.30am with enough steely determination to ignore the unfriendly, officious and probably childless desk clerk, who displays all the empathy and understanding of a serial killer.
And do you think they provide seats for all the queuing mothers, half dead on their feet and carrying eight-pound bundles that leak vomit, pooh and dribble? Don’t make me laugh.
Thankfully, Joy was relatively mobile despite having been stapled back together following an emergency caesarean, and she had an ‘other half’ who had the flexibility of being self-employed and who happened to be between overseas assignments.
After taking a ticket from the dispensing machine, we stood with the fifty or so other new parents waiting to register their new arrivals. But for the absence of a 120-beats-per-minute soundtrack, we could have been in a disco. Some mothers jigged up and down, trying to soothe restless babes in arms. Others swayed gently from side to side, partly to lull little ones on the verge of hysterics and partly to provide the sort of reassuring comfort self-administered from within padded cells.
Naturally, the number on our ticket and the digital countdown clock were miles apart. We spent ou
r time comparing babies. Clearly ours was the most beautiful. None of the others had such a distinguished Elvis quiff. ‘Qué preciosa!’ the other parents would squeal, followed by a universally understood ‘Oh!’ when her hair quiff sprang to life.
After a couple of hours’ standing, shuffling and swaying, we carried our bundle to the lady at the desk. Understandably, she was a little child-weary by this stage and could manage only a conciliatory grunt of a greeting.
She pulled back the blankets shielding our baby’s face then presented us with a form plucked from an extensive selection of stacks. I presumed that if we had been carrying a bag of carrots under the blankets, she would have nonchalantly slipped us a form for that instead.
We began to fill in the form at the desk, but she shooed us away and attended to the next person. After completing the paperwork as best we could, there didn’t seem to be a process for re-joining the queue to hand it in. Like the others, we stood with papers raised in one hand, baby held in the other, waiting for directions. None came. Were we supposed to get another number and queue again? Was there another desk we had to go to? Did we need to strip naked and run riot to get attention? It crossed my mind. Instead, we followed the lead of the Canarian mothers and pushed in front of those on the first, ticket-wielding leg of this joyless odyssey.
Despite much tutting from behind, our form was grabbed by the spectacled lady. She scanned it, crossed out Joy’s surname, peeled off one of the three copies, gave it to us and moved on to the next person. We hung around at the desk until she gave us that impatient ‘Why are you dawdling?’ glare, then left.
It was only afterwards that we discovered she had personally had a hand in naming our child ‘Molly Blue Cawley’ rather than the double-barrelled ‘Molly Blue Cawley-Liddell’ that Joy and I had negotiated with each other.
Back at home, more trauma was waiting. Fugly had ceased her attacks on me. We were worried. From her favoured vantage point on the back of the settee she barely lifted a head as I came within striking distance. I walked back and forth a few times just to check.
‘Maybe she’s finally accepted you,’ said Joy.
But I sensed there was more. There was – in the kitchen, on my side of the bed (naturally), in the garden. In fact, half a dozen small pools of yellow bile and vomit dotted our home. The following day we bundled all four members of our family into the car.
While cat psychiatrists were short on the ground in Tenerife, regular vets were not. Perhaps the Canarian predilection for human hypochondria was apparent in the island’s wildlife too. Our vet of choice hadn’t seen our cat for a while. That did nothing to dampen the look of fear on her face when she saw Fugly peering from within a McCain’s Frozen Chips box.
‘How is she?’ she said from a good distance.
‘Not very well,’ replied Joy forlornly. ‘She has yellow sick.’
‘No, I mean is she still…’ She raised her fists like a boxer. ‘You know… violent?’
We both nodded apologetically. The vet sighed and pulled a pair of industrial gauntlets from a metal drawer.
She ordered me to hold Fugly still, keep her calm.
‘Me?’ I said. ‘Calm’ was not something I was good at instilling in her.
Joy volunteered. As the vet approached the stainless-steel examination table, Fugly began to growl like the girl from The Exorcist. I’m sure I heard the vet whimper.
‘You have hold of her, yes?’ she asked.
Joy nodded.
But as soon as the vet came alongside Fugly, the fight in her went. ‘Oh,’ said the vet, ‘I can see she’s not well at all.’
Blood samples were taken, internal organs felt, and vaccinations administered. All accompanied by nothing more violent than a baritone gurgle and a token baring of teeth. But the vet looked worried. ‘I think we need to have a look inside, an X-ray. Her liver is swollen.’
For the X-ray, Fugly had to be put to sleep, which meant that she would be overnighting at the surgery to recover from the anaesthetic.
We returned the next day, and so had Fugly’s temper, which made us happy. The vet was not so cheerful. I noticed a plaster on the back of her hand, where yesterday there had been none. But the injury was not the only thing she was concerned about. ‘The cancer has spread,’ she said sadly. She waited for the significance of her words to sink in before continuing. ‘It’s in her liver, her spleen, and I think it’s started in her lungs.’
Joy and I just looked at each other. Joy spoke first. ‘Is there anything you can do? Any treatment she can have?’ The words were said in a low, desperate whisper.
The vet shook her head.
‘How long do you think she has?’ I asked hesitantly.
The vet sighed. ‘Hard to say. Weeks. Months. Possibly a year. It depends how fast it spreads from now on. She’s a fighter. That’s a good thing.’
‘Is she in pain?’ asked Joy.
‘Not now. I can give you some drugs. That will help.’
We wrestled Fugly back into the box as gently as two people wearing elbow-length gauntlets could manhandle a writhing mop of anger.
At home, she darted from the box and hid under our bed, hissing if we even dared to venture past the bedroom door, and there she stayed for almost a week.
In the morning, Joy fed Molly. She’d finally managed to get us into a clockwork routine of feed, sleep, feed, sleep at more or less regular intervals. When either was needed, Molly let us know with air-raid-siren wails, demanding immediate attention. Then, while our daughter guzzled sleepily, I packed for Alicante, where I’d be researching one of a series of features I’d been asked to write for Homes Overseas magazine.
The commission required me to make a four-day trip to the mainland to write about property hotspots. Walking out of the house that day felt different. It was the first time since Molly had been born that I’d had to go away. As I waited for take-off at Tenerife’s north airport, there was none of the usual excitement at the prospect of exploring a new destination. The anticipation of discovery was absent; in its place was an empty hole and nagging guilt that I was not with my family.
By the time I touched back down in Tenerife, I’d made the decision. I would complete this series of six commissions for Homes Overseas, then finally and fully quit travelling to be with Molly and Joy.
My dad had often been absent during my childhood, and in my mind I’d vowed not to do the same. I had a family, a duty, but more than that, a desire to do my best, give my time and be there for my daughter as much as possible.
I remembered clearly the infrequent occasions when my dad had been at home for any length of time. After he moved to America, my brother and I would sometimes go and visit him there. I could still recall the cycle of emotions: the excited anticipation, the thrill of being together again, with all that love and bonding, then the dread as departure day loomed and we began counting down the hours, and finally the heartbreak of watching him walk away. Coming home from those reunions was always painful, with me spending a lot of time alone in my bedroom, in tears and desperately sad. I was a young boy. I needed my dad. I needed the stability of a permanent father-figure, a hero, even. I did not want to put my daughter through the same cycle.
I also had the responsibility to provide, and unfortunately this meant I would have to find something else that would keep the money flowing in. Island Connections seemed like a step backwards, but it was possibly the only writing job I could get in Tenerife. Having written for just about every national newspaper in the UK, I really didn’t want to go back to rough translations of Spanish articles and fawning features on local politicians. But the job pool wasn’t exactly awash with alternatives.
With me choosing to be a stay-at-home dad, Joy secured a part-time job at a local travel company in the Patch area of Playa de las Américas. It had been a while since she’d had a role outside her own family. It was also an office staffed entirely by women, so the gossip was bound to be good.
My days, meanwhile, consisted of work
ing on the odd Tenerife feature while Molly slept, then bouncing her on my knee as we sang along to the Tweenies, Peppa Pig or the Teletubbies. A macho culture still thrives in the rural reaches of the Canary Islands, much as it does in mainland Spain. Women have their roles, men theirs. Usually there isn’t much crossover, especially when it comes to childcare. It was considered a bit of a novelty in Tejina when a dad showed up in daylight hours with a baby strapped to his chest.
As soon as I entered, the supermarket sisters would whisk Molly away, singing squeaky Spanish baby songs to her from one of the dark recesses while I filled my basket. In the coffee shops too, the staff would invariably kidnap my daughter and take her behind the bar or into the kitchen. On several occasions I had to ask for my bill and for my child back.
However, as much as I loved our father–daughter time, Joy’s part-time wage along with my infrequent local travel commissions weren’t enough to stop us having to break into our savings every month, especially with a new arrival to feed, clothe and keep in toys. I needed to start earning some regular money that would still give me the freedom to work from home around Molly’s demands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Fortune struck again a few months later when I was asked to contribute to Living Tenerife, a glossy lifestyle magazine that had recently launched. Set up as something of a diversion by the director of a UK newspaper group, the monthly magazine was only two editions into its lifetime and was being run from the cellar of a villa in Callao Salvaje, a coastal community just fifteen minutes from Tejina.
The publication showed great promise but clearly needed direction. Although I was no expert, my experience as a freelancer with the top newspapers and travel magazines had given me a certain amount of insight and I could see it badly needed help with its structure, style and editing.
My one article turned into two, then four, then five, oh… and would I mind spending some time in the office proofing the pages before the third edition went to print. The managing director took me to one side and asked if I’d be interested in becoming the editor as well as the principal contributor, working from home two days a week.