“And maybe we’re the lucky ones!” For the first time, Brindle, who was still sitting in among the weeds, spoke out. “We, at least, are locked on the outside of their houses, where there’s hope. There are plenty of cats who are not so lucky. My own mate is a prisoner behind a locked door. What chance does he have?”
“Aye, I’ve heard them,” mewed Lodger, from behind his rubbish bin. “The pitiful crying of trapped cats. The yowling of dogs.”
“Never mind the mangy dogs!” squealed the tabby. “Aren’t there enough of them roamin’ free for us to worry about? Chargin’ about in packs, killin’ and murderin’ innocent animals!”
Bryna flicked her ears this way and that, listening to the arguments rage on all sides of her. Cats, she decided, weren’t really much good in large groups.
“Please, please. One cat at a time,” Dexter called. “And listen . . . We must organise. We must decide what is to be done – and we must do it together.”
“Well, I, for one, have had enough of all this twaddle,” spat Brindle. “I’ll look after myself, if it’s all the same to you.” She stood up and began to walk off through the grass.
“Yes—” Dexter cried after her. “I’m sure you can look after yourself, queen. You are young and strong, with all your wits about you. You’ll manage all right. You’ll feed your own belly. Let the others fend for themselves. The old, the injured, and the kits—”
“Pah!” spat Brindle, without looking back.
“And you are no doubt big enough and strong enough to take on an entire dog pack on your own.”
Brindle stood still, but without turning.
Other voices began their cat calls again.
“Together,” continued Dexter, “only together, can we survive until man’s return.”
“Yes, yes, Dexter is right,” cried some cat. “We must hunt together for food. Give each other protection. Guard against the dogs.” Bryna twitched her ears in the direction of the voice. This made sense.
“No! This is foolish talk,” cried the tabby. “What happens if the people never come back? Eh, what happens then? . . . No, we can’t wait here. We must go after them. Seek them out for ourselves.”
“Aye, aye . . .” mewed young toms and excited kits desperate for adventure.
“And it’s each for themselves, as is the cats’ way,” said Brindle.
Bryna’s ears twitched again. This too made sense.
Close by, Fat Blossom had stopped her grumbling, and now stood alert, her eyes nervously searching the dark. Bryna felt a sharp coldness as a shadow fell across her mind, sensed Fat Blossom’s strange change of mood. Dexter too sensed her mood and began to climb down from the greenhouse roof. He knew things were not going well. He knew there was no agreement near making, and now, he knew there was something else . . . something far worse.
“What is it, Blossom?” he asked.
“Dexter, it’s the dogs!” Fat Blossom cried out. “THE DOGS!”
Out of the night the dogs fell upon the cats.
Bryna’s body froze, locked in panic, in fear, refused to move. Only her mind raced frantically. Why had they gathered together so openly? Brindle had been right. They should have listened to her. Bryna had already survived the dog pack on her own. It could be done. She could learn the sly ways of the stray, of the wild cat. She could live out on the streets, on her own, or, or maybe take Treacle with her. Yes, yes, she could take Treacle with her. But this, this . . .
Out of the night the dogs fell upon the cats.
In their Council the cats had grown careless, forgetful of everything but their own squabbles and arguments. Not a single nose had sniffed the dog scent. Not one ear had heard the clumsy thumping of dog paws, the heavy panting of their breath. Even Fat Blossom had allowed herself to become absorbed in their futile debate . . . until the last moment, until it was too late.
And what of this Dexter, this would-be leader of cats? Hadn’t he placed watchers? A guard of his own choosing? Hadn’t he, surely?
Where they had stood at street corners, now they lay dead.
Out of the night the dogs fell upon the cats.
“Grrrowf, growf, rowf—”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Veil of Snow
Which came first, the snow, the ghost, or the crying of injured animals? No cat can know for sure. Let us say for the sake of our story, and to save us from the bloody gore of a death fight, that it was the snow . . . It tumbled out of the cold night sky, blinding white, dropped like a dazzling curtain, instantly blotting out everything.
Bryna stood there watching the snow, still paralysed, helpless with fear.
Then, a voice spoke to her in urgent whispers. “Quickly now, pussy-wussy. Come this way. There are no dogs to fear this way!” Surely it was not a real voice, not a voice blown about on the wind or muffled behind the weight of falling snow. And yet, it was a voice she knew.
“Who, who’s there?” she called to it.
“No time to play guessy-games, moggie. Escape is this way!”
For a moment Bryna was sure she saw Grundle through the veil of snow; dead Grundle, standing there, with his small bird perched upon his back. And then at last, she did move, as she began to hear the fierce roars and caterwauls of fighting cats and dogs; the yowls of the stricken and the struggle for life itself. She stumbled blindly forwards, hoping to find the spot where the ghost of Grundle had stood. But the snowstorm beat itself against her in violent flurries, like some big bully, forcing her to move the wrong way.
She tried to turn against it, tried to make her way to where she could hear the thick of the fighting. But whichever way she moved, she never seemed to get anywhere before the sounds moved off to some other place. The snow fell heavier still, until even the yelling and screaming were lost within its thickening blanket. Soon there was only its endless empty whiteness, that and the stinging bite of its chill.
It was a cat’s paw that found her at last.
“Here’s another one—”
“Alive?”
Bryna could not find her voice to answer the question herself.
“Aye, alive. But she’s frozen to the bone.”
Then, two anxious black faces, both heavily marked from fierce fighting and glistening with the spillage of fresh blood, loomed at her out of the snow.
“Come on, we’ve got to get you out of this storm!”
Bryna followed their flicking black tails through the falling snow without thought for where they were taking her. Almost at once, they were climbing: first uphill, she could feel the ground rising beneath her paws, and then just up. Where before, snow had been striking her face, the strokes of loose twigs were hitting her now, as if they were in among the bare branches of a tree. When the black tails in front of her suddenly disappeared Bryna panicked and leapt forward. The bare branches, the snow and the chill of the night were all instantly gone.
It was suddenly very quiet, and very peaceful, like the weatherless peaceful inside of Mrs Ida Tupps’ living-room, full of dusty human smells and stale human air. The black cats had brought her to a room, a small and untidy room, full of the litter of a human kitten. They had climbed a tree and from it jumped through an open bedroom window.
Fat Blossom was sitting on the windowsill, mumbling numbers to herself, counting off cats as they fell in through the window. At least Bryna supposed it was Fat Blossom: even in the dark she could see that her great white body had turned a kind of vivid pink. Bryna sensed other cats too, already sitting silently about the room. But how many were there she couldn’t tell. The stench of fear clung so heavily to the air it masked all but the strongest of cat scents. She did recognise Brindle, hidden deep within the shadows of the room, and the kitten Treacle. Yes, she was sure Treacle was there too, somewhere.
As Fat Blossom’s count reached fifteen, the weight of Bryna’s old shoulder wound, the hunger, the cold and the fear, stole the last of her strength and she began to drift into a fitful sleep.
Some time later,
she was half-awakened by cats mewing anxiously at her side. Fat Blossom’s voice came to her first, as vague murmurings; coaxing, pacifying . . . and then more clearly Dexter’s voice, bitter and anguished, “I should have been more careful,” he spat. “I should have known where it would end.”
“How could you have known?” said Fat Blossom.
“I . . . I should have guessed. It was obvious. Bringing the cats together, all in one place. How could I have been so stupid!”
“But there had to be a council—”
“Did there? Did there really? And what did it achieve? They would have been better off on their own. Fending for themselves.”
“We brought some cats to safety, at least.”
“Oh yes, battered and broken for the most part. And what of the rest? Those we left behind, those we left for dead, what have we done for them? Tell me that. What have we done for them?”
Bryna couldn’t lie still any longer and lifted her head towards the voices. Instantly, the argument stopped without an answer. “Dexter, is that you?” she asked drowsily, trying to look for him in the dark. Beautiful Dexter. The cat in front of her was his size, his shape. But the face, surely the face was all wrong? What had the dogs done with Dexter’s beautiful face? She closed her eyes again. Slunk down into the bedclothes. Shut him out. Forced herself to sleep.
PART TWO
Dread Booga stirred in its sleep. Not enough to wake up, only enough to stretch out its long thin arms and delight in the feeling of strength returning to its fragile, naked body. Something outside, something out there in the town had changed. Its injured head was not so fuddled now, not so heavy with the weight of men’s thoughts, and that was a blessed relief.
There were other things too, things it had not known in a very long time . . . The desire to move about in the open, unfettered. The pangs of hunger gnawing at its belly.
Its clawed fingers were tingling with a peculiar eagerness, and it knew, even if it did not, could not understand, that there was a kind of power, a strange force within those fingers desperate to be unleashed . . .
CHAPTER NINE
Deep Winter Snow
The sun danced across the walls of the bedroom; a sprinkling of light tossed backwards and forwards as the branches of the tree outside the window were rocked by a slight gust of wind. Slowly the sunlight came to rest again, landing on the bed where Bryna lay, and she gave herself up to its delicious warmth. It was so good to be waking up at home again. Oh, it was so, so good—
But then around her she began to sense other cats; their scents, their slight movements, the noise of their breathing. And with the cats she remembered. Remembered everything. This was not her home. She lay very still, wanted the warmth of the sun to send her back to sleep. But it would not.
She struggled stiffly to her feet.
Lying next to her, not a tail’s length away, was a thin, poor-looking brown tabby, lost in a restless sleep. Next to the tabby lay the kit, Maxwell; his collar and bell were missing, and his injured leg was twisted awkwardly underneath his body as if it did not really belong to him. How had any cat managed to save him? And if his rescue was not impossible enough, lying at the head of the bed raised up on a pillow was a young mother with three blind newborns frantically suckling at her swollen teats. Fat Blossom was sitting on the floor close by, and Dexter was on the windowsill, with his back turned against her.
“You’re awake at last, Bryna,” Fat Blossom said, jumping clumsily onto the bed, forcing the cheery purr she had needed with most of the injured cats. “Your shoulder wound – I see it’s healing well.”
“Oh, this old thing. It’s nothing.” Bryna returned the purr as best she could. Her shoulder throbbed with pain, and the heavy scab had broken open and was weeping. They were both telling lies, and somehow they both knew.
They eyed each other quizzically. For Bryna it was as if she was seeing something of herself in that fat white cat; the part of her that saw ghosts, and had peculiar, unexplainable feelings. Then the moment was past.
“I think you’re ready for your breakfast.” This time Fat Blossom’s soft purr was real. As she spoke a small orange-and-white kit heaved himself in through the open window, and without a glance at Dexter, fell clumsily onto the bed, dropping the warm body of a mouse between Bryna’s paws.
“Welcome stranger,” said Treacle, laughing.
And so the winter days turned slowly over. It was the hardest of times: the snows came worse and worse again, settling deeper and more treacherous with each new fall. The brown tabby who had slept at Bryna’s side died after three days. Silently, the pair of black toms – Dexter’s bodyguard – removed his body between them. There were others too, who had rested upon the floor beneath the bed. Bryna did not see them alive and she did not see them dead. Fat Blossom’s daily head count fell to twelve.
For those cats who survived, that small bedroom became their home after all. Home, refuge, hospital, and ultimately prison. There was a door that led from the room to the rest of the house, but it was firmly closed and no amount of clawing made any difference. The only way to get out was to jump through the open window and climb down the trunk of the tree into the front garden. And once outside the streets were always dangerous. The snow was nothing less than a death trap, its deepest drifts making movement impossible for all but the biggest of the cats. And anywhere the wind happened to blow a pavement clear of snow there were always dogs, dogs sitting in wait of them.
And what of filling their empty bellies? There was little for the hunters among them to stalk; the snow and the dogs saw to that. What could be scavenged from the streets was done by lone cats late at night, or more daringly, during the heaviest falls of snow when the dogs did not venture outside. Any scrap that could be carried was brought back to the bedroom to be shared out equally among them all. At first that meant rich pickings – if a cat knew where to look – whole chicken carcasses, fat-rich bacon rinds, half-eaten tins of meat. What could not be carried – the slops scraped from dinner plates, the broken raw eggs, dribbles of congealed cooking fat, and other such treasures – well, finders keepers.
But soon, all too soon, rubbish bins and street droppings were picked clean. Dogs had been there first, or other cats, and more than once, some unnamed wild animal who left behind a scent that worried the nose and sent the heart beating strangely. And once bins were emptied they stayed emptied: there were no more wasteful humans endlessly filling them up again.
“Dexter, we must have more food,” Fat Blossom said, looking anxiously at the three blind bundles nuzzling uselessly at their exhausted mother. “Crumpet is so very weak now. I don’t think her kits will last another night . . .”
Dexter stood silently looking out of the window, watching the snow fall. He did not answer. He did not have an answer.
That night Fat Blossom’s count of twelve cats became ten . . . only the largest of the newborns clung on to life.
In the days that followed scavenging cats began to return home empty-handed, often desperate and angry, and cursing the gangs of dogs who had chased them to within an inch of their lives. Others brought reports of lone dogs seen lurking quietly in shadowed doorways: dogs carefully placed at regular intervals, street by street, like frontline troops, and effectively cutting off whole districts of the town to all but the slyest of cats. Sometimes, just sometimes, other cats were seen. Dexter called all of these reports Intelligence, and he praised cats for it, although Bryna was never really sure why. “It’s the next best thing there is to food,” he would say and rub a paw against his empty belly. Bryna would have settled for the food.
With more and more Intelligence, and less and less food, with each new day, the condition of the cats grew steadily worse. Skin began to hang loose from ribs, and fur became dull and patchy. Dexter was unaccountably thinner and more patchy than the rest. Even Fat Blossom stopped looking quite so fat.
And if this was not enough, cats injured in the dog-fight at the allotments simply never got ful
ly better. Wounds would not heal properly; they leaked continually, or became poisoned, or bled afresh through each newly formed scab. Of course, no cat complained. How could they ever complain, with Dexter? He made nothing of his battle wounds, but Bryna was never quite able to look him in the face. Even now there was a gash across his skull that lay open to the bone. His left ear had been chewed to a bloodied tat, and a cruel double line, gouged by dog fangs, ran down his nose and under his jaw. It left his mouth with a permanent sneering grin, that forever dribbled blood, or food, or saliva.
With his Intelligence Dexter tried to build up a picture of animal movements on their side of the river. It became clear from sightings that they were not the only cats to survive. There was a small group, perhaps half a mile away, probably based around a street called Waverley Crescent. And another that prowled the derelict, Year of Enterprise, Youth Employment Project warehouses that skirted the river just below the bridge. It was also clear that there were a few loners – old Lodger among them – still roaming free outside.
Of what had become of the dogs Dexter was even more certain. They were highly organised and patrolled the streets like an army of occupation. Lone sentries stood guard on street corners, while small packs of two or three dogs endlessly hunted for unwary cats. From reports of their numbers and movements the main pack seemed to be centred around the area of the town Bryna called The Lonnen, though no cat ever dared to venture close enough to prove it.
On the other hand, that the dogs knew for certain of their whereabouts was obvious, with or without Intelligence. More than once already, a dog patrol had trailed a scavenging cat back to their tree, only to be thwarted as he or she scampered out of jaws’ reach. And sometimes, while Bryna sat at the window, she would see a dog lurking at the top of the street, quietly watching them. These sightings, seldom at first, became more frequent as the first chill of winter relented, and the snows began to clear.
Tooth and Claw Page 4