The Improbable Cat

by Allan Ahlberg

  The Improbable Cat

  ALLAN AHLBERG

  The Improbable Cat

  Illustrated by Peter Bailey

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published in hardback in Puffin Books 2002

  Published in paperback in Puffin Books 2003

  4

  Text copyright © Allan Ahlberg, 2002

  Illustrations copyright © Peter Bailey, 2002

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN:978-0-14-192804-3

  Also by Allan Ahlberg

  Verse

  Friendly Matches • Heard it in the Playground

  The Mighty Slide • Please Mrs Butler

  Novels and Stories

  The Bear Nobody Wanted • The Better Brown Stories

  The Clothes Horse • The Giant Baby

  It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

  Jeremiah in the Dark Woods

  My Brother’s Ghost • Ten in a Bed

  Woof!

  Picture Books

  The Adventures of Bert • The Baby’s Catalogue

  A Bit More Bert • Burglar Bill

  Bye Bye Baby • Cops and Robbers

  Each Peach Pear Plum • Funnybones

  The Jolly Postman • The Jolly Christmas Postman

  The Jolly Pocket Postman • The Little Cat Baby

  Peepo! • Starting School

  Miscellaneous

  The Fast Fox, Slow Dog series

  The Ha Ha Bonk Book

  The Happy Families series

  Contents

  1 How It Started

  2 Billy

  3 The Landing

  4 Proving It to George

  5 We Like This Better

  6 Cat Servants

  7 Panthers and All That

  8 Shopping

  9 Thomas’s Farm

  10 Coming Home

  11 Not Much Longer Now

  12 Aftermath

  I have wanted (and not wanted) to tell this story for a while – for years, really. Get it off my chest, as you might say. But I never did. And the reason is (I have lately come to realize), the reason is… I didn’t know it. I mean, I couldn’t tell it all; there was one bit missing. Y’see, something happens in this story which I can’t account for. Something crazy – impossible – horrific. And there really is no explanation, none I can think of anyway. No dark lord or magic wardrobe, for instance; no mad scientist either. Nothing like that, it just… happened.

  There again, as I get older (I’m at university now), I begin to think, well, what’s normal anyway? What’s ordinary? Is a boiled egg ordinary, a mobile phone – a planet? I can remember years ago we did this project on probability in Mrs Miller’s class. For five minutes in pairs (George and I were a pair) we tossed coins and recorded how they fell: heads, tails, tails, heads.

  Towards the end there was a commotion. A couple of girls were leaping about and yelling, ‘Look, Miss!’ There on the floor, their coin between the boards was stood on end. They had cheated, of course, but that’s it, isn’t it – or it could be. I mean, for instance, most kittens become cats (if they live long enough), don’t they? The odds on a kitten not becoming a cat are huge, but not impossible maybe. Sometimes… sometimes, unaided, the coin will stand on end.

  So here we go. My name is David Burrell and when this story begins (I think I can tell it now) I am twelve years old and getting on with my life, alive and kicking… in the ordinary world.

  1

  How It Started

  MY FAMILY WERE A soft lot, Dad included. They hardly knew what hit them. There they all were that summer’s afternoon clearing up after Josie’s party. Mum and Dad carrying left-overs back into the house, Josie collecting paper plates, Luke half-asleep in his bouncer.

  All of a sudden, the prettiest little smoky grey kitten that any of them had ever seen came limping out of the hedge and stood miaowing before them. Like a bunch of sheep – ‘Ah!’ – the three of them went rushing forward. Even Lukey bounced into life. Yes, that little cat had captured their attention right enough. Fact is, they were in love with it in an instant.

  Anyway, that was how it started. There was the cat, there was my besotted family, and there was I at my bedroom window, watching it all. I had retreated hours earlier to escape a houseful of screaming seven-year-old girls. Billy was beside me, dozing on the bed, yet ready for a walk if one was offered.

  When I came down later, Dad was still in the garden. Mum and Josie had the kitten between them on the sofa. They did not look up as I entered the room. A fast-asleep Lukey was lolling unnoticed in his carrycot. Out in the kitchen a pan of baby food was simmering itself dry on the hob. There was a hint of burning in the air.

  In the next day or so we made efforts to find the owner of this kitten. Dad knocked on a few doors. Mum and Josie put a postcard in the newsagent’s window. I asked around. Nothing. This kitten was entirely unconnected, had popped up out of nowhere, was nobody’s. Only now, of course, he was ours.

  It was August, halfway through the summer holidays. Dad left for work each day; he was a librarian. Mum was a teacher. She and Josie spent much of their time making a banner for the ‘BAN THE LORRIES’ campaign. These huge things, juggernauts really, were using Crompton Street and Cavendish Road as a cut-through to the motorway. There was a protest planned for this coming Saturday.

  Meanwhile, the kitten was continuing to infiltrate our lives, wanting ever to be made a fuss of, wanting ever to be fed. Food. I didn’t notice it at first, but Mum wasn’t buying any of the usual brands of cat food. No, it was more like sardines and pilchards, salmon even. Salmon – for a cat!

  Truth is, I was keeping clear of this animal. I was allergic to cats, well, some of them. Nothing serious, just sneezing and that sort of thing. Besides, it was the holidays, the sun was out and George and I had stuff to do. So it was a little while before I realized just how well this kitten was thriving on his de luxe diet.

  It was the Saturday. The ‘BAN THE LORRIES’ banner was propped up in the hall. Mum was yelling instructions to Josie from upstairs, to brush her hair, put her shoes on, and so on. Josie made no reply and eventually I got involved.

  Josie was in the sitting-room on the sofa, the kitten stretched out across her lap having its ears rubbed. ‘Kitten’ – it was bigger than Billy! (How could I not have noticed?) It gave me a look as I put my head round the door. Josie i
gnored me. Her face was flushed, her eyes heavy and glazed, which was the state she often got into when watching TV. But the TV was off.

  2

  Billy

  BILLY WAS A MONGREL terrier, brown and white, about four years old. He was the boldest little dog, afraid of nothing. I have known him see off an Alsatian. Cats, however, he mostly ignored. With the kitten it was different.

  They encountered each other that first evening in the kitchen. Billy instantly went rigid, y’know, like a wooden dog. The fur along his back stood on end, a growl formed in his throat. My mother in alarm scooped up the kitten, while Dad dragged Billy back into the garden. He stayed there for some time, pawing at the french windows, growling and peering, anxiously it seemed, into the room. The kitten was not bothered at all.

  That Saturday, while Mum and Josie were out protesting, I went round to George’s and spent most of the day there. George lived with his mum; they had this big house which his mum used mainly as an animal refuge. She had everything in there: hedgehogs, tortoises – swans even. There was a paddock at the side of the house with pens, hutches and various other shelters in it. Three or four elderly donkeys grazed there, and a small horse.

  George and I did jobs for his mum, feeding the animals mostly. We swung around on his tyre-on-a-rope for a while and threw sticks in the river for the dogs. At lunchtime I talked to George’s mum about the kitten.

  ‘The thing is, Alma, how fast do kittens grow?’

  ‘Pretty fast,’ said Alma. ‘More hummus?’

  ‘How fast in a week?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘See, this kitten – I think it’s doubled in size, tripled even.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said George.

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s got some kind of eating disorder,’ said Alma.

  Then George’s gran (Alma’s mother) arrived, and she joined in. ‘What are you feeding it on?’

  ‘Salmon.’

  ‘Salmon – ha, no wonder.’

  After that the conversation shifted somehow into fantasy – jokes mainly – about an almost spherical cat that Joyce had once owned, overweight stick insects and, finally, dieting. Alma had merely to look at a profiterole, she said, to put on the pounds. Joyce had merely to read the recipe.

  On Sunday I slept in late, only to be woken at about ten o’clock by a loud crash, and shouting and barking. I rushed downstairs. Mum, in her dressing-gown, was swatting at Billy with a rolled-up newspaper. Dad was trying to grab him as he darted about. The kitten, unperturbed, was up on the table, a shattered jug all over the floor. Billy was going berserk.

  By half-past ten his bed had been moved out into the garage, together with his bowls, his ball and anything else he possessed. Billy was banished.

  3

  The Landing

  LOOKING BACK, IT’S HARD to be sure now when my earliest suspicions arose. (Billy’s instincts, of course, were another matter. If only dogs could talk, none of this would have happened.) One thing I do know, it wasn’t just the size, the growing. Even from the start I must have sensed something was wrong. I mean, take that first evening: a limping kitten, which once it got into the house never limped again, and after a day or so never miaowed again either. Or purred. Or, as far as I could see, even washed itself.

  I tried talking to Dad.

  ‘But who started it? What did he do?’

  We were in the garage, clearing a space for Billy’s bed.

  ‘Billy started it – give me a hand with this.’ The garage was crammed with bikes and jumble-sale stuff. ‘Turned really savage. I’ve never seen him like that.’

  Out in the garden, tied up to the mower, Billy looked calm enough.

  ‘It’s just for a while,’ said Dad. He brushed a cobweb from his hair. ‘Till things settle down.’

  I felt really angry then, indignant on Billy’s behalf. ‘But it’s Billy’s house, Dad – Billy comes first. Put the cat in the garage.’

  ‘It’s only a kitten, Davy.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like a kitten – look at the size of it.’ In my frustration, I kicked out at a sack of compost. ‘That’s another thing – why is it getting so big?’

  Dad removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I could see now the darker shadows around them. ‘Maybe it’s the breed,’ he said.

  In the afternoon I took Billy up to the common and threw his ball around for him for a while. He seemed as enthusiastic as ever, unaffected by his eviction. He chased the ball as though his life depended on it, leapt high for it, even headed it at times. He shook it and chewed it and, now and then, reluctantly let go of it for me to throw it again.

  Later we lay in the long grass and I gazed up at the sky and wondered once more about that kitten. Then it rained.

  By the time we reached the house, both of us were soaked. A squally wind whipped at the trees, rain bounced up from the slabs. For some reason I did not rush inside but went round the back and looked in through the kitchen window. Rain streamed down the glass, distorting the scene, but you could see enough. The kitten was on the table, motionless. Mum, Dad and Josie were grouped around it, their faces so solemn, tear-stained even, but that was probably the rain. Only Luke in his high chair seemed cheerful, banging his spoon. And the kitten again, just sitting there — like royalty.

  Their faces so solemn

  Billy, meanwhile, was getting his view of things through the french window. He placed a sodden paw on the glass, tilted his head and whined. And that was odd too; Billy never whined.

  The next day I tried talking to Mum.

  ‘Mum, I’ve been thinking – this kitten, it’s always eating.’

  Mum was removing a huge baked ham from the oven. ‘It’s a growing cat – hand me that fork.’

  The gorgeous aroma of ham filled the kitchen.

  ‘Who’s that for?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘And it, I’ll bet.’

  The kitten – cat – was elsewhere, in the sitting-room probably, where it preferred to be, with the curtains closed (it had ‘sensitive eyes’, according to Dad) and the TV on.

  I decided to try a different approach. ‘I’ve been sneezing a lot.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mum was carving the ham.

  ‘And I think I’m getting a rash – it’s that cat.’

  Mum paused and turned wearily towards me. ‘David, stop –’

  ‘We should get rid of it!’

  It was then, I think, that the first real wave of fear washed over me. What was happening to us?

  Mum took little notice. It occurred to me that she was still in her dressing-gown, hair unbrushed, and it was lunchtime. Worse still, I thought I could detect in the air around her the faintest hint of cigarette smoke.

  My parents were changing. Of course, to appreciate just how much, you need to know what they were like before. Well, normally, my dad was… normal: a neat dresser, collar and tie and all that, cleanshaven, punctual. He seemed to enjoy being a librarian. He was a ‘good’ dad, took us out on our bikes, took us for pizzas, planned holidays.

  Mum was the same, rushing home from her teaching job (part-time because of Luke), cooking for us, washing for us. She was secretary of the Lorries Campaign, a great jumble-sale organizer, and she was reliable. That was it, reliable (they both were), and talkative, nosey really, always wanting to know what you were up to. And both of them loved Billy.

  Whereas now there wasn’t much talking, even among themselves, the bikes went nowhere, Dad looked quite scruffy at times and Mum was smoking again.

  With Josie, the changes were less obvious. She always did go in for scowling and sucking her thumb – when she was tired, according to Mum, when she wasn’t getting her own way, I’d have said. Too much TV could send her into a hot and grumpy trance. But she was also funny and full of beans, always wanting her friends round, forever after my PlayStation. She’d come down the stairs like a ton of bricks, eat three bowls of Frosties in a blink — and she loved Billy.

  I tried
talking to her.

  About the PlayStation: ‘Fancy a game?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  About her little pals: ‘How’s Olivia?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  Even about that kitten: ‘So what d’you think we should call it?’

  Pause. Thumb out. And this from the girl who had a name for everything.

  ‘… I dunno.’

  The kitten for its part was still growing. (I may call it a cat from here on.) It was almost as big as a Labrador. Most of the time it skulked around in the sitting-room. Occasionally it would squeeze under one of the beds upstairs. Once I found it on the landing.

  I was coming out of my room and there it was, stretched out. I nearly fell over it. Its fur, I thought, was darkening, less grey now than black. Its yellow eyes stared up at me, fixed me. It did not move.

  All cats have a coldness in their eyes, don’t they? A remoteness, an absence of feeling. But then cats, real cats, can’t help it. Whereas with this one you felt there was something deliberate in its gaze, as though it knew what it was up to.

  It looked at me, I looked at it. A kind of contest developed; which one of us would look away. I found myself crouching down, leaning forward. It seemed to be getting darker on the landing. The cat still held my gaze… I put out a hand.

  Just then there was a screech of brakes out in the street, followed by angry voices. (The lorries again.) I jumped to my feet and glanced out of the window at the hopping-mad couple on the pavement. I went downstairs.

  4

  Proving It to George

  ‘HOW BIG IS IT now?’

  ‘As big as Flossie.’

  George smiled in disbelief.

  ‘No, really, it is.’

  He and I were in the paddock playing dog football: me and Billy, supposedly, versus Flossie (Labrador), Spy (spaniel), Archie (indescribable) and George. The permanently deflated ball flew here and there, whenever one of us could get a kick at it, with the dogs in joyful pursuit.