Dad muttered something I couldn’t hear. He had a hand up to his mouth, that anxious gesture. Tears shining now in his eyes.
There was a sound then in the hall behind me, a rising siren of howling baby. Luke! I did not hesitate. If I had hesitated, I would never have moved. I stumbled into the hall. It was like a tunnel in there, black and smoky. A tiny stain of light seeped out around the sitting-room door. I shoved the door… and saw them.
Mum had Luke in her arms, Josie beside her. They were standing there, that’s all, just standing and watching the creature in the chair, as it was watching the still silent TV.
What did I think? What horrifying sacrifice did I assume? Or was it just that Luke was there at all? Would it be his turn soon? It was the shifting situation again; I could not get my head round it. And what had Dad meant: ‘Not much longer now’? Was it leaving? Were there changes, transformations, still to come?
Well, I did not think, that’s the truth of it. If I had, I would have got them out of there somehow and waited. As it was, I blundered forward, grabbed the first thing I could lay my hands on – a tennis racket – and brought it down with all my might upon the creature’s head. Mum screamed and stepped away. But Josie, Josie came at me, furious anger in her face – ‘No!’ – and grabbed my arm.
I pushed her aside and raised the racket again. It was no contest. I was trying to attack a thing that frightened me so much I could not bear to look at it. I hit the back of the chair. The creature rose then to its feet, unhurt, it seemed. I sensed it towering over me, the swing of its misshapen arm.
I sensed it towering over me
I was flat on the floor, my ears ringing, a taste of blood in my mouth. Mum was beside me, helping me to my feet. Dad was in the doorway. He staggered forward, hurled his bottle at the creature’s head and smashed the TV. Blue sparks danced where the screen had been. The noise now was tremendous, all of us yelling, screaming, crying. We huddled in a corner behind the sofa, while the cat – I forced myself to look – observed us.
The terror in that room was unbearable. A sickening dizziness washed over me. I was about to faint away, when, airborne and like a bullet almost, in came Billy.
Thinking about it, years later, it’s so obvious. This was always how it would end: cats and dogs, those ancient enemies, the natural solution. I remember how I’d laughed aloud at the neatness of it – my brainwave – there on that spiky, close-cropped field with George and the others, fooling around with the bales in the sunlight. For a dog will always see off a cat, won’t it? And if one dog is not enough…
Billy came in as though off a ramp, flying. He was drenched, which made him look smaller than ever, but his courage was huge and unhesitating. He hit the cat, sank his teeth into its upper arm (while keeping up a constant growling), and hung on. Archie and Spy were close behind, snapping and leaping. Flossie, the oldest dog with the poorest eyesight, leapt and missed. Jasper, the slowest, walked in and grabbed an ankle. Winston had yet to arrive.
For a moment the advantage lay with the dogs. The cat twisted and turned to meet each new assault, unsure which one to deal with first. Then… Billy was hurled across the room, airborne once more, and hit the dresser. Hissing and spitting (cat-like again), the cat knocked over the chair and caught poor Archie a terrible raking blow with its claws. Archie whimpered and retreated; Spy likewise. Jasper, the most fearsome growler of them all, hung on, shaking and tearing at the cat’s ankle, his jaws clamped tight like a trap.
Winston arrived, slamming the cat so hard that it stumbled and fell. Even off-balance, it lashed out, catching the dog a savage swipe to the head. There was blood everywhere: Winston’s, Archie’s, the cat’s. Flossie was on the floor, struggling to rise, her shoulder dislocated in an earlier attack, her leg broken. Meanwhile, a small fire had started. A stack of newspapers was smouldering in a corner, ignited by a fallen candle.
Billy came again. The confusion was unimaginable: smoke – flames – noise – blood. Billy, though, I’d have to say, was not confused, never had been. This was still a cat, whatever its size or shape, and this was still his home, y’know, his territory. Yes, Billy had his reasons, twice over. Growling ferociously now, he darted in once more and seized the cat by its ear as it ducked and weaved, trying to get at Jasper. The cat reared up, snarling, while Billy dangled perilously, legs in air, like a ridiculous earring.
How slow time moves, at times. All this, from start to finish, had happened in seconds. (George was still out on the drive!) Now, as I watched, the cat seized Billy with its razor teeth and tore his side wide open, and tossed him away.
A dog will always see off a cat, yes, but what if the cat is too strong? What if the dogs are torn and battered, and killed?
The cat was too strong. It had only to stand and fight to win. And yet. Maybe it was the light from the flames now leaping up. (Those sensitive eyes, remember?) Or Jasper’s horrendous, bone-crunching grip, Spy’s non-stop snapping and barking. Or the smoke. Or the absolute bedlam in that small room. Or…
The cat ran. It turned and leapt straight through the window, dragging the curtains with it, shattering the glass and the frame, freeing itself from Jasper at last. George, still steeling himself to enter the house, saw it all. The cat came flying out in a shower of splintering wood and glass. On all fours it bounded and flowed across the drive, smashed clean through the hedge… and was hit by a lorry.
12
Aftermath
THE CAT LAY CRUSHED and mangled, flattened between a giant tanker and the Co-op Bakery wall. Later the driver was to speak of his ‘unnerving experience’. (I have the newspaper clipping here beside me.) An immense ‘cat’ caught in the headlights, arriving from nowhere. The desperate application of the brakes, the screeching, the skidding, the unearthly scream-cum-roar of the animal itself, the thunderous collision with the wall, which was demolished.
The driver suffered a broken jaw. So, as a matter of fact, did Winston, who also lost an eye. That any of the dogs – the injured ones – survived at all was down to Alma. Even as the police and fire brigade were arriving, she drove up and with Joyce’s help whisked them away. There was this vet she knew, had regular dealings with (a vet, as it happens, she later married).
The police had loads of questions, though what they made of our answers it’s hard to say. From one small kitten in three short weeks, to this! They questioned George about his role in the affair (bringing the dogs, releasing Billy). And Alma too. George had told her nothing, it seemed. She was simply out looking for him.
Above all, I suppose, they wanted to know what it was, and we couldn’t tell them. The evidence was unclear. What was eventually revealed, beneath the rubble, was the pulverized body of a giant cat, but what sort of cat? Some peculiarities in its shape were discovered, but otherwise it was impossible to be sure of anything.
We stood on the pavement with blankets around our shoulders watching the firemen put out the fire. The rain had stopped, a breeze was shifting the clouds away and layers of purple and pale green sky stretched out above the town. Dad had Josie in his arms, Mum had Luke, and I had Billy.
Billy, poor ruined Billy. His little corpse lay in my arms like a blood-stained rag. My guilty tears spilled out and splashed his head. I pressed my face into his fur and kissed him. Softly, from a long way down, Billy growled.
He wasn’t dead; he was only ninety-nine per cent dead. So Billy was rushed to the vet’s too. And they stitched him up. And bandaged him up. And fastened some kind of corset round him. And told us to keep him in cotton wool for a month.
And Billy lived.
The fire did not destroy the house entirely, but we moved anyway. We couldn’t live there any more, it was impossible. And time does heal, doesn’t it? Yes, over the years our family has become a family again. There’s even one more of us now – Baby Alice. Actually, the others – Mum, Dad, Josie – recovered quicker than I did. They were in it, I guess you’d say, anaesthetized by it. They saw less, remembered less, dreamt less. Me
? I was the witness; I saw it all.
Anyway, that’s it: end of cat, end of story. Except… I do sometimes wonder what the alternative ending might have been. If, say, somehow we had left it alone, allowed it to… develop. What size would it have stopped at, what shape, what powers? (And I remember that weird remark of Dad’s: ‘Not much longer now.’) There again, was it a one-off, really, a coin that stood on end, our share of strangeness? Or might there be others of its kind in the world, in other countries, cities, towns; miaowing and limping their way into other sunlit (or snowy) gardens.
Like yours, for instance.
The Improbable Cat Page 4