Solomon's Kitten

by Sheila Jeffries

  On that day, the house shook like thunder, and two strange men plodded in and out, moving furniture, sliding and scraping and bumping it down the stairs. Then Joe came in with a basket in his hand. He put it down on the bedroom floor and reached under the bed where we were cuddled together against our mother’s warm body.

  ‘Sorry about this, Jessica,’ he said, and picked us up one by one with his big hand and dumped us inside the basket. I saw my mother’s anxious eyes as she came after us, and that was the last time I ever saw her dear black and white face. She cried and cried as Joe clipped the basket shut. He slammed the bedroom door and we heard Jessica’s echoing wail of despair, and her paws scrabbling to get out.

  We huddled together and clung on with our tiny paws as he bounded down the stairs swinging the basket.

  ‘There’s nothing to cry about,’ he said to Ellen and John, ‘so stop your snivelling. We’ve got more to worry about than a bunch of kittens.’

  He took us outside, and that was the first time I saw the sky and smelled the lawn. A bird was singing high up in one of the trees, and women and children were walking past with pushchairs. No one seemed to care about us, three kittens suddenly wrenched away from their mother. Jessica was at the window, crying and crying, clawing at the glass with her pink paws.

  ‘You will take them to the Cat Sanctuary, won’t you?’ said Ellen to Joe.

  ‘Course I will. Stop fussing.’ Joe swung the basket into a car and another door was banged in our faces. Seriously worried now, we were climbing all over the inside of the basket, desperately seeking a crack or a hole through which we could escape.

  The inside of the car smelled of beer and socks. It squealed and rattled as Joe drove us away from our home and our mother, away from Solomon, away from Ellen and John. We travelled fast, the basket lurching as the car hurtled round corners. We grew hot with fear and exhausted by our efforts to escape.

  ‘Nearly there, guys,’ said Joe. He hauled the car around a sharp bend and slowed down. ‘Here we are. Cat Sanctuary.’

  He turned the engine off, and there was only the sound of our three baby voices crying and crying for our mother cat. Joe swung the basket out of the car and walked towards a pair of high wire gates. He stopped in front of them, looking at a notice board.

  And then he exploded.

  ‘SHIT,’ he bellowed. ‘They’re shitting CLOSED.’

  He kicked at the wire gates. He put the basket down and rattled the gates with both hands.

  ‘What’s the good of a cat sanctuary that’s CLOSED!’ he roared. ‘Well, you’ll have to go somewhere. I’ve gotta get back. I can’t be doing with a bunch of wailing cats.’

  He flung our basket into the hedge. Then he got back into the car, reversed it and roared off, filling the lane with black smoke and a storm of gravel.

  And he left us there, three terrified kittens cowering in a corner of the basket.

  Minutes later, the car came racing back and skidded to a halt. Joe got out, swigging beer from a can. Still swear- ing, he seized our basket, opened it and tipped us out like rubbish into the long wet grass.

  Chapter Two

  A BAD CAT

  I learned a lot during those lonely hours in the hedge.

  My brothers were both black; they were mates and didn’t care about me, so I followed them as they crawled deep into the hedge. We had to keep each other warm. We found a dry twiggy hollow at the roots of a hawthorn tree and pressed close together. Hungry and tired, we slept, and when we woke, nothing had changed except the sunlight, which was now a brassy pink. We’d grown up under a bed, and we hadn’t learned about day and night, earth and sky, sun and rain.

  Soon we were starving. We spent the night creeping about, not far away from each other, tasting anything we could find; worms, slugs, beetles, all disgusting and too tough for our delicate new teeth. We licked raindrops from the leaves and blades of grass, and we did a lot of meowing, hoping our mother would come and find us.

  I tried to see my angel, but I was too little to remember how. Her voice whispered to me, but it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear.

  ‘Your mother is far away,’ she said. ‘Jessica and Solomon were put in the basket and taken away, hundreds of miles. You won’t see them again in this lifetime.’

  But she coaxed me out in the morning to feel the sun on my fur, and this time my brothers followed me. We sat at the edge of the lane on hot stones, and the sun’s warmth was a new and healing experience for us. The sound of a dog barking sent us scurrying back to our twiggy hollow. I’d never seen a real dog and, curious, I crawled out on my own through the narrow grass tunnel we’d made.

  I peeped, and immediately regretted it. Towering over me was a very stiff black Labrador with such a tail, wagging up in the sky. Its ears were up and its brown eyes were staring at me. It gave a soft huffy sort of woof and its hot breath gusted over me. Too petrified to move, I stared back and we had a telepathic exchange. She was an old dog, wise and kindly; she wanted to tell me something, and she wanted to ask me a question. Her eyes were puzzled, as if she knew I shouldn’t be there.

  ‘Come on, Harriet. Whatever it is, leave it. I said LEAVE IT,’ called a voice from further down the lane.

  Harriet gave an apologetic shrug, turned and trotted off, looking back at me just once, her paw in the air.

  ‘LEAVE IT,’ shouted the voice again. I was trembling with shock at my first encounter with a dog. The overwhelming smell of her, the thickness of her legs, the way she went stiff when she saw me. And yet, tiny as I was, I had a sudden sense of power. I was a CAT. Well, almost.

  Two more days and nights passed. We kept each other warm, but we were getting weaker and more depressed. We’d given up meowing; it took too much energy. Worse than that was the emotional pain. That feeling of being dumped in the hedge like rubbish never left me in my whole life, but weaved and wandered through my aura in strands of anger and sorrow. We should have been normal happy little cats, but already, at four weeks old, our confidence was damaged, our sense of self-worth shaken. And we didn’t have our mother to teach us how to live.

  I wondered if Jessica ever got over losing us, even me.

  On our third day in the hedge, something terrifying happened.

  We were sleeping, heaped together in a mound of fur, in a round nest we had made in the grass, when I woke up suddenly. The Labrador, Harriet, was looming over us, puffing and sniffing, a long pink tongue flopping from her mouth. I caught the smell and the gleam of her teeth set in pink and black shiny gums, and the look of thoughtfulness in her eyes as she reached down to me. Before I could move, she had opened her jaws and picked me up by the scruff.

  I squealed and screeched. My heart lurched into a stream of beats. I tried to kick and scratch but she had me so tightly, stretching my skin so that my tiny legs splayed out and wouldn’t move. I hung there, hardly able to breathe, and the dog lifted me high in the air and walked off with me.

  ‘I can’t survive this. I can’t,’ I thought, panicking. But Harriet was plodding down the lane with me. She wasn’t going to put me down. I kept my baby-blue eyes wide open, and floating alongside us were splinters of coloured light, stars of turquoise, emerald and lime. My angel! My angel was there, escorting us in cloaks of light, and in total silence. The Angel of Secrets.

  After that, I calmed down and let it happen. Harriet wasn’t eating me. She was taking me somewhere, the only way she knew how, in her mouth. An extraordinary thought dawned in me: this was a dog, a dear old dog who wanted to mother me.

  She broke into a trot, and I was swinging, like it was when Jessica had carried me upstairs. I could see the dog’s tail wagging faster and faster. We reached a wicket gate in the hedge, and Harriet shoved it open with her paw, being careful not to bump me. She took me up a garden path and in through an open door.

  ‘Oh, Harriet! What have you got?’

  A woman was sitting there on a cosy sofa. Harriet’s tail dropped and only the tip of it wagged apologetically as sh
e gently put me down in the woman’s lap. I lay there in total shock. The woman’s lap smelled of bread and flowers. She gasped.

  ‘A KITTEN!’

  I sat there, disorientated.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ she asked Harriet loudly. And immediately the dog turned around and bounded out, her tail wagging madly. She turned the corner on one leg and galloped up the lane.

  ‘What a little beauty you are,’ whispered the woman. She cupped me gently in a pair of weathered hands, and I could have cried. The way she looked at me with such tenderness. Someone wanted me. I wasn’t rubbish. The dog hadn’t hurt me.

  Minutes later, Harriet came back through the door, her tail bang banging against the wood, and in her mouth was one of my brothers. She did the same again. Put the traumatised kitten down next to me and charged out again to fetch the other one.

  ‘That dog!’ Tears were running down the woman’s face. ‘That dog is a miracle. A miracle.’

  But this time the dog returned with a puzzled expression on her face, and she hadn’t got my brother. He was the all-black one, the biggest and bravest of us three kittens.

  I never saw him again.

  I’d have liked to stay in the cottage and cuddled up to Harriet for the rest of my life, but it wasn’t to be. A few days later, well fed and rested, we were put in another basket and taken, gently this time, to a Cat Rescue Centre, to await adoption.

  I wanted to go with my brother. He was all I had. But the first person to look at us fell in love with me straight away. Her name was Gretel. I gazed up at her wrinkled face which was covered in powder, and her expectant eyes under blue-painted lids. Two tantalising pearls dangled from her ears and there was a halo of silvery hair. She pursed her red-painted lips, then opened her mouth very wide.

  ‘Oh, what a pretty kitten. Aren’t you a little poppet?’ she crooned, and picked me up as if I was made of gold. She held me against her pale pink sweater, and I managed to keep still, smelling her perfume and watching those earrings. Aware that my silver and white fur was exquisitely soft, my paws had pink pads, I knew I was beautiful, but I wasn’t sure if this was right for me. Was I good enough for Gretel?

  I didn’t exactly have a choice.

  Gretel looked at me silently for a moment, and then said, ‘You are a darling, darling little Fuzzball.’ I hoped that wasn’t going to be my name, but then she turned to the cat lady and said, ‘Can I have her? She’s definitely THE ONE.’

  I wanted to say goodbye to my brother, my only family now, but I was whisked into a luxurious carrier with pink fluff. A lot of fuss was going on. People saying, ‘Oh, you are a lucky kitten,’ and shuffling about with papers while I sat in there, lonely, and wanting my mother. I even wanted Harriet. We had spent a couple of nights cuddled up to the big dog who seemed to love us. She was warm and peaceful, her heartbeat so steady and slow. She’d even let us play with her silky ears and the tip of her tail. It helped me to make a decision: I wanted a dog in my life. A dog was a solid reliable friend.

  Gretel was OK, but I was uneasy. Had I made the right decision? And I definitely didn’t want to be called FUZZBALL.

  Gretel’s bungalow was fine. Warm and sweet-smelling, with soft carpets, a fur-lined cat bed with a roof, and a puss-flap leading to a sunny patio and a square of lawn. I should have been happy there, but I wasn’t. It was lonely, even though Gretel made a fuss of me. She wanted me to be good.

  I wasn’t good. I was a BAD CAT.

  My dad, Solomon, was the most saintly cat, and I wished he were there to teach me the mysteries and illogical rules about living with humans.

  The first issue was the litter tray. I knew how to use it, but I didn’t think it right to use it a second time. It was more creative to find some paper and make my own. I shredded a copy of the Damart catalogue before Gretel had read it, and she went ballistic.

  ‘You wretched cat. Look at this STINKING mess. You’re a bad girl. BAD GIRL,’ and she grabbed my scruff like Jessica would have done and shook me. I was hurt and puzzled. It had been fun shredding the paper and making myself a luxurious heap behind the sofa and, when I’d used it, I’d carefully raked it up and covered it over. Problem solved.

  I quickly became a compulsive paper shredder as I grew bigger. My new claws had to be kept sharp and it was a good workout. Gretel used to go out and shut the kitchen door so I couldn’t go out through the puss-flap, and she’d always left a magazine somewhere, by her bed or on a chair.

  Next, I discovered the postman. I learned what time he came and recognised his footsteps. Or I’d sit in the window, watching him pushing his trolley down the street, getting more and more excited as he approached. Once he was on the path, I shot into the hall and waited, tingling, by the front door. There were always catalogues in plastic that landed with a slap, but if they were heavy I ignored them. What I liked were the paper letters, especially the brown ones, which made a succulent tearing noise. In one part of my mind, I was being a lion ripping skin from its prey, and in another way, I was being creative and pragmatic while Gretel was out.

  One morning, she came in the back door with her shopping bags and I ran to meet her like a cat should. She sat down and took me onto her lap, and I learned how to give her healing. She had pain in her joints; they used to glow in her aura like hotspots. I draped myself over her knees or up on her shoulder and practised the art of purring, which I had brought with me from the spirit world. It was a vibration that generated streams of minute stars that only I could see. But Gretel felt it. I knew she did.

  ‘Oh, you are a darling cat. You’re so good for me,’ she said as we relaxed together. But as soon as she got up and went into the hall, it all changed.

  ‘You BAD CAT,’ she shouted when she saw the heaps of shredded paper I was so proud of. ‘My LETTERS! You’ve ruined them.’

  She seized me in angry hands and held me up so that my face was close to hers, and hissed at me like a mother cat. ‘WHAT am I going to DO with you, Fuzzball, eh?’

  I hated being treated like that. I flattened my ears and lashed my tail. After all that healing, Gretel was abusing me! I kicked out with my back legs, and my claws were out. They caught in her clothes and scratched her neck.

  ‘You little demon,’ she snarled and dropped me. I mean – dropped me, not put me down nicely. Unprepared, I twisted and landed awkwardly. Stunned, I crouched there, looking up at her, hoping she’d apologise, pick me up and make peace with me. Instead, she clapped her hands right in my ear and I ran away, through the puss-flap and into the garden. It was lovely sunshine, but I sat in the dark underneath the decking and licked myself miserably. I was trembling inside with a mixture of fear and anger. What had I done? How could Gretel change so quickly from sweetness to rage?

  I’d never felt so alone. I wanted my parents and my brothers to guide and comfort me. I wanted a dog like Harriet. I wanted a nice name, a beautiful romantic name suitable for a silver and white tabby who had come here to heal. My life wasn’t working out the way I’d planned.

  Then I remembered my angel. It was a long time since I’d talked to her, and I’d never really learned how to see her on this planet. Where was she?

  A cloud blew over the sun, the garden darkened and rain spattered down, splashing the leaves with drops. It dripped through cracks in the decking and I shrank back against the wall, feeling worse.

  The storm was soon over and the sun shone out again, making everything glisten, and tempting me out to feel it on my fur. I sat on the path and stared out at a bright raindrop hanging from a leaf. The sunlight was turning it into a blazing star, so bright I squinted my eyes to look at it, and it started turning pink, then gold, then blue. As I turned my head sideways, the rays of light revolved like the spokes of a wheel.

  Mesmerised, I focused on the centre where the rays of pink, gold and blue converged, and with my daydream came a memory from the spirit world. That magic dot in the centre was the point of infinity. In my mind, I could go through it, into the land of spirit.
Ignoring everything else around me, ignoring my hurt feelings, I concentrated on it. I zoomed in, slipped through it into a place of light.

  And there, waiting for me, was my fantastic angel. The Angel of Secrets. Her colours were those of a dragonfly in the sun, her face was the happiest beaming smile, welcoming me. Just seeing her gave me courage.

  ‘It’s all going wrong, living with Gretel,’ I confided. ‘She’s so angry with me for being a cat.’

  ‘I know, I know. I see it all,’ my angel said, and she wrapped her light around me. I nestled into the sparkles, and listened.

  ‘It’s a time of learning,’ she explained. ‘You are a young cat with no mother to teach you. Gretel is teaching you how to live with humans. If you don’t learn this, you will suffer all your life.’

  ‘But why can’t she teach me nicely?’ I asked.

  ‘She doesn’t know how. She’s a human. She has stuff to learn too.’

  ‘But why am I a bad cat?’

  My angel threw an extra whoosh of stars around me, warming my soul. ‘You’re not a bad cat. There are no bad cats. You must forgive Gretel. She doesn’t know a better way, and she was treated unkindly by her family. When she is fierce, she is afraid.’

  I cuddled into the warmth of her aura as if it were a cushion.

  ‘Your mother, Jessica, was a very creative cat. She did all the things you are doing now and got punished and called a demon for it. But she was loyal and courageous too.’

  ‘But this isn’t how my life is meant to be,’ I said. ‘I’m not meant to be with Gretel, am I? And I’m not “Fuzzball”.’ I flicked my tail in frustration.

  ‘You are an earth kitten. All young earthlings must go through a time of learning, and if you don’t learn, you can’t move on,’ said my angel. ‘So learn! Learn what Gretel is trying to teach you. We have work for you.’

  She melted back into the light, leaving me realising I was staring at a sparkle on a raindrop. I sat thinking about how to please Gretel. Catch a mouse and present it to her? Or that robin who was tugging a worm out of the lawn. He’d make a nice gift for Gretel.