The candles flickered until dawn, and the sunrise was silver grey. Drops of rain still covered the windows and there was an unfamiliar light outside, and no sounds of traffic, which was unusual. A loud metallic throbbing sound filled the air, coming and going as if some great machine was patrolling the sky.
Amber seemed tense. She wouldn’t talk to me, but stood in the doorway, listening, her tail down. I was OK, refreshed from my sleep and wanting to go out in the garden. Heading for the cat flap, I ran through the kitchen with my tail up, hoping TammyLee would be on her way back. The kitchen floor was wet, causing me to stop and shake each paw. I butted my head against the cat flap and jumped out. Too late, I saw water shining, directly outside, and there was no avoiding it. The whole garden shone like a lake. Even the path was submerged and water was lapping at the walls of the house. With my paws and tummy horribly wet and cold, I turned and went back through the cat flap. The hearth rug was still warm, and Amber came to me, whining, and tried to lick me dry. She was comforting, but I wanted TammyLee to come and fluff me up with a towel. I needed her there, to cuddle me and explain what was happening. I missed her kindness.
Amber ran to the window and put her paws up on the sill, looking out as if someone was coming. I leaped up there, and stared, transfixed by what was happening outside. Max had stacked sandbags across the gate, and a line of gleaming muddy brown water was spilling over the top of them. Out in the road, the water was flowing along like a river, and, in the distance, voices were shouting. The sky throbbed with circling helicopters.
A duck with a green head lurched over the top of the sandbags and started swimming around our garden as if it owned the place. I sat up very straight and batted the window, trying to tell that duck exactly what I would do to it if I was out there.
Amber was watching, but her tail wasn’t wagging and her eyes looked worried. Then she did something that seriously spooked me. She lifted her head, stretched her throat, and howled, on and on. It chilled me to my bones. It resounded through the house, along the floor and up the walls, into corners and cupboards, even the lampshades quivered with it.
My fur ruffed out, my eyes must have gone black with terror, and my pulse raced. But Amber didn’t stop. The howling went on and on, like a warning siren.
Too petrified to move, I watched the water in the garden. I saw Max’s sandbag wall sag and burst open, and a torrent of brown water surged towards the house with an unforgettable roar. It burst through the cat flap in a plume of froth, swept across the kitchen and into the hall.
Amber stopped howling and barked. She spun round and lolloped through the water and up the stairs, leaving me paralysed with terror on the windowsill.
I watched in horror as my food bowl, still with some bits in it, floated by, along with the leaves and litter the water was bringing in. I watched the brown tide, foaming at the edges, glide into the lounge and under the sofa, swirling around the chair legs, soaking the carpet. It picked up TammyLee’s fluffy slippers and sloshed them against the wall. Then it reached the fireplace and steam rose, hissing from the embers.
‘What the hell is the matter with that dog?’
I heard Max getting up, his feet creaking across the landing.
‘Oh, my GOD. Now we have got problems.’
He dived into the bedroom and grabbed a mobile phone, tapping it urgently and listening.
‘Damn it. The lines are jammed.’ He did a lot of cursing, and finally spoke to someone. ‘Our house is flooded. The water’s pouring in, and my wife is disabled . . . and my teenage daughter has gone missing.’
He didn’t say, ‘Our cat is marooned on the windowsill.’ I was, and the water was creeping up the wall, deeper and deeper. I clung there, watching Max, who was now downstairs and paddling around, grabbing armfuls of stuff and chucking it on the stairs. I was afraid that in his frenzy, he wouldn’t notice me, so I meowed loudly; in fact, I wailed. He waded over and picked me up. Phew!
‘Poor Tallulah,’ he said as I clung to his shoulder. He carried me to the stairs and put me on them. ‘Go upstairs, go on. Shoo!’ He clapped his hands which wasn’t helpful to an already frightened cat.
Miffed, I crouched on the top step, watching Amber, who was trying to convince Max it was a game. She was charging up and down what was left of the stairs, grabbing some of the things he was chucking up there, and carrying them into Diana’s room in her mouth. She grabbed books, papers, shoes and gadgets, even a telephone with its wires trailing. She got that tangled up in the banister rail, and tugged at it until Max shouted at her. She left it swinging in mid-air and seized a coat by its hood, dragging it round the corner into Diana’s room.
An amazing sound rippled through the house. Diana was laughing! It relaxed me straight away and I ran in to see her with my tail up. What Amber had done was awesome, in my opinion. In the midst of a crisis, she’d managed to make Diana laugh. It made me feel better.
But it had the opposite effect on Max.
‘What the hell is there to laugh at?’ He shouted. ‘I’m busting a gut trying to salvage our belongings. What’s so funny?’
His words only sent Diana into a new bout of hysterical giggling, and encouraged Amber to move even faster, her tail wagging now, knocking medicine bottles off tables as she flew past.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ said Diana as Max’s furious face appeared at the door. ‘I know I shouldn’t be laughing . . . but Amber is so funny . . . don’t be cross with her, Max. It’s better to laugh than cry.’
‘I’ll do the crying,’ said Max. ‘Our home is RUINED, Diana. Our daughter is missing. For God’s sake, woman.’
He did start to cry, sitting at the top of the stairs, but he refused to let the tears flow. Silently and painfully, he fought it, his shoulders shuddering with every breath. I ran to him and looked right into his soul with my most concerned cat stare.
‘Tallulah . . . you lovely, lovely cat,’ he said, and caressed my fur with an unsteady hand. ‘What are we going to do with you and Amber? And, dear God, where IS my daughter?
Max shut Amber and me in TammyLee’s bedroom, with a dish of water. Amber lay down across the door with a sigh of resignation, and I made a nest in the duvet and fell into a restorative sleep.
It must have been mid-afternoon when the house began to shake. Amber was frightened of thunderstorms, and she crawled under the table and pressed herself against the wall, whimpering. It wasn’t thunder, I knew that. Keeping myself hidden behind the curtain, I peeped out, alarmed to see a helicopter hovering just above the house. My ears hurt with the bang-banging of its relentless blades, and, up close, the helicopter was enormous, deafening and intimidating.
My instinct was to hide like Amber, but I wanted to see what was happening. It felt as if the house was going to be blown to bits. I touched the window with my nose, and the glass was vibrating.
The sky was blue now and the flood had settled into a vast sheet of water. I could see the reflection of the helicopter and the trees. Loud and scary as it was, I worked out that this iron giant was actually under control. In the midst of the thunderous noise, there were voices, and they were calm, giving clear instructions to each other. I understood that a man in goggles and a helmet was in the cockpit, and he was OK. Two more men, clad in bright orange, were in the side door, and one of them began to descend, on a string, like a spider!
Down and down he came, and stopped level with Diana’s bedroom window. Max was holding on to her tightly, and Diana was being brave, smiling and making jokes as the man fixed a harness round her. She was whisked up into the sky, with the man in orange holding her firmly. She looked down at me as I sat in the window, and then she was lifted into the helicopter. Max went next, his body rigid, his face grim as he was winched to safety.
‘What about us?’ I thought, expecting the men in orange to come back with a cat cage and lift me up there too, and Amber, and take us to a lovely place where TammyLee would be waiting. I wanted her so much in that moment. I wanted her love, and the
special way she talked to me and explained things, the way she’d put her face close to mine and call me ‘magic puss cat’.
But it didn’t happen like that. A cold shadow of betrayal crept over me as they closed the door of the rescue helicopter. I meowed and scrabbled at the window. I wailed and cried, but the helicopter rose heartlessly into the sky and set off at speed, carrying Max and Diana away from us. I watched until it was a tiny speck against the western sky.
They had left us behind.
Max’s words rang in my head. ‘Our home is RUINED.’ What did he mean? It seemed OK to me, except that there was water downstairs. I wondered where my food dish was.
Amber crawled out from under the table, still shivering. I tried to comfort her by winding myself round her legs with my tail brushing her face, but all it did was make her sneeze. My attempt to tell her about the helicopter was a waste of time. She couldn’t get her head round it. She stood at the door, pawing it and whining, her tail hanging limp like rope. Her fur had mostly dried except for her ears, and she was cold, and, like me, hungry.
Outside, the sun was setting and pink light reflected in the water. Amber wouldn’t talk to me, so I sat in the window and watched it getting dark. Boats were going up the flooded road, laden with people wrapped in blankets. One woman had a cat in a cage and I could hear it meowing. The other cat I saw was all alone and clinging to a wooden table that was being swept along fast by the surging water. I searched the sky, but the helicopter didn’t come back, and in the deepening twilight there were blue lights flashing everywhere.
It was the longest night of my life, thinking I’d been abandoned, wanting TammyLee, wanting my supper and the warm bright fire. Amber didn’t sleep either but stared at the door all night, her nose twitching, and her tail didn’t wag once.
When dawn came, I noticed her looking up at the door handle and getting more and more agitated. She seemed to be hyping herself up for something she was planning to do. Then, cleverly, she got the handle between her teeth and pushed it down. It didn’t work, but she tried again, and I ran to sit beside her and encourage her, thinking we could get down to the kitchen and find our food. Amber growled and jerked the handle harder, and at last the door swung open. Amber dashed into Diana’s room, and came out again, looking puzzled. She ran up and down the landing and in and out of the bathroom.
‘Max and Diana are gone,’ I said, ‘and TammyLee.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Amber. ‘They’re out there somewhere.’
She sat at the top of the stairs, sniffing the air and thinking.
‘Don’t go down there,’ I said. ‘It’s flooded.’
The water was deep. Stuff was floating around in it, and only the top of the sofa and table were visible. Sticks and straw had been washed in and was drifting around with lots of paper and plastic bottles. We could see into the kitchen, and the window was open, and once Amber saw that, something even more terrible happened.
‘Don’t go . . . please,’ I begged, but Amber wasn’t seeing or hearing me.
With a sense of foreboding, I watched her pad down the stairs. She entered the water quietly, not with her usual joyful splash. She swam around in a circle, and looked up at me, and clearly she was saying, ‘Goodbye.’
Devastated, I meowed and meowed, but Amber swam into the kitchen, and dragged herself over the worktop and out of the open window. Frantic, I tore back into TammyLee’s room, to see what happened, and glimpsed the shine of Amber’s wet head as she swam across the flooded garden and into the swirling current that was the road. I meowed my loudest. What chance did a lone dog have in that vast and swiftly moving flood?
Now I was truly alone.
I spent most of the morning meowing, going from one window to another, hoping to see someone who would notice me. Nobody was out there now – even the boats had gone, and the helicopters were far away. I clung to a frail idea that Amber might come back, and I worried about my family. TammyLee was the one I ached to see.
Clouds gathered over the midday sun and soon it was raining again. Mist hung over the water, and the place looked desolate. The day was passing and I hadn’t been rescued. Starving hungry, I ate some bread and cheese Max had left, but it upset me and I was sick. I missed being in the garden and thought that going outside would make me feel better.
‘You must help yourself,’ said my angel, and I flicked my tail in annoyance. But last time she’d said that, it had worked. I sat in the front window, thinking, studying the flooded landscape for escape routes, wondering if it might be possible to go along the tops of fences and trees. First I had to find a way out of the house. Swimming was not an option. Meowing at boats hadn’t worked. I studied parts of the roof visible from the window and noticed a skylight that was open just a crack.
I found it in the bathroom. The crack was too small, but if I got my paws up there and pushed, I could squeeze out. Jumping up was a challenge, especially from the floor. I clambered onto the shiny lid of the loo, then onto the cistern, and from this narrow slippery perch, I planned my daring leap. I had to try. Focusing on the power in my back legs, and the sharpness of my claws, I sprang up there. For a frantic moment, I hung with my claws dug into the wood. With all my strength, I lifted my hind legs, butted the crack with my head, and wriggled through. I was out!
It had stopped raining, so I walked up to the ridge of the roof to survey the landscape. Somewhere an engine was running, and I soon discovered it was a fire engine, sucking water out of a nearby house. I sat on the roof and meowed, but no one even looked in my direction, and my cries for help were lost in the noise of the fire engine.
I was hungry, and thirsty, and cold.
Night came with frightening speed. Another night of being abandoned, this time on my own. Thinking the roof was not a good place to spend the night, I went back to the open skylight, intending to attempt the jump back into the bathroom. But I made a dreadful mistake by putting my weight on the raised edge of the window and making it shut. My entrance was closed, and despite my efforts to reopen it, it stayed closed.
With thick darkness and a chilly wind blowing, there was no choice but to spend the night on the roof, with no soft place to sleep, no food, no water, and no one to love me.
Chapter Fourteen
CATS IN CAGES
I pressed myself against the chimney on its warmest side. Cold and isolated up on the roof, I tried to conserve my energy by tucking my paws under my body and dozing quietly. Staying calm was vital to my survival. No more meowing.
It ought to have been peaceful, but suddenly the roof tiles were vibrating, first from a loud clanking noise, followed by a steady rhythmic pounding, like footsteps. I could feel my eyes growing big with fright. Was the roof somehow trying to shake me off into the water?
The rhythmic pounding stopped, and, in the expectant pause, I sensed a listening, and a beam of light came sweeping over the roof. Then, an unbelievable sound.
Someone was calling, ‘Kitty kitty kitty.’
A gentle, male voice, up there on the roof. It wasn’t anyone I knew, but from past experience, I assumed that ‘kitty kitty kitty’, meant me.
Someone had found me!
I peeped round the chimney and the light dazzled me. Whoever was holding it turned it off, and I stared down at a fireman in a helmet, his face looking up at me. He looked solid and reassuring, obviously a cat lover.
My tail shot up, and my fur bushed out with joy. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. I slithered down the wet tiles, doing purr-meows in gratitude. A friend, a warm, human friend. It was so comforting to lean against his chest and hear the slow heartbeat. I clung to his shoulder, and cried like a little kitten.
‘You’re a beauty!’ he said, appreciatively. ‘You’re gorgeous. Now you hang on to me and I’ll take you down. Trust me. OK?’
How could I not trust this cuddly fireman? I hung on, and treated him to my loudest purr as he took me carefully down the ladder. It didn’t even bother me when he put me in a cat c
age. I was being rescued!
The fireman waded a long way through the flood to a patch of higher ground. A fire engine was parked there, its blue light flickering, reflected in the water. Behind it was a van with a familiar figure waiting at the wheel.
‘Got her. She’s fine,’ the fireman shouted. ‘Can you take her?’
‘I’ve just got room, my luvvy. Thank you SO much. You’re a star.’
She took the cage from the fireman, and looked in at me. ‘Tallulah! Hello, my luvvy. It’s me, Penny, the cat lady. Now don’t you worry, we’ll take care of you and find your people.’
I was a lucky cat, and if I’d been a human, I’d have given Penny a box of Cadbury’s Roses like the one Max had given TammyLee for passing her exams.
The interior of the van was full of cat cages, and there was a cacophony of meowing and yowling. Black frightened eyes looked out, and most of the cats were extremely upset. I did a lot of work in the back of that van, showing them how to be calm and telling them about the work of Cats Protection. As Penny drove up the hill away from the flood, those traumatised cats were looking at me, their eyes hungry for reassurance. The worst was a Siamese with blue tormented eyes and the loudest voice I’d ever heard from a cat. ‘You’re upsetting everyone,’ I said, ‘and it’s no good wasting your energy on meowing. It won’t make any difference. Penny is a good and clever human. She’ll find your people for you.’
But the Siamese cat ignored me.
I thought Penny would take us to the farm with the cat pens, but she didn’t. When she pulled into a car park and turned off the engine, the yowling and meowing made eerie music ring through the night.
Where were we?
She opened the back door and outside was a big building like a school, with the lights on and people milling about inside. I wished I could read the tall red words on a board outside. Penny picked up my curiosity immediately and read them for me:
‘FLOOD DISASTER CENTRE.’
Solomon's Kitten Page 14