The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas

by Julia Romp

  This is the life, isn’t it, Ju? All lovely and cozy. What a good sleep I’ve had!

  The worst thing in the world for Ben was to sleep alone because it wasn’t warm. As I got to know him, I couldn’t understand how he’d lived outside for so long. He hated the cold so much that he refused to go out in the rain and we had to walk him into the garden with an umbrella. Maybe he’d been the Queen of Sheba or something in a former life because Ben loved to be adored. If he was sitting on the sofa and George dared stop stroking him, Ben would cry for more until his belly was rubbed again and he’d lie back contentedly as he watched TV. He always enjoyed TV, but whenever Katie Price appeared on the television his eyes became even more glued and he’d sit completely still as he watched her. Ben was fast becoming the most spoiled cat in London with a taste for glam celebrities.

  There were two sides to Ben and the one I saw most was the wise old man with the peaceful eyes. After George had gone off to school, Ben would climb into my arms for a cuddle and gaze calmly at me until I finally got up to do some jobs around the house and he’d settle down for a sleep. Soon enough, though, he’d come to find me again, because there was only so long that Ben could go without a bit of love and if he felt he’d been ignored for too long, he’d make sure someone soon took notice of him. If I was out in the garden, he’d sit himself down in the middle of the bed I was digging and fix me with a look; when I tried to look something up on the computer, Ben would lie on the keyboard; if I laid the table for a meal, he would jump up on to it.

  It’s been a whole hour since you stroked me! This isn’t good enough. I want a cuddle.

  It wasn’t just George and I who had to adore Ben. If anyone came to visit, he wanted to be the center of attention. If Boy arrived with my nephews and nieces—Harry, William, Chloe and Frank—Ben would clamber up a tree on the drive to watch them arrive. After giving us just long enough to say hello, he’d start running around to make sure we stopped and took notice of him. When Mum came over and we sat out on the patio, Ben would roll around on the floor until she tickled him or sit with his head held high as we chatted to make sure we knew he was part of the conversation. As we talked, he would move his head from side to side to look at whoever was speaking; I really wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he’d cleared his throat one day and said a few words himself.

  Although Ben was small, he was able to command a room’s attention, and although our friends and family all liked cats, even the strangers who didn’t so much had to give in to him. When a social worker came to see me about George, Ben climbed on to her lap and sat slap bang in the middle of her paperwork. The woman went a bit stiff as he looked at her, but Ben meowed to let her know that she had no choice but to stroke him. He also came out whenever I was talking to someone on the drive and would wind around our legs until he was noticed. He soon became a favorite with all the pensioners who lived in the bungalows nearby. He’d sit on the drive when the sun was shining, waiting for them to walk past to the post office or to do a bit of shopping. “Hello, Ben,” they’d coo as he ran up to them and pushed against their legs with pleasure as they bent stiffly down to him.

  But as much as Ben loved people, he had eyes only for George when he was around. It was as though no one else existed and the wise old grandpa I knew who crept softly about most of the day was transformed into an energetic little boy who whizzed around from the moment George arrived home. Even though the vet had told me he thought Ben was about six years old, which is almost middle aged for a cat, he could still be like a kitten when he wanted to be. His favorite game was hide and seek. If he and George had been sitting down too long, Ben would suddenly jump up before running off to give the signal that he wanted to be chased.

  “I’m coming,” George would shout as he raced upstairs after Ben, who could usually be found hiding under a bed or wardrobe.

  The moment he was spotted, Ben would bomb off to hide again and the game would start all over. He and George spent hours playing it together.

  Their other favorite was a toy wand with a cuddly mouse attached to it on a rubber string. Each evening, about an hour before George’s bedtime, Ben would look at him.

  Come on, George. I’m bored. Let’s play. Why don’t you show me the mouse?

  So George would get up, pick up the wand and Ben would stare at it, still as a statue, until George flicked it for the first time. Then Ben would go mad, jumping and scurrying around as the mouse went flying, diving and rolling to get it while George laughed his head off. George played with Ben so easily and freely that he didn’t even mind when he made a mess of things. If George played with another child and they knocked over one of his plastic figures of knights and pirates, he would lift the whole board above his head, drop it and walk away without a backward glance. But that never happened with Ben—instead if Ben got in the way he’d laugh.

  “You want to win, don’t you, Baboo?” he’d cry before putting the figures back in line.

  It did not take the two of them long to discover their other favorite game, the sandpit. I walked out into the garden one day to find George sitting in it, building a castle. When he’d finished, he sat back on his heels and waited as Ben slowly uncurled himself, got to his feet and walked without a care in the world before lying down on top of the castle. George started laughing as the sand crumbled beneath Ben.

  “Baboo!” George said in cat talk. “What is you doing?”

  The game went on and on and George couldn’t get enough of it, but no matter how many times he wanted to repeat a game, Ben would play. He never refused to move or got bored, and woe betide anyone, or anything, that tried to get in the way of their fun—like an earwig George spotted in the sandpit one day.

  “Baboo!” he cried, running into the living room and picking up Ben.

  George took him out into the garden and pointed at the earwig scurrying around in the sand.

  “Get it!” he cried.

  As George stared, Ben fixed the earwig in his sights and started jabbing at it with his paw as he chased it, leaping about after the tiny bug as he tried to catch it.

  “Go on, Ben,” George cried. “You can get it.”

  Ben darted around, eyes locked on the intruder. But it was so quick that every time he smashed his paw down, the earwig reappeared and made another run for it. George and I started howling with laughter as we watched Ben dance around, jumping up and down, backward and forward, until his paw smashed into the sand for a final time. He’d got it! Ben scooped up the earwig in his paw and popped it into his mouth.

  Delicious!

  “You is so good,” George said with a smile.

  I couldn’t help but wonder where the cat had been all my life. It had only been a few weeks but already our life had changed in so many ways. Ben was opening a door inside George and as we walked through it together, we were discovering a new world.

  “There’s a bird in the house,” George yelled as I got out of the car.

  My heart sank. I knew what this meant. In less than a month, I’d learned that Ben liked to give presents—dead or alive. Ever since he’d arrived, I’d regularly found mice that had been skewered by his sharp claws and left on our living-room floor as a gift. One day he’d even brought home a frog, after finding it in the small pond in our garden. All the goldfish had been taken by herons, so we didn’t think there was much left in the water. But Ben had managed to find the one thing that had survived the massacre, and I’d got the fright of my life as I got up to turn off the television one night and a frog jumped across the room. Ben had flung himself on the floor, ready to pounce, as I screamed blue murder and George jumped on to the sofa. In the end I’d phoned Nob, who came over and caught the frog because I was too petrified to do it. Ben had looked at me in disgust as the frog was taken back out into the garden.

  Why don’t you like my present, Julia? That frog was hard to catch and now you’ve gone and let it go again.

  George was just as squeamish as me and what scared us both the
most was when Ben brought home mice that were still alive but petrified. If George and I saw one in the house, we’d get on to the sofa to get our feet up off the floor and call Nob again. He’d even had to come out at midnight once because I knew I’d never sleep knowing that a mouse was loose in the house. Nob had trapped it in a jar and taken it out into the garden while George and I waited.

  “All done,” he said as he came back into the house. “Can I go back to bed, please?”

  But now as I stood on the drive with George, I knew that Nob wouldn’t be able to help us, because he was at work. There was just me, George and my neighbor, Wendy, who had been looking after George while I nipped out to get a pint of milk. I’d gotten to know her well because she lived a few doors down with her husband, Keith, and daughters, Nicky and Kayleigh. At first, I’d doubted I’d find another friend like Michelle when I moved because although we’d kept in touch, our lives were both busy and we didn’t see as much of each other anymore. But when I started chatting with Wendy, I knew I’d met another of those rare people who took George in their stride.

  “Kayleigh’s hyper,” George would tell her as we talked on the doorstep. “Keith hasn’t got no hair.”

  “That’s right, George,” Wendy would reply without batting an eyelid.

  Over time we’d become such good friends that George even let Wendy come into the house to keep an eye on him if I had to go out for a short while. I still couldn’t leave him with her for long, though, and had had to come home from the hospital after a minor operation, although the doctor had wanted me to stay in overnight. If I was gone too long George would start to worry and he would get anxious that his routines weren’t going right. The fact that he’d let Wendy come into the house, though, was a step forward in itself.

  I stared at Wendy, wondering what I was going to do about the storm that had erupted in the house while I was out.

  “It’s a baby magpie,” she told me and I knew I had to save the poor thing from Ben’s claws.

  As I started walking toward the front door, George ran after me.

  “Baboo is going crazy,” he shrieked. “The bird’s got away from him, but he’s going to get out his wings and take it prisoner. Ben can fly like a plane. He was a jet pilot once.”

  George was using cat talk like this more and more now. In his cartoon voice, he had started telling me about all the imaginary adventures Ben went on. I loved hearing about them because George had never been able to talk to me like this. Ben was helping him to say things he never had before and I knew that George was also using cat talk to tell me things he’d learned. I’d never known if he’d taken in what I and other people had tried to teach him over the years—from historical facts to lessons about right and wrong—but now George showed me that he had. He’d also picked up all sorts of other bits of throwaway information as well.

  “Ben’s been on a Slim Shake diet three times a day but he’s cheating because I see him eat all the Twix,” George would say and I knew he’d noticed that I’d been trying to cut down on what I ate for years.

  “You need to go to Weight Watchers,” he’d tell Ben as he picked off the bits of leaves and grass that collected on the soft white fur on Ben’s stomach, and it made me giggle to hear him mention what he’d heard Mum and me chatting about.

  However many times I told him, though, that Ben’s low-slung stomach was the result of being neutered years before, George was convinced he had a weight problem. Ben had a tummy so big it picked up bits of dirt and George had to brush it. Ben loved it when George groomed him, because keeping clean was very important to him. He could spend hours letting George brush him, and when there wasn’t someone around to pamper him, Ben would devote almost a whole morning to licking his ears. His paws were his prize possession, though. The back ones looked as if he was wearing white socks that stretched up to his knee, the front two had just a slip of white on them like baby booties, and Ben always made sure they were clean. But when he followed George upstairs to keep watch on him as he had a bath, Ben would get teased.

  “Is your teeth yellow?” George would say excitedly as Ben lay in the sink, which was his favorite spot from which to watch bathtime. “Do you clean your teeth? Have you washed behind your ears and under your arms?”

  The only thing that tempted Ben out of the sink was George blowing bubbles on to the floor, because he loved to chase them.

  “I ain’t got yellow teeth!” George would say for Ben. “I’m a very clean cat. It’s you who’s the smelly one, George.”

  “I’m not smelly!” George would cry. “I wash with the soap and I’m clean as a whistle.”

  It made me laugh so much to hear the kinds of phrases that George had picked up. In his conversations with Ben he could thread all he had heard into his rich imagination.

  “Go outside!” George would tell me excitedly. “Baboo’s on the roof. He’s going to do a parachute jump. He’s been mending all the roofs. Putting on new ones with his hammer.”

  As George spoke, I would see the pictures of Ben in my head that he had painted for me with his words and start giggling as I imagined Ben dressed as a lumberjack with a hammer and tools or wearing a pilot’s uniform. Sometimes we could lose ourselves for hours imagining Ben’s adventures, and I could hardly remember how silent the house had been before he arrived. Our days were full of talk and laughter now, and George’s happiness was beginning to stretch from day to day, week to week, as he used Ben to tell me the things he couldn’t bring himself to say directly—the thoughts he had, the feelings, the stories that constantly filled his imagination.

  Ben was such a constant presence for us both that he was with us even when he wasn’t, because we talked about him all the time when we were out.

  “Ben tried out these safety straps,” George told me as we got on a ride at an amusement park during one of the trips that I still took him on, just as I had done since he was young. “And when the ride starts, he’ll come out and slap the kids on the head.”

  We started giggling as the roller coaster moved slowly to a start.

  “I can’t believe he’s got a day job!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, he has. He works on security. He made this ride for me, he did. It’s his favorite.”

  Ben could be anything George wanted him to be and I loved hearing about what he imagined for him. But it wasn’t all make-believe: sometimes George used cat talk to tell me things that he wanted to say to me—from something that had made him smile to an incredible fact he’d heard on the television.

  Cat talk wasn’t going to help us now, though, as I stood on the drive with George and Wendy; the magpie inside the house was all too real. Ben was chasing the bird even as we wondered what to do, and I had to rescue it. Taking a deep breath, I walked into the house and opened the living-room door.

  The magpie was flapping wildly about, with Ben prancing about underneath.

  What a beautiful present I’ve brought you. Look at the bird! It’s great, isn’t it?

  All I could think of as Ben stared at the magpie with pride was that old Hitchcock film The Birds. I slammed the door shut and walked outside.

  “Are you scared?” Wendy asked when she saw my face, the color of chalk.

  I didn’t say a word.

  “I’ll sort it out for you,” Wendy told me bravely. “I just need a pair of gloves. No need to panic.”

  I ran into the kitchen to get her some rubber gloves and Wendy pulled them on to her hands with a face like a surgeon getting ready to go into the operating theater.

  “You two wait here,” she said, and disappeared inside.

  Five seconds later, Wendy ran out of the front door. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said. “I’ll go and get Keith.”

  I wasn’t sure the poor bird could take much more of this. There was blood on the front door where it must have flown into it in panic, and I hated thinking of Ben torturing the poor thing. For a loving cat, he certainly had a nasty streak. But Keith saved the day: he came over, c
aught the magpie and took it out into the back garden, where it flew away.

  “You are so naughty, Ben,” I cried after we’d gone back into the house and George had picked him up.

  But as I leaned toward Ben to give him a stern look, he nipped me with his teeth.

  Don’t tell me off, Julia! I was only bringing you a present. Why are you angry? I was just trying to be nice!

  As I looked at Ben sitting in George’s arms, I knew that I wasn’t going to change him. I was just going to have to accept that Ben had his quirks—as everyone does. He was so much more than his little misdemeanors. Look at George and me: we were talking to each other in a way we never had before, and it was all because of Ben. He had given us voices and even if they were high, cartoon and just a little bit crazy, I did not mind. Now I could return the favor. If Ben loved rodents and birds a bit too much, or didn’t like it when I told him off, I would just have to let him be.

  Chapter 9

  George had made another friend as well as Ben: a little boy called Arthur, who lived next door with his mum and was one of those kids who thought everything over before he did it, a 10-year-old going on 55. Arthur was patient and kind, and he didn’t pay too much attention when George shouted that he’d had enough if Arthur didn’t do what he wanted as they played. He just went home without a backward glance and came back cheerful as ever the next day.

  I was sure that the playful side Ben had brought out so much in George was what helped him become such good friends with Arthur. The seeds for it had been sown even before Ben arrived when Howard bought George a computer after we moved. He loved all the games so much he even started playing them over the Internet with people from other countries. I didn’t know what to make of it when George told me he was one of the best in the world at one particular game because I couldn’t even work the TV control properly. Then Howard told me George wasn’t too far off the mark and I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised, because it was a world in which George didn’t have to interact with people face to face. Even so, as I listened to George talk over the Internet—because you can never be too careful—I noticed that he was laughing and joking with people more and more.