The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas

by Julia Romp

  “How old are you?” I’d hear a voice from America or Australia ask George.

  “Ten,” he’d reply.

  “Ten? Really, man? You’re only ten?”

  George would giggle as he listened and every now and again he’d tell whoever he was talking to that he was 33, just to make himself laugh a bit more. He was a great mimic and could do all the accents as he repeated what he’d heard.

  Ben brought out that playfulness even more and when George finally showed it to Arthur, it felt as though he’d won a marathon after all those years of trying to get over the starting line with other kids.

  For the first few months they were friends, Arthur and George played computer games and watched TV, or spent hours in the garden on the trampoline together, bouncing so high that once Arthur ended up getting stuck in a rose that climbed up the fence. He had thorn scratches all over his head by the time I untangled him.

  George came to have a look. “Would you like some sweets?” he asked Arthur. “They’ll make you feel better.”

  Arthur didn’t say anything as I steadied him on his feet. He just rubbed his head and looked at the rose.

  “Shall I make you laugh?” George asked him. “Shall I jump in the rose too?”

  With that, Arthur started giggling. “Don’t do that, George,” he told him. “Why don’t we just have some lemonade or something?”

  Ben wasn’t quite sure what to make of Arthur at first, and when Arthur came over to play, he’d often sit inside and just watch the boys together. But every now and again he would join them on the trampoline; and Ben certainly wasn’t going to let George out of his sight when he started exploring with Arthur. I suppose I should have known that George would want to go farther than our garden one day. But I still felt nervous when he asked if he and Arthur could go on to the recreation field opposite our house. A lot of kids went there to play football or climb trees, but I’d never let George leave the house without me before. Although I knew I had to let George have a little bit of independence, it’s hard to give it to a child who you just want to stick to you like glue. He knew, though, that other children his age went out to play without their parents, just as I knew that I couldn’t keep him locked in the little world we had with Ben—just the three of us—forever.

  Two things finally convinced me to let George go out. One was Arthur. Just as some adults never grow up, there are children like Arthur who are old before their years and his middle name should have been “sensible.” I’d never had to sit Arthur down and explain George’s autism to him; he just understood that he had to look out for George. The second was that the recreation field was directly opposite my kitchen window, so I’d know if George wandered off from Arthur; I told George this, and that I would stop him going out again if he did. Whenever they went on to the field, I would conveniently do the washing up so that I could watch George like an undercover James Bond spy to make sure he was OK. I had an extra pair of eyes too, because Ben always followed and if George went out to play or took his remote-controlled car on to the field, Ben would lie on the pavement keeping watch on him.

  As Arthur and George ventured out together, I saw for myself that George was having fun as he kicked the football or climbed trees, with Ben following not far behind most of the time. One day when they went out to play with Arthur’s cousin Charlie I even packed up a lunch for them, and they had a great time—until disaster struck when George decided to jump out of a tree. My heart was in my mouth when Arthur and Charlie came running to tell me that George was stuck on a fence. I ran to the field to find him hanging off the fence by his collar. As I lifted him off, I wondered if I’d ever be able to let him out again.

  “The children in the park said, ‘I dare you to jump,’” George told me when we got him home. “So I thought I’d see if I could. I tried to jump toward the green grass.”

  Arthur looked sternly at George as he spoke. “You can’t jump out of trees, George,” he said. “Because you might hurt your legs and then how would you play football? Why would you want to do that—whatever anyone says?”

  George bent down to Ben, who was sitting beside him on the sofa. “Hear that?” he said. “You mustn’t jump out of trees, Ben. It’s naughty.”

  I couldn’t help but think back to the day so long ago when Michelle and I had used the eggs to try to teach George how fragile he was. Now finally he seemed to understand—even though it had taken jumping out of a tree to teach him—and I was so relieved as George spoke to Ben, who meowed as he talked.

  “Don’t laugh,” George said, using the same kind of serious voice with Ben that Arthur had just used with him. “It’s not funny.”

  I got the feeling that George wouldn’t be jumping out of anymore trees soon.

  That day cemented the boys’ friendship. George was soon as protective of Arthur as he was of Lewis, and if someone dared say a word against Arthur he would tell them off.

  “He is the best footballer,” he’d say if a child made a joke about Arthur. “He’s fantastic. He’s really good at goals.”

  George hero-worshipped his friend and would have given him the clothes off his back if Arthur had asked for them. But Arthur never took advantage of George’s trust in him.

  “Would you like the chocolates Nan gave me for my birthday?” George would ask. “Do you want my Pokémon cards?”

  “All those things cost a lot of money,” Arthur would tell George as they played on the computer. “So why not just give me one chocolate instead of the whole box?”

  George would hand it over and look the other way as Arthur took it.

  “You’re my best friend,” George would tell him as he stared into the distance, and then they’d go back to their game without another word.

  My heart would swell every time I heard George say that. I know most mums take things like that for granted by the time their child is 10. But I’d never had those kinds of milestones with George before—his first real friend and the forming of a bond between them—and I felt so excited that he was finally showing who he really was, revealing the loving and kind little boy inside him.

  There were fallings out, of course. George still found it hard to let people do their own thing and would shout at Arthur sometimes when their game didn’t go as he wanted it to. But the only time Arthur really got angry was when George told him off for dropping litter.

  “Don’t you care about the world?” George exclaimed when Arthur threw a disposable cup on the floor. “Do you know that the earth is being filled up with plastic?”

  That caused a bit of upset, because Arthur didn’t like George telling him what was what, but they made up in the end. Tellings off like that were George’s new thing now. After all the years of my drumming manners into him, he’d learned how important they were and would tell a child when they did something he thought was rude—however many times I told him that people didn’t always like being told what to do.

  “Someone needs to tell them, Mum,” George would say. “They need to learn. They’re out of control, they are.”

  I couldn’t help but smile when he told me that. George had always been convinced that it was the world around him that was topsy-turvy, not him. He had a point, though, because some of the kids on our estate ran a bit wild. But I stopped myself from giggling too much as I told George that the other kids might not like it when he told them off. That was life with George: like being on a pinball machine, because as soon as you hit one target you were pinged on to the next.

  Most kids couldn’t understand it when George told them what was what or said their mum’s teeth stuck out. But Arthur liked George for who he was and I was happy that George liked Arthur just as much back. Life is all about the small steps forward which together help you walk the distance, and George’s friendship with Arthur felt like a leap forward that Ben had helped him make.

  Ben was getting more and more territorial. It had taken a while for him to work out how far his kingdom stretched, but when he did, he wouldn’t
stand for anyone trying to invade it.

  He’d always known that Fluffy the rabbit was part of the household and even though I was a bit worried he might try to nip her, Ben never took any notice of her. “She’s Ben’s pet,” George would tell me. “Fluffy is his. He don’t like cats because he’s got allergies. But he likes Fluffy.” In the end, I’d sit Fluffy in the garden for a bit of a sunbathe sometimes and Ben would just stretch out beside her. He seemed to think, just as George did, that he wasn’t a cat at all, so why on earth would a rabbit interest him?

  But it wasn’t as simple with other animals, and the gentle nature Ben showed Fluffy disappeared when it came to dogs or other cats. They were the two things guaranteed to bring out Ben’s fighting spirit and the loving, gentle cat we knew was transformed into a ninja warrior.

  After rescuing Ben, I’d taken pity on a few more stray cats and fed them. Most disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived, but a couple had become regular visitors and I gave them a meal almost every day. One was a tabby boy who I left out a bowl for in the back garden, just as I had once done for Ben; another was a beautiful fluffy girl, who was the Oliver Twist of my foster pets because she was always peering through the kitchen window and asking for more food. But although Ben just about tolerated both our visitors as long as they stayed outside the house, it was another matter if they tried putting a paw through his front door.

  “You need to be kind to them,” George would tell him as Ben hissed if one of the strays tried to come over the threshold. “You lived on the streets and you was as hungry as them once, weren’t you?”

  But Ben would just shoot him an angry glare and run off to take refuge on the sofa.

  This is my house, George. Mine. And I don’t want anyone else in it. Don’t you understand? I don’t like other cats.

  Most of the time, we managed to avoid trouble, but then came the day when the tabby, who we’d nicknamed Buster, decided to explore a bit more. By now, Ben had made the summerhouse his very own and where once I’d sat gazing out at my garden, Ben had now taken up residency. If he wasn’t in the living room or on a bed, he could always be found sitting in the summerhouse. From there he could keep a close eye on everything that was going on.

  George and I were picking tomatoes on the day that Buster crept down the garden toward the door into the living room. Ben was asleep. At least he seemed to be, until his eyes snapped open the moment the tabby went past the summerhouse and narrowed as Buster took another few steps toward the house. Quick as a flash, Ben jumped off his chair and ran out on to the lawn with his hair on end and growling like a lion.

  Get out of here! Get away! Don’t you dare go into my house!

  Ben ran full tilt at Buster, who turned around to see his enemy steaming down the garden like a freight train. Buster took one look, pushed back his ears and ran for cover as Ben hissed and spat. After taking a flying leap up the fence, Buster was gone. George and I stood open mouthed, our hands full of tomatoes. George laughed as Ben scampered proudly back up the garden with his head held high and his tail swishing behind him. Ben looked pleased as punch with himself as he settled down on the edge of the patio to make sure Buster didn’t try another raid.

  Ben’s victory that day soon made him so confident that he wanted to extend the boundaries of his kingdom, and one very odd addition to it was my car. Whenever I cleaned it, Ben would come out, climb inside, hop on to the dashboard and stare out the windscreen at passersby. As music played from the car stereo and George and I covered everything in suds, Ben would watch us.

  Good job. Keep going. I think you’ve missed a bit just over there, haven’t you?

  Even when he was inside, Ben was determined to keep an eye on his territory, which caused all sorts of problems. I got through two bedroom blinds because he broke the slats by pushing his head through them one too many times. A pair of curtains didn’t do much better when Ben ripped them with his claws as he ran up them; it was just the same with the kitchen blind. Ben was like a watchman on permanent guard, and even when he gave himself a bit of time off, he caused another kind of havoc by digging his claws into anything from the sofa to the carpet to the chair legs. I regularly walked into the living room to find him flexing his long claws, his fur fluffed up and his eyes so dazed with pleasure that he looked drunk as a skunk as he dug into the fabric with a look of ecstasy. To Ben, ripping up my soft furnishings was like reaching nirvana. Buying him a scratching pole didn’t do any good because it wasn’t nearly as much fun.

  “Will you stop it!” I’d cry when I came into the lounge to find Ben plunging his claws into the rug again or teasing another run of fabric pulls into the edge of the sofa.

  But George would always defend his friend. “Those scratching poles are for cats, so they’re not for Ben,” he’d tell me. “He likes the rug, so why can’t we just buy a new one when it’s too old?”

  “Because money doesn’t grow on trees,” I’d exclaim. “I can’t go buying new sofas and carpets and curtains and blinds just because Ben wants to claw them.”

  “Oh, Mum,” George would tell me. “Ben loves doing it and you only live once, don’t you?”

  I knew that George would never see my point and I swear that whenever we talked about this tricky subject, Ben would sit down beside him and look at me with a satisfied smile.

  You can’t tell me off, you know. I’m George’s cat and he’s so nice he’ll let me do just what I want. Give up, Julia. I like the sofa far too much to leave it alone.

  But although Ben’s naughtiness caused problems, I could not help but laugh most of the time, because he was so fearless about it all. While the cats he chased off were about his size and weight, Ben didn’t seem to even consider that the dogs he teased were twice the size of him. After cats, they were his next best enemy. While he had tolerated Mum’s dogs, Oli and Sally, when he first arrived by just ignoring them, Ben slowly showed his true fighting colors. Sitting on the window ledge outside the living room, he would stare in at Sally and Oli when they visited with a look of such concentration that we’d laugh: it was as if he was trying to hypnotize them.

  But Ben’s patience finally snapped when I had a dog to stay and he decided enough was enough as far as canine intruders were concerned.

  When Arthur and his mum went on holiday, I agreed to look after their British bulldog called Jedi. I’d always liked him: Jedi was so sweet natured that he let himself be wrapped in blankets like a baby when he got cold and he liked nothing more than getting into the passenger seat of the car beside me when I went out shopping. But all Ben wanted to do was intimidate our house guest. Jedi could not even wee in peace because Ben would follow him outside and stare so hard that poor Jedi couldn’t perform. All I could do to help was follow them into the garden every time Jedi wanted to do the necessary, but all hell broke loose one afternoon when Jedi slipped out unseen.

  “Ben’s going riding,” I heard George shout and I ran into the living room to see Jedi running in.

  He was twisting and flipping around as he tried to get something off his back—a long black shadow, a streak of white fur: a cat. Ben was clinging on to Jedi’s back as though he was riding a bucking bronco.

  “Let go,” I screamed. “Get off the poor dog.”

  But Ben wasn’t in any mood to let go. He dug his claws in even further as Jedi gave a yelp and ran out into the garden, where he carried on desperately trying to shake off his attacker. As Ben clung on for dear life, Jedi did a final huge shake and managed to dislodge him. Ben flew into the air and the moment he landed on his feet assumed the attack position. Jedi, realizing he was free at last, lay on the ground and gave me a bewildered look from between his paws as Ben started scampering around. He might have been shaken off by Jedi but he’d still managed to frighten him out of his wits. That was a victory for Ben and it only gave him a taste for more.

  When Jedi went home at the end of the week, Ben would sit in a tree on our drive, waiting for him to leave the house for a walk. Most of the
time he just stared menacingly, but once he took a flying leap at Jedi from the branches; and when a Staffordshire bull terrier made the mistake of stepping on to our drive, Ben reared up on his hind legs and started slapping the dog’s face with his paws.

  The defense of his realm was not only practical, though: it was pleasurable. When Ben realized just how much fun it was to tease dogs he soon found the perfect victim: Wendy’s Yorkshire terrier, Scruffy. During the summer, Wendy often put a baby gate across her lounge door to keep him safe inside while she opened the front door to let air through the house. When Ben realized that Scruffy was behind bars, he’d walk up the drive whenever he saw Wendy’s door open, sit down on the step and stare into the house. Every time a coconut, Scruffy would go wild and jump up and down as he tried to get over the baby gate to reach Ben. Scruffy was so small, of course, that he was never going to manage it, but Ben relished every moment of tormenting him. He never stepped foot in Wendy’s house or got too near poor Scruffy. Instead he sat just out of reach, staring in and driving Scruffy wild.

  But as much as Ben had a blind spot when it came to other cats and dogs, I slowly learned that he was far more objective about people. At first I’d thought that he was a really friendly cat, because Ben loved all the people George and I liked best in the world: when Mum came over, he’d run to her for a pickup; when Nob, Tor or Boy arrived, he’d roll over to have his tummy scratched; and if Wendy knocked on the door, he’d run to it so fast that I thought he might smash his way through to the other side.