Timba Comes Home

by Sheila Jeffries

  But, hey, this house had a cat flap! I was powerful and bossy. I could deal with any cat who might be in there. Go for it, I thought. Stealthily I prowled up the path, low to the ground, and glided through the cat flap. Inside was an array of dishes on the floor, and one had a substantial dollop of fishy-smelling cat food. Nobody was there so I scoffed it down.

  ‘You cheeky cat! OUT!’ came the voice, and a woman who looked like a toad came at me with a squeegee mop. No one had ever treated me like this! I half put my tail up and tried to cat smile at her, but my friendliness seemed to enrage her even more. ‘That’s my cat’s food!’ she shrieked. ‘OUT . . . go on . . . OUT!’

  I’d never been afraid of a human, and I wasn’t now. A few minutes of tail up and rubbing lovingly round her legs would soon melt her cold heart. But it didn’t work out.

  With a scrabble of paws, a beefy little dog charged into the kitchen, almost airborne in its rush to get to me.

  I looked at it disdainfully, and wished I knew how to laugh. The entire dog was vibrating with its hysterical barking, even its ridiculously short legs and flippy little ears.

  You don’t turn your back on dogs. Your back end is vulnerable, especially the tail. My mum Jessica had perfected the art of reversing through a cat flap, but I hadn’t tried it, and hadn’t needed to until now.

  I arched my back and made a savage snarly face. Predictably, the dog ran out of steam and stopped a few feet away from me, its white body trembling, its eyes uncertain. Majestically I crab-walked towards the cat flap, my tail lashing. I whipped round and dived out through it, and felt a horrible tearing sensation as the dog ripped a tuft of hair from my tail. What a cheek!

  I fled down the garden and straight across the road into the path of an oncoming white van. There was a screech of tyres, and a volley of swearing. I changed my mind in mid-air, my whiskers brushing the hot rubber wheel as I turned and dashed back. Thoroughly frightened, I crept, black-eyed, under the same evergreen and stayed there. The tip of my tail was sore and bleeding, and it looked awful. Tails are sensitive and important, and that feisty little dog had ruined mine. I attended to it immediately, licking and cleaning and rearranging the fur that was left.

  My nerves were shattered and I remembered what Angie had said when Leroy had squeezed me. ‘His little bones are like matchsticks.’ An unexpected flood of respect for my body came to me now. I needed to rest. Yet something pushed me onward. I wouldn’t stop until I found the edge of the noisy town.

  Many streets later I finally reached the quiet. Stubble fields stretched away from me, the edges cushioned with tussocks of wild flowers and grasses. My tired paws sank into the softness and found it still warm from the sun. So welcome, now that the twilight had a taste of cold, as if winter might arrive in the night.

  I made myself a round nest under an ash tree. Vati had taught me about different trees and their effect on cats. Ash trees were stabilising and healing. This one splayed its leaves over me like a guardian of the plant world. I slept under it for hours, and when I awoke, my fur felt damp.

  Against the night sky the fields and hedges were the colour of blackberries. Above me the stars seemed to be entangled in the ash tree’s branches.

  At midnight at home I would usually walk around on Leroy’s bed, loving him while he slept. Or I’d go downstairs and find Angie still awake at the table, her head bent over a pile of children’s school books, a red pen in her hand. Or she’d be in the kitchen baking midnight cakes. We’d have a cuddle and, if the night was clear, she’d carry me outside to look at the stars. Those same stars I was looking at now.

  The thought made me unbearably homesick. What had I done? How had my love for Vati taken precedence over everything I treasured? I vowed that, when I found him, I would bring him home, home where he belonged with me and Angie and Leroy.

  I climbed into the ash tree, glad that my eyes were so good at night. Up there everything was crystal sharp, the leaves black, the stubble fields a shimmering silver; the distant rim of the sky glowed orange, and lights twinkled from the town I had left. I turned my face to the south, and on that horizon loomed the forest, my next destination. A beam of excitement cut through the heavy mist of homesickness. The forest was one part of my journey which appealed to the wild cat still curled up in my soul.

  The Spirit Lion turned up at dawn. In my nest of dry grass, I was listening to the chatter of gathering swallows, flocks of them swooping and diving over the fields, moving south without appearing to do so.

  The Lion came slinking across the networks of gossamer that bedecked the stubble and festooned the brambles around the ash tree. He came from the east, silent, almost invisible, but real. He took a long time to arrive, as if demonstrating his manifestation skills.

  I waited, feeling better just knowing he was there for me: he was choosing to find me. Was he going to send me back home to Angie? Would he tell me what was wrong with Vati?

  Slow and thoughtful, he enfolded me in those giant paws, the mane tumbling like a waterfall, the eyes guarding a secret more global than the concerns of a fluffy black cat.

  He began with wordless communication, loving me, encouraging me to relax and purr. The purring reassured me, and for once I was purring for ME. Purring was not only for humans: it was for me to calm myself, to heal my hurts. To send a message across the Earth.

  The Spirit Lion looked satisfied when I understood this startling truth. It came close to what Vati had tried to teach me about the energy lines.

  ‘Planet Earth is full of messages,’ the Spirit Lion said. ‘You must learn a different way of listening, Timba, a listening that is more like touching. Stretch out on the earth and listen with the whole of your being. Do this often on your journey, for if you don’t you will become lost.’

  ‘Vati needs me urgently,’ I said. ‘I can’t go fast enough to reach him. It’s a long way.’

  The Spirit Lion was silent, his eyes absorbing my words. Then he said, ‘Winter is coming, Timba. You must go quickly. Don’t run with your feet, think with them, and be smart. Your times of stillness must be used for attunement and meditation.’

  ‘Meditation?’ I asked, curious. Angie had used that word passionately and often, but it had drifted over me in my preoccupation with food and play.

  ‘Meditation,’ the Lion repeated, ‘is like daydreaming, Timba. When the body is still, the mind can travel through space and time. Gaze back across the centuries and reclaim the wisdom and intelligence of the cat. Much of it has been used to heal and support humans, but you can use it on your journey to manipulate humans into giving you the right kind of help.’

  ‘Vati can do that kind of stuff,’ I said.

  ‘Vati is a highly evolved, supersensitive being,’ said the Spirit Lion. ‘That’s why you are perfect together . . . twin souls. Between you, you have all the gifts.’

  ‘We’re brothers,’ I said proudly. ‘The sons of Solomon.’

  ‘Yes . . . but for now, Timba, you must do the work of two cats. Vati cannot work right now. Your strength and pragmatism, and Vati’s sensitivity. You are right, he needs you urgently . . . urgently.’ The Spirit Lion became ominously quiet. His presence turned misty, and the light around him flickered alarmingly.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I said. Our conversation wasn’t finished, and he was drifting precariously. ‘You haven’t told me what’s wrong with Vati.’

  The Spirit Lion darkened. The colours of night filtered down through his curly mane. A frown gathered like a thunderstorm on his brow.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I repeated, suddenly gripped by a fear beyond anything I had ever experienced. This wasn’t fear of getting hurt or lost. This was cosmic. Cosmic fear of some undiscovered mistake that was building into a global catastrophe.

  The Spirit Lion’s last words were a hollow whisper echoing in my soul. ‘I can’t say it,’ he breathed, and the hush of cosmic sadness descended from the morning sky. The birds fell silent. The air was becalmed, and the beads of dew on the gossamer lost their s
parkle. Leaves fell like tears from the ash tree.

  The Spirit Lion breathed in deeply. ‘I can’t say it,’ he said again. ‘It is universal. A happening, a terrible happening that is seeding fear in cats . . . all over the Earth . . . all . . . over . . .’ he whispered, and the sadness eclipsed his shining light. In seconds he was gone.

  I sat there, numb and shocked, watching a bank of white mist stealing in from the valley, as if the energy of the Spirit Lion had been dissolved and was floating away, shape-shifting, becoming a cloud billowing over the bright sun.

  My Spirit Lion had gone . . . not joyfully . . . but immersed in sadness. There was something out there he couldn’t bear to talk about. He’d given me his love, and his wisdom. Now he’d left me. Once again, at my time of greatest need, I was alone.

  The mist settled like a fleece over the fields, hiding the landscape from me when I needed to see it. I wanted to work out which way to go. I tried to talk to Vati, to tell him I was on my way to rescue him, but all I saw was the black of his eyes, and the stillness of his crouched body. For some reason Vati was not moving, and not communicating. Alive, but closed down. Unresponsive, unmotivated, numb.

  What had happened to this beautiful, creative little cat?

  I knew in my bones that, if I didn’t get to him soon, Vati would will himself to die.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE DARK FOREST

  The Spirit Lion told me not to run without thinking first, but I pushed on relentlessly, driven by the pain in Vati’s eyes and the urgency of his need. I didn’t think of the distance that separated us, but focused on one day at a time. I ran along the hedges, parallel to the road. Flocks of birds flew ahead of me, feeding on scarlet berries that bobbed in the branches above. I felt like an impostor. The magpies and crows cursed me in their raucous voices, and the blackbirds warned each other about me. No one wanted a fluffy black cat in the countryside. For a cat who was used to lots of love and attention, it felt bleak and lonely.

  Late afternoon was the time when foxes emerged from their holes, hungry, full of energy. I was wary of them, but quickly found I could outstare an interested fox, or outsmart it by climbing a tree. But after several encounters, my wariness mushroomed into fear. A fox could kill me if it caught me off guard, or sleeping.

  As I drew near to the forest, another creature scared me: a buzzard that flew out of the trees with wings like giant hands. Its cry haunted me because it resembled a cat meowing, and it swooped low and flexed its powerful wings above me so that I felt the rush of air from its feathers, and saw the talons and the cruel yellow eyes. And there were always two buzzards, hunting together, watching for movement in the grass.

  Tension began to build in my mind, tiring me, not allowing me the rest I needed.

  Towards evening the mist cleared and the sun hung low and bright, like a peach on fire. On the opposite side of the sky the moon was rising, and it was pink. I hurried on, up a hill, heading south between sun and moon. Aching tiredness slowed me down to a steady trot, my eyes fixed on the luminous sky at the crest of the hill. Would the hill never end?

  Twilight was falling as I reached the top, and the cool colours of night stained the brim of the sky. Exhausted, I lay down under a pine tree, glad of its soft carpet of needles and moss. A perfect bed for a cat who needed to watch the stars and study the distant landscape.

  All I needed was a plate of mashed chicken with gravy. Even if there had been a handy mouse, I was too tired to catch one. I slept and slept, my paws twitching as I crossed roads in my nightmare. Hunger gnawed at my dreams, and my tummy felt weak and empty. Nothing else disturbed me, and as usual I awoke at midnight. The moon was far away in the southern sky. Silent and pale, an owl passed by on muffled wings. It turned a heart-shaped face and checked me out with intelligent eyes. I looked back, proudly, unafraid of this creature of the night who had once terrorised me.

  The owl turned in a wide arc and returned to check me out again. I thought of Vati and the way he had a mysterious rapport with wild creatures. How he’d searched their minds, and seen the good in them, the hunger, and the fun.

  As the owl swooped by for a third time, I sent him a telepathic message. ‘I’m Timba, and I’m on a long journey to find my brother Vati . . . because I love him.’ I saw the message arrive like a spark of understanding in the owl’s black eyes. I watched him hover over a tangle of grasses, and heard the swoosh of wing feathers when he pounced on some creature who had dared to pop out of a hole.

  The next minute the owl dived towards me, looking at me with intense eyes. It hovered above me, pale wings catching a glaze of moonlight.

  There was a soft thud, and a dead mouse, ready to eat, was dropped right in front of my paws. A midnight feast, delivered with style to a starving cat!

  I looked up and meowed in astonishment, and the owl gave me a permissive sort of nod, screeched, and flew away.

  Between me and the forest was a vast meadow in which a herd of cattle grazed. So far I’d been running along the hedgerows, day after day, crossing the occasional lane. Once I paused by an isolated cottage to see if it had a cat flap. The door was open and I slunk over the polished stone doorstep and peeped in at a table with food on it . . . and nobody there! Angie hadn’t allowed me on the kitchen table, but I’d never been this hungry since I was a kitten. Moving smoothly like a cloud, I glided in, grabbed a cheese sandwich and fled back to the safety of the hedge. The butter and cheese tasted good but not the bread. Bread was bad for me, even with Marmite on it.

  Tempted to hang around and become an accomplished thief, I found a sunny corner and tried to wash. I had brushed against a burdock plant and my lovely fur was matted with prickly burrs. Annoyed, I worked at getting them out and was distressed to find I couldn’t shift them. I rolled on the floor, scratched, and tugged at my matted fur, but the burrs refused to come out and began to be painful. Angie had never let my fur get in such a state.

  Time was passing. The leaves were falling, the songbirds silent, the nights longer. Winter was coming, and I would be cold and alone. The immediate challenge was the field of cattle. They weren’t amiable milking cows. They were hefty young bullocks, alert and interested in anything that moved. The field was enormous, and I wasn’t used to long runs. Short bursts of speed were OK. A field that huge, with no cover, looked impossible. The bullocks might surround me, and blow their hot breath at me, and toss me in the air, or even trample on me.

  So I sat outside the gate in the middle of a lemon-scented patch of wild camomile, and once the bullocks had seen me and done some snorting and stamping, they got bored and wandered away. My only chance was to wait until they reached the far side of the field, then make a dash for it.

  I had to believe that I could run that far, that fast, on tired paws at the end of the day! I waited ages for the cattle to retreat, and I was getting more and more agitated.

  When the last bullock reached the far side, I made a run for it. Low and fast was how I wanted to go, but the turf was covered in thistles and cowpats, so I was jumping and dodging.

  I was out in the open when I heard their roar and felt the thunder of their hooves. I ran for my life, my paws splashing through mud. The bullocks crossed the field in seconds, their tails in the air. I was going to die, horribly, in the pungent stench of them and the mud. I tried and tried to run faster, but there was no place to hide. Bewildered, I turned and found myself surrounded by steaming red-brown faces.

  In my moment of need, Vati flashed into my mind, and I remembered the way he used his winsome little face and kinky tail to bewitch any creature who threatened him. The power of the cat! Come on, Timba, use it!

  I sat down in the middle of those red-brown faces, and scrutinised their minds. Actually they didn’t WANT to kill me. They were just having fun. If they killed me, it would be by accident, not intention.

  I was terrified, but in control. The intense power of my absolute stillness shone like a dazzling star. Stiff whiskers gleaming, my aura fierce with
light, I focused on one particular bullock. Eyeball to eyeball, we exchanged an animal rights agreement.

  I, Timba, have a right to occupy my bit of Mother Earth, even if it’s smaller than your bit. I, Timba, am a cat, and cats have been here longer than cattle. You are going to end up on someone’s plate, covered in gravy and next to a potato. Whereas I, Timba, will become an indispensable, pampered cat with supreme influence over my humans. Therefore, you will grant me free exit from this field, at my own pace, with my tail up.

  Then I did something VERY brave. I walked towards the ring-leader and kissed his outstretched nose. I visualised myself as a shining cat, my light so vivid that no one would harm me.

  With deliberate slowness and calm, and with a flagrant wave of my tail, I walked away and on towards the forest. The bullocks trailed behind me, clumped together and at a respectful distance. Keep it slow, Timba, keep it slow, I was thinking, and finally. . . finally, I was out of the field. I even turned and blinked my golden eyes, a cheeky goodbye to the bemused red-brown faces.

  After that, I had no more trouble from cattle, ever again.

  It’s important to have fun, even if you’re miserable, I thought as I strolled into the towering twilight of the forest. My paws were sore, my once lovely fur matted with burrs, my heart heavy with the weight of Vati’s mysterious problem. Added to that, if I sat thinking for too long I got homesick and wanted to turn back. But I was a young cat, bright-spirited and strong, and there was power in being totally alone in a place of magic.

  Magic was everywhere in this forest. I sensed it shimmering between the leaves, teasing me with dancing patterns of light. Crisp autumn leaves floated down, twirling through the stillness, and landed light as cheese puffs. The urge to play with them tugged at the edges of my misery until I gave in and went totally mad, diving and sliding into them, leaping high in the air, my paws akimbo, my tail flying.