Ginger the Gangster Cat

by Frank Kusy

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’ cried Sparky. ‘You must be catching your death up here. Come on over here with me!’

  And so it was that, when Madge returned to the attic a long hour later and shone a light up into the attic, she saw Sparky sound asleep against the rat. The two of them had been cuddling up to each other for warmth.

  ‘Well, this won’t do!’ she raged at Joe. ‘I told you Sparky was a coward. He can’t even kill a baby rodent!’

  ‘One day,’ responded Joe calmly, ‘Sparky will bring you a gerbil, or a robin, and you will be horrified as it gasps out its little life on your carpet. What do you want of him anyway? To be ultra-cute or a killer? You can’t have both!’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  Joe considered. On the one hand, he was glad to be shot of Ginger – it was well past his bedtime – but on the other, if he didn’t get him back, he wouldn’t be going to bed at all.

  ‘I suggest you go outside – like Sparky has been urging us to do all day – and find Ginger. I hate to say this, but he’s the man for this job. Mister Rat won’t have a chance.’

  ‘And then I can sleep again?’

  ‘Well, I can’t get up the attic with my bad leg, and you – with your fear of blood and torture – wouldn’t kill a fly!’

  Grumbling under her breath, Madge snatched the torch, threw on some clothes, and went out into the street.

  ‘Ginger! Ginger!’ she called without much hope, and wandered down the road silently cursing to herself. It had begun raining again and as a light sheen of damp settled upon her tousled blonde hair, she hoped that none of the neighbours were watching. Particularly Ahmed, the dotty old Indian next door who fed all living creatures (even ants) but who strangely hated cats.

  But she needn’t have worried. Ginger had not gone far. If he had learnt one thing from Sparky, it was this: if you’re a pussy with a good home, and you accidentally lose it, you don’t run away. You stay put. Especially if it’s raining and you want to be found again. So he had positioned himself under a bush, just three doors down from Joe’s house, and as soon as he heard Madge’s voice he dashed out to greet her.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ Madge informed him. ‘But I guess we both need each other. So let’s get out of this rain and try and patch things up.’

  Sparky was delighted to see his lost friend back again. He watched as Joe reluctantly dried Ginger off with a towel, and then he looked on - very gratefully - as Madge shoved him up into the attic. There was a surprised squawk of terror as Mister Rat departed this world, and then Ginger returned to the mouth of the loft, licking his lips and with cobwebs all around his mouth.

  ‘I hope you didn’t hurt him?’ squeaked up Sparky.

  ‘Good boy!’ cried Joe and Madge in unison, and carried down Ginger in triumph.

  Ginger wasn’t used to being congratulated. For anything. And while his knowledge of ooman-speak was limited, he did know what ‘good boy’ meant. It was the opposite of ‘bad boy,’ which meant he was about to be slapped around the head for pooping in someone’s hat or tearing up their curtains. ‘Good boy,’ which he had only ever heard applied to Sparky, was generally followed by a trip to the fridge and a big reward.

  It was a new sensation, being the hero of the hour, and as Ginger tucked into his bowl of hand-selected Atlantic prawns, he set aside his dark hatred of oomans for a moment. ‘Well, at least I’m good for sumfink!’’ he thought grudgingly. ‘If I’d known they liked dead fings, I could have been “good boy” a lot sooner!’

  But Ginger was a slow learner. He was an old cat, not up for new tricks, and besides, he still had his heart set on returning to Barcelona.

  ‘Whaddya mean “good boy” isn’t “good boy” in Spanish?’ he quizzed Sparky later. ‘What is it, then?’

  It was late in the day, and the two cats were sitting at a large bay-window at the top of house – watching the pigeons fly up and the sun go down.

  ‘Humans aren’t like us,’ said Sparky hesitantly. ‘They live in different countries, apparently, and they speak different languages. I only know this because we have a Spanish maid. She comes to clean the house each week, and she calls me buen chico.’

  ‘Boo-wen cheeko?’ mocked Ginger. ‘Well, la-de-dah!’

  ‘You’re not taking this very seriously,’ said Sparky. ‘Do you want to learn or not?’

  ‘As long as it’s not bloomin’ Spanish. And ‘ow come you know so much ooman-speak anyway? It ain’t natural.’

  ‘It is in my house,’ said Sparky proudly. ‘Six months with my humans and anyone would understand English. They talk to each other non-stop, and to me in particular.’

  ‘That don’t mean nuffink,’ said Ginger, dreaming of pigeon pie. ‘My old lady blah-blahed at me every day and I was still none the wiser.’

  ‘Well,’ paused Sparky, ‘I was. The first word I learnt, naturally enough, was “bowl”. Then came “food”, “fridge”, and “litter tray”. After that – and I really don’t know how this happened – everything my humans said started to make sense. It’s almost as though as I was human!’’

  ‘You wot?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t talking at me anymore. They were talking to me, and I understood.’

  Ginger eyed him with a mixture of awe and suspicion. Up until a couple of days ago, he had made not talking to anyone, let alone listening to them, his stock in trade. His motto then had been simple: ‘If it’s small and squeaking, eat it. If it’s big and barking, get up a tree.’ The thought of actually engaging any other creature in conversation – apart from Sparky – had never entered his mind.

  Along with this thought came another. That if Sparky could learn English ooman-speak so quickly, he could pick up the Spanish version just as fast. And that, in Ginger’s book, made him a walking, talking gold mine. ‘Cor!’ he thought enthusiastically, ‘I could really use him! Forget about the “sad and pathetic pussy” routine. I could park him outside any Barcelona cafe or tapas bar, and he’d know exactly when oomans was totally stuffed and up for givin’ away their leftovers!’

  *

  The Spanish maid, Juanita, turned up on Wednesday. She was young and pretty, and she had even less English than Ginger. Which suited him just fine, because he wanted Sparky to learn Spanish. But there was just one problem. Juanita came with a hoover, and the moment she turned it on, Sparky leapt up with fright and vacated the premises. He was very sensitive to loud noises and hoovers were number one on his list of things to run away from.

  ‘Come back, you nervous little pussy!’ Ginger called after him, but Sparky had already cleared the garden and was shivering behind the shed. He was only persuaded back in again when Ginger tugged the hoover lead out of its socket and left Juanita without a power source. And to make quite sure she couldn’t plug it in again, he sprayed on the socket and turned it into a damp electrical hazard.

  ‘Mierda!’ cried Juanita as she carted the hoover upstairs and found all the other sockets similarly sabotaged. ‘Gato estupido!’

  ‘I think she said “blimey” and called me a “stoopid cat!”’ chortled Ginger happily. ‘We can use that...’

  ‘Pooh!’’ said a disgusted Sparky. ‘You’ve just stunk out the whole house.’’

  ‘Totally worth it, man! We’ve just learnt our first three words of Spanish!’

  But Ginger’s triumph was short-lived. Juanita stopped just long enough to deodorise the plug sockets and to throw open all the windows, and then she upped and left. Without even leaving a note.

  ‘That’s strange,’ commented Joe on their return. ‘The whole place smells of bleach and there’s a force nine gale blowing through it. Has Juanita lost her mind?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Madge, sniffing the air, ‘I think we’ve lost Juanita. Look, there’s the hoover standing idle in the hall, and there’s something behind the bleach that reeks of cat pee. Where’s that blasted Ginger?

  Ginger was wisely out of sight, licking his bum behind the
garden shed. He was planning on how to get back in the house without becoming a ‘bad boy’ again. Somebody else would have to take the fall for his crime, and it couldn’t be him or Sparky. So, after due deliberation, he broke his long vow of silence with other cats, and struck up a conversation with a big black one called Valentino, who just happened to be passing by.

  ‘Ere, mate,’ he growled sweetly. ‘No, don’t run away. I just wanna word with you.’

  ‘You don’t call anyone “mate”, said Valentino cagily. ‘You’re going to bite me or something, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that. I just wanna do you a favour. See that house down there? Well, it’s got a cat-flap, and if you go in it, you’ll find this gorgeous little tabby wot’s dying for a boyfriend. She tried it on with me earlier but, as you can see, I’m a fat old blob wot can’t please the ladies no more. You, on the other hand – a dashing young feller like you – well, you’d have no trouble. She’d be lickin’ her lips the moment she clapped eyes on you!’’

  ‘Really?’ said Valentino – who quite fancied himself as the local ladies’ man – and he galloped gullibly down the garden and through the open flap. Seconds later, he was back out again and being chased up the lawn by an irate Madge with a broom.

  ‘Spray our house out, will you?’ she shouted after him. ‘You’re a very naughty, dirty cat, and if my husband sees you again he’s going to shoot you with his air pistol!’

  ‘You rotter !’ puffed Valentino as he passed Ginger. ‘You totally set me up!’

  ‘Sucker!’ smirked Ginger with a satisfied grin and slowly sloped back down into the house.

  Here he found Sparky, who was doing what he always did when he wanted some ‘alone’ time. He was sitting on his favourite stool next to the very warmest radiator, kneading an old woollen poncho from India with his two front paws and dribbling into it with sheer pleasure. It was warm and furry, and it reminded him of his mother’s tummy when he was just a tiny suckling new-born.

  Looking at him, Ginger was overcome by a wave of unusual sentiment. He had never had any kittens – well, none he had stuck around long enough to look after anyway – and he was filled with an annoying feeling of gluey fondness. It annoyed him because he had never been fond of anything before, and it made him feel weak, like a cissy-cat with no claws.

  ‘What am I doin’?’ he found himself thinking. ‘Draggin’ this poor little innocent to Barcelona, makin’ him learn Spanish, even sprayin’ out his house! If I took one eye off him in the big wide world, he’d be eaten alive!’

  But then he pulled himself together. He was a big, bad killing machine, a cat to be reckoned with, and he wasn’t about to go soft on anyone. Even when that ‘anyone’ was Sparky – the cutest and most cuddly kitten in the universe. He would just have to toughen him up, that’s all, and that was when Ginger thought of Ben.

  *

  Ben was the largest, loudest and dumbest dog in the neighbourhood. He lived three doors down, at number 25, and he had ‘I hate cats’ written all over him. He was bored senseless of being kept indoors all day, and on the rare occasion he was let out for walkies he would break leash at the sight of a cat and run for miles to catch it.

  Ginger had had lots of fun with Ben – leading him on wild-goose chases up and down the road, then hiding up trees, just out of reach, as the huge, slavering Labrador senselessly barked its head off in frustrated rage. And now he thought Sparky deserved a bit of fun too.

  ‘We’re goin’ on a little adventure,’ he said as Sparky finished pawing his damp poncho. ‘It’s time you met a dog.’

  ‘A dog? What’s that?’

  ‘That’s an animal you run away from. Yes, I know you run away from everyfink, but this is different. Dogs is like a game. They is big and loud, but also very slow and stoopid. The idea is, you wander past ‘em, making like you haven’t seen ‘em, and then you leg it up a tree or a fence and pull funny faces at them. It drives ‘em crazy!’’

  ‘Do we have to?’ said Sparky timidly. ‘It sounds rather dangerous...’

  Ginger gave a sigh of despair. It was no good telling his nervous disciple that dogs were dangerous, that they would tear him into tiny pieces if they caught him. He would have to try a different tack.

  ‘Dangerous? Nah! They love it, they do. Dogs was born to chase cats, and it gives ‘em a lot more exercise than just wanderin’ down roads and peein’ against lamp-posts. Besides, if you are slow and they do catch you, all they do is give you a jolly good licking.’

  ‘Do I want to be licked by a dog?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Ginger carefully. ‘They smells sumfink grim. That’s the problem with dogs. They is not hygienic.’

  ‘They don’t clean themselves?’ said Sparky, horrified.

  ‘Nah, they let their oomans do that for them, lazy lummoxes. Why do you fink we run away from them? They stink to high heaven.’

  ‘Oh, the poor unwashed creatures!’ sympathised Sparky. ‘Do you really want me to meet one?’

  ‘Yeah, why not? If you leave any more cat saliva on that blanket of yours, it’ll be standing up on its own!’

  Ben was hard at work, gnawing on a meat-flavoured rubber bone, when Ginger and Sparky turned up. Ginger tapped on the thin garden window separating dog from cat and waved a cheery ‘Hello!’ Then he sat back and awaited the inevitable response. Ben clambered awkwardly to his feet, tossed aside the useless bone, and crashed against the double-glazed glass until it shivered on its mountings. He couldn’t believe the sheer gall of these two cats – one big and bolshy, the other small and sleepy – who were sitting literally inches away from his slobbering jaws. He wanted to kill them both very badly.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ben’s owner, conveniently opening the garden door, ‘there’s that horrible orange cat who keeps pooping on our lawn. Go on, Ben – see him off!’

  And with a howl of joy, Ben launched himself out into the open and stupidly went after Ginger. He could have had Sparky, who was rather looking forward to being licked by a dog and who hadn’t moved an inch, but he didn’t. Ben liked things to move when he chased them, and Ginger moved very fast – dodging in and out of flower-pots and hedges, and causing absolute mayhem. By the time Ginger was finished with him, Ben had clumsily trodden down or uprooted nearly every budding plant or bush in the garden.

  It was not a good day for Ben. Not only had he failed to catch Ginger – who had now found safe haven on the shed roof – but his owner John had unexpectedly taken to Sparky and he wasn’t allowed to molest him either.

  ‘Leave him alone, Ben!’ ordered John. ‘He’s only a poor little baby cat, and you’re just making him nervous. For Heaven’s sake, stop barking!’’

  Ginger couldn’t believe his eyes. Here he was sitting high up on a roof, and there was Sparky way down below, being fussed over by his least favourite ooman and his least favourite dog. ‘Blimey!’ he muttered to himself. ‘He’s even got the bloomin’ dog licking him. And he’s liking it! There’s something not quite right ‘ere!’

  But Sparky couldn’t see the problem. In his mind, he had just made two new friends. Yes, one of them had very bad breath and a slimy tongue, but they both seemed to like him. So much so indeed, that he was invited inside and given a whole pot of real tinned tuna. Then John picked him up and carried him gently back home again.

  ‘I like dogs,’ Sparky informed a disbelieving Ginger later. ‘All they need is a little mouthwash.’

  Ginger promptly put Barcelona on hold.

  Chapter 5

  The Loss of Innocence

  The following week, Ginger discovered the power of flight. One second his head was buried in Madge’s breakfast bowl, slurping down porridge-milk like there was no tomorrow; the next, he was airborne and sailing down the garden like a fat, furry zeppelin.

  ‘I can fly! I can fly!’’ he thought as he high-fived a passing pigeon, and then, ‘no, I can’t!’ as he nosedived into the pond. ‘Gaargh!’ he spluttered. ‘W
hat’s wiv all this water? I can’t swim!’’

  Joe leaned tiredly over Madge’s shoulder and said ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘He’s helped himself to my porridge!’’

  ‘And so you threw him into the pond? Wasn’t that a bit drastic?’

  ‘Well, he’s got to learn,’ Madge shrugged. ‘He’s a mean tangerine eating machine!’

  Ginger struggled out of the pond like the creature from the black lagoon. He was covered in green slime and in the mood for murder. Once again, his street cred had been seriously damaged, and all over a bowl of milk for Gawd’s sake! He shot Madge a look of damp hatred and silently vowed his revenge.

  Sometime later, he found Sparky playing with a toad. It was a small toad, just past being a tadpole, and Sparky had adopted it. He had one front paw on it, to stop it jumping away, and he was chatting away to it as though it was a long-lost relative.

  ‘Hello, Mister Toad!’ said Sparky. ‘I like you lots because every time I touch you, you go ribbit! ribbit! and grin back at me. Will you be my new friend?’

  Ginger looked on with annoyance. Why was Sparky so bloomin’ happy? And why was he always the ‘good boy’ and never punished? It just wasn’t fair. And so, still dripping with pond scum and still filled with spite, he decided to stitch Sparky up. He wanted to punish Joe too (well, ‘Ralph’ did have it coming!) but he still needed Sparky, and Sparky needed Joe. So he did the next best thing, and picked on Joe’s missus instead. She also had it coming.

  He ran in the house, bit the back of Madge’s ankle again, and hid away as she exploded into the garden, looking for her attacker.

  But she found only one cat there.

  ‘Sparky?’ she spluttered angrily. ‘Well, I can’t believe it – you’re picking up bad tricks, aren’t you? And what’s that you’ve got there? A toad? A bad cat like you doesn’t deserve a toad. Give it here!’