by Frank Kusy
He couldn’t believe his luck. He tore the sack open with one paw, and scooped out a generous amount with the other. And then he sat down in the fresh fuller’s earth and poo’d to his heart’s delight.
After that, he mechanically scratched away at a nearby box, and discovered, to his further delight, that it contained some of his favourite cat food. He was just trying to work out how to open it when a familiar voice interrupted him.
‘Wot you doin’ back there?’ hissed Ginger urgently. ‘I got us a mouse to eat, so leave that ruddy processed stuff alone!’
But Sparky had tasted mouse once before and he hadn’t liked it. He wanted proper cat food and nothing else. He managed to rip out one plastic pack from its box, and then he began biting and treading on it, hoping to squeeze out its contents.
‘You’re a stubborn little soldier, ain’t you?’ grunted Ginger. ‘You look like some bloomin’ Spanish grape-treader! Here, let me sort it out.’ And with that he clambered clumsily to Sparky’s side and sat heavily on the pack until it went ‘pop!’ and exploded.
‘Being fat does have its advantages,’ he informed Sparky casually, and then he returned to the front of the cab to torture his mildly protesting mouse.
Sparky had just finished eating and had rejoined Ginger, when the van door suddenly swung open and there was Lee again, his wild mass of greying curls framing the back of his head and looking more than ever like Coco the Clown.
‘Cor!’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘Something don’t half niff in here! Smells like the worst kind of cleaning fluid!’
Ginger rolled his eyes despairingly at Sparky.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You had a poo back there, didn’t you? You just couldn’t help yourself. And now we’ve got to live with it for the rest of the trip!’
Sparky crept fearfully back under the passenger seat. He had been a bad boy, a very bad boy, and if there had been a hole in the floor, he would have happily fallen into it. He was that embarrassed.
But he was lucky. Lee had a poor sense of smell, much poorer than cats, and besides, his nose was still stuffed up from a cold. He was also a bit tipsy, having just shared some rum with his dad, and was in a merry mood – chattering away to himself, oblivious to all else.
‘Pity my dad’s allergic to cats,’ he commented happily. ‘Because you’d have just loved this one. You know what he said? He said: “Me and the old duchess – that’s what he calls me mum, y’know – have been married for fifty years. Blow me, I could have killed two people, got two life sentences, and have been out by now!”
Lee would have liked to say more, but he was now nearing the ferry point and had to bundle both cats into the back of the van.
‘Sorry, lads,’ he apologised. ‘But you know the drill, Ginger. No cats allowed on board, so you keep your pretty little chum quiet back there, okay? We don’t want no customs geezers sniffing about!’
‘Charming,’ Ginger addressed Sparky. ‘Now I get to sit in your stinky poo-place for the next 24 hours. Gawd, it reeks in here. Wot did you eat last night, curry?’
Sparky was still mortified. He tried to cover up his mess with yet more earthy litter, but this one was not as ‘odour-free’ as it claimed. With no ventilation shafts to let in fresh air, the whole storage area now stunk of tuna-flavoured botty burps.
‘Well,’ grunted Ginger, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,’ and he added a pile of his own poo to the mix.
‘I didn’t really let go in the woods,’ he explained with a shrug. ‘I had to catch that mouse in “mid flow”.
Sparky knew what Ginger was doing. He was trying to put him at ease. And that was the first time he knew that Ginger had feelings for him. He couldn’t think of anyone else, even ol’ Joe, who would have poo’d for him.
But he did have one last question.
‘Why are we back here?’ he asked timidly. ‘Why can’t we go up and see the sea?’
‘Well, it’s delicate like,’ said Ginger, choosing his words with care. ‘Some oomans fink we’re not hygienic – wot is ridick’lus because we clean ourselves much more than they do – and they don’t want us invading Spain with fleas n’ stuff!’
‘Hasn’t Spain got fleas, then?’
‘Oh yeah, plenty of them. They even got a song about ‘em called “Spanish Flea.” But they don’t want no more, so we gotta stay put. Besides, if we poke our heads out, Lee might lose his job. And that’d be curtains for my big plan...’
Sparky nodded in apparent understanding, and laid down to rest.
*
The lorry lurched aboard the ferry without event. The customs officials were so distracted by Lee’s booming bonhomie that they completely forgot to search his vehicle.
Once aboard, surrounded by lots of other delivery vans in the hold, Lee made a hasty getaway. Just looking at them put him in the mood for murder.
‘Where’s he gone?’ enquired Sparky hesitantly.
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ grunted Ginger, climbing into the driver’s compartment. ‘’I’m goin’ for a stroll. You comin’?’
Sparky shook his head. The violent lurch of the ferry as it left its moorings had left him quite dizzy.
‘Suit yourself. But I may be a while. I know this boat, I do, and I stashed away some rum on me last trip.’
‘Rum? I thought you said it was a bad thing.’
‘Nah, I said it was bad for oomans. Especially the sad ones who’ve got nuffink else to live for. Me, I loves a tot of rum. Steadies my nerves, like.’
Sparky eyed him with suspicion.
‘Nerves? I’ve never seen you nervous.’
Ginger hesitated. He was about to say it was the sea that made him nervous – that he had lost one of his previous lives to the rolling waves – but then he thought better of it. Sparky would think he was bonkers. He also didn’t mention the (large) part that rum had played in his earlier demise. Sparky wouldn’t have understood that either.
Instead, he gave a non-committal shrug and struggled out of the van through the open passenger window.
He was gone a long time.
*
Sparky was quietly dozing on a sack of dry porridge when he heard the noise.
“Sixteen kitties on an ooman’s chest!
Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!”
It was a ghostly, drunken voice, and it came from outside the van.
Sparky shook himself awake, looked out the window, and saw Ginger propped up against one of the lifeboats. He had a funny scarf on his head, and a patch over one eye, and he could barely stand up.
‘Oo’s that?’’ croaked Ginger loudly. ‘Billy Bones? Peg-leg Silver? Nah (hic), it’s me ol’ mate Sparky, innit? Bes’ cat wot ever lived!’
‘Are you all right?’ whispered Sparky quietly.
‘Corse I’m all right! “Drink up, me hearties, and the devil has done for the rest!” ‘Ere, have some of this grog and sing along: “Yo, ho, ho, a pirate’s life for me!”
‘No, thank you. And what’s that thing on your eye – can’t you see?’
Ginger’s face twisted into an evil leer.
‘Rotten parrot! I told it to shut up, perched there on Long John’s shoulder, but it wouldn’t (hic) listen. “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! “ it kept screamin’, so I tried to take it out. How was I to know it was quicker than me? Stoopid bird – took my eye out instead!’
Sparky was getting worried. He had no idea what his crazy friend was talking about, but he knew one thing for certain – one more sea shanty, one more chorus of caterwauling nonsense, and he would never see his litter tray again. So he jumped on the door release, opened it out, and dragged Ginger in by the scruff of his neck.
It was not a moment too soon. The rum-sodden renegade had run out of song – and out of sea-legs too – and was collapsed in a sentimental heap around Lee’s gearstick.
‘No-one understans’ me’, he sobbed into his dampening eye-patch. ‘You’se the onl
y one, Sparky. You’se the only one...’
*
A long night later, Lee flung open the back of the van and said, ‘Okay mateys, we’re back on dry land. Time to stretch your legs...’
Sparky yawned and clambered out into the daylight.
‘Where are we now?’’ he asked Ginger.
‘We’re in Santander – sunny Spain,’ yawned his orange friend, squinting thick-headedly at the sun. ‘But we’re not yet in Barcelona. That’s a long way down the line, in Catalonia. Or, as the Spanish say, Catalunya. And no, don’t ask, Catalunya ain’t a place for loony cats. It just has a cat-like name.’
But then, after everything had gone so smoothly, they hit a snag.
Poor Lee had been sea-sick on the ferry – courtesy of a very large Sunday roast dinner – and he did not want to go back inside his van. He was feeling nauseous and could not face six more hours of intense claustrophobia.
‘Sorry, pussies – I’m sick as a parrot,’ he groaned miserably. ‘If I have to drive again, I’m gonna just hurl!’
Ginger hadn’t counted on this. He knew Lee was stupid, but not that stupid. Rum and roast dinners and rolling seas? What was he thinking ? He should have stuck to just the rum. Ginger shook his bleary head in annoyance. All of his grand schemes depended on this silly ooman, and he was falling apart before their very eyes.
It was then, quite unexpectedly, that Sparky saved the day.
He picked up a pen from the dashboard and wrote, in very spidery script,
Please tell us more about carpits
He inscribed it with the pen gripped tightly between his tiny baby-teeth, and he chose Lee’s trousered left knee-cap as his message board.
‘Blimey!’ exclaimed Lee, shaken out of his malaise. ‘How’d you learn to do that?’’
Sparky had learnt to do that by studying the shopping lists ol’ Joe had been issued by his missus. He had begun by scratching out the words ‘sardines’ and ‘pilchards’ – two cat foods he absolutely hated – and scrawling in the words ‘chicken’ and ‘tuna’ instead. Joe never noticed. Joe never noticed anything. He just went shopping and got what Sparky had cleverly re-ordered. After that, Sparky had moved on to bigger things. He had picked up more words from watching ‘deaf’ language on TV – words which appeared on the screen for humans whose ears did not work. And every so often, when he put together the spoken word and the printed words below, he would pick up a pen and write them down in a secret pad. He didn’t know why or how he did this, but his earlier nightmare – where he’d been dying in the road – had not been a one-off.
He now had a recurring dream that he had been a human in a past life, a learned human, and that his dearest wish – in that existence – had been to be come back as a cat.
But now he was a cat, he wasn’t so sure. Something, some basic instinct, told him that nobody was interested in an educated cat. Either that, or they would become too interested, and he would be taken away for scientific experiments. He had seen that on TV too – the way that super-intelligent chimpanzees had been wired up, cut open, or even sent into space. And so, very wisely, he had kept his secret to himself.
Until, that is, right now.
Now he had no choice. He had to get Lee moving – by any means possible – or they would be stranded here forever.
And it worked.
Rejuvenated at having a feline wunderkind on his hands, Lee stared at the miraculous words on his knee-cap, leapt into his cab, and did as he was told. He started talking about carpets again.
‘Some people,’ he confided joyfully, ‘are real paranoid about their carpets. I had this one old biddy last week, and she was so terrified about what her neighbours might think, that she locked herself upstairs in her bedroom. Her carpets were so disgusting, I seriously thought she might top herself. “Where have you been?” I said when I eventually found her, and she said, “I’ve been sitting up here, thinking about that dirty water”. And I said, “There is other things you can think about, love!’
From carpets, Lee moved onto his second favourite topic – vegetarians.
‘There’s nothing worse than vegetarians,’ he informed the two cats. ‘They don’t look well, do they? All pasty-like and anaemic, and clinging onto tables for support. They could all do with a nice big juicy steak!’
Ginger nodded silent agreement. He couldn’t argue with Lee there.
Only one thing was worse than vegetarians, in Lee’s opinion, and that was vegans.
‘Vegans!’ he snorted dismissively. ‘What are they all about? They put two fingers in a V shape, and then they start lecturing me about fish and cheese. As if I bloomin’ care! My Grandad is 90 years old and has been living on a diet of pork crackling and dripping all that time, and he’s happy as Larry!’
Ginger listened on, glad to be on the move again, but simply dying to ask Sparky one question.
His opportunity came soon, when Lee – inspired by his own talk about non-veg cuisine – stopped off at a roadside kiosk for a meat-stuffed taco.
‘Okay, you sneaky little pussy!’ Ginger accused Sparky. ‘Wot’s with you and this ooman writing lark? I’ve known you a long time, and I never saw you with a pen in your gob before!’
‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’ asked Sparky quietly.
‘Re-incarnate what?’ sneered Ginger, secretly alarmed. ‘Don’t hit me with those big ooman words, or I’ll re-incarnate you!’’
‘I have these dreams,’ confessed Sparky. ‘And in them, I am a very small human who ran into the road one day and got killed by a horse carriage. That’s why I’m so frightened all the time. I’m scared that if I leave my kitchen, I’m going to die again.’
‘That’s ridik’lus!’ scoffed Ginger. ‘You’re just imagining it!’
Ginger had put aside his own dreams of past lives. He hadn’t liked the eye-patch.
‘No, I’m quite sure,’ said Sparky firmly. ‘I’ve been getting a lot of these dreams lately, and in them I’m this little girl called Alice who is very good with words but is very bad at looking at the traffic. One day, she is so careless when crossing the road, she gets knocked over.’
‘You’re bonkers, you are! All I dreams about is little squirmy fings wot I chase around the garden and kill. That’s wot normal cats dream about!’
‘Well, I’m not normal then, am I?’
‘But you can read and write ooman?’ said Ginger, mystified. ‘Is that why you watch so much TV?’
Sparky gave him a nervous nod.
‘Well, you had me fooled. Me, I hates TV. I like the radio instead. Especially that Delia Smith ooman on Tuesday afternoons. “Recipes for Cats” – now that’s what I call entertainment. I like Delia lots, because she talks non-stop about cat food! ’ ...’Ere, I’ve just had a thought. Could you write her a letter from me?’
‘What kind of letter?’
‘Well, sumfink snappy like: “Dear Delia. Please come over and fill my fridge with every recipe possible. Here are your instructions on how I like to eat it: Open fridge. Empty contents onto floor. Don’t cook it. I can’t wait. Leave it on the floor. Lock the door on your way out.”’
Sparky sighed. He knew he shouldn’t have told Ginger his little secret. But it was too late now. Once they were in Barcelona, he knew, he would become his fat friend’s pet monkey – a feline freak-show with infinite possibilities. He could just imagine himself writing ‘Thank You’ notes to every person who gave them food. And then they would want autographs, wouldn’t they, and someone would come along and put him in a laboratory, and he would never see his humans again.
Once again, Sparky was a pussy in peril.
Chapter 8
Cats in Catalonia
Lee dropped them off at Ginger’s favourite stomping ground – Las Ramblas, the main tourist drag of Barcelona. He was sorry to see them go, but he had deliveries to make. Deliveries which, unbeknown to him, would be turned away because they stank of cat poo.
Before they parted, he disabled a passing fruit trolley (well, he had to hit something) and left Sparky a little farewell note. It said simply: ‘Be back here tomorrow noon. We can talk more carpets. I’ll run you back to Surrey.’
Then, all of a sudden, he was gone and the two cats found themselves in a madhouse. Strange foreign smells and sounds filled the air, and the whole place was seething with loud tourists – mainly half-naked English lager-louts – and cunning little thieves out to fleece them.
‘See that?’ Ginger nudged Sparky. ‘Those local kids just kick the visiting oomans in the shins, and when they bend down to rub them, they nick all the money out of their back pockets!’
‘What’s money?’
‘Oh, you may be the Einstein of the pussy kingdom, but you’ve got a LOT to learn about things wot really matter!’’ said Ginger with a leer. ‘Money is everyfink in the ooman world. How do you fink ol’ Joe gets your food and your litter? He has to go down the supermarket and give them bits of dirty paper called “money” and if he hasn’t got none, they don’t give him anyfink. And it’s the same right here. We haven’t got no money, so no-one’s going to give us anyfink either. We’re goin’ to have to make our own luck.’
‘Luck?’
‘Well, they don’t fink much of cats, these Spanish oomans, so we’re going to need lots of luck. And I’ve got a feeling - a very strong feeling - that you’re luck on a stick!’
Sparky gave an inner groan. He didn’t feel lucky at all. He just felt used.
He also felt very nervous. All these people, all that traffic, was making him very jumpy. In his mind, his worst nightmare was about to come true. He was going to get run over again and die and come back as what next? A limbless toad?
But Ginger was quite determined. The sun was now high in the sky, and he was in a hurry.
‘This Barcelona lot,’ he informed his frightened friend, ‘has their feed time quite early. They eat until they burst, and then they go home – for wot they call a ‘siesta’ – and sleep it all off. It’s too hot, y’see, for them to work or do fings in the daytime. So we’ve got to work fast, before they all keel over and stop givin’ us stuff. And they won’t give us stuff unless we give them sumfink to put it in...So ‘ere’s our first stop – right here.’