by Frank Kusy
The “right here” was a tourist shop, just off the Las Ramblas, which sold (amongst other things) sombreros.
‘We’re gonna need a lot of these,’ Ginger informed Sparky. ‘So you go talk to the owner – yeah, do your sad, pathetic thing – while I go ahead and nick ‘em!’
‘You’re going to steal a heap of sombreros?’
‘Well, I can’t pay for ‘em, can I? And I can’t lift ‘em on my own, so you got to keep that bloke busy for at least two minutes.’
Sparky walked forward, wondering what on earth he was doing, and looked up at the fat, greasy Spaniard manning the shop. The Spaniard was called Pedro, and he didn’t like cats. Pedro was indeed famous for not liking cats. If he had his way, he would be making sombreros out of cats.
But Pedro had not come across a cat like Sparky. Those big, soulful eyes, that shivering little body, that unbearably plaintive little prrrrrp! It was all too much for poor Pedro. It was all he could do not to pick Sparky up and take him home and adopt him.
‘Que gato mas bonito!’ (What a cute cat!) he cooed, oblivious to the fact that Ginger was dragging away a large pile of sun-hats, ‘Como te llamas?’ (What’s your name, then?)
Sparky let himself be picked up and fussed over, and then he jumped down again – repelled by Pedro’s overpowering reek of garlic – to rejoin a happy Ginger.
‘Look at this lot!’ exclaimed his fat orange friend, dragging his illegal haul of sombreros round the corner. ‘We’ve got enough ‘ere to keep us busy for days!’
But it didn’t take days. It didn’t even take an hour.
Ginger parked Sparky outside his favourite cafe, the Rita Rouge just behind the bustling La Boqueria, and gave him his instructions.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve scored ‘ere in the past – mainly by bitin’ oomans in the leg and makin’ ‘em drop their food – so you should have no problem. Just...’
‘Hang on,’ interrupted Sparky. ‘That sausage and paella you gave me back in Surrey. You picked it off the road?’
‘Corse I did!’ snorted Ginger. ‘Mind you, I did lick it clean first...’
Sparky shook his head in wonderment. It was a miracle he hadn’t got food poisoning.
‘Just sit ‘ere,’ commanded Ginger. ‘And go into your act. I’ll be close by, and as soon as you fill up one sombrero, I’ll be back to give you anuvver.’
Sparky didn’t know what was expected of him, but he did his best. He just sat there, looking sad and forlorn, and stared into an empty sombrero. It was enough. Sympathetic diners went ‘Oh, pobrecito!’’ or ‘aaah, poor thing!’ and began tossing things into his hat – squid rings, sausages, bits of fish and paella, and, every so often, a big juicy gamba prawn.
Sparky lifted his head with each new offering to give a pathetic little prrrrrp! And to speed things up, since he was now enjoying the attention, he picked up a nearby piece of chalk in his teeth and scrawled my name’s Sparky - what’s yours? on the pavement.
Well, that got them going. As Ginger had earlier predicted, people began simply throwing food at him – even locals who couldn’t read English. It was the best circus trick they had ever seen, and they all wanted more.
I’m lost and hungry, he scribbled awkwardly, thank you very much
The deluge of food defeated even Ginger. He was so busy dragging away full sombreros and substituting empty ones, that he nearly had a stroke.
‘Golly!’ said Sparky when the crowd finally dispersed. ‘Twenty sombreros full of food. And all in just one lunch-time. Where are we going to put it all?
‘I’m not stoopid,’ puffed Ginger wheezily. ‘I didn’t tell you this, but I didn’t eat that mouse earlier. I put it in Lee’s freezer. Yeah, the big hummin’ fing at the back of his van. And who’s gonna fill a freezer with a dead mouse in it? Nobody. Especially not Tesco’s, wot is so squeaky-clean and planet-friendly. They’re gonna empty that freezer and leave it empty, in case they gets done by the law. Which means it’s our freezer now, and we get to go home with all this lovely grub without it goin’ off. Brilliant, eh?’
‘Not so brilliant for poor Lee,’ said Sparky sourly. ‘Won’t he lose his job or something?’
‘He hates his job, does poor Lee!’ retorted Ginger. ‘He said so himself! He wants to do carpets instead. So we’re doin’ him a favour, right?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sparky uneasily. ‘But where is Lee’s van? And how are we going to get all these sombreros into his freezer without him noticing?’
‘Ah, that’s where Sergei comes in...’
‘Sergei?’
‘Yeah, he’s annuver “mate” of mine. He’s a poor Polish plumber wot lives in a cardboard box nearby. You wait here, and I’ll go fetch him.’
And with that Ginger waddled away, a stray chorizo sausage dangling from his whiskers and his tight, fat tummy scraping heavily against the pavement.
*
All was quiet. Siesta-time had kicked in and nobody was on the streets. The heat had reached boiling point and even the supermarkets were closed.
Sparky felt weary too. Not just from the sun, but from all the recent excitement. He dragged himself into the cool shelter of a nearby car park, and with nothing to disturb him, fell into a deep but restless sleep.
Minutes passed, and Alice was back. The little girl of his dreams. And in this dream, she was in a large house - a Victorian mansion – and stroking her only friend, her pussycat Ralph.
‘Oh, I’m so sad and lonely,’ she was telling him. ‘Thank heavens I have you.’
Ralph rubbed his head against Alice's knee and purred. She smiled, despite her tears. She was lucky to have such a faithful cat, with his glossy tortoiseshell fur and uncanny ability to understand her. And lucky to have a kind nanny who risked her father's fury every time she smuggled Ralph to her room just when she needed him most.
Like right now. Mama and Papa were arguing again and it sounded worse than the other times. Papa was shouting so loudly, even the servants would hear!
‘If you are unable to discipline the staff,’ he was raging, ‘how can you control and train the child? You need to be forceful, Emily! I am writing to my unmarried aunt. She will reside as part of my household, in the room next door to the child. You may carry out your duties as usual, but Aunt Clarissa will be here to correct your mistakes and report your progress to me!’
Trying to block out the awful words, Alice held Ralph tight. ‘I wish I was you,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I had someone to cuddle me and read me stories. I'd feel so much better then!’
An idea flashed through her mind. Of course! The new book that Mama had bought.
Excited now, Alice grabbed the book from beside her bed and sat cross-legged next to Ralph. She smiled as the cat peered at it, his head on one side as if he really was reading it.
‘Alice in Wonderland’ she declared. ‘Yes, Alice, like me! It’s about a little girl who meets with a big Cheshire cat. The cat is the only thing in the story that listens to her, like you, and it teaches her the rules of Wonderland. It tells her that she is mad for going there, that he is mad for being there, and that everyone in her imagined world is mad. It also disappears when it likes, leaving behind only its grin. I wish I could disappear like that – it would be so nice...’
She flicked through the pages and found the picture of the Cheshire cat beaming at the story-book Alice. ‘Here we are. I'll do the voice of the cat all “purry” – like yours would be if you could talk.’
Ralph settled into her lap and Alice cleared her throat, ready to project her voice like her elocution teacher had taught her. Then she began. ‘Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here...’
But the shouting downstairs was getting louder. Crash! Then a scream. Then silence.
‘Mama!’ Alice cried, jumping up and rushing to the door. She reached the balcony and looked down into the entrance hall. Her red-faced father was holding the door open and she glimpsed a flash o
f her mother's bonnet. She was leaving.
Alice raced down the stairs, past her flustered nanny and past the footman by the hat stand. Finally, she dodged around her father and ran into the street. She had only one thing on her mind – to catch up with her mother and go with her.
Alice didn’t see the approaching hansom carriage. It bore down on her as she gave chase down the road, and in one unguarded moment, she slipped and fell under its wheels.
Her wish was fulfilled.
Just like the Cheshire cat, she faded away...
Chapter 9
Return of the Gangster Cats
Sparky woke up with a jump.
Ginger was back, and he had the strangest little man with him.
‘This is Sergei,’ he told Sparky. ‘And you’re gonna tell him how to help us.’
Sergei was a skinny little Pole with wild sticky-out hair, an even wilder bushy-browed stare, and a long hawkish nose. Sergei had been in Barcelona for close on a year, and was still looking for work. He was a plumber, a very bad plumber, and he had come here with just one ambition – to go to England and become a reality TV rock-star. It was a dream he had had since childhood, and he practised on a battered old karaoke machine – discovered in a lonely dumpster – each and every night. His favourite song was Thriller by Michael Jackson, and he liked to enact it, with thrusting dance moves thrown in, outside crowded restaurants. It was an alarming sight, and also his only source of income, since trapped diners often paid him to go somewhere else.
Sergei had two problems. First, he couldn’t get to England, because he didn’t have a work permit. Second, he had very little English – just a smattering of odd phrases (gleaned from a pre-war phrase-book) like ‘Top Notch!’ and ‘Steady on, old boy!’ Along, of course, with a few slang expressions he had picked up from British tourists. His favourite slang expression at present was ‘Bite me!’ – which had a nice ring to it, but for some strange reason had rarely gone down well with locals. Neither had the two euro ad he had posted in Cafe E Canto, his local bar, which said simply, ‘My name Sergei – I fix you good!’ The extra one euro to explain this was currently beyond his means.
‘My friend bring me good sausage,’ gasped Sergei, all hot and sweaty after following Ginger down the heat-blasted pavement. ‘What is problem?’
Sparky pointed one paw at the mountain of food before him, and with the other, he put the chalk back in his mouth and scrawled how big is your box? on the ground.
Sergei was entranced. He had never come across a literate cat before, and he was in awe. He was especially in awe that this little pussycat could write better English than himself.
‘Is BIG box!’ he stammered in astonishment. ‘Why you need?’
Sparky went into a quick huddle with Ginger, and then wrote: please bring box here and put all this food in it – take us to Tesco’s
‘Grupo Tesco in Solanes street?’ said Sergei. ‘That is very long way, three mile or more. And I like my box very much. It is my home. Why I give it you?’
Ginger gave Sparky an urgent whisper. ‘Tell him what he wants to hear. Tell him we’re taking him to England!’
Sparky was running out of chalk, but he conveyed the message.
‘You take me to the England?’ beamed Sergei eagerly. ‘Well, bite me! I am so happy!’
And with that he ran off, his scrawny little form darting back up the tarmac like a deranged hobbit.
‘Why did we have to lie to him?’ said Sparky, crossly. ‘Lee is never going to smuggle him into Surrey.’
‘Lee is not going to Surrey,’ replied Ginger. ‘We’re nicking his van.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, I’ve already nicked his passport, and all we gotta do is put Sergei’s photo in it instead. We’ll get that from Sergei’s passport.’
‘So who’s going to drive? Sergei?’
‘Well, he does speak funny-like, but I heard him say once that he drove a tractor back in Poland. So a Tesco’s lorry should be no problem!’
‘You are one disturbed cat,’ said Sparky, quietly. ‘I think I had a dream about you just now, and it wasn’t good.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘It was in the olden days and you were a really bad lot. I was a little girl called Alice who died, and her precious cat Ralph went looking for her, and he found you instead.’
‘And I smothered him with hugs and kisses?’
‘No, you didn’t. You used him to beg and steal food for you.
‘Wot was I, then? A furry Fagin?’
‘Yes, something like that. Anyway, you used to make poor Ralph steal – sausages mainly – from the poor and the sick and then you took them all off of him.’
‘Well,’ quipped Ginger, ‘yer gotta nick a sausage or two!’
‘No wonder he reported you to the police,’ said Sparky.
‘Oh, did he? I don’t remember that.’
‘Yes, you probably do. That’s why you’ve got it for ol’ Joe, isn’t it? Even when you chased him – or rather, Ralph – into the forest and left him to die.’
’I never!’
‘It wasn’t nice,’ said Sparky decisively. ‘The more I think about it, the more I want to go home.’
‘Nah, you can’t do that!’ panicked Ginger. ‘It was just a dream, weren’t it? You could have got it wrong. Besides, we’ve come too far to turn back now! Think about it. Everybody gets wot they want – we get our grub home safe, Sergei goes to Surrey and becomes a poncy rock star, and Lee, well, he gets a nice holiday in sunny Spain.’
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Except the parts about getting to Tesco’s and getting all this food into a locked van.’
‘Locked?’ snickered Ginger, with a knowing wink. ‘It ain’t never been locked. Lee is so keen to get rid of it, he never locks up. He even leaves the keys in the ignition, hopin’ that someone will drive it away. And as for getting to Tesco’s, well, I ain’t exactly worked that one out yet, but Sergei will think of sumfink. He’s so keen on England, he’ll probably carry it there!’
‘What, three miles? I don’t think so. Look at him – here he comes now – and that box is even bigger than he is!’
Sergei arrived, dripping with sweat but triumphant. The crumpled cardboard box, folded up for carrying ease, unfurled into an enormous container six feet high.
‘I am good egg!’’ he declared proudly. ‘Bring home the bacon!’’
And without further ado, he scooped up the pile of heaped sombreros and emptied their contents into his ex-domicile.
‘Now is peachy-dandy!’ he announced. ‘What next do?’
Ginger had been thinking about this, and there was only one solution. It was obvious, even to him, that Sparky was right. The box was now so full of food that Sergei would not even be able to lift it, let alone drag it, three miles up the road.
Ginger’s solution was simple. If they could not get to Tesco’s, then Tesco’s – in a manner of speaking – would have to come to them.
He went into another quick huddle with Sparky and made him write one last message.
Please drive us to England. We have new passport for you – also big van. Take me to Tesco’s then come back – Ginger guard food.
Sergei flicked desperately through his well-thumbed English phrase-book. He thought he understood what Sparky was saying, but he couldn’t be sure.
‘Ah ha!’ he said at last. ‘Ginger cat stay here. You go with me. Top notch idea!’
*
But if Ginger thought he had it easy, sitting in his cardboard fortress of gourmet food, he was wrong.
As soon as Sergei and Sparky had left, he heard a familiar voice.
‘Ere, amigo,’ it said, ‘Giss’us a prawn!’
Ginger’s head whipped round and he saw a face from the past.
‘Blimey!’ he stuttered. ‘Scampi, isn’t it? Wot’s an old lag like you doin’ here? I ain’t seen you for ages!’’
‘It�
��s not Scampi anymore,’ retorted the big, black tom-cat. ‘It’s “Miguel” now and don’t you forget it! And what am I doing here? I’m doing what every other stray cat is going to be doing in a minute – sniffing that lovely, big box of goodies you’re sitting on and wanting some of it. You need protection, mate, and I’m here to give it you!’
Ginger and Scampi went way back.
Back to the time they had led a sixteen-strong pussy posse (in a former life) on a crime spree that had been the talk of Victorian London.
And more recently, to the time they had shared a cage at Annie’s Katz Castle and had beaten each other to a pulp. On this occasion, just before Ginger had been moved to isolation, they had become uneasy chums and had agreed to meet up on the outside. It had been Scampi who had first put Ginger onto Barcelona. He had taken him there one day, in a Sainsbury’s lorry, and had shown him the wonders of authentic Spanish cuisine. In return, he had used Ginger as his main ‘hit man’ – the cat most likely to inflict pain on any other strays who invaded their patch.
But now it was Ginger who needed his help, not the other way round.
‘I know you,’ said Ginger cautiously. ‘And you don’t want one prawn. You want your usual “cut”.’
Miguel shrugged.
‘Look, I just broke out sixteen hungry moggies from a ruddy cats’ home and I ain’t got time for no bargaining. Fifty-fifty. Take it or leave it.’
‘Gotta leave it, mate,’ said Ginger. ‘There’s a third party to fink about – a little guy called Sparky – and I didn’t get all this grub myself. He did most of the work.’
Miguel looked over his shoulder, and then back at Ginger. As the sun reached its zenith, and the delightful aroma of free Catalonian cuisine filled the air, a hungry legion of convict cats were gathering fast.