She showed me the plastic tube, smeared with mud but still recognizably Brambles’s.
“Don’t worry, Bella, I’m sure Brambles is fine,” I reassured her, but inside, I wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER 7
Homecomings
If any cat has a conscience it’s generally a guilty one.
—(Adapted from) Max Frisch
Still no sign?” I asked Bella later that day, although I could tell by her tear-stained cheeks that the answer would be no. We had retraced Brambles’s route back from the party, but, aside from his antibacterial gel, there was no trace of him.
“I just don’t understand where he could be. This makes no sense,” I said.
“He never should have gone to the party in the first place.” Bella sniffed. “He didn’t want to. It was only because I said I was going. It’s all my fault.”
“Oh, Bella. It’s not your fault.”
Although I didn’t say it, I knew perfectly well that it was my fault. I had persuaded Brambles to go beyond his own territory, not to mention to a party, probably the very definition of hell for a cat like Brambles. I had forced him to come because it suited me to have him there. That was the plain fact of the matter. Bella was so wrapped up in her own feelings of guilt that my protestations fell on deaf ears.
Pip, on the other hand, let me know in no uncertain terms that I was responsible for the whole sorry mess.
“Pleased with yourself?” he asked me as he set off on yet another search for clues that night.
I woke early the following morning and headed out onto the street. I could see immediately that there was a commotion coming from Brambles’s house. The front door was open and his owners were rushing around inside.
“Quick. We’ve got to get him to the vet. Now!” one of them said, the panic audible in her voice.
I caught sight of Bella lurking in a flower bed and ran over to her.
“Well? What happened? Is he back?” I asked, catching my breath.
“He’s back. I waited outside his back door all night,” she said, unwittingly twisting the knife further into my guilty conscience—why hadn’t I thought of doing that?
“At about six o’clock this morning I heard a rustling sound. I looked up and saw him limping down the lawn, dragging what was left of his plastic bag. All the contents had fallen out, but he was still clutching it as if his life depended on it. . . .”
Bella stopped to wipe her tears on her paw.
“I asked him what had happened and he just said . . .”
“Said what, Bella?” I asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“He just said ... Bruce.”
At this Bella burst into tears again and I had to conceal a gasp of horror. Of course, I realized now, if Brambles had been in a rush to get home he would have forgotten to avoid Bruce’s garden. Instead of taking the route along the footpath he had cut across the gardens, straight into the path of the neighborhood’s canine psychopath. A picture of Bruce’s puce face popped into my mind, the vein bulging with fury on his forehead.
“Oh, God. Poor Brambles. Is he badly hurt?”
“He’s got a bruised belly and a gash down one leg, and most of his front claws have gone. He crawled underneath Bruce’s shed and has been hiding there ever since. He must have heard us all searching for him but been too afraid to come out.”
“Oh, Bella. Well, look, his owners are taking him to the vet right now. I’m sure once he’s been cleaned up he will be okay.”
Bella nodded but couldn’t stop the tears flowing down her cheeks.
Back at NHQ I dug out the antibacterial wipes and sterile dressings that Brambles had given me after my operation, and which I had carelessly discarded. Clutching them in my mouth I headed back to Brambles’s house and deposited them carefully on the mat outside his back door. I knew it was too little, too late, but at least it was something.
I walked back home and went straight to the front windowsill to wait for Brambles’s return. I had a wash before settling down to keep watch over the street and reflect on the events of the last few days.
How selfish I had been!
I had wanted a party because it suited me, but I hadn’t stopped to consider whether my guests would share my enthusiasm. I had become so self-absorbed since my operation it hadn’t crossed my mind that others might not want to go to a party.
Team Nancy is all well and good, I thought, but I need to let members join on their own terms.
If only it hadn’t taken Brambles getting mauled for me to realize it.
About an hour later I saw Brambles’s car turn into the road, and within a couple of minutes his owners were unloading the cat box from the trunk. I rushed out to try to catch a glimpse of the patient. I tiptoed along the pavement, stopping at the end of their path. His owner had placed the cat box on the doorstep while she unlocked the front door, and I could see Brambles curled up inside. I don’t know if he knew I was there—he didn’t look up—but his face wore an expression of total desolation.
His owners were talking about him.
“As long as we can get these antibiotics down him he should be back to normal within a week,” one said.
Phew, I thought. It sounded like the prognosis was good, although Brambles’s face told a different story.
Later that day I ventured past the front of Brambles’s house, hoping that he would be in his bed by the window. I approached slowly, not sure how he would react when he saw me. He was sitting up in bed, which I figured must be a good sign, but as I got closer I noticed that he was totally focused on his first-aid essentials, which he had lined up on the windowsill and was obsessively nudging into a perfectly straight line. As I passed directly in front of the window he glanced at me, but there was only the briefest flicker of recognition before he averted his eyes and returned to his work on the windowsill, sliding one of his bottles a tiny fraction to the left.
I returned home feeling devastated. Not depressed like after my operation—this was worse, because in addition to feeling sorry for myself, I felt guilty about Brambles. Even if his physical injuries healed within a week I knew that the damage to his delicate mental constitution might be irreparable. How would he ever regain the courage to go outside again?
I closed my eyes, wondering what I could do to help him. The way he had avoided my gaze could only mean one thing: my very existence was a reminder of his trauma. The best thing for Brambles would be if I kept out of his way completely.
In fact, I realized, I needed to be away from everyone in Team Nancy, all of whom were upset about Brambles, and most of whom probably blamed me.
I felt a visceral urge to escape from everything that would remind me of that disastrous night.
That evening, as the little people were going to bed, I headed out, but this time I didn’t tell anyone in Team Nancy where I was going.
When I woke up the following morning the first thing I was aware of was a splitting headache. I opened my eyes and realized that the sleeping person I was sharing a bed with was not one of my owners. And the bed was not their bed.
Oh, God, what happened last night? I wondered, jumping down to see if I could sniff out any clues to my whereabouts.
I remembered starting the evening at the Amble and telling Guinness about Brambles’s encounter with Bruce (his verdict: “That’s small dogs for you. Aggressive little bastards, some of them.”)
I also remembered sitting on the bar with one of the customers and being fascinated by his drink—a tall glass full of a liquid as silky black as my fur but with a creamy-looking froth on top. The customer said, “Would you like a sip, Nancy?” and then people laughed as I took a few cautious licks from the glass. We repeated the trick several times until I had a sticky coating all over my whiskers and nose, which made the customers laugh even more. Then one of them said, “We’re going to the Gib now, Nancy. Want to come with us?” which had struck me as an excellent idea.
At the Gib my new drinking partner and I repeate
d our “cat drinks from pint” party piece, much to the amusement of the regulars there. After that my memories became very blurred. I knew I had enjoyed myself and felt a surprisingly strong affection for my new friends, all of whom seemed to find me hilarious. It had been so nice to feel loved again and, albeit temporarily, put the drama of the previous days out of my mind.
As I sniffed around the bedroom carpet I could vaguely recall someone at the bar daring me to do something, but what on earth was it?
Then I stopped in my tracks, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I put my paw up to feel for my collar, then let out an audible groan. Yes, someone had dared me to take off my collar and run naked through the pub, and, clearly, I had agreed.
At this point my host woke up. He looked momentarily surprised to see me sniffing around his laundry.
“So you’re still here, eh? You’re quite the binge drinker, aren’t you?”
I meowed at him, trying to convey some of my consternation about my lost collar, my splitting headache, and the fact that I couldn’t remember where I was or how I had got there.
“There, there, it’s all right, cat. You look hungry.”
Now that he mentioned it, I was starving. We went downstairs together and while he looked in his fridge for something cat-appropriate I sat on his dining table looking out the window, desperately searching for a familiar landmark.
He placed some ham on a plate in front of me and I wolfed it down, then he tickled me behind the ears.
“Come on, then, time for you to go home.”
He opened the front door and I gingerly stepped out, half blinded by the low winter sun, which did my throbbing head no favors. I sat on the doormat looking around blankly, then turned back and meowed at him, trying to convey the fact that I couldn’t get home without my owners and he would have to call them, but first we would have to find my name tag, which was on my collar, which was ... Oh, what was the point? Fortunately he understood enough to get the gist.
“Are you trying to tell me you’re lost?” he asked.
“Yes! Yes! Got it in one!” I mewed.
We went back inside and he pulled a thick yellow telephone directory out of a bookcase. “Council . . . council services ... council animal warden ... ah, here we go.” I didn’t know who “council” was, but I hoped it was someone who would recognize me and know where I lived. He picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Oh, hello. A little black cat followed me home last night. She hasn’t got a collar. She’s tiny—she must be very young” (every cloud, I thought—at least the diet must be working).
“Okay, that’ll be great. We’ll wait here for you.” He gave his address.
“Don’t worry, cat. Someone’s going to come and get you.”
He gave me a few more scraps of ham while we waited and, when that had run out, a saucer of milk—I discovered I had a raging thirst as well as an insatiable hunger.
I was feeling much better by the time we heard a van pull up outside.
The doorbell rang, and a stout woman came in, carrying a rather functional-looking cage.
“Would it kill you to put a piece of fleece down here?” I mewed at her as she dropped me in.
“Thank you for notifying us. We’ll take it from here,” the woman said to my host before grabbing the box and carrying me out to the van.
“Much appreciated,” I meowed at her, and as she loaded me into the van I tried to lighten the tone with a joke. “Home, James!” but she ignored me.
Without so much as making eye contact, she slammed the door shut, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.
“Could you try and keep the noise down, please?” I mewed beseechingly as she turned up the volume on a CD of soft rock classics.
After a few minutes, though, the hum of the engine and the movement in the van had me nodding off to sleep. As my eyelids began to droop, my last waking thought was Phew, that was fun, but I’m glad to be going home.
CHAPTER 8
Juvie
It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.
—Author unknown
I was woken by the scrape of the van’s door handle, quickly followed by a piercing bright light as the door opened. My mouth still felt dry but the throbbing in my head had, thankfully, gone.
“Are we there? Thanks for the lift ... ,” I meowed at the stout woman, but stopped upon realizing that we weren’t outside NHQ but in a car park next to a fortresslike building.
As I was carried to the entrance I glimpsed a sign by the door: “Shelter for Feral Cats” it read. What’s a feral cat? I wondered.
Once inside I took in my surroundings. The room reminded me of the waiting area at the vet’s and smelled similarly of disinfectant. More off-putting than the smell, though, was the noise coming from behind a door next to the reception desk: the yowls and moans of feline protestation. There must have been at least two dozen cats back there, I estimated, and none of them sounded very happy. What on earth was this place?
“Got another one for you, Maud,” the woman said to the receptionist as she plonked me unceremoniously on the linoleum floor.
“Young female. No collar. Looks like a stray. And reeks of alcohol.”
Do you mind? I thought. I do not look anything like a stray!
I heard Maud sigh, then she tapped at her computer keyboard.
“All right. Thanks, Jo. We’ve got room for her. Come on, then, you,” Maud said as she walked around the reception desk to pick up my cage.
She carried me toward the door to the room beyond, and I braced myself for what was on the other side. Hearing the door close behind us I opened my eyes to see a long room lined with hutches on both sides. The furry faces of the cat inmates peered from every hutch. Suddenly there was an avalanche of jeers and catcalls.
“Ooooh—look what the cat dragged in.”
“It’s a newbie!”
“And she looks young!”
The cage I was in offered me no protection from the thirty or so pairs of eyes now scrutinizing me from every direction. If you imagine the scene from The Silence of the Lambs where Clarice Starling first visits Hannibal Lecter in prison, you’ll get the picture. As we passed along the seemingly endless rows of hutches I took a few surreptitious glances at the cats on both sides.
Clearly these were not cats from my hometown. There was not a Siamese or Bengal in sight, just hutch after hutch of cats with varying degrees of facial scarring or with eyes missing. And reader, I will spare your blushes, but let’s just say their language was shocking. As they rattled the doors on their hutches Maud shouted, “Shut up, you lot!”
After what seemed like an interminable walk, we reached the last hutch in the room and Maud placed my cage on the ground, unhooked a bunch of keys from her belt, and began to unlock the door.
She swung my cage round as she lifted me up, subjecting me again to another glimpse of the faces leering at me. Then she opened my cage door and tipped me out onto the concrete floor of my hutch.
Without so much as an introductory tour of the facilities, Maud locked the door behind me and walked off. I could hear the other cats jeering at her as she left.
“Nice skirt you’re wearing today, Maud.”
“Did you make it yourself?”
“Shame you forgot to look in the mirror.”
But Maud remained impervious to their barbed comments and had soon returned to the reception desk, leaving me alone with my fellow inmates.
I won’t lie to you, reader, I felt more than a little intimidated by these somewhat “streetwise” felines. I skulked to the back of my hutch, praying that if they couldn’t see me, they might forget I was there. To my great surprise, however, once Maud had left the room the atmosphere changed almost instantaneously, and I began to hear chuckles coming from the hutches around me.
“Forgot to look in the mirror ... good one!”
“Thanks very much. I’d been working on
that.”
“So, who’s for charades?”
I crept forward to the front of my hutch, not quite sure whether I could believe my ears. As I peered through the chicken wire I could see one cat, a particularly terrifying-looking black tom with chunks missing from both ears. He was holding up his paws to the cats in the hutches opposite, all of whom were studying him in rapt concentration.
“Six words,” one of them called out.
The black tom nodded, then proceeded to jump up and down and blow on his paws. After a couple of minutes of silence another cat shouted, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!” and the black tom smiled and took an elaborate bow.
“That’s three–nil to our side of the room. Whose turn now?” someone asked.
Whatever next? I thought. Spin the bottle?
Relieved that the cats’ attention was no longer directed at me, I turned around to have a proper look at my new living quarters.
“Basic” was the first word that sprang to mind.
The floor throughout was concrete, and the walls were exposed brickwork. At the rear of the hutch was a tiny storage heater next to a cat bed that had seen better days. There was also a litter box, food dish, and water bowl. I sniffed at the stale food rations in the bowl.
Think I’ll pass on lunch, I thought. I could not suppress a laugh when I noticed the faded image of the Kit-e-Licious cat on the side of the bowl.
Very funny, I thought. If you’re meant to be my guardian angel you’re not doing a very good job of it.
I looked up and noticed, for the first time, the cat in the hutch directly opposite mine. He was a haggard-looking black and white tom, with a scar that ran from the middle of his forehead, straight across his eyelid, and down to his cheek. He had said nothing since I arrived, but remained seated on the roof of his litter box, regarding me with suspicion.
I ventured a timid “hi” at him and after a pause he smiled. “Aren’t you playing charades?” I asked.
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