‘If this is the sort of food humans eat around here,’ I commented, ‘they must have very strange tastes.’
‘Well, let’s face it,’ he said. ‘Humans are just plain weird. I’ve given up trying to work them out. I can’t understand what you see in them.’
And so the night went on. Exhausted, aching and starting to feel sick, I was forced to sample things I thought no self-respecting cat would ever let pass their whiskers. Now that my hunger had been eased, I really didn’t want to try balls of pig meat smeared with a bright red spicy sauce, or prawns that had been ruined by being covered in that awful batter stuff. But I didn’t want to offend Big and his friends, who were teaching me how to scavenge and might just as happily have left me to starve.
‘You’ll get a taste for these things in due course,’ Tail-less tried to comfort me as I retched on a piece of funny-tasting red sausage wrapped in stale bread.
But I wasn’t sure I ever could. When they finally led me back to their yard, Big showed me his sleeping place in a mossy crevice of a brick wall – and taking pity on me, offered to share it with me. Then I lay awake for ages, watching the dawn break, thinking about Julian and Laura, and whether they’d gone to the hospital to find Caroline and Grace. And whether Caroline’s wounds hurt as much as mine did. And … whether they all missed me. But eventually I mewed myself quietly to sleep, curled up against Big’s bony back, and dreamt I was back here in Little Broomford, chasing stupid pigeons in the Big House grounds. Oh, if only that dream would come true!
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
When I woke up the sun was shining brightly, but I could see from the length of the shadows that the day was already half over. I guessed I’d have to get used to this more nocturnal lifestyle while I was living with the feral gang. I just hoped it wasn’t going to go on for too long.
‘I need to start exploring the town again, to try to find my human family,’ I told Big when I found him washing himself under the lamppost. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate your generosity in letting me stay with you and the boys. It’s very good of you to give me your protection.’
As you can tell, despite him calling me a hero the previous day, and seeming to like me well enough now, I was still a little wary of Big and I didn’t want to offend him.
‘All right, all right, no need for all that,’ he said. ‘I get it, you’re not one of us, and I suppose you’re missing your nice easy life with your tame humans.’ He paused. ‘But I’m not sure you should be off exploring on your own. You’re only a kid, and not very streetwise. You’ll probably get yourself lost again. Your eye is so swollen you can’t see properly.’
Yes, and whose fault was that?
‘What am I going to do, then? If I don’t find them soon, they might finish their holiday and go back to our normal home. And I’d never be able to get back there on my own. It’s on the other side of the universe – our car had to carry us here and it took nearly a whole day.’
‘Oh, they’re holiday humans, are they? Huh! They’re the worst sort,’ he said.
‘Mine aren’t!’ I retorted. ‘They’re very kind humans, actually, and they love cats.’
‘I bet they wouldn’t love us. Humans never do. They treat us like we’re rats,’ he said. ‘But still, I think a couple of us should come with you if you’re going to start touring the streets looking for them. I warn you, though, there could be a few fights if we trespass into other cats’ territories.’
‘I expect you’ll win, though.’
‘Of course we will. That goes without saying!’
Black, Stinky and Tail-less had joined us by now, and Tail-less was meowing about going to the harbour to try to steal a fish or two.
‘Good idea,’ Big agreed. ‘Let’s show our new little friend how it’s done. We have to be careful, as well as crafty,’ he said, as we began to move off.
‘Yes, you explained about the angry humans and the vicious seagulls,’ I said. It didn’t sound like my idea of fun. ‘Shouldn’t we just stay away?’ I think I’d proved myself not to be a Cowardy Cat now, but to be fair, my bites and scratches from the previous day were still sore, and I was walking with a limp.
‘What, and miss the chance of a nice bit of fish, fresh from the sea?’ squawked Stinky.
‘You can stay in the shadow of the humans’ pub place, and watch us from there,’ Big said. ‘Tail-less will stay with you and watch out for seagulls swooping down. Black and Stinky – you stand guard by the harbourmaster’s hut as usual. I’ll be the runner today. If anyone sees one of those humans by the boats, coming after me, you give me the cat-call, OK?’
Despite my anxiety, the whole operation was actually carried out so quickly, the humans still had their backs turned when Big returned, a whole fish hanging from his mouth.
‘Tuck in,’ he meowed to me and Tail-less. ‘I’m going back for another.’
‘Cod. Yum, my favourite,’ said Tail-less.
And I have to admit, it was the freshest, most delicious fish I’d ever tasted. No wonder these boys took such a risk for it.
Suddenly, there was a loud yowl of warning from where Black and Stinky were positioned. Big, another fish in his mouth, turned tail and dashed back towards us. The two humans had turned away from their boats and one of them was throwing something at him while the other one yelled:
‘Bloody cats! Thieving bloody varmints! Get out of here, you pesky moth-eaten bag of bones!’
‘Phew!’ meowed Big as he skidded to a halt beside us. ‘That was a close shave.’
‘I can’t believe how rude that human was to you,’ I sympathised. ‘There was no need to call you names like that.’
Big and Tail-less both gave me a funny look.
‘Oh, he was just making a lot of angry growling noises,’ he said without much interest.
I thought perhaps he’d been running too fast to hear what was being said. But a little later, while we were finishing off the fish round the back of the pub, a couple of humans strolled past, holding each other’s paws, the way they do sometimes if they like each other.
‘Ah, look at the poor little cats,’ the female said, stopping and bending down towards us. ‘Do you think they’re strays, Kev?’
‘No, I think they’re feral cats, Gemma. Don’t touch them, they might be carrying some kind of disease. And they might attack you.’
‘What a cheek!’ I muttered to Big, but he wasn’t taking any notice.
‘Poor things,’ said the female. ‘It’s not their fault, Kev – they were probably someone’s pets once. They might have got lost, and turned feral to survive.’
I pricked up my ears at this. Was I going to turn feral too, if I didn’t find my way home? Would I end up living my whole life like this, stealing fish, raiding bins for humans’ rubbish, sleeping rough and starting to talk in the strange, guttural Cat accent of my new friends? I started to shiver at the thought of it.
‘No, most of them will have been born in the alleyways around here to feral mothers,’ said the male. ‘They’re vermin, Gemma. There’s a lot to be said for the idea of a cull.’
‘What?’ She let go of his paw, looking at him in horror. ‘I can’t believe you just said that! What have these poor little things done to deserve that?’
As you can imagine, I was liking her a whole lot more than her male! I couldn’t help myself from purring and going to rub myself against her legs in gratitude. It seemed ages since I’d had any human affection.
‘Don’t let it touch you!’ the male said, pulling her away from me. ‘It’s probably riddled with fleas and disease.’
‘I’m not!’ I meowed. ‘I’m a pet! I’m lost! I want some love!’
‘What are you doing?’ Big meowed at me at the same time. ‘Stay away from them, Charlie, for the love of catnip! You don’t know whether they’re tame humans or not.’
‘They were. Well, she was,’ I mewed sadly as I watched them walk away. I noticed they weren’t holding paws anymore and the female was
walking apart from the male, looking cross. ‘She was being kind, but the male was horrible, wasn’t he.’
All the other cats were staring at me.
‘So what are you, some kind of expert in human behaviour now?’ Big demanded. ‘I’m telling you, it’s impossible to know what they’re thinking. Not all of them are like the pet humans you used to have, you know.’
The words used to have filled my heart with despair. I was going to go back to my family. I had to find my way back! But in the meantime, something was puzzling me.
‘Didn’t you hear what that male was saying?’ I asked Big quietly. Maybe he was a bit deaf.
‘I didn’t notice any particular body language from him, no,’ he said. ‘But then again, humans don’t use much, do they.’
‘I mean what he was saying. Verbalising.’
‘Oh, you mean all that growling and whining they do. It’s meaningless. Don’t worry about it. It’s only when they bark like dogs we have to make ourselves scarce.’
‘No,’ I protested, ‘it’s not meaningless at all. Do you mean to say you can’t understand Human?’
‘There’s nothing to understand,’ he insisted. But he was giving me another funny look now. ‘You’re not telling me you think you can translate it?’
‘I thought all cats could. We’re born bilingual. I mean, we can’t speak it, of course, and they can’t understand Cat, sadly, but …’
Stinky and Black were sniggering. Big and Tail-less were frozen on the spot, looking at me as if I had two heads.
‘Prove it,’ Tail-less demanded.
‘Yeah, go on,’ Black said. ‘Tell us what those humans were saying.’
‘All right. But you won’t like it. The male said we were all vermin, we carry disease, and we should be culled.’
‘What?’ Stinky squawked. ‘I hope you’re making this up!’
‘No, I’m not. But the female felt sorry for us and told him off.’
There was silence for a while. They were starting to look at me differently – almost like they respected me.
‘And you’re saying you can understand everything humans say?’ Big demanded.
‘Well, they do sometimes come out with new words I haven’t heard before. But I can usually get the gist of it.’
‘I suppose it’s because you were born to domestic cat parents,’ he said wonderingly, ‘and you’ve been raised by humans, lived with them from kittenhood.’
‘Well, all the cats I know can understand Human,’ I said. ‘So I didn’t think it was unusual.’
‘We’ve only ever had other feral cats for company,’ Stinky said. ‘All of our mothers were ferals. All the females we mate with, and all our kittens, are ferals too.’
‘Yeah, we’ve never been friends with a posh domestic cat like you before,’ Black said. ‘We normally leave them for dead if they stray into our territory.’
‘I know.’
There was another silence.
‘Well, we’re sorry about that now, aren’t we, boys,’ Big said. ‘And it looks like you might be a useful little cat to have around, after all.’
‘How?’
‘You can give us the low-down on what any passing humans are saying. There are always rumours going around our community about them plotting to poison us or chase us out of town, but we’ve never known whether there’s any truth in it all.’
‘Good idea,’ Tail-less said, ‘And in return we’ll keep trying to help you find your humans. You don’t belong round here, that’s for sure. You’re … well, you’re different.’
I wasn’t sure if the look he was giving me now was one of admiration or wariness. But it was a fair enough bargain. And if it resulted in me finding my family, preferably before I turned feral myself, it was the only way to go.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll be your translator. Now, can we start searching for my holiday home?’
That evening, while Black and Stinky went scavenging for scraps in the bins as usual, Big and Tail-less took me on a tour of some of the streets of the town. The houses here seemed mostly to be very large, with signs outside printed with names in Human.
‘Hotels,’ Big explained. ‘Holiday humans stay in them and get fed. The bins round the backs are good for scavenging. I’m guessing your humans will be in one of these?’
‘No,’ I meowed sadly. ‘They’re staying in a little house – a cottage. It’s in a quiet lane, not a street like this with -pavements. It’s near the sea.’
‘Hmm. Sounds like it’s further out of town. Well, we’ve covered quite a lot of ground already tonight. I suggest we call off the search for now and get something to eat. Don’t worry, young Charlie.’ He was sounding quite affectionate towards me now. ‘We’ll search the streets every day. We’ll get there in the end.’
I hoped he was right. But I was beginning to feel like it might be an impossible mission.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Yes, my friends, you’re right in thinking I was becoming used to the feral cats by now. After living with them like that, I can tell you I actually have a lot of sympathy for them. They’ve got a terrible reputation, and it’s true they can be very aggressive. I’ve got the scars to prove it! But it’s understandable. They’ve got tough lives, and after all, they didn’t choose to be born into those circumstances. I understand now why they hang around in gangs, too. On their own, they’d be prey to all sorts of dangers. They need each other for protection. It’s all very well for domestic cats like us to say we enjoy our own company. We can pick and choose which cats we want to spend time with, and who’s allowed into our territory, or we can be completely solitary if we want to. We’ve got humans to protect us and we can choose to stay inside our nice warm homes whenever we like. I found myself wishing I could do more to help those cats, but to be honest, I don’t think they’d have been able to adapt to a life like ours.
For one thing, none of them had ever heard about going to the vet for that operation. They looked absolutely horrified when I told them I’d had it.
‘I thought you said your humans were kind!’ Black said.
‘They are. I know it seems like a cruel thing to do, but honestly, it’s just like my friend Oliver explained to me when I was a little kitten: what you’ve never had, you never miss.’
‘Well, I’m as sure as a dog’s backside that I’d miss it,’ Big said. ‘We all would! Apart from the fresh fish, it’s the only thing that makes our lives worth living.’
I thought about this for a while. There were so many things that made my life worth living when I was at home in Little Broomford, I felt almost guilty about it, not to say even more homesick.
‘We have humans to love us,’ I tried to explain. ‘We sit on their laps and get stroked and cuddled. It makes up for not mating.’
‘You must be joking,’ Stinky said. ‘That sounds awful. I’m surprised you put up with it.’
‘And it can’t possibly compare with a quick session with Blotchy Face when she’s on heat,’ Black put in.
‘Yeah, she’d soon make you forget about your humans, Charlie!’ said Tail-less.
I felt sorry for Blotchy Face, whoever she was. She must have spent her whole life being pregnant and having loads of kittens.
As the boys continued to discuss their mating rituals, I distanced myself from the conversation. I couldn’t help thinking about my sisters back at home. I was glad to remember most of you females have been spayed.
‘I was neutered before I was old enough to want to mate with anyone,’ I tried to explain to the boys when their banter had finally died down. ‘Our humans get us done because they want to take care of us. They don’t want our females to have lots of kittens who might not be looked after by anyone.’
‘Our females look after their own kittens,’ Black retorted. ‘Well, for a few weeks, anyway, till they can fend for themselves.’
And then they just end up living rough, like you, I wanted to say. But I knew it was no use. They’d never understand. T
he gulf between our lifestyles was too vast.
But the one thing they envied, once they were actually convinced I wasn’t faking, was my ability to understand Human. That same day, I proved my worth to them by translating a very interesting conversation that was going on outside the little café near our yard. Two females were sitting together at a table with cups in their paws, talking earnestly about seagulls.
‘Damn things are a real nuisance,’ one of them said, pointing out a couple of gulls circling above. ‘Ever since a few people were attacked, it’s been putting off holidaymakers from coming here.’
‘I know. Business is going down the pan for the beach cafés and kiosks. Nobody wants to risk eating in the open air.’
I remembered how we were told the same thing by the Annie female who owned our holiday cottage. And because I still felt cross about Caroline having her finger bitten, I listened closely to the women now.
‘It’s the fault of people who leave their food rubbish lying around,’ the first one said. ‘I’m glad the council’s putting up new notices, warning people about dropping litter and threatening them with fines. It’s about time they clamped down on it.’
‘Yes, and on the people who feed the gulls, too! Some holidaymakers think they’re being kind, until they get swooped on and pecked. The gulls should be left to feed themselves with their natural food.’
‘There are signs up now about that too,’ said the other woman. ‘Please Do Not Feed the Gulls. They are Becoming a Nuisance. I just hope it works, otherwise Mudditon is never going to recover from this year’s slump in bookings.’ She paused, and I suddenly realised she was looking straight at me. I’d been so interested in what they were saying, I’d poked my head a little way out of the hiding place behind the fence where I’d been resting with the gang. ‘Look at that little cat watching us,’ she said, nudging her companion. ‘Haven’t seen him around here before.’
Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life Page 10