I wasn’t listening anymore. His Human words were all running into each other, making no sense to me. I’d switched off. I was waiting for that needle, and just hoping the end would be quick.
‘Pass me the scanner,’ he said to the nurse, and the next thing I knew, something cold was being run over the back of my neck. Here comes the needle, I thought. Oh well, this is it. Goodbye, cruel world. Goodbye, Caroline. Goodbye, Laura, Julian … but before I’d even finished my litany of farewells, the vet was speaking again. I tried to concentrate this time, to tune in and hear what he was saying. It might be the last thing I ever heard, after all.
‘Would you ladies mind holding him on this side, while I check the computer?’
Jean and Shirley grabbed hold of me together. There was silence, apart from some tapping noises as Mr Caswell did something on his computer. And then:
‘Well I never! That is a surprise. You’re quite right, ladies. Well done – you have found our missing hero!’
Hero? Was he talking about me? Was he not going to kill me, then? I tried to lift my head to look at him. He was smiling.
‘Poor Charlie, eh! He must have really been through it these past few weeks to end up in this condition. Well, it’s good news. I’m going to give Mr Smythe a call right now. I think he’s still staying in one of the hotels down at the seafront. He told me he’s taken a week off work and was going to search the town day and night until he found this little chap. His daughter is inconsolable, apparently, breaking her heart over him.’
‘Oh, I’m so pleased we found him!’ Jean said, clapping her paws together.
‘Me too.’ Shirley looked like she was about to start mewing.
‘You’re in line for a hefty reward,’ the vet said to the two females as he picked up his phone, but they were both shaking their heads.
‘Oh, we don’t want any money, do we, Shirl?’ Jean exclaimed. ‘We just want Charlie taken back where he belongs.’
‘That’s right,’ Shirley agreed, as the vet started talking on his phone. ‘That poor little girl will be so happy!’
Poor little girl? Were they talking about Caroline? I tried to sit up, but they were still holding me firmly. Were they saying I wasn’t going to be killed? No injection? No roasting and eating with ketchup? Could it really be true?
‘Am I going home?’ I meowed loudly. ‘Are you not going to hurt me?’
They all laughed. ‘It’s as if he knows he’s going to be all right now,’ said Jean. ‘Look, he’s completely settled down. I think he trusts us now.’
‘I’ve spoken to Mr Smythe,’ the vet said. ‘He’s on his way.’ Mr Caswell came over to the table and started tickling me under the chin. ‘Yes, you’re a nice boy really, aren’t you, Charlie?’ he said very gently. ‘Not a wild cat at all, just a poor little tabby who got lost.’
To my surprise, I found myself purring. I’d misjudged him. He liked me! And the two females weren’t catnappers after all – they were my rescuers! I rubbed my head against their hands and purred at them too, and they all laughed again, sounding as happy as I was, now beginning to feel myself.
The young nurse lifted me down to the floor and put a bowl of lovely milk in front of me. I fell on it and lapped it all up.
‘That’s it, Charlie, now let’s get you some food too,’ she said, sounding like she was almost mewing too. ‘You’ve had a rotten time, by the look of you, and you must be starving. But it’s all over now. Your master’s coming to get you. You’re going home, Charlie. You’re going home to your little girl!’
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
I was asleep in a kind of cage thing in a back room of the vet’s when I heard Julian’s voice. I wasn’t very happy about being put in the cage, just when I’d made up my mind to trust Mr Caswell and Ginny the nurse, and thought they liked me. But I’d been well fed, and after all the trauma I’d been through, I was exhausted, so I gave in, let them shut the cage door and settled down on the mat inside the cage. I was just in the middle of a very satisfying dream where I was playing with a fat frog at the edge of the big pond at home, when I heard Julian calling me.
‘OK,’ I meowed in my dream, ‘I’ll just make this frog jump one more time, then I’ll come in …’, and then I woke up with a start, looked around me, and remembered where I was. Julian was smiling at me through the door of the cage.
I jumped up, purring at the top of my lungs. I’d never been so happy to see anyone! I put my front paws up to the cage door, trying to get out, trying to lick him through the bars, meowing and purring for all I was worth.
‘Hello, boy. What a welcome!’ Julian said. His voice sounded wobbly.
Ginny reached around him to unlock the cage and he took hold of me, hugging me close.
‘Look at the state of you,’ he murmured. ‘You poor little fellow.’
‘Mr Caswell says he must have been living rough, and he’s definitely got into a fight or two,’ Ginny said. ‘He was half wild with fear when the two ladies brought him in.’
‘Where are they?’ Julian looked around him as he carried me through to the vet’s room. ‘I wanted to thank them. I offered a reward.’
‘They said they wouldn’t accept anything,’ Mr Caswell said, turning round from wiping down the table. ‘They were just thrilled to bits to have found Charlie and that he would be going home safely.’
‘But I must thank them, at least! And if they won’t accept the reward, I’ll send the money to a cat charity.’
‘Well, I’m sure Jean and Shirley would really appreciate that. They’re both cat lovers.’
‘Oh, you know them? They live locally?’
‘Yes. They both have pets registered here, and bring them in for their regular check-ups and so on.’
‘Would you be able to give me their phone numbers, then, or is that against your data protection?’
Mr Caswell was smiling. ‘It’s fine, Mr Smythe. They actually asked me to give you their contact details. They asked if you’d be kind enough to update them on Charlie’s recovery.’
‘Of course I will,’ Julian said, taking a piece of paper from the vet and putting it in his wallet. ‘Now, what do I owe you?’
‘Nothing yet, because I haven’t actually started Charlie on any treatment. I was waiting to consult you about it. I’m sure you’re keen to take him straight home, but he’s going to need that abscess on his leg lanced as soon as possible. I could do it right now, but he’ll need to wear an Elizabethan collar afterwards to stop him licking and chewing at the wound.’
‘One of those big protective collars? Animals hate wearing them, don’t they?’
‘At first, yes, until they get used to them. But as you’ve got such a long journey it might not be a good idea to upset him any further today. What I’d suggest is, I’ll give Charlie a quick shot of intravenous antibiotic now, and after you get him home, see your own vet about getting the abscess treated. I’ll give you some antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drops for that poor eye, too. And he also needs a flea treatment. Would you like me to do that now?’
And so I was put back on the shiny table and subjected to a needle after all, as well as a dose of flea stuff on the back of my neck. Then I had something dripped into my sore eye, which made me shake my head and twitch my ears madly. But this time I wasn’t screaming or quaking with fear, because my own human was holding me, whispering words of comfort in my ear and stroking me all the while it was happening.
‘He’s going to need some feeding up, poor little chap,’ Mr Caswell commented, feeling my ribs again. ‘And his coat’s going to need some attention.’
‘We’ll see to that ourselves,’ Julian said firmly.
‘Yes, I think that’s best. With a bit of grooming he’ll be back to his old self, and it’ll help him settle back at home and bond with the family again. Although,’ he added, watching as I climbed up Julian’s chest and tried to bury myself inside his shirt, ‘from what I can see, I suspect that’s not going to be a problem.’
‘Thank you for the warning. We’ll take great care of him.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ He smiled at me. ‘He’s missed you, that’s obvious!’
‘And we’ve missed him. I know one little girl who’s going to be very happy tonight.’
Caroline. I purred with joy at the thought of seeing her. But there was still another ordeal to face yet: the long car journey back to Little Broomford.
In some ways the journey wasn’t quite as bad as the previous one, at the start of the holiday, because at least we didn’t have Jessica in the car mewing her head off, keeping me awake. It seemed so long now since that day, and strange to think that back then I’d still had no idea really what to expect from a holiday. Remembering that now, I realised again how much I’d grown up over the course of this summer. For one thing, up till then I’d never been away from my home village before, whereas now I was a well-travelled little cat with a wealth of experience. I’d seen the sea, and had eventually got quite used to it during my time with the feral gang. I’d had my first proper fight, lived to tell the tale and had got some sore places to prove it, and hoped I’d never have to fight like that again. I’d made new friends, learning to get along with cats who were quite frankly not the type we normally fraternise with. Most importantly, I’d learnt to survive. And after all that, the most important thing I’d learnt was that I loved my life with my human family and never wanted to leave them again.
Julian called out to me occasionally as he drove the car home. Are you all right, there, Charlie? And Not too far now, boy. But most of the time, we were nice and quiet, apart from the music he’d got playing very gently to take my mind off the car’s growling and rumbling noises. I was actually asleep again when the car finally stopped outside our house. I woke up at the sound of the car door being pulled open and the voice I loved most in the whole world squealing:
‘Charlie! Oh, Charlie, you’re home!’
I was so excited to see Caroline’s face looking back at me, I jumped up and hit my head on the lid of the silly carrying basket. I meowed so loudly I couldn’t even hear what else she was saying, but as she carried my basket into the house, I realised she was crying.
‘Don’t cry, darling!’ Julian said as he followed us in. ‘We’ve got him back now!’
‘I know!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m crying because I’m so happy!’
That was a new one on me. Humans are very odd sometimes! But I didn’t care, Caroline could be as odd as she liked, just as long as I could jump into her arms, which I did as soon as she let me out of the basket. We sat on the sofa and I snuggled into her for a lovely long cuddle, purring fit to burst. It was probably the happiest moment of my life.
‘He’s so thin!’ she was saying to her father. ‘And what’s happened to his eye?’
‘He’s been in a fight or two, we think,’ Julian explained, as Laura came and sat next to Caroline, stroking me and inspecting me carefully. ‘He’s had a bad bite to his leg there, too – see? It hasn’t healed properly so it’s left a nasty sore. We’ve got to take him to our vet tomorrow or the next day, when he’s settled down. And the vet in Mudditon thinks he got clawed in his eye – that’s what caused the problem there, but we’ve got drops for him. He’s lucky he didn’t lose the sight in it.’
‘He’s got scabby places on his head, too,’ Laura said. ‘And his poor coat! It’s all dull and matted.’
Caroline started to cry again. ‘Poor Charlie! It’s all my fault!’
‘We’ll soon nurse him back to health, Caroline,’ Laura said gently, putting an arm around her. ‘He’s young – he’ll mend. Just as you will,’ she added quietly, looking like she might cry herself.
I looked up at Laura in surprise. What did she mean by that? Was Caroline still not mended? Hadn’t they been able to fix her head at the hospital? All my worries about her while we’d been apart immediately came flooding back.
‘If Grace and I hadn’t been so stupid …’ she was saying, wiping her eyes.
‘What’s done is done,’ Julian said. ‘We’ve talked about this, haven’t we? Losing Charlie was more than enough punishment for you, to say nothing of you getting hurt yourself. I know Grace’s parents grounded her for the rest of the holiday, just as we did with you, but you’ve both learned your lessons, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Charlie, I’m so sorry you got lost! I didn’t mean for you to run out of the house. It was dark … we didn’t see you … we were being so stupid.’
‘It’s all right,’ I meowed. ‘I’m home now, with you. That’s all that matters.’
Actually it wasn’t. What mattered even more was for me to find out whether she was feeling better. There wasn’t any blood dripping from her head anymore, and her finger wasn’t looking sore, but what about that horrible illness? Had it come back? Was that what Laura meant? I meowed to myself anxiously, but Caroline just carried on stroking me.
‘I’m still absolutely sure it was him, watching me being put into that ambulance, you know,’ she said to Laura.
‘Well, there must be lots of other little tabby cats just like him. We’ll never know for sure.’
‘It was me!’ I told them in Cat, but of course, none of them understood. ‘I ran to get help for Caroline! I got the woman from the beach café to come to her rescue!’
‘I bet he would’ve helped us, if he could,’ Caroline said. ‘I bet that was why he ran out after us – to try to look after us.’
‘Yes!’ I squeaked. ‘Why else would I have done it?’
‘Nice idea,’ Julian said, smiling at her. ‘And if he could, I’m sure he would have done, darling. He loves you very much, that’s obvious. But at the end of the day, he’s just a little kitten, isn’t he. Dogs have certainly been known to look after people, but I’ve never heard of cats doing it.’
‘But he did help a human, Daddy! He helped that old lady with the ice cream, when he jumped up at the seagull, didn’t he? That’s what got into the paper and onto the TV News, wasn’t it, and how those ladies came to think it might be him. Everyone in Mudditon thought he was a hero!’
And she cuddled me closer again, wiping her eyes.
‘My little hero, Charlie!’ she said.
I saw Julian and Laura looking at each other.
‘Well,’ Julian said. ‘Yes, we think it was Charlie. And the publicity certainly helped to get him found and brought back, so that’s all good. But we can’t ever be completely sure. As Laura says, there are lots of little tabby cats around, and—’
‘But it was him, Daddy. I knew it as soon as we saw him on the TV.’
They didn’t argue with her. Nor did I. I just purred in her ear, happy to be called her hero! But despite my worries about Caroline, I must say I was quite interested to hear this conversation. Because although I still didn’t understand it at all, it did at least prove I wasn’t dreaming when I saw myself in the newspaper and inside the television!
That first day I was home, I didn’t even see baby Jessica – she’d already gone to bed. Because of our long journey back from Mudditon, dinner was late and it was getting dark by the time they’d finished eating. Caroline was sent off to bed too then, as she had school the next day, but not before she’d given me another long hug and told me again how much she’d missed me and how much she loved me. I was hoping they were all going to keep up this extra love and attention, and not stop making a fuss of me once they’d got used to me being home again. I followed her upstairs to her room and, to my surprise, before she got ready for bed she picked up a phone from her bedside table.
‘Yes, it’s
mine, Charlie,’ she said, waving it at me. ‘Daddy and Laura changed their minds! Cool, isn’t it!’
It was surprising, that’s what it was. I’d heard them with my very own ears, several times, saying she was too young and didn’t need one. Perhaps I’d been away so long, she was now old enough. That was a scary thought. But I sat on her bed and listened as she started speaking into it.
‘Hi Grace! Guess what – we’ve got Charlie back!’
I could hear Grace’s voice coming out of the phone, squealing with excitement. I have no idea how she got inside it.
‘Yes, Daddy brought him home today. We don’t know where he’s been all this time, but he’s been in a fight, and he’s skinny and he’s got a sore leg and a sore eye, but Laura says we can feed him back to health.’
It was lovely to hear Caroline chatting to her friend, sounding giggly and happy, making me think perhaps there wasn’t anything wrong with her anymore after all. But towards the end of her conversation, Grace must have asked her something about how she was feeling, because she sighed and said, ‘Oh, you know. The same. Just … tired, still, really, all the time.’ She looked at me, smiled and added, ‘But it’s cheered me up so much, having Charlie back.’ And then Laura called up to her to remind her to get herself to bed, and I scampered back downstairs to get some cuddles in with Julian and Laura before it was night-time. But even with all the extra attention, it was hard to forget my worries.
Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life Page 14