‘Domino team meetings, next venue TBA,’ he read out loud. ‘Pensioners’ afternoon tea at Barbara Griggs’s house. Cub Scouts’ cook-out in Clive and Beryl’s garden, please bring own sausages.’
Further down! I wanted to shout.
‘Mums-and-babies group – next meeting at Hayley’s house Tuesday 2pm, we will sing nursery rhymes, bring shakers. Shakers?’ he asked himself, looking puzzled. Then: ‘Child minding rota. As you know Kay’s nursery business is closing 31 December. Please add your availability and requirements. Oh yes. That’s what Sarah and Martin were telling us about. And what’s this? Louise and Dave Porter require kind, qualified person to care for Freya, three, and Henry, eighteen months, twenty hours per week, Monday to Friday mornings, payment by agreement. Apply to … Wow, Ollie. This might be right up Nicky’s street. Lucky I saw it, eh?’ He gave me a funny look then. ‘If it wasn’t a ridiculous thing to think, I could almost believe you knew this was here.’
* * *
He did actually try to tell Nicky it was because of me that he’d seen it, but she just laughed. Unfortunately, she also laughed when he told her what the notice had said, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh that sounded as if she was really amused. In fact she sounded quite snappy about it.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dan. Twenty hours a week, on local wages? How’s that supposed to be a good idea? We wouldn’t even be able to pay the rent, let alone feed ourselves.’
‘You wouldn’t have to pay train fares,’ he reminded her. ‘And I wouldn’t have to be worried sick about you getting exhausted from commuting, closer to when the baby’s due.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to worry about me,’ she said crossly. ‘Just go and find some firewood, please, Dan, and stop coming up with stupid ideas.’
He picked up his rucksack and went off towards the woods again, only this time he wasn’t whistling. And I slunk away to have a sleep in their kitchen, feeling sorry that I’d tried to help. Maybe I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was. The cat who saved Christmas? At the moment I just seemed to be the cat who caused arguments.
* * *
At least the atmosphere in Sarah and Martin’s house was more cheerful. On that same Saturday, the whole family went out in the car and came back laughing and excited, with a tree strapped to the car roof. Of course, from my Christmases at the pub, I knew straight away what it was, but Sarah must have thought I was a silly little inexperienced kitten like you, because she picked me up and cuddled me as Martin carried the tree inside, telling me not to worry, it wasn’t going to hurt me. I felt quite offended, but at the end of the day there was no point in passing up the opportunity for a nice cuddle.
‘Can we decorate it now, Daddy?’ Grace was shouting as she danced around the room. ‘Please, Daddy, can we…’
‘No. Let’s leave that for a few days, at least. It’s still far too soon – I don’t know why I let you talk me into buying one when it’s not even the first of December until Monday.’
‘Oh, Daddy, please! Now we’ve got it, can’t we put the decorations on?’ She was jumping up and down and going red in the face.
‘Calm down, Grace,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve said no.’ He gave Sarah a look, and nodded at Rose, who was sitting quietly on the sofa, just watching Martin trying to prop the tree up in its bucket.
‘Dad’s right,’ Sarah said. ‘It won’t hurt to wait a few more days for the decorations.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘You can both do it together, after Rose has her plaster off on Thursday,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Grace looked at her sister. ‘Why? She can help me now, with her good arm, can’t she?’
‘That’s not very fair, is it? It’ll be much nicer if you can both do it together, and she’ll manage a whole lot better when she’s got both arms free.’
‘But you said they might not even take the plaster off when she goes to the hospital on Thursday,’ Grace said, crossly. ‘Then we’ll never be able to put the decorations up.’
‘We hope it will come off.’ Sarah sounded equally cross now. ‘But if it doesn’t, we’ll do the decorations on Thursday evening anyway, and I’ll help Rose so that she can join in properly.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Grace moaned.
‘And it’s not like you to be so selfish, Grace,’ Martin snapped at her. ‘Rose has had to put up with doing everything one-handed all these weeks and hasn’t complained about it. Think yourself lucky it wasn’t you that got hurt.’
‘I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to run into the road,’ Grace retorted – and then she went suddenly even redder, and put her paw over her mouth. ‘Sorry!’ she gabbled. ‘I didn’t mean it!’
But she was too late saying sorry, because Rose had burst into tears, and Sarah had put me down abruptly, got hold of Grace by the shoulders and marched her quite roughly out of the room.
‘Go upstairs and stay there until you’ve had time to think about what you just said,’ I heard her saying angrily. ‘I know you’re overexcited about the Christmas tree, but that was a really nasty thing to say to your sister. And to think you were the one sticking up for her when other children were being unkind.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!’ Grace was still saying through her sobs as she went upstairs. ‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ she called back from their bedroom.
But Rose was crying quietly on the sofa, and Martin was muttering to himself that if Grace carried on like that she wouldn’t get any Christmas presents. The whole day seemed spoilt.
I jumped up on Rose’s lap and snuggled up to her, giving her good paw a few licks of consolation.
‘I’m not stupid,’ she said in a little quiet voice as Sarah came back into the room. ‘I only ran into the road because I loved Sooty.’
‘Grace knows that really,’ Sarah told her, joining us on the sofa and putting an arm round Rose. ‘She was just being spiteful. She probably resents the extra attention Rose has had,’ she added quietly to Martin, who sighed and nodded.
When Rose had stopped crying, I jumped down and ran upstairs to see Grace. She was lying on her bed, looking like she’d cried even harder than Rose. Her face was swollen and blotchy and her eyes were all red.
‘Oh, Ollie!’ she said, picking me up and cuddling me. ‘I wish I hadn’t been so horrible. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Am I turning into a horrible person?’
‘No!’ I mewed at her in Cat. I didn’t really know what else to say.
‘I do love Rose, and I actually think she was really, really brave to try to save Sooty,’ she said, her eyes starting to fill up with tears again. ‘She was just getting over it all, wasn’t she, and now I’ve gone and upset her all over again. How can I make it up to her?’
I didn’t have any answers. I just purred against her neck to show I understood.
She jumped up suddenly, wiping her eyes, opened the drawer in her bedside table and pulled out a little pink purse, which she unzipped and tipped upside down on the bed. Lots of brown coins, a few silver ones and one of those pieces of paper they call five pound notes fell out, and she started counting it all up.
‘I know what I’ll do,’ she said, sounding excited again. ‘I’ll use all my money to buy Rose a new cat of her own, to keep. She can call it Sooty again. That’ll make her happy, won’t it, Ollie?’
I nearly fell off the bed. A new cat? Another Sooty, a permanent member of the family, coming to live in my foster home? I’m sorry to say, Charlie, the selfishness problem must have been catching that day, because all I could think was What about me?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For a few days, things were more settled in Sarah and Martin’s house. But I was so worried about the suggestion of a new cat, I decided I’d better try harder than ever to make myself irreplaceable. Since being told off for leaving the headless sparrow in the lounge, I’d tried leaving a few gifts of mice and birds by the back door, but Sarah hadn’t seemed particularly thrilled. So this time, I spent a while stalking the stupid
pigeons who dominated the bird feeder a few gardens down the road. They’re not particularly hard to catch, but they’re big and cumbersome to carry off. I chose the biggest, plumpest one, and just to make sure it was properly appreciated, left it on the front doorstep.
Sarah was indoors, working in the study. I went in to keep her company, jumping up on the desk next to her computer.
‘Hello, Ollie,’ she said, but she seemed to find the screen of the computer more interesting than me. I tried to lie across the part where she tapped out writing – it was nice and warm from her hands – but she sighed and lifted me off. I really didn’t feel very welcome. Was she getting bored with me? I toyed for a few minutes with a funny-shaped thing lying next to the computer, but then she reached for it herself and sighed again.
‘Ollie, please don’t play with the mouse,’ she said, sounding tired and fed up.
Mouse? I stared at it. If it was a mouse, it had been dead for a long time, that was for sure.
‘I’m very busy,’ she said. ‘This is a tricky piece of work and I need to concentrate. I think you’d better get down.’
And she lifted me off the desk, putting me down quite firmly on the floor. I was mortified. She must be getting bored with me! Was I going to be expelled from the family even sooner than I’d feared? I slunk off to my bed in the kitchen and curled up tight, burying my head under my tail, and consoled myself with a little nap.
When I woke up, there was pandemonium in the house. The children were home from school, they were both shrieking at the tops of their voices and Sarah was trying to calm them down.
‘It’s gross,’ Grace was shouting. ‘I nearly trod on it.’
‘Its eyes were staring at me,’ Rose cried. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘Why does Ollie do it?’ Grace said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t. Sooty never did it, did he, Mummy?’
I sat up in bed, horrified. What had I done wrong? I tried my best to please them, and I just got compared unfavourably with Saint Sooty. How could I compete with a ghost?
‘Sooty did do it,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘You don’t remember, because you were too little when he was a young cat. He got too old to hunt in the end. All cats like to hunt – it’s normal. I agree, it’s not very pleasant for us, but it’s part of living with cats, and there’s no point making all this fuss. I’ll clear it up. Now, calm down, and go and get changed out of your uniforms.’
I stayed in the kitchen, sulking, feeling unappreciated. A little while later, both girls came in to talk to me.
‘I know you can’t help it, Ollie,’ Grace said very seriously, squatting down to stroke my head. ‘But really, it isn’t very nice.’
‘Next time, Ollie, leave it somewhere else,’ said Rose. ‘A long way away.’
‘Yes, as far away as possible,’ Grace said, and they both giggled.
At least they didn’t seem cross with me anymore. I sighed. Humans could be so hard to understand at times.
* * *
The next day, Sarah took Rose to the hospital and they both came home with big smiles on their faces.
‘Look, Ollie!’ she shouted, running into the room, waving both paws at me. ‘My plaster’s off! I can cuddle you properly now. Can we do the decorations now, Mummy?’
‘Yes, when Grace gets home from school,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t want any more arguments about it.’
There was a much better atmosphere in the room this time, with both girls happy and excited about climbing on a chair to put the sparkly stuff and the shiny baubles on the tree.
‘You can put the angel on the top, Rose,’ Grace said. She’d been particularly kind to her sister since the trouble at the weekend. ‘I’ll hold the chair steady for you. Be careful you don’t fall.’
Nothing more was being said about a new cat. But as I’m sure you can imagine, I had my ears up constantly, listening for any talk about one replacing me. It had brought home to me how precarious my position was, as a foster cat in the family. Thank goodness I’d got a back-up with Nicky and Daniel next door, even though I suspected they might prefer their new baby to me when it arrived. Oh, how I wished I could be back in my pub, where I had George all to myself and didn’t have to compete with anyone else.
* * *
I tried to console myself with the new friends I’d made at the Big House. It was so nice to see Caroline looking so happy when I arrived, and in fact the next time when Laura let me in and gave me her usual little cuddle before putting me on Caroline’s lap, she said:
‘You’re doing Caroline so much good, you know, Oliver. You’ve really cheered her up since you’ve been coming here. I can’t see how Julian could possibly object.’
I guessed Julian must be Caroline’s father. It was good to hear that he couldn’t object to me. I decided now that he couldn’t be the same person as the angry man with the stick that Tabby had gone on about. I’d still never seen any sign of the father, and I guess I was getting a little bit complacent. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder when I ran up the driveway and meowed at the glass doors. I should have known it was too good to be true.
* * *
It happened on another Saturday, the one after the argument about the Christmas tree. Looking back, I suppose until then I hadn’t been going to the Big House at weekends, because there was always so much more going on at my two foster homes. Daniel and Nicky were at home, Martin and the children were around, and sometimes the Brownie Foxes turned up to do their important study of my behaviour. Having so many people to play with, I didn’t get bored and lonely like I sometimes did during the week. But now I’d started seeing Caroline every day, and because Laura had told me I was doing her good, I didn’t want to miss out any days anymore.
I bounded down the drive as usual and called out to Laura from my normal place at the glass doors. For a minute I thought nobody was there. I put my ear against the glass and heard Caroline calling out to Laura: ‘Oliver’s here!’ She sounded a bit startled.
‘Oh!’ Laura had rushed back into the room and was staring at me in surprise. ‘He’s never come at the weekend before. We’d better not let him in,’ she said, looking back over her shoulder. ‘It would have to be one of the Saturdays that your dad works from home.’
‘Oh, please, Laura!’ Caroline said.
‘Yes, please, Laura!’ I meowed in Cat. It was cold outside.
‘Just for a little while? I can keep him under my blanket,’ Caroline was pleading. ‘Daddy’s in his study. He’ll be in there all morning, won’t he?’
‘Well…’ Laura sighed, looked back through the door of the room again, then quietly closed it behind her. ‘All right, then, but only for a few minutes. If he makes any noise, he’ll have to go straight out again.’
She opened the glass door for me and I dashed over to the sofa and jumped up next to Caroline. She giggled and pulled me onto her lap, putting the blanket right over me.
‘No noise, Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve got to be a very quiet, very secret cat today.’
I quite liked the idea of being a secret cat. It wasn’t easy to keep from purring, though, snuggled up like that under the warm blanket with Caroline giving me a nice stroke.
‘Can we have the TV on?’ she asked Laura. ‘Then if Oliver does start meowing, Daddy won’t hear.’
‘OK.’ Laura smiled at her. ‘Just this once.’ I heard the television being turned on and for a while, I settled down and closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth and comfort and letting Caroline’s stroking soothe away my worries about being displaced by a new Sooty.
‘I’m just going to the bathroom, Caroline,’ I heard Laura say after quite a while. ‘And when I come back, Oliver’s going to have to go. No fuss, please, otherwise he’ll have to stop coming altogether.’
‘OK,’ Caroline said reluctantly. ‘Sorry, Oliver,’ she whispered to me as the door closed quietly behind Laura. ‘She’s worried about my dad, you see. Maybe I should get brave enough to tell him about you, but since I’ve been ill he tends to get u
pset about things.’
There was the sound of the door opening again. Laura coming back, I supposed. I made the fatal mistake of getting up and having a stretch, before turning round to settle myself back down again. To my surprise, Caroline pushed me down quite hard under the blanket, giving a little gasp.
‘Daddy!’
I froze. I had a horrible feeling my tail was half out of the blanket. A frightened little mew escaped from my lips.
‘What the hell?’ came this loud, cross voice. Footsteps thumped across the floor. The blanket was lifted off us, and a huge paw grabbed me round the back of my neck. I was suddenly reminded so horrifyingly of being grabbed in the same way by that very first scary man in my life, when I was only a tiny kitten, that I screeched in terror and dug my claws into the skin of the man’s other paw.
‘Ouch! Let go, you horrible, vicious thing.’ He flung me off himself and I landed, shaking with fear, on the floor near the glass door.
‘Let me out! Let me out!’ I cried out to Caroline in Cat, but even if she could have understood me, she was too busy crying herself.
‘Daddy, you didn’t have to do that. You’ve hurt him.’
‘I’ll hurt him a lot more if I ever see him in this house again. What on earth was Laura thinking of, letting you have an animal in here with you? LAURA!’ he shouted – and she came running in, red in the face and trembling almost as much as I was.
‘I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t think it’d do any harm – he’s a nice clean little cat, he has a collar on…’
‘I wouldn’t care if he had a dinner jacket on. You know perfectly well I do not allow animals in my house, and especially not on my daughter’s sickbed.’
‘It’s not a sickbed, Daddy, it’s a sofa. I’m not as sick as I was, I’m getting better,’ Caroline cried.
‘You’re still susceptible to germs, you know that. Your immunity is low. You’re not supposed to mix with people, never mind dirty, flea-ridden animals.’
Flea-ridden? If I hadn’t been in a state of such abject terror, I’d have jumped up and clawed him again for being so rude.
Oliver the Cat Who Saved Christmas Page 11