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AVON
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Rachel Wells 2014
Cover image © Shutterstock 2014
Cover design © Emma Rogers 2014
Faith Bleasdale, writing as Rachel Wells, asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008101626
Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008101619
Version: 2014-09-15
Dedication
To Ginger, my first cat who I took on walks on his lead and let me treat him as if he was a doll. You are long gone but never forgotten.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
About the Book
About the Author
About the Publisher
‘It’s not going to take too long to pack up the house,’ Linda said.
‘Linda, you’re so optimistic; look at all the junk your mother collected,’ Jeremy replied.
‘That’s unfair. She’s got some nice china and you never know, some of it might be worth something.’
I was pretending to be asleep but my ears were pricked up, listening to what was being said as I tried to stop my tail flicking in agitation. I was curled up on Margaret’s favourite chair – or rather, the chair that had been her favourite – watching her daughter and son-in-law discuss what would happen; determining my future. The past few days had been so terrifyingly confusing, especially as I didn’t fully understand what had happened. However, what I did understand as I listened, trying my best not to cry, was that life would never be the same again.
‘You’ll be lucky. Anyway, we should call a house clearance place. Lord knows we don’t want any of her stuff.’ I tried to sneak a look without them noticing. Jeremy was tall, grey haired and bad tempered. I had never really liked him, but the woman, Linda, had always been nice to me.
‘I’d like a chance to keep a few of Mum’s things. I’ll miss her.’ Linda started crying and I yearned to yowl along with her, but I kept quiet.
‘I know, love,’ Jeremy’s voice softened. ‘It’s just that we can’t stay here forever. Now the funeral’s over, we need to think about getting the house on the market and, well, if we get it packed up, we can be off in a few days.’
‘It just seems so final, though. But you’re right, of course.’ She sighed. ‘And what about Alfie?’ I bristled. This was what I was waiting for. What would happen to me?
‘We need to put him in a shelter I suppose.’ I felt my fur stand on end.
‘A shelter? But Mum loved him so much. It seems so cruel to just get rid of him.’ I wished I could voice my agreement with her; it was beyond cruel.
’But you know we can’t take him home. We’ve got two dogs, love. A cat just won’t work for us, you know that.’
I was incensed. It wasn’t that I wanted to go with them, but I absolutely couldn’t go to a shelter.
Shelter. My body shuddered at the word; such an inappropriate name for what we in the cat community thought of as ‘death row’. There might be a few lucky cats who got re-homed, but then who knew what happened to them? Who was to say that the family that re-homed them would treat them well? The cats I knew unanimously agreed that a shelter was a bad place. And we knew full well that for those that weren’t re-homed, the death sentence loomed.
Although I considered myself a handsome cat with a certain kind of charm, there was no way I was going to take that risk.
‘I know you’re right, the dogs would eat him alive. And they’re very good at these shelters these days, so he might be re-homed quickly.’ She paused as if she was still mulling things over. ‘No, it has to be done. I’ll call the shelter in the morning and the house clearance company. Then I guess we can get an estate agent round.’ She sounded more sure of herself and I knew my fate had been sealed unless I did something about it.
‘Now you’re thinking straight. I know this is hard, but Linda, your mum was very old and honestly, it’s not like it was a huge surprise.’
‘That doesn’t make it easy though, does it?’
I put my paws over my ears. My little head was reeling. In the past two weeks I had lost my owner, the only human I’d ever really known. Life had been turned upside down and I was heartbroken, desolate and now, it seemed, homeless. What on earth was a cat like me supposed to do?
I was what was known as a ‘lap cat’. I didn’t feel the need to be out all night hunting, prowling or socialising, when I had a warm lap, food and comfort. I also had company; a family. But then it was all taken away, leaving my cat heart totally broken. For the first time ever I was all alone.
I had lived in this small terraced house with my owner, Margaret, almost my whole life. I also had a sister cat called Agnes, although she was more like an aunt, being so much older than me. When Agnes went to cat heaven, a year ago, I felt a pain that I had never thought possible. It hurt so much that I didn’t think I would ever recover. But I had Margaret, who loved me very much, and we clung together in our grief. We had both adored Agnes and we missed her with every ounce of our beings, united in our suffering.
However, I recently learnt how incredibly cruel life could be. One day, a couple of weeks ago, Margaret didn’t get up from her bed. I had no idea what was wrong or what to do, being a cat, so I lay next to her and yowled as loudly as I could. Luckily, a nurse who came to see Margaret once a week was due, and when I heard the doorbell I reluctantly left Margaret’s side and leapt out of the cat flap.
‘Oh my, what’s wrong?’ the nurse asked, as I wailed for all I was worth. When she pushed the doorbell again, I pawed at her, gently but insistently trying to convey that something was wrong. She used the spare key and found Margaret’s lifeless body. I stayed with Margaret, knowing she was lost to me, as the nurse made some phone calls. After a while, some men came to take her away and I couldn’t stop yowling. They wouldn’t let me go with Margaret, and that was when I realised that my life, as I knew it, was over. Margaret’s family were called and I yowled some more. I yowled myself hoarse.
As Jeremy and Linda continued talking, I quietly jumped off the chair and left the house. I prowled around looking for some of the other cats to ask advice from, but it was pretty much tea time so I struggled to find anyone. However, I knew a nice elderly cat called Mavis who lived down the street, so I went to seek her out. I sat outside her cat flap and miaowed loudly. She knew that Margaret had died; she’d seen her being taken away and had found me shortly afterwards pining after her. She was a maternal cat, a bit like Agnes, and she had taken care of me, letting me yowl until I could yowl no more. She had stayed with me, sharing her food and milk with me, until Linda and Jeremy arrived.
Hearing my call, she came out of the cat flap, and I explained the situation to her.
‘They can’t take you?’ she asked, looking at me with sad eyes.
‘No, they say they have dogs and, well, I don’t want to live with dogs anyway.’ We both shivered at the thought.
‘Who would?’ she said.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I lamented, trying not to cry again. Mavis nestled her body into me. We hadn’t been close until recently, but she was a very caring cat, and I was grateful for her friendship.
‘Alfie, don’t let them take you to the shelter,’ she said. ‘I’d take care of you but I don’t think I can. I’m old and tired now and my owner isn’t much younger than Margaret was. You have to be a brave little cat and find yourself a new family.’ She rubbed her neck into mine affectionately.
‘But how do I do that?’ I asked. I had never felt so lost or scared.
‘I wish I had the answers, but think what you have learnt lately about how fragile life is, and be strong.’
We rubbed noses, and I knew that I had to leave. I went back to Margaret’s house one last time so I could remember it before I left. I wanted a picture to lock in my memory and take on my journey with me. I hoped it might give me strength. I looked at Margaret’s trinkets, her ‘treasures’ she called them. I looked at the pictures on the wall that had been so familiar to me. I looked at the carpet, worn where I had scratched at it when I was too young to know better. This house was me, and I was it. And now I had no idea what was to become of me.
I had little appetite but I forced myself to eat the food that Linda had given me (after all I wasn’t sure when I would get to eat next), and then I took one final, lingering look around the home that had been mine; that had always kept me warm and safe. I thought about the lessons I’d learnt. In my four years in this house I had grasped a lot about love, and about loss. I had once been taken care of, but not any longer. I remembered the time I arrived as a tiny kitten. How Agnes hadn’t liked me and had treated me as a threat. How I had won her round, and how Margaret had always treated us as if we were the most important cats in the world. I thought about how lucky I had been; but now my luck had run out. As I mourned the only life that I had known, I felt instinctively that I had to survive, but I had no idea how. I prepared to take a leap into the unknown.
With my broken heart, and fearing no reasonable alternative, I set out from the only home I’d ever known. I had no idea where I was going, or how I was going to manage, but I knew that relying on myself, and my limited abilities, would be better than relying on a shelter. And I also knew that a cat like me needed to have a home and love. As I crept off into the dark night, my little body shaking with fear, I tried to find a way to be brave. I knew little but I was certain that I didn’t ever want to be alone again. This cat desperately needed to find a lap, or even a number of laps, to sit on. With a sense of purpose, I tried to muster my courage. I hoped, prayed, that it wouldn’t fail me.
I started walking, letting my senses guide me. I wasn’t used to prowling the streets in the dark, unwelcoming night, but I could see and I could hear well and kept telling myself that it would be all right. I tried to hear Margaret and Agnes’ voices as I walked the streets, to drive me on.
The first night was hard – frightening and long. At some point, as the moon shone down, I found a shed at the bottom of someone’s back garden, which was lucky because my legs were hurting and I was exhausted. The door was open, and although it was dusty and full of cobwebs, I was too tired to care. I curled up in a corner on the hard, dirty floor, but somehow I managed to fall fast asleep.
I was awoken during the night by a loud yowl, and a large black cat loomed over me. I jumped into the air in fright. He stared at me angrily, and although my legs were shaking, I tried to stand my ground.
‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed, spitting at me aggressively.
‘I just needed to sleep,’ I replied, trying and failing to sound confident. There was no way I could get past him easily, so, trembling, I stood up and tried to look menacing. The cat grinned, an evil grin, and I nearly buckled. He reached out and swiped my head with his claws. I yelped and felt the pain from where he’d scratched me and I wanted to curl into a ball but knew that I had to get away from this vicious cat. He came at me again, claws glinting, brandished at my face, but luckily I was more agile than him. I launched myself towards the door and ran past him, brushing his wiry fur but managing to get outside. He turned and hissed at me again. I spat back then ran as fast as my little legs would take me. At some point, I stopped and breathlessly looked back to find I was alone. I had had my first taste of danger and I knew that I needed to develop a thicker fur if I was going to make it. I used my paw to smooth my coat and tried to ignore the scratch, which still smarted. I realised that I could be fast when I needed to be, and that was something I could use to get myself out of danger. I yelped some more as I walked on, fear flooding through me, but also driving me. I looked into the night sky, at the stars, and wondered, yet again, if Agnes and Margaret could see me, wherever they were. I hoped so, but I didn’t know. I knew very little.
I was so hungry by the time I felt able to stop again and it was very cold. Used to sitting by Margaret’s fire day after day, this was an alien life to me. I knew that if I needed food I would have to hunt; something I hadn’t had to do very much of in my past and something I wasn’t adept at. I followed my nose and found some mice skulking around the bins outside a big house. Despite my distaste – I usually ate food from a tin, except on special occasions when Margaret gave me fish – I chased one into a corner and went in for the kill. Because I hadn’t been used to hunger like this, it tasted almost delicious to me and it gave me the energy that I needed to continue.
I wandered on through the night until the day began to dawn, trying to remember that I was still me, Alfie, the playful cat, as I chased my tail and practised my bounding. I hunted a fat fly, but then I remembered I needed to conserve my energy; I didn’t know where my next meal would come from or when I’d get it.
Still with no idea where I was heading, I came to a big road and realised I would need to cross it. I wasn’t used to roads and traffic; Margaret had lectured me about not going near roads when I was a kitten. It was noisy and scary as cars and vans zoomed past me. I stood on the pavement, my heart pounding, until I saw a gap. I almost closed my eyes and ran, but managed to steady my shaking legs before I did anything stupid. Fearfully, I put one little paw down onto the road, feeling the rumble of traffic as it grew nearer. A horn blared and as I turned to my left I saw an enormous pair of lights bearing down on me. I bolted, running faster than I ever had in my life, and to my horror I felt something brush my tail. I yelped and leapt as far as I could, landing on the pavement. Heart beating, I turned around and saw a car speed past, knowing I had nearly ended up under it. I wondered if I had used up one of my nine lives – I was pretty sure I had. Eventually I caught my breath, again fear was becoming my driving force, and legs like jelly, I walked for a few minutes away from the road, before I collapsed by someone’s front gate.
After a few minutes, a door opened and a lady came out. She had a dog with her, on a lead. The dog lurched at me, barking wildly, and once again I had to dodge out of harm’s way. The lady yanked the lead and shouted at the dog, who snarled at me. I hissed back.
I was learning very quickly that the world was a dangerous and hostile place, a million miles away from my home, Agnes and Margaret. I began to wonder if a shelter wouldn’t have been safer after all.
However, there was no going back. By now I had no idea where I was. When I first set out, I didn’t know exactly where I was going or what would happen to me but I had my hopes. I thought I would have to travel a bit but in the back of my mind, a kind family, perhaps a sweet little girl, would find me and take me to my new home. As I faced daily terrors, sometimes running for my life, and often feeling like I was ready to collapse from hunger, this was the picture I kept in my head.
By now, I was disorientated, thirsty and tired. The adrenaline that had kept me going was deserting me and being replaced by a heaviness in my limbs.
I found my way to a back alley, where, if I jumped on fences and balanced like a ballerina, I could make my way along, looking down from high enough to feel safe. I tapped into my energy reserves in order to do so. I spotted a garden with a big bowl of water on a post; Margaret had had one in her garden for birds to drink from. I jumped down and managed to climb up it, so desperate for a drink that I would have climbed the highest mountain. I drank greedily, grateful for the immediate relief it gave me. I swiped some birds away; this was my water now. When I had all but emptied it, I returned to the fences and made my way further and further away from my old life.
I spent a thankfully uneventful night. I met some other cats but they ignored me, too concerned with their cat calling and mating to pay much heed.
Most of what I knew about other cats, I had learnt from Agnes, who could hardly move by the time I met her, and the other cats on our street, who were generally friendly, especially Mavis, who had shown me such kindness. I wanted to approach the cats to ask for help, but they looked too busy and I was scared after the black cat incident, so I trotted on carefully.
The next morning, I felt as if I had come quite a distance. Yet again I was hungry, so I decided that I would try to look my most appealing in the hope that some kindly cat would help me out with food. I happened upon a cat who was basking in the sunshine outside a house with a shiny red door. I tentatively approached and purred.
‘Goodness,’ said the cat, who was a rather large lady tabby. ‘You look dreadful.’ I was about to take offence but I remembered that I hadn’t really groomed myself properly since leaving Margaret’s due to the fact I was more concerned with staying alive and out of trouble.
‘I’m homeless and hungry,’ I miaowed.
‘Come on, I’ll share some of my breakfast with you,’ she offered. ‘But then you’ll have to go. My owner will be home soon and won’t like to find a stray in her house.’ It suddenly struck me that I really was a stray. I had no home, no family, no protection. I was among the unfortunate cats that had to fend for themselves; living in fear, always feeling hungry and tired. Never feeling quite their best; never looking anything near their best. I had now joined their ranks and it felt horrible.
I gratefully ate and drank and then went on my way, thanking and bidding farewell to the kindly cat. I didn’t even know her name.
My state of mind reflected my physical being. Grief was such a part of me; causing me physical pain in my heart as I missed Margaret with every fibre of my fur. But I had known love; the love of my owner and my cat sister, and I owed it to them, to their love, to carry on. Now, with food in my tummy, I felt renewed energy as I prepared to do just that.
A few days passed, increasing the distance between my old home and wherever I was heading. I met some kind cats, some angry ones, and many mean dogs that delighted in barking at me but thankfully couldn’t get me. I was kept on my toes, literally, as I danced and jumped and ran away, and I could feel my energy depleting all the time. I learnt to fight back when I needed to; although aggression didn’t come naturally to me, it seemed survival did. As I dodged cars, cats and dogs, I was slowly developing a more streetwise persona.
However I was getting thinner by the day; my once gleaming fur was patchy and I was cold and tired. I barely knew how I was surviving and I had never imagined that life could ever be like this. I was sadder than I had ever been and more lonely than I thought possible. When I slept, I had nightmares, and when I woke, I remembered my predicament and cried. It was a horrible time and sometimes I just wanted it all to be over. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could carry on.
I was learning that the streets could be mean and unforgiving. Physically and mentally it was taking its toll on me and I was beginning to feel so downhearted that it was a struggle to put one paw in front of the other.
The weather reflected my mood. It was cold and raining, and I felt a chill in my bones as my fur never seemed to be fully dry. In the time that I had been homeless – searching for my future, the kind family – the sweet little girl hadn’t materialised. No one had come to my rescue so far and I was beginning to think that no one would. To say I was feeling sorry for myself was an understatement.
Once again, I came to a main road. Roads still filled me with fear; I’d got better at crossing them, but I still felt as if I was taking my life in my paws every time I stepped off a kerb. I had learnt to take my time when crossing, even if I had to wait for a very long time. So I sat, head moving side to side until there was a break in the traffic that made it safe enough. Despite this I still ran as fast as I could and ended up breathless on the other side. Unfortunately, I had been so busy concentrating on getting across the road that I hadn’t noticed the small fat dog standing on the other side of the road. He squared up to me, snarling, showing his sharp teeth and dribbling saliva. Unfortunately there was no lead or owner in sight.
‘Hisssss,’ I replied, trying to deter him, although I was terrified. He was so close to me I could smell him. He barked at me and suddenly lunged forward. Despite my fatigue I leapt back and started running, but I could feel his breath on my tail. Increasing my speed I dared to look back and could see him coming after me, snapping at my heels. For such a fat dog he was quick and I could hear him barking furiously as I ran. I rounded a corner and came upon an alleyway. I swerved and sprinted down it as fast as my legs would take me. After what felt like miles I slowed and hearing only silence I looked back; thankfully the dog was nowhere to be seen. I’d managed to escape.