Debbie took a moment to compose herself. ‘First of all,’ she began in a reasonable voice, ‘I am not a pushover when it comes to cats. Or when it comes to anything else, for that matter. And secondly,’ Debbie’s voice was getting louder as she struggled to be heard over Jo’s escalating laughter, ‘this isn’t just about me and what I want. I’ve got the welfare of the cats to consider and THEY COME FIRST!’ Debbie was practically shouting, and her face was a picture of hurt indignation. She sat back in her chair and took a slug of wine.
Jo, sensing she had hurt her friend’s feelings, backed down. ‘Of course they do, Debs,’ she said in a conciliatory voice. ‘I know that. I was only teasing.’
My eyes flicked between the two of them, unsure whether I should feel reassured or alarmed by their exchange. Debbie’s reaction had suggested that, like me, she saw Ming’s arrival as an unwelcome imposition; but Jo was right about Debbie’s proclivity towards taking in homeless cats. It was, after all, this very instinct that had led to her taking me in. And later, of course, she had done the same for my kittens. And for Jasper. I exhaled slowly through my nose. Perhaps Jo had a point: history showed that, when it came to cats in need of a home, Debbie found it difficult to say no. It had never occurred to me previously to consider this a shortcoming in her, but then I had never before found myself facing the prospect of living with an aloof Siamese.
Debbie and Jo continued to eat in silence for a few minutes, in unspoken agreement that they should let the subject of Ming drop.
Eventually Debbie put down her fork and said warmly, ‘Speaking of pets, how’s Bernard?’ Bernard was Jo’s dog, an ageing, arthritic black Labrador who spent his days snoozing by her feet in the shop.
Jo looked wistful and her eyes began to redden. ‘Oh, he’s hanging on in there,’ she replied, trying to muster a smile. ‘We’ve been back to the vet again this week. His hips are really playing up, and he’s got a couple of worrying growths. They’re going to do tests.’
Jo’s eyes had turned glassy, and Debbie leant closer. ‘Oh, Jo,’ she said, giving her friend’s arm an encouraging squeeze. ‘He’ll be okay.’
‘I hope so,’ Jo answered shakily.
Some time later, when Jo had gone home and Debbie had trudged upstairs to bed, the swoosh of the cat flap jerked me out of a doze. I looked drowsily across to see Jasper on the doormat, silhouetted in the semi-darkness. Still smarting from our encounter in the churchyard, I watched through half-open eyes as he moved stealthily across the room and jumped noiselessly up onto a table next to the cat tree. For several moments he stared at Ming’s motionless, sleeping form on the platform. Then, perhaps sensing my gaze, he turned and glanced towards the window. I closed my eyes to feign sleep and, when I looked again, Jasper was grooming himself on the flagstones in front of the stove. I continued to watch him until he had completed his wash and I was quite certain he had gone to sleep.
9
When I awoke the following morning, Jasper had gone from the café, but Ming remained on the platform. She was sitting serenely with her eyes closed, her paws aligned and her tail neatly curled around the base of her body. Feeling fresh stirrings of envy in the pit of my stomach, I averted my eyes from her elegant profile, jumped down from the window and made my way outside.
The tip of my tail flicked indecisively as I stood on the doorstep considering my options. I knew I should seek out Jasper and make amends for snapping at him, but something about the way he had looked at Ming as she slept riled me, and I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for my testiness just yet. Instead, I took a certain peevish satisfaction in setting off in the opposite direction from the alleyway, picking out a meandering route around the town’s deserted back streets, which would give me time to ruminate in private on my grievances.
The raw sense of injustice I felt at Ming’s arrival had brought fresh vigour to my simmering resentment towards Linda and Beau. I paced the streets for a good couple of hours dwelling on my woes before I felt ready to return to the café. When I finally made my way upstairs to the flat, I rounded the top step to see Debbie wrestling with the contents of the hallway cupboard. The ironing board had toppled out, along with the box of Christmas decorations, and Debbie appeared to be fighting with the hose of the vacuum cleaner. When she caught sight of me around the cupboard door, however, she smiled.
‘Shall we go and see Margery, Molls?’ she asked, finally yanking the cat carrier free. I let out an involuntary purr of delight, as the irritability that I had been carrying was suddenly lifted from my shoulders.
Before I had come to Stourton, my owner had been an elderly lady called Margery. In her devoted care, I had grown up with the unassailable confidence that comes from being an adored only pet. The cosy bungalow we shared had been my entire world, and it never occurred to me that there might be more to life than hunting in Margery’s compact, tidy garden, or napping on the sofa while she watched television programmes about antiques.
As I grew older, however, there were occasions when Margery’s behaviour began to unsettle me. They were infrequent at first: a sporadic forgetfulness, or a vagueness about the task in hand. But as time went on, her confused episodes became more frequent until, eventually, the decision was made by her son, David, that Margery could no longer live independently. Her bungalow – our home – was sold, Margery moved to a care home, and I was left distraught and alone.
Through a combination of perseverance and luck, I had been offered a second chance at happiness with Debbie. Nobody could ever replace Margery but, in time, I had accepted that, for me, she would exist only in my memories. And so, when Margery had appeared out of the blue in the café one afternoon, on an outing from her care home, it felt as though a part of me that had died had somehow come back to life.
After that blissful reunion, Margery had returned to the café every few weeks with her carer, invariably bringing a small bag of cat treats tucked inside her handbag, which she scattered onto the flagstones for the kittens, while I purred blissfully on her lap. When Margery’s increasing frailty meant she was no longer able to come and see us, Debbie had persuaded the carer to let us visit her in the care home instead.
On the back seat of Debbie’s car, I listened to the thrum of the engine and watched the clouds scudding past the front windscreen. Excited as I was about seeing Margery, I could not keep my thoughts from returning to Ming. Was that simply an over-developed territorial instinct, or was I right to be suspicious of her? Debbie’s insistence that the cats’ welfare was her main priority gave me hope: if she knew I was unhappy, surely she would have no choice but to rehome Ming? And Debbie knew me well enough to recognize my horror at having to share my home with a pointy-faced, sneering Siamese – didn’t she?
The sun had broken through the clouds by the time Debbie pulled up outside the care home, but there was a distinctly autumnal chill in the air as we made our way across the car park. In contrast to the freshness outside, the atmosphere inside the care home felt overheated and stuffy, and the air was pervaded by the pungent smell of boiled vegetables. Debbie carried me through the vast lounge in which a television played loudly, but was largely ignored by the residents, who were seated in high-backed wing chairs, chatting to visitors or dozing with crossword puzzles on their laps.