I awoke on Monday morning to a queasy feeling of dread. I had spent the night at the end of Debbie’s bed, flitting between feelings of self-pity at the unfairness of having to share my home with a rival feline, and rage at everybody else’s apparent inability to recognize my distress. In a few hours’ time Debbie would open the café and I would have to bear witness to Ming’s moment of glory, as she was unveiled to the public. Of course I could avoid the café altogether and spend the day outdoors but, after the previous day’s trauma, I worried that to absent myself completely might have even worse consequences. Not only was there a high likelihood that Ming would lay claim to the window cushion again, but people might assume she had taken my place as the café’s figurehead. So, after eating a breakfast for which I had very little appetite, I crept downstairs.
Ming was on her platform, surveying the room regally while Debbie prepared to open the café.
‘We’ll need to keep a close eye on Ming today,’ Debbie told Linda, emptying a bag of coins into the till drawer. ‘I don’t know how she’ll react to the customers.’
I padded past the cat tree with my eyes averted from the platform, as had become habitual for me since Ming had taken possession of it.
‘If she looks like she’s distressed, we’ll need to take her upstairs,’ Debbie continued, ‘and that might mean putting Beau in his carrier. We don’t want her being frightened by him, either.’
‘Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ replied Linda airily, avoiding Debbie’s gaze as she pulled her Molly’s apron over her head. I pictured Beau’s bulging carrier in the living-room alcove and knew there was no way he could use it, unless Linda removed all her shopping first. Linda walked up to the cat tree and smiled approvingly at Ming. ‘Besides, I have a feeling the customers are going to love her.’
One by one the kittens appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Purdy headed straight for the cat flap while the others stalked across the floor, rubbing their whiskers against the chair legs or batting catnip toys across the flagstones, before taking up their usual positions around the room. Even the normally timid Maisie seemed unfazed and jumped happily into the domed bed directly underneath Ming’s platform.
Just as Linda had predicted, the first customers gravitated immediately to the cat tree for a closer look at Ming. A grinning Linda shepherded them to a nearby table, explaining that Ming was the ‘new addition to the Molly’s family’. The customers, an elderly couple whom I recognized as regular visitors, normally requested a table near the window so that they could sit near me. On this occasion, however, they could barely take their eyes off Ming, even to look at their menus. ‘What a gorgeous cat!’ one exclaimed. ‘Exquisite,’ the other agreed.
I observed Ming from the windowsill, looking – hoping – to see signs of distress or, at the very least, mild displeasure at the increasing number of people filling the room. A party of day-trippers arrived just before lunchtime, chatting loudly and laden with shopping. As Linda bustled around them, scraping chairs and tables together across the stone floor, I fixed my eyes on Ming; surely this would disturb her equilibrium? But she continued to sit calmly on her platform with her eyes closed and one forepaw extended. She delicately licked the inside of her long, slender leg, unruffled by the commotion going on around her.
The day wore on, and I began to feel as if I were invisible on my cushion in the window. The buzz of conversation and the click of cutlery on plates were punctuated by coos of delight across the room whenever Ming moved. Linda stood earnestly beside the table of each new customer, revelling in telling them all about Ming. I noticed how, over the course of the day, she began to embellish details of the story, until Ming eventually became the victim of an abusive home, whom Linda had personally rescued, at great risk both to herself and to Ming. The customers lapped it up, oohing and aahing at the different beats of Linda’s story.
When, at the height of the lunchtime rush, Ming yawned, stretched and jumped lightly down from her platform, an unnatural hush fell across the café. The customers all paused mid-conversation, to watch her sashay across the room. ‘So elegant!’ one lady gasped, as she sauntered past their table. Seething, I turned my back on them to stare furiously out of the window.
The week continued as it had started. There was something masochistic about my determination to remain in the café, largely ignored, while Ming was lavished with praise and attention. I took some sort of perverse satisfaction from it, as if each compliment paid to Ming confirmed my conviction that she was deliberately trying to upstage me. The kittens, however, continued to go about their daily routine as though nothing had changed, playing with their toys, napping or, in Eddie’s case, scrounging for titbits at people’s feet. Purdy seemed to be spending more time outdoors than usual, but she had always been more adventurous than her siblings, so this could hardly be considered cause for alarm. It was almost as if the kittens hadn’t noticed the change in the café’s atmosphere, or the way we had been relegated to the status of supporting artists to Ming’s show-stopping diva.
My resentment about the way my kittens had accepted a rival female into the colony continued to rankle, but feline pride made me want to hide my hurt feelings from them. Though I kept my anger to myself, I was aware that my behaviour towards the kittens began to change. It was a subtle shift, almost imperceptible at first, but there was less casual intimacy of the sort that would have come naturally to me in the past. If I saw one of the kittens trying to wash a hard-to-reach spot between the shoulder blades, I no longer padded over to lick it for them; and if we caught each other’s eyes across the café, I no longer instinctively blinked affectionately. I had no conscious desire to punish them, and in my more self-pitying moments I told myself peevishly that, if they had noticed the change in my manner, they probably didn’t care anyway.
As the week wore on, my frustration at the kittens’ blasé attitude to our new living arrangements was wearing me down, and my efforts to maintain any semblance of composure were beginning to exhaust me. So when, on Friday morning, Eddie jumped onto the window cushion next to me, something gave way inside me.
Before Ming’s arrival, I would never have begrudged sharing my cushion with Eddie; when the kittens were tiny they had all done so, burrowing deep into my fur for warmth and comfort. Over time they had outgrown the practice, with the exception of Eddie, who seemed reluctant to abandon the physical closeness of our bond. But, on this occasion, Eddie’s proximity felt like an intimacy too far. When he sprang nimbly onto the cushion beside me, my heart did not swell with tenderness; instead, I felt a flash of rage at the invasion of my personal space. I hissed at him – a vicious, heartfelt hiss, which somehow gave vent to all the pent-up anger I had been feeling since Ming first set foot in the café.
Eddie’s body retracted in shock and he cowered, flattening his ears against his bowed head. I instantly regretted my response. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .’ I stuttered, horrified by his reaction. But before I had a chance to explain, Eddie had jumped down from the windowsill with a look of abject mortification. Shame and remorse flooded through me as I watched him slink across the floor with his tail between his legs; the shame made worse by the realization that the other kittens were watching and had no doubt witnessed what I had done.
I turned to face the window, feeling utterly wretched. Behind me I heard Linda talking to a customer, recounting what had now become an epic tale of Ming’s rescue. When she had finally finished speaking and was jotting down the order on her notepad, the customer remarked, ‘Molly ’n’ Ming – now that’s got a ring to it,’ and Linda cackled in agreement, ‘You’re so right; it does!’