I sat down next to the iron steps and Jasper came to sit beside me. ‘Sleep well?’ I asked.
‘Not so great,’ he answered, with a slight narrowing of his amber eyes. We contemplated the skyline in silence for a few moments: the rising sun had broken through the cloud, and the light mist that had swathed the nearby church spire was beginning to melt away. ‘Who is she?’ he asked finally, in a voice heavy with disdain.
‘Her name’s Linda – she’s Debbie’s sister.’
Jasper looked pensive. ‘And is she . . . are they . . . staying long?’ he asked.
I realized that, amidst the drama of the previous evening, Linda had not specified how long she planned to stay. ‘Just a few days, I think,’ I answered vaguely, with more hope than conviction.
‘Hmm,’ Jasper replied, returning his thoughtful gaze to the sky.
Having lived on the streets all his life, Jasper had an ambivalent attitude towards the cat café, at best. It had been a mark of his devotion to me, and his dedication as a father, that he had compromised his street-cat independence to spend time with us indoors, albeit on his own terms. He consistently avoided the café during opening hours, considering the idea of being ‘on show’ to customers demeaning; but, after closing time, he would slip through the cat flap, to enjoy some of the benefits of our lifestyle. I sometimes teased him about his double standards, pointing out that his proud assertion that he would ‘always be an alley-cat’ was not entirely credible when he spent his evenings sprawled semi-conscious on the café’s flagstones in front of the dying embers of the stove. I suspected, however, that Jasper would draw the line at sharing his indoor territory with a highly strung stranger and a lunatic lapdog.
The town was beginning to wake up around us; somewhere in the distance a dustbin lorry rumbled its stop–start progress around the streets, while the rooks and magpies in the adjacent churchyard cawed incessantly, starting the day in dispute, as always. Behind me, I detected movement in the flat above the café: the swoop of a venetian blind being raised and the patter of water from the shower. I could picture the scene inside: Debbie hurrying from the steaming bathroom into the kitchen to fill our food bowls, before shouting up the stairs to the attic, to wake Sophie for college. My stomach began to growl with hunger.
‘Are you coming in for breakfast?’ I asked Jasper, knowing full well what his answer would be.
His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘Not today,’ he replied dismissively, but when his eyes caught mine, I saw a trace of a smile. ‘If he stays much longer that dog will need putting in his place,’ he commented wryly.
‘Don’t worry, Purdy’s already done it,’ I said.
Jasper blinked his approval and puffed out his chest. ‘Good for her,’ he commented. Then he stood up, stretched and slunk away towards the row of conifers at the end of the passage.
Inside, the kittens had vanished from the café. I crept cautiously up the stairs, my ears alert for indications of Beau’s whereabouts. The living-room door was still closed, but I could hear Debbie in the kitchen, talking happily to the kittens. ‘There you go, Purdy; now, be nice, make room for Maisie. Bella and Abby, you can share the pink dish – there’s plenty for both of you. Don’t worry, Eddie, I haven’t forgotten about you, aren’t you a patient boy?’
Her loving chatter made my heart swell with gratitude; she knew my kittens almost as well as I knew them myself, and she always made sure they each received their fair share of food and attention.
I paused in the doorway to watch as they ate greedily from the dishes on the kitchen floor. With their heads lowered, the four tabby sisters looked so similar that they were almost indistinguishable, although Maisie’s petite frame marked her out from the others. Eddie was at the far end of the line, noticeably taller and bulkier than his sisters, his black-and-white colouring a sleeker, glossier version of his father’s.
Debbie stood at the worktop, waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Morning, Molls, I was wondering where you’d got to.’ She smiled as I edged in alongside Purdy.
I had just taken my first mouthful when there was a scuffling sound across the hall, and Linda squeezed out of the living room, holding the door close to her body to prevent Beau from escaping. He yapped and scrabbled in protest as she pulled the door shut behind her.
‘Cuppa?’ Debbie asked.
‘Oh, yes, please,’ Linda answered, sidling into the kitchen to lean against the fridge. In her dressing gown, with mussed-up hair and eyes puffy with sleep, she was hardly recognizable as the immaculately presented woman I had met the day before.
At that moment Sophie raced noisily downstairs from her bedroom and steadied herself on the kitchen doorframe to pull on her trainers.
‘You having breakfast, Soph?’ Debbie asked.
Sophie glanced at her watch, considering whether she had time, and perhaps also whether she could face the contortions required to extract a bowl of cereal; the kitchen was compact at the best of times, let alone when it contained two adults and six cats. ‘Er, actually, don’t worry, Mum, I’ll get something at the canteen,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got to get my art portfolio—’
Before Debbie or Linda could stop her, Sophie had crossed the hall and flung open the living-room door. Beau instantly darted out into the hallway, his feathery eyebrows twitching, his pink tongue hanging out. He looked as if he could hardly believe his luck at finding so many cats directly in his eye-line.
Experience had taught me that, when it came to dogs, attack was the best form of defence. As Beau hurtled across the hall, I braced myself for a fight: my hackles rose, my ears flattened and I growled in warning.
But before he reached me, Linda had lunged out of the kitchen and swooped down to lift Beau off the ground. Thwarted and humiliated, Beau tried to break free, but Linda kept a tight hold on him, cradling him in her arms as if he were an angry baby who needed soothing. Realizing that the dog would not settle with several cats in such tantalizingly close proximity, she dropped him back into the living room and closed the door on him.
‘Sorry, I’d forgotten he was in there,’ Sophie said sheepishly, before grabbing her things and thundering downstairs and out through the café.
Debbie sighed and stirred two mugs of tea. ‘He’s a feisty little thing, isn’t he?’ she observed, over the sound of Beau’s determined scraping at the living-room door.
‘It’s the breed,’ Linda concurred. ‘He’s a Lhasa Apso – they’re very territorial. They were used to guard Buddhist monasteries in Tibet.’
Debbie raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, right,’ she replied in a flat voice. ‘Well, he’s not in Tibet now, he’s in the Cotswolds. In a cat café.’ She handed Linda a steaming mug of tea. ‘I mean . . . the clue’s in the title, really.’ She took a sip and fixed her sister with a look over the rim of her cup.
‘I know, Debbie – sorry,’ Linda replied. ‘I think he’s just a bit traumatized by the whole experience. I mean, all the arguing and shouting at home, it was so awful . . .’ Her cheeks flushed with colour and I could see that tears were imminent. I watched as Debbie put her mug back on the worktop and touched her sister’s arm.
‘Sorry, Lind, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Linda’s head dropped and she covered her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown, her shoulders starting to shake.