I averted my eyes in disgust and began to wash.
It was not possible to imagine an owner more different from Margery. Everything about Margery had been gentle, careful and quiet. Rob was uncouth, noisy and messy. I thought longingly of the afternoons spent curled up on Margery’s sofa watching television programmes about antiques, or gentle quiz shows. Try as I might, I could not envisage a time when I would be curled up on Rob’s lap, happily watching his ear-splitting racing cars.
And then, of course, there were the dogs.
As I had been washing, one of the small rat-like dogs had wandered into the room and, noticing movement on top of the bookcase, had started to bark demonically at me. Soon rat-dog number two had run in to see what all the fuss was about, followed by the muscular square-faced dog. It didn’t take long for them to spot me in my lofty hideout and soon they were all barking, their cacophonous racket drowning out the droning engines onscreen.
‘Oi, you three, that’s enough!’
Roused into action, Rob spun round, grappling for something to hurl at the dogs. He grabbed a magazine and flung it in their general direction, but as it flew through the air the magazine clipped the drink can balanced on the sofa’s arm. The can rocked from side to side before toppling over the side of the sofa, spraying its contents across the carpet and over the dogs. Rob roared an expletive as he dived over the side of the sofa to retrieve the can from the floor. Doing his best to siphon the still-fizzing contents into his mouth, he sat back down on the sofa, upending the bowl of crisps, which he had left in the middle of his seat.
I paused mid-wash and allowed a wry smile to spread across my lips.
Rob growled and made a cursory attempt to sweep the loose crisps from the sofa cushions back into the bowl, before storming out of the room to fetch a cloth. The dogs, sensing his anger, beat a hasty retreat into another room.
In the days that followed, I began, reluctantly, to adjust to life in Rob’s house. I studied the dogs’ behaviour, observing when they went for their walks and when they slept, and tailored my own sleeping pattern so that our waking hours coincided as little as possible. I learnt what triggered their rage: the little rat-like dogs went into a barking frenzy whenever the doorbell rang, whereas the big dog was driven to the point of apoplexy if anyone went near his food bowl while he was eating.
Stan, the square-faced dog, was without a doubt an intimidating beast, but thankfully he was not the cleverest of animals. If he saw me walking anywhere in the vicinity of his food bowl he would growl ominously, but he was easily confused by my feline agility, and my habit of leaping upwards and disappearing out of sight constantly left him baffled.
It was Chas and Dave, the little dogs, that I soon realized posed more of a problem for me. I had considered them a single entity, as they always did everything together. In actual fact, I couldn’t tell them apart. They egged each other on in their malice towards me. Their favourite sport was to chase me into a corner of the house from which it was impossible to escape, and then bark maniacally so that my hair stood on end and my tail had fluffed out to double its usual size. I would hiss and spit in retaliation, and we would remain in this three-way stand-off until a momentary lapse in the dogs’ concentration afforded me a split-second chance to dash to safety, streaking past them and up onto higher ground, from where I would eye them contemptuously.
Not surprisingly, I began to spend more time outside than I had ever done at Margery’s. Up until now I’d always considered myself more an indoor cat; I had generally felt nervous stepping outside the quiet safety of Margery’s house. But Rob’s house did not feel quiet or safe to me, so in desperation I began to take refuge in the garden.
At first I would sit on the fence post, too nervous to venture beyond my immediate vicinity. Looking down the row of back gardens, I could see that I was surrounded on all sides by houses exactly like Rob’s. Each had a neat rectangle of lawn at the back, which was edged by fencing. Some lawns were pristine and trimmed, others were sparse and patchy with trampolines or goalposts in the middle of them. Overall the street had a busier, noisier feel to it than Margery’s cul-de-sac. There were more children, more dogs and the constant noise of music, or of balls being kicked against walls.
One of Rob’s neighbours had an elderly tomcat, who spent the days sunning himself on the patio of his back garden. He would eye me suspiciously if I strayed into his territory. I would chirrup a friendly ‘good morning’ to him, but he never did any more than harrumph in reply. Further down the street there was a pair of young cats, not long out of kittenhood. Just watching them tearing up and down trees or flinging themselves at every bird that landed in their garden left me feeling exhausted.
The cat who most intrigued me was a small black cat with lively green eyes, who I often saw trotting past the front of Rob’s house. I couldn’t work out where she lived, as she always seemed to be coming and going from different houses, but she had a happy air and confident demeanour, which I envied. She sometimes noticed me watching her, but always seemed so focused on whatever she was doing that I never felt confident enough to stop her and talk.
In the early hours of the morning when everyone else was asleep, I would reflect on my new life, and on the life I had lost. I berated myself for not appreciating how lucky I had been when I lived with Margery. If I had known then what I knew now, perhaps I would have done things differently. Maybe I could have done more to help Margery and to prevent the calamity that was to befall us both. Was my natural complacency to blame? If I had been a better cat, perhaps none of this would have happened. Whether or not I was right to blame myself, I had to accept the reality of my new life: it was simply an existence, a succession of daily obstacles to be overcome. There was no love or affection in my life any more, for Rob took very little interest in me and the feeling was mutual.
The thought did cross my mind that there was nothing stopping me from leaving, but where would I go? Life with Rob and the dogs had very little to recommend it, but I did at least have food and shelter. What was the alternative? I was not yet ready to take my chances and find out.
6
As the days turned to weeks, Chas and Dave continued to bait me at every opportunity, and after a while I accepted that their high-pitched yapping was a constant background accompaniment to my life. Rob, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten that I existed. When he remembered he would put a bowl of dry food down for me, and would shout at the dogs if he saw them lunge at me, but other than that he barely interacted with me at all.
It would be an exaggeration to say that I had settled into my new home, but as time went on there was a certain familiarity to the routine of it. I had stopped thinking about Margery so much, and no longer lulled myself to sleep by remembering her lavender scent and imagining the feel of her hand stroking my fur. I tried my hardest to live in the present, and neither to dwell on the past nor worry about the future. I faced each day as its own challenge, and hoped that I would make it to night-time with minimal aggravation from the dogs. Perhaps life would have carried on like that, and I might still be there now, if it hadn’t been for Stan and the dog biscuit.