Little kitten, I don’t suppose you’re old enough to have met a fox yet, so let me explain. If you think dogs are scary, you haven’t seen anything yet. Foxes don’t even have humans in charge of them like dogs are supposed to. They’re one of our worst enemies, almost as dangerous as cars. At least cars normally stay on roads, so we know how to avoid getting attacked by them. But foxes sneak up on you. They get into gardens and even walk down the street, just like we do, and if they see you they’ll chase you with their horrible big smirking mouth open showing their horrible sharp teeth. There’s only one way to get away from them – run up the nearest tree. So although, as you can probably imagine, my fur was standing on end at the sight of this snarling vicious creature staring up at me from the ground below, I knew I was in the best place. He couldn’t get me. I was so relieved about this that I actually started showing off to him a bit, arching my back at him and hissing and spitting – until I nearly overbalanced again and decided no amount of bravado was worth falling out of the tree and landing on top of him.
I sat back down on my branch, stretched out my paws and let my head hang over the edge so that I could keep one eye on the fox. I could tell he was getting annoyed about not being able to climb up and get me. He was pacing up and down at the bottom of the tree, walking round its trunk one way and then back round the other. And the whole time he was staring up at me, with a look on his nasty face like I can feel on my own when George puts a nice plate of food down for me. I shuddered to myself. If I put one paw out of place on that branch, I’d be his dinner. To my relief, after what seemed like hours of this walking round and round, the stupid fox must have got tired. He lay down, curled up like a little puppy dog, and fell asleep. I was safe for a while. The best plan of action would be to have another little nap myself.
It wasn’t until I woke up, and saw him still there at the bottom of the tree, that I realised three things, all at once. One: I’d had no breakfast and was now feeling very, very hungry. Two: I didn’t know which way was home anymore. I’d lost its scent, and there was no more red glow or smoke in the sky to tell me. And three: until that fox moved, I was stuck. If I tried to jump into another tree, he’d just follow me. I couldn’t get back down to the ground until he went away. And he didn’t look like giving up any time soon.
I thought about George, and my chair, and the warmth of the pub, and my food dish being filled up with lovely chicken or fish, and I couldn’t help it, little kitten. Even big grown-up cats cry sometimes. I sat on my branch and mewed pitifully to myself as the fox licked his lips and dribbled revoltingly beneath me. And I wondered if I’d ever see George or my home again.
CHAPTER TWO
It was getting colder, with a dusky sort of look in the sky, by the time I heard a new sound coming towards me. I sat very still, my ears up, listening carefully. It was like music, but different. The fox sat up too, and was looking around him nervously, and then he suddenly loped off, giving me an angry backward glance as he went. The sound was coming closer. I waited, my head on one side, trying to remember where I’d heard it before. And then it came back to me. Whistling! That’s what they called it. Humans did it by putting their mouths into a funny shape and pushing their breath out. It made a kind of tune that wasn’t always very pretty. Finally I heard the footsteps of the whistling human, treading on the dead leaves on the ground. And there he was, just a few trees away from me, walking quite quickly. If I didn’t shout now, he’d be out of earshot – humans don’t have very good hearing, you know. But was he someone I could trust? I wasn’t good at trusting humans, especially strange male ones – but that’s a story for another time. Well, this time I didn’t have a lot of choice, and I made a quick decision. If he was doing that whistling thing, he probably wasn’t in a bad mood. I’d noticed before that they did it when they were cheerful. So I stood up again on my branch and yowled as loudly as my little lungs would let me.
He stopped whistling, stood still just a little way from my tree and stared around him. Just a little further on, the fox was standing looking back too, but I hoped he wouldn’t risk coming back while the man was there. I don’t think foxes like humans. There are stories in cat folklore – and they might be made up, of course – that humans long ago used to ride around on horses, blowing horns and using dogs to hunt foxes. It sounds a bit unlikely, but I wouldn’t put anything past some humans. Anyway, there I was, crying and screaming out to get this man’s attention, and there he stood, looking up, down, and all around him with a puzzled expression on his face. Like I say, they don’t have very good hearing. But luckily, eventually he caught sight of me and it was the way he said, ‘Well, hello, up there’ in such a nice friendly way, that made me relax a bit and think perhaps I’d be able to trust him.
In fact he carried on talking to me as he approached my tree, smiling up at me and calling me a ‘nice puss’ and asking whether I’d got stuck up the tree. Although I was very glad he was being so friendly, I felt a little bit patronised then, as I’m sure you can imagine. Stuck up the tree, indeed! Anyone would think I was an inexperienced little kitten like you. I wanted to tell him that if he’d only use his eyes, he’d notice there was a great big nasty snarling fox hiding in the undergrowth, watching us from a safe distance. Otherwise I’d have got down from that tree on my own, no trouble at all, thank you very much!
But I must admit, he was a pretty good tree climber himself. He was a fairly young, lean human and made good use of his front paws to swing himself up through the branches. He kept saying things like ‘All right, good puss, sit tight, don’t panic.’ Then as soon as he was close enough, he reached out and grabbed me with such a sudden movement I nearly toppled off the branch with fright. I let him hold onto me going down again, which was a bit awkward for both of us, but I wanted to let the fox – if he was still watching – see that I now had a protector. When we were nearly at the bottom I jumped down, but stayed by the human’s feet, giving him a little display of gratitude, rubbing myself on his legs and purring. He looked down at me, a bemused expression on his face.
‘OK, you can run off home now, puss!’
I continued my rubbing and purring. He watched me for a bit longer.
‘What is it, then? Are you lost?’
Hooray! He’d got the message. I purred a bit louder. He picked me up again and looked at the little disc on my collar.
‘Oliver,’ he read out. ‘And no address, just a phone number.’ He got one of those mobile phone things out of his pocket, tapped it and sighed. ‘No signal here. Well, maybe I’d better take you home with me, Oliver, and give you some milk or something and then I can try…’
The mention of milk had reminded me of how hungry and thirsty I was, and I practically jumped into his arms this time when he bent to pick me up again. I’d decided I liked him. Perhaps he was a good one, like George. But then, to my horror, he picked up a bag he’d left by the tree trunk and pushed me into it, quite clumsily, head-first so that my tail nearly got caught in the zip as he did it up. I yowled my head off in protest. So much for trusting him! But as I felt him lift the bag up, he was talking to me through the flap.
‘Sorry about this, Oliver. You’ll be safer in the rucksack on my back, see, while I walk home with you. Otherwise I’m frightened you’ll jump out of my arms and run off when we get to the road, and there’ll be cars, and it’ll be dangerous. All right, all right!’ he said as I carried on complaining. Well, honestly! It was so undignified, to say nothing of bringing back some terrible memories for me. ‘It won’t be for long. Just try and sit still like a good puss.’