Sarah was indoors, working in the study. I went in to keep her company, jumping up on the desk next to her computer.
‘Hello, Ollie,’ she said, but she seemed to find the screen of the computer more interesting than me. I tried to lie across the part where she tapped out writing – it was nice and warm from her hands – but she sighed and lifted me off. I really didn’t feel very welcome. Was she getting bored with me? I toyed for a few minutes with a funny-shaped thing lying next to the computer, but then she reached for it herself and sighed again.
‘Ollie, please don’t play with the mouse,’ she said, sounding tired and fed up.
Mouse? I stared at it. If it was a mouse, it had been dead for a long time, that was for sure.
‘I’m very busy,’ she said. ‘This is a tricky piece of work and I need to concentrate. I think you’d better get down.’
And she lifted me off the desk, putting me down quite firmly on the floor. I was mortified. She must be getting bored with me! Was I going to be expelled from the family even sooner than I’d feared? I slunk off to my bed in the kitchen and curled up tight, burying my head under my tail, and consoled myself with a little nap.
When I woke up, there was pandemonium in the house. The children were home from school, they were both shrieking at the tops of their voices and Sarah was trying to calm them down.
‘It’s gross,’ Grace was shouting. ‘I nearly trod on it.’
‘Its eyes were staring at me,’ Rose cried. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘Why does Ollie do it?’ Grace said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t. Sooty never did it, did he, Mummy?’
I sat up in bed, horrified. What had I done wrong? I tried my best to please them, and I just got compared unfavourably with Saint Sooty. How could I compete with a ghost?
‘Sooty did do it,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘You don’t remember, because you were too little when he was a young cat. He got too old to hunt in the end. All cats like to hunt – it’s normal. I agree, it’s not very pleasant for us, but it’s part of living with cats, and there’s no point making all this fuss. I’ll clear it up. Now, calm down, and go and get changed out of your uniforms.’
I stayed in the kitchen, sulking, feeling unappreciated. A little while later, both girls came in to talk to me.
‘I know you can’t help it, Ollie,’ Grace said very seriously, squatting down to stroke my head. ‘But really, it isn’t very nice.’
‘Next time, Ollie, leave it somewhere else,’ said Rose. ‘A long way away.’
‘Yes, as far away as possible,’ Grace said, and they both giggled.
At least they didn’t seem cross with me anymore. I sighed. Humans could be so hard to understand at times.
The next day, Sarah took Rose to the hospital and they both came home with big smiles on their faces.
‘Look, Ollie!’ she shouted, running into the room, waving both paws at me. ‘My plaster’s off! I can cuddle you properly now. Can we do the decorations now, Mummy?’
‘Yes, when Grace gets home from school,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t want any more arguments about it.’
There was a much better atmosphere in the room this time, with both girls happy and excited about climbing on a chair to put the sparkly stuff and the shiny baubles on the tree.
‘You can put the angel on the top, Rose,’ Grace said. She’d been particularly kind to her sister since the trouble at the weekend. ‘I’ll hold the chair steady for you. Be careful you don’t fall.’
Nothing more was being said about a new cat. But as I’m sure you can imagine, I had my ears up constantly, listening for any talk about one replacing me. It had brought home to me how precarious my position was, as a foster cat in the family. Thank goodness I’d got a back-up with Nicky and Daniel next door, even though I suspected they might prefer their new baby to me when it arrived. Oh, how I wished I could be back in my pub, where I had George all to myself and didn’t have to compete with anyone else.
I tried to console myself with the new friends I’d made at the Big House. It was so nice to see Caroline looking so happy when I arrived, and in fact the next time when Laura let me in and gave me her usual little cuddle before putting me on Caroline’s lap, she said:
‘You’re doing Caroline so much good, you know, Oliver. You’ve really cheered her up since you’ve been coming here. I can’t see how Julian could possibly object.’
I guessed Julian must be Caroline’s father. It was good to hear that he couldn’t object to me. I decided now that he couldn’t be the same person as the angry man with the stick that Tabby had gone on about. I’d still never seen any sign of the father, and I guess I was getting a little bit complacent. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder when I ran up the driveway and meowed at the glass doors. I should have known it was too good to be true.
It happened on another Saturday, the one after the argument about the Christmas tree. Looking back, I suppose until then I hadn’t been going to the Big House at weekends, because there was always so much more going on at my two foster homes. Daniel and Nicky were at home, Martin and the children were around, and sometimes the Brownie Foxes turned up to do their important study of my behaviour. Having so many people to play with, I didn’t get bored and lonely like I sometimes did during the week. But now I’d started seeing Caroline every day, and because Laura had told me I was doing her good, I didn’t want to miss out any days anymore.
I bounded down the drive as usual and called out to Laura from my normal place at the glass doors. For a minute I thought nobody was there. I put my ear against the glass and heard Caroline calling out to Laura: ‘Oliver’s here!’ She sounded a bit startled.
‘Oh!’ Laura had rushed back into the room and was staring at me in surprise. ‘He’s never come at the weekend before. We’d better not let him in,’ she said, looking back over her shoulder. ‘It would have to be one of the Saturdays that your dad works from home.’
‘Oh, please, Laura!’ Caroline said.
‘Yes, please, Laura!’ I meowed in Cat. It was cold outside.
‘Just for a little while? I can keep him under my blanket,’ Caroline was pleading. ‘Daddy’s in his study. He’ll be in there all morning, won’t he?’
‘Well…’ Laura sighed, looked back through the door of the room again, then quietly closed it behind her. ‘All right, then, but only for a few minutes. If he makes any noise, he’ll have to go straight out again.’
She opened the glass door for me and I dashed over to the sofa and jumped up next to Caroline. She giggled and pulled me onto her lap, putting the blanket right over me.
‘No noise, Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve got to be a very quiet, very secret cat today.’
I quite liked the idea of being a secret cat. It wasn’t easy to keep from purring, though, snuggled up like that under the warm blanket with Caroline giving me a nice stroke.
‘Can we have the TV on?’ she asked Laura. ‘Then if Oliver does start meowing, Daddy won’t hear.’
‘OK.’ Laura smiled at her. ‘Just this once.’ I heard the television being turned on and for a while, I settled down and closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth and comfort and letting Caroline’s stroking soothe away my worries about being displaced by a new Sooty.