She sighed bleakly. ‘What with the cats, and with Barney being so odd this morning and running away before school, it’s really been a weird day, Mum.’
I didn’t run away. That wasn’t me.
Barney saw that Rissa was looking sad, and he tried to comfort her by rubbing his head into her hand.
‘You really like Barney, don’t you?’ said her mum, her eyes twinkling like the stars outside the porthole.
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ Rissa’s words caused Barney to feel embarrassed, and he was thankful for the furry face, which concealed his blush.
Rissa’s voice changed. ‘But Barns … I mean, Barney can be so annoying sometimes. Like today! Acting so weird this morning, and me thinking he’d run away for ever or something, and then just turning up at the end of the day … And not even bothering to phone here when he got home, after I hadn’t been in school all afternoon. Then having to find out from his mum! What was that all about?’
‘I don’t know, darling,’ her mum said as water lapped gently against the barge. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation. He’s a good boy, I know it.’
Barney knew that all the bits of information were there in Rissa’s brain, like Lego. If only she could click them all together and make the truth.
Carrot Cake
AFTER THE CHEESE, the Fairweathers gave Barney some home-made carrot cake, cut up really small and placed in a bowl.
Then they sat him down on a warm rug. ‘Oh, look,’ said Rissa’s mum sadly. ‘He’s got scratches all over him.’
‘Mum,’ said Rissa. ‘Can he stay with us?’
‘Of course he can. If he wants to. Can’t he, Robert?’
Rissa’s dad looked over at Barney from an old wooden chair as he played a soft melody on his guitar. ‘You’d be very welcome, so long as you realize that’s not a swimming pool out there.’
Rissa’s mum poured some milk, which Barney lapped up as quickly as he could. It was delicious, and full of thousands of tastes and aromas he’d never known before.
Rissa sat down next to him on the rug, and stroked him. ‘You’re quite lucky to be a cat,’ she told him. ‘Because it means you don’t have to pay too much attention to human beings.’
‘That’s not very cheerful, Rissa,’ said her dad.
‘Well, I know.’ She sighed, and her hand came to a standstill on her friend’s fur. ‘It’s just Barney.’
Her mum opened her sketchbook, started drawing her daughter and the cat with a piece of charcoal. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation,’ she repeated.
‘I hope the old Barney’s back tomorrow so I can have a best friend again.’
‘Thought you wanted him to be more than that?’
This time Rissa blushed along with Barney.
‘Changed my mind. No boyfriends till I’m at least eighteen! And it won’t be Barney Willow! Anyway, best friends are more important than boyfriends.’
‘One day you’ll realize they can be both,’ her mum said.
Barney looked up at Rissa’s face. She seemed unhappy. And it hurt him to know that he was the cause.
I’m still here.
She stroked his chin. ‘Poor cat. You’re safe now.’
And then her dad started singing a made-up song. He called it ‘A Cat Shanty’.
‘Oh, you’re safe now, cat, so don’t you worry,
Oh, you’re dry and warm and there’s no hurry.
Oh, you might as well stay right here,
For a day, a week, or even a year …’
It was tempting. To stay here, with his best friend and her lovely parents, being fed cheese and carrot cake in the warmth of this barge.
And he certainly was sleepy.
Really sleepy.
Yes. Why not? Why not stay here?
As he stared up at the Fairweathers’ loving, smiling faces he felt himself dissolving into darkness and a deep, deep sleep, in which he saw nothing but a shining green eye, glistening with answers.
I am Barney
BARNEY WOKE.
It was still night outside the windows of the barge, and the stars remained in the sky. He was alone on the rug, exactly as Rissa and her parents had left him.
He could hear the river lapping at the barge. He looked up at the wooden walls and the paintings of plants. One was of a cactus in a desert, with its long shadow stretching back across the sand. It looked more beautiful than any painting he had ever seen.
He could see Robert’s guitar lying in the corner of the room next to the tiny kitchen area, and the remainder of the marmalade-flavoured carrot cake lying in a saucer near his front paws.
There are worse lives, he thought to himself, than the life of a cat on a barge. Being warm, sleeping on a soft rug.
He could stay here.
Safe.
For ever.
But then he remembered. His dad was alive. And right now his mum was living with a former cat. And what if that former cat was as deadly as that former cat’s mother? If that was the case his mum and Rissa could be in danger. No. He had to solve this. Somehow, he had to become human again. All he needed was to find out how, and he had a feeling he knew who’d be able to tell him. He didn’t know why, but he kept on thinking of the Terrorcat and that strange, sad green eye staring at him, and the warmth he had felt inside. The feeling that he had something to say but hadn’t.
Barney looked at the time on the old wooden clock on the wall.
It was half-past five in the morning.
Before he left he had some more milk, which had been left out for him, along with a nibble of the carrot cake too, as he knew he’d need all the strength he could get.
Then he had an idea.
Slowly, with his paws, he picked apart at the cake until it was a thousand little crumbs. Then he carefully pawed the crumbs onto the floor and shaped them into words on the light wooden floorboards:
I am Barney
It took him ages. Then he left, out of a tiny open window in the bathroom, and landed easily on the grass of the river bank.
He headed off in the direction of town, thinking about the shining green eye of the Terrorcat he had seen in his dream.
Rissa Realizes
RISSA WOKE BEFORE her parents. She stepped out of her little cabin in her normal morning haze and looked for the cat.
‘Here, kitty-cat, where are you?’
And then she saw the crumbs on the floor. At first that is all they were. Just crumbs. But then she saw the crumbs had fallen into the shape of words, and she read the words and gasped as something the cattery owner – whoever he really was – had said yesterday afternoon came back into her head.
He might have come to you but you didn’t recognize him. Trust me, keep your mind open to the impossible and you will find the truth.
Rissa’s heart drum-rolled. And she quickly got ready and put on her coat to go and look for her friend.
The Terrorcat (and the Stillness of Things)
BARNEY REACHED THE right house, opposite the park, but there was no sign of the one-eyed cat that always sat there every morning when he walked Guster. There was nothing in the window except an empty vase. Barney sat on the pavement a while, feeling vulnerable.
But there were no cats around.
Maybe they were too scared to come anywhere near the Terrorcat. Yes, that was probably it. In which case, maybe he should have been too scared to go anywhere near the Terrorcat. Still, he waited.
As he did, he observed his surroundings. The park. With the same trees and bushes and flower beds that had been there two days ago when he’d been human.
He had a weird feeling.