‘Get off mee–owwww!’
But Guster wouldn’t let go, not with Barney cheering him on from over Miss Whipmire’s shoulder. And soon Rissa and Barney’s mum were there too, grabbing her arm and straining to keep her thumb away from Barney’s neck. Miss Whipmire called to Pumpkin on the other side of the pavement, who beckoned with his tail to Lyka further up the street, who beckoned with her tail to the other swipers hiding in doorways and behind bins.
‘Now!’
Barney’s dad ran out of the front door into the street, where fifty curtains were twitching all at the same time as the residents of Dullard Street wondered why so many cats had suddenly appeared as if from nowhere.
Barney’s dad stood right in the middle of the road, and in the scariest cat voice he could manage he declared:
‘I am the Terrorcat! If any of you feeble felines step one paw closer I will unleash terror! Big … terror! So stay where you are!’
The cats, about twenty of them, did as he said.
Not a paw forward, not a paw back.
Then Maurice got out of the car to help his mum.
‘Here, Barney,’ said Sheila, Mocha’s owner, the nice but nosy lady who lived at number 33. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m not Barney,’ he said, and started running to help his mum.
Meanwhile, amid all this mayhem, as Guster kept biting, as Rissa and his mum kept pulling, the real Barney was closing his eyes.
I am not a cat.
I am Barney Willow.
And being Barney Willow is OK. More than OK. It’s good.
Miss Whipmire is just a bitter, spiteful cat with a grudge …
Gavin Needle is just a stupid, frightened bully who cuddles donkeys …
Mum and Dad aren’t together but that’s not my fault …
I am lucky to have them.
I am lucky to have Rissa.
And, OK, I am not good at rugby.
I’m quite short and freckly and go to a horrible school, but I know the truth deep inside.
I am lucky to be me.
And I always was.
I just didn’t realize it.
‘Stay in the car!’ Miss Whipmire’s scream broke into Barney’s thoughts. She was shouting at her son. ‘I can handle this! Stay in the car! Don’t get close to him! You’re too weak! Don’t let him make eye contact!’
Barney turned, saw the face that should be his, then gazed into his own human eyes.
‘Maurice,’ Barney said, ‘if you change back, it will be OK. You won’t have to return to the Needles. You could live with us. Guster would understand. I promise.’
‘I would indeed!’ confirmed Guster with a quick yap before chomping again on Miss Whipmire’s leg.
Barney thought. ‘Or if you really wanted to live with your mum, you could. No one would stop you.’
This in particular almost made Miss Whipmire combust with fury. ‘Don’t listen to them. You stay being a human. We’ll be humans together. To be a cat is to be nothing! As a human you could live seven times as long, buy your own food in supermarkets, and never be separated from me! The humans have the best of this world … not the cats! And humans are all vile and ungrateful things, so they’ve got no right to everything they have.’
Maurice thought. He’d never been the brightest of cats, but strong thoughts can shine lights in even the dimmest of brains sometimes.
And this was the thought Maurice was thinking:
Barney helped me when he was being bullied by Gavin, so not all humans can be all bad. And if Mum’s lying about that, she might be lying about other things …
Plus, added to this thought was something else we should consider. Maurice was a good cat, as most cats are, and he didn’t like any kind of bully. After all, he had lived with one before – did he want to live with another, even if that bully was, technically, his mum? But if his mum truly loved him, why did she want him to be something other than his true self? These questions worked like keys, opening up Maurice’s mind, letting the wish that Barney was wishing shoot right in and make itself comfortable.
At the same time Miss Whipmire felt the increasing weight on her left shoulder and knew what was happening. She called over to Pumpkin.
‘I need help! Move. Help me! … That’s Barney’s father! There’s no such thing as a Terrorcat, you idiotic swiper!’
‘There is,’ said Barney’s dad. ‘Oh, there very much is. Come one paw closer and you’ll see.’
But it didn’t matter if there was or there wasn’t a Terrorcat. What mattered was what Pumpkin and the others had just heard.
‘To be a cat is to be nothing?’ Pumpkin hissed in disgust. ‘That’s a lie, that is. To be a cat is to be happy in your own fur. You was a no-good cat if you ever thought that! You can shove yer woofin’ sardines in lemon-infused olive oil! I’m not working for such a low-life any more. I’m not a fireside. I’ve got principles! Come on, swipers, let’s keep our dignity.’
And Pumpkin and Lyka and the rest of his gang strolled away, causing Miss Whipmire to become angrier than she’d ever been in her life. And the anger kept rising as she looked at her son out on the pavement, his face starting to get hairy.
His back beginning to hunch.
His ears sharpening.
His tail pushing through his shirt.
The anger gave Miss Whipmire strength. She freed her arm from the grip of Rissa and Barney’s mum, who went flying onto the carpet. Then she kicked her leg, sending a winded Guster rolling back to the base of the stairs.
But all the time Barney was transforming too. He heard his dad encouraging him. ‘She’s wrong, son. The apple’s fallen far from the tree. You’re not me. Your mind’s stronger than mine ever was … You can do it. You can do it, Barney.’ And Barney could feel it, the change branching through his body. Even though right now he was still much closer to cat than human, and it was all too easy for Miss Whipmire to do what she did next. Namely, whack him down against the wooden chest in the hallway and press her thumb into his neck.
As she did so, Barney felt a pain beyond anything to which the name of pain is given. She pressed down in the right spot. Right on a nerve. He could hardly breathe. But he could still hear his head teacher’s voice talking to her son.
‘Well, Maurice, I’m going to stop this right now. In about five seconds, there’ll be no Barney Willow. You’ll be Barney Willow. A human for ever! Don’t you see? I only want what’s best for you.’
‘No,’ Maurice said, ‘I don’t see. Sorry, Mum, but I don’t.’
The truth was, Maurice wanted to be a cat again, especially as now he knew he wouldn’t have to live with Gavin, and his mother’s words were only accelerating the change.
He fell forward, onto all fours, and shrank inside Barney’s clothes.
Barney, meanwhile, was discovering you could wish through pain and that, indeed, pain is the wind in a wish’s sails. And he wished so impossibly hard to be a human, to be himself, to be Barney Willow again, that the wooden chest shook beneath him, and his patch switched eyes, and the world became more vivid and alive, and he could feel his legs stretch and bend off the edge of the wooden chest. He felt dizzy, but he was still aware that his arms too were becoming human, losing their hair, gaining elbows, freckles. And, as his paws started to grow fingers, he grabbed Miss Whipmire’s wrists and joined with his mum, his best friend, his dog – and even his cat-father, swiping her ankles – in wrestling her away from his increasingly human self.
In fact, Barney was so completely back inside his own body that when the police car arrived outside their house – the police car Sheila at number 33 had just called for – the policeman inside saw nothing except a psychotic head teacher trying to strangle a twelve-year-old boy wearing no clothes.
And no matter what the circumstances, that never looks particularly good.