‘Don’t do that, you naughty thing,’ said his mother. ‘Now, where’s Barney? Barney?! Where are you? I really haven’t got time for this!’
I’m here! You’re carrying me!
She hauled Barney around the house, her grip getting tighter with every new room she couldn’t find her son in.
Eventually Mrs Willow opened the front door, detached Barney from her dressing gown and dropped him to the ground, out in the frosty February air.
Mum! he cried. Mum! Don’t worry! I’m—
The giant door closed with a heavy thud and he was left there.
Cold.
Confused.
And infinitely alone.
The No-Hoper
BARNEY WAITED ON the porch for a while, expecting his mother to realize he wasn’t anywhere in the house and hoping she’d make the connection. But the door didn’t open. It just stayed there, a gigantic piece of unfriendly wood, which Barney’s dad had painted three years ago when he still lived there.
The usually quiet street felt full of a hundred noises – twittering birds, distant traffic, crisp packets scraping concrete as they travelled with the breeze.
Another noise. Rustling, coming from the little juniper bush in the garden. Two green cat’s eyes staring at him.
‘Hello?’
‘Who are you?’ the cat asked tenderly, in a voice as soothing as hot cocoa. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’
She stepped out of the bush. She was a sleek, chocolate-brown cat that Barney vaguely recognized as belonging to Sheila, the new arrival at number 33.
‘Yes, you have,’ Barney said as this other cat came and rubbed her head against the side of his face. ‘I’m the boy who lives here. In this house. It’s just … I’ve changed … and I don’t know why.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and then she said it again (only this time in italics). ‘Oh. Oh, you poor thing. You poor little sardine. You’re one of them.’
‘One of who? Wait … does this happen to other people too?’
‘Oh yes. It does. I’m Mocha, by the way, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She purred, but then her mood switched at cat-speed and the purring stopped. Mocha started to look anxious.
Barney, though, needed answers. ‘Look, do you know why I’m like this? Do you know how I can change back? Could you help me?’
Mocha was looking past Barney now to the street. Her tail twitched, and her whiskers were curling slightly. She was sensing something. ‘I think, sweetie, we’re being watched.’
‘Watched? By who?’
‘By swipers, most probably.’
‘Swipers? What are they?’
Mocha turned to Barney and gave a rushed explanation, her soothing hot-chocolate voice now fast and nervous, like his mum’s after too much coffee. ‘There are three types of cats,’ she said, then named them. ‘There are swipers, who are tough street cats, and who you need to be scared of. Then there are firesides, like me, who have owners and who generally prefer staying at home. We aren’t scary, as a rule, not unless you try and bathe us. Well, apart from the …’ She hesitated, as if frightened to finish her sentence. ‘Apart from the Terrorcat.’
‘The Terrorcat? Who’s that?’
Mocha came closer, to whisper. ‘I hope you never find out.’
‘Why? What makes him so scary?’
‘He was just a normal cat once, but then he changed, just as a night follows a sunset,’ Mocha said with a shudder. ‘He developed powers, dark and evil powers, and became something else. He looked the same. But he was very, very different …’
‘What made him change?’
But Barney wasn’t going to get an answer on this one. You see, Mocha had just spotted something: a fat, thuggish ginger moggy on the other side of the street, lying under a parked car, staring straight at them. Or rather, straight at Barney.
‘Is that the Terrorcat?’
‘No, my dear. You would know about it if that was the Terrorcat. That’s Pumpkin. A swiper. He’s stupid. But violent. And he’s got a lot of equally stupid, equally violent friends.’
‘Why’s he watching me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and suddenly seemed less keen to be friends. ‘Now, I’d love to hang around, truthfully, but my owner – Sheila – she’s going on holiday today and I’m going to the cattery, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘I thought cats hated catteries.’
‘Not this one. It’s lovely.’
The cat started to trot away down the side of the house. ‘But wait!’ Barney called after her. ‘What about the third type of cat? You only mentioned two.’
Mocha stopped, tail-twitched, turned. ‘That’s your type. Former humans trapped in cat bodies.’
‘What are we called?’ Barney said, stalling for time and wanting Mocha to stay with him as long as she possibly could.
‘The no-hopers,’ Mocha told him sadly. ‘Because it’s true. You really have no hope.’
Best Friend(ly Giant)
BARNEY LOOKED AROUND nervously. Saw the ginger moggy still staring at him. Perhaps he should have followed Mocha. But, no. He wanted to stay here in the hope of convincing his mum who he was, even if it meant being at the mercy of a swiper.
The fat ginger cat started to walk out from under the car. He beckoned down the street with his tail, and soon there were other cats there too. Street cats of varying shapes and furs prowling menacingly towards him.
‘Right, lads, this is the boy,’ said Pumpkin. ‘Do yer worst on ’im.’
The cats got closer and closer.
‘Wait,’ said Barney. ‘Please, I don’t want any trouble.’
‘Well, that’s all we’s be wantin’, see,’ Pumpkin sneered. ‘That’s all we about, innit, fellas? Trouble. And the causing thereof. And, besides, we be ’avin’ our orders.’
‘Who’s ordered you?’ Barney asked, panicking as three more swipers headed up the path. One, an evil-looking cat with oversized ears, hissed in Barney’s face. ‘Prepare to die!’
Barney had no idea how he would prepare for his death so thought he’d better try and avoid it for a while. He backed away, heading down the side of the house. ‘Mocha? Are you still there? I might actually need some help here.’
But if Mocha could hear him, she certainly wasn’t saying.
‘Now, swipers,’ said the ginger moggy. ‘Let’s be showin’ what we’re made of.’
‘What he’s made of, you mean,’ laughed big-ears, her claws at the ready.
‘Wotchit, Lyka. I do the jokes round here.’
Barney tried to run away but he was faced with a giant compost heap blocking his path. He tried to climb over it but his feet kept sinking into the mush of leaves and earth and weeds, some of which had probably been thrown there by his dad over two years ago. There were now five cats down the passageway, and they all had their hair raised and their claws out, ready to pounce.
And I can assure you they would have pounced if they hadn’t heard something behind them.
Or rather, someone. Humming tunefully to themselves as they walked along the path.
‘Pumpkin, what shall we do?’ asked Lyka in her evil cat hiss.
‘We can’t be doin’ no murder with ’oomans round. You’s know the rules.’ So, on Pumpkin’s orders, the street cats fled, running over the compost heap and over Barney, their sharp claws scratching him as they went.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Pumpkin, before disappearing across the top of the heap. ‘We be seein’ you shortly.’
Barney felt sick. His cat nostrils could pick up smells a human nose would miss, and there seemed to be a million different queasy odours coming from the compost heap which, mixed with his fear, was really too much to bear.