Solomon's Kitten (2 page)

I only agreed to be born again on earth because no other cat would go. The task was to experience abandonment, and then to help reunite an abandoned child with its mother. It sounded impossible,
which is why I thought I could do it. No problem. And I had an angel, a new one who introduced herself as the Angel of Secrets.

She was clear as glass and her robe rustled with stars of turquoise, emerald and lime. Camouflage, she said, to blend with the colours of earth’s oceans and forests.

‘When you are on earth, I will always be with you,’ she said in a voice that tinkled like bells. ‘But my colours and my transparency will help me to hide, and you must remember
that and work hard to see me. My voice will blend with the sound of rain, and the wind in the leaves, so you must listen for me, and not get distracted by the cacophony of noise that humans manage
to create.’

When it was time for me to be born as an earth kitten, I was nervous about whizzing through the star gates, having to let go and burst through the golden web. I didn’t feel I could do it.
So my angel led me through a beautiful land where shining cats and dogs were playing and resting, and eventually, we arrived at the foot of the rainbow bridge, which was awesome.

‘Choose a colour,’ she said, ‘and you can just walk over with your tail up.’

I hesitated, staring up at the arched bridge of glowing colours. I sat and watched it for a while, reassured to see other cats, and dogs, trotting over confidently, some going, some arriving.
All of them were quiet and peaceful.

‘Once you start, you can’t go back,’ my angel explained, ‘so take your time, and all will be well. Trust me, I’m an angel.’

Still I hesitated, and she said, ‘Why not choose pink? It’s the colour of love. You can’t go wrong with that.’

I put one shining paw into the pink light, and before I knew it, I was walking, tail up, higher and higher over the rainbow bridge. Easy! Over the top, and there in the distance, far below me
was Planet Earth. I wanted to cry because she looked utterly delicate and complex, her colours magical. Electric blues, rich greens, lemon and lots of white.

But as I reached the summit, my angel swirled past me with a whoosh of her wings. Shocked, I watched her disappear, her colours shimmering as she dissolved and became one with the landscapes of
Planet Earth. I couldn’t stop now. I was racing, sliding down the other side of the rainbow bridge; it took my breath away; even though I knew how it would happen, I was still terrified.

I didn’t want my fabulous spirit to be put inside a tiny wriggling earth kitten. I wanted to go back and be the Queen of Cats for ever. But it was too late. Being born was such a let-down.
I should have been loved – and I wasn’t!

I was born under someone’s bed, right next to a smelly pair of slippers. And my mother didn’t like me. The minute I was born, she gave me a draconian swipe with her paw, knocking my
small wet head sideways. I was blind, but I sensed her anger as I struggled to breathe. She was blaming me for getting stuck and causing her pain. Weak and shocked, I lay there on my own, getting
colder and colder.

A man’s voice made me jump.

‘Ellen!’ he was shouting. ‘Guess what THAT CAT’S DONE NOW!’

‘What?’

‘She’s had a bunch of kittens under the bed.’

‘Oh, Jessica!’

Ellen’s voice was lovely. I heard her come and look under the bed. ‘Oh, the little darlings,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t be cross with her, Joe. We can take them
downstairs in a basket. Aw, look at them feeding. Aren’t you a clever girl, Jessica?’

I was cold and starving so I squeaked and squeaked until Ellen noticed me, and I felt her hand round me.

‘What about this one, Jessica?’ She put me down close to my two purring guzzling brothers, and gently pushed my face into my mother’s fur. ‘No, don’t growl at her,
Jessica. She’s beautiful. Silver tabby with long fur and she’s got pink paws like you. Come on, you’ve got to feed her.’

I found a nipple and sucked like mad until the warm sweet milk filled my mouth and mother finally relaxed and let me have it while Ellen stayed close, encouraging her. I got the feeling that
Jessica was rebellious but she would do anything for Ellen. So I was fed. But Jessica never liked me. She always left me until last, lavishing attention on my two brothers, and she would bop me
when Ellen wasn’t there. Twice we were put in a nice basket and carried downstairs, and both times Jessica carried us back, one by one, holding us by the scruff. When it was my turn, she
wasn’t careful. She banged me all up the stairs.

On that day, before our eyes were open, there was a lot of shouting and crying in the house, and we all lay there shivering, cuddling close and wondering what was going to happen. What kind of
home had we come into so trustingly?

At the end of the day, I heard this amazing loud purring, and sensed a huge male cat very close, looking at us, sniffing us. He was loving and kind, I knew that, but my mother still growled at
him until he backed off. Once our eyes were open, I saw him. He was black with a white chest and paws, long white whiskers and concerned peagreen eyes. His aura was massive and shining. My dad!
Solomon.

I settled down, thinking I had decent parents and a warm safe home, even if there was a lot of shouting. The three of us grew up under the bed, learning to crawl, to put our tails up and to
play. We got used to Ellen and her little boy, John, picking us up. In fact, we loved it. They were so warm and kind and stroked our fur and talked to us.

Until one terrible day that I will never forget.

We were four weeks old and just learning to lap Kitty Milk from a dish. Jessica was a strict mother. She bopped us if we put our feet in it, and she diligently kept us immaculate, always leaving
me until last. Sometimes our dad Solomon would come and wash me, and purr with me and tell me stuff by telepathy.

On that day, the house shook like thunder, and two strange men plodded in and out, moving furniture, sliding and scraping and bumping it down the stairs. Then Joe came in with a basket in his
hand. He put it down on the bedroom floor and reached under the bed where we were cuddled together against our mother’s warm body.

‘Sorry about this, Jessica,’ he said, and picked us up one by one with his big hand and dumped us inside the basket. I saw my mother’s anxious eyes as she came after us, and
that was the last time I ever saw her dear black and white face. She cried and cried as Joe clipped the basket shut. He slammed the bedroom door and we heard Jessica’s echoing wail of
despair, and her paws scrabbling to get out.

We huddled together and clung on with our tiny paws as he bounded down the stairs swinging the basket.

‘There’s nothing to cry about,’ he said to Ellen and John, ‘so stop your snivelling. We’ve got more to worry about than a bunch of kittens.’

He took us outside, and that was the first time I saw the sky and smelled the lawn. A bird was singing high up in one of the trees, and women and children were walking past with pushchairs. No
one seemed to care about us, three kittens suddenly wrenched away from their mother. Jessica was at the window, crying and crying, clawing at the glass with her pink paws.

‘You will take them to the Cat Sanctuary, won’t you?’ said Ellen to Joe.

‘Course I will. Stop fussing.’ Joe swung the basket into a car and another door was banged in our faces. Seriously worried now, we were climbing all over the inside of the basket,
desperately seeking a crack or a hole through which we could escape.

The inside of the car smelled of beer and socks. It squealed and rattled as Joe drove us away from our home and our mother, away from Solomon, away from Ellen and John. We travelled fast, the
basket lurching as the car hurtled round corners. We grew hot with fear and exhausted by our efforts to escape.

‘Nearly there, guys,’ said Joe. He hauled the car around a sharp bend and slowed down. ‘Here we are. Cat Sanctuary.’

He turned the engine off, and there was only the sound of our three baby voices crying and crying for our mother cat. Joe swung the basket out of the car and walked towards a pair of high wire
gates. He stopped in front of them, looking at a notice board.

And then he exploded.

‘SHIT,’ he bellowed. ‘They’re shitting CLOSED.’

He kicked at the wire gates. He put the basket down and rattled the gates with both hands.

‘What’s the good of a cat sanctuary that’s CLOSED!’ he roared. ‘Well, you’ll have to go somewhere. I’ve gotta get back. I can’t be doing with a
bunch of wailing cats.’

He flung our basket into the hedge. Then he got back into the car, reversed it and roared off, filling the lane with black smoke and a storm of gravel.

And he left us there, three terrified kittens cowering in a corner of the basket.

Minutes later, the car came racing back and skidded to a halt. Joe got out, swigging beer from a can. Still swear- ing, he seized our basket, opened it and tipped us out like rubbish into the
long wet grass.

I learned a lot during those lonely hours in the hedge.

My brothers were both black; they were mates and didn’t care about me, so I followed them as they crawled deep into the hedge. We had to keep each other warm. We found a dry twiggy hollow
at the roots of a hawthorn tree and pressed close together. Hungry and tired, we slept, and when we woke, nothing had changed except the sunlight, which was now a brassy pink. We’d grown up
under a bed, and we hadn’t learned about day and night, earth and sky, sun and rain.

Soon we were starving. We spent the night creeping about, not far away from each other, tasting anything we could find; worms, slugs, beetles, all disgusting and too tough for our delicate new
teeth. We licked raindrops from the leaves and blades of grass, and we did a lot of meowing, hoping our mother would come and find us.

I tried to see my angel, but I was too little to remember how. Her voice whispered to me, but it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear.

‘Your mother is far away,’ she said. ‘Jessica and Solomon were put in the basket and taken away, hundreds of miles. You won’t see them again in this lifetime.’

But she coaxed me out in the morning to feel the sun on my fur, and this time my brothers followed me. We sat at the edge of the lane on hot stones, and the sun’s warmth was a new and
healing experience for us. The sound of a dog barking sent us scurrying back to our twiggy hollow. I’d never seen a real dog and, curious, I crawled out on my own through the narrow grass
tunnel we’d made.

I peeped, and immediately regretted it. Towering over me was a very stiff black Labrador with such a tail, wagging up in the sky. Its ears were up and its brown eyes were staring at me. It gave
a soft huffy sort of woof and its hot breath gusted over me. Too petrified to move, I stared back and we had a telepathic exchange. She was an old dog, wise and kindly; she wanted to tell me
something, and she wanted to ask me a question. Her eyes were puzzled, as if she knew I shouldn’t be there.

‘Come on, Harriet. Whatever it is, leave it. I said LEAVE IT,’ called a voice from further down the lane.

Harriet gave an apologetic shrug, turned and trotted off, looking back at me just once, her paw in the air.

‘LEAVE IT,’ shouted the voice again. I was trembling with shock at my first encounter with a dog. The overwhelming smell of her, the thickness of her legs, the way she went stiff
when she saw me. And yet, tiny as I was, I had a sudden sense of power. I was a CAT. Well, almost.

Two more days and nights passed. We kept each other warm, but we were getting weaker and more depressed. We’d given up meowing; it took too much energy. Worse than that was the emotional
pain. That feeling of being dumped in the hedge like rubbish never left me in my whole life, but weaved and wandered through my aura in strands of anger and sorrow. We should have been normal happy
little cats, but already, at four weeks old, our confidence was damaged, our sense of self-worth shaken. And we didn’t have our mother to teach us how to live.

I wondered if Jessica ever got over losing us, even me.

On our third day in the hedge, something terrifying happened.

We were sleeping, heaped together in a mound of fur, in a round nest we had made in the grass, when I woke up suddenly. The Labrador, Harriet, was looming over us, puffing and sniffing, a long
pink tongue flopping from her mouth. I caught the smell and the gleam of her teeth set in pink and black shiny gums, and the look of thoughtfulness in her eyes as she reached down to me. Before I
could move, she had opened her jaws and picked me up by the scruff.

I squealed and screeched. My heart lurched into a stream of beats. I tried to kick and scratch but she had me so tightly, stretching my skin so that my tiny legs splayed out and wouldn’t
move. I hung there, hardly able to breathe, and the dog lifted me high in the air and walked off with me.

‘I can’t survive this. I can’t,’ I thought, panicking. But Harriet was plodding down the lane with me. She wasn’t going to put me down. I kept my baby-blue eyes
wide open, and floating alongside us were splinters of coloured light, stars of turquoise, emerald and lime. My angel! My angel was there, escorting us in cloaks of light, and in total silence. The
Angel of Secrets.

After that, I calmed down and let it happen. Harriet wasn’t eating me. She was taking me somewhere, the only way she knew how, in her mouth. An extraordinary thought dawned in me: this was
a dog, a dear old dog who wanted to mother me.

She broke into a trot, and I was swinging, like it was when Jessica had carried me upstairs. I could see the dog’s tail wagging faster and faster. We reached a wicket gate in the hedge,
and Harriet shoved it open with her paw, being careful not to bump me. She took me up a garden path and in through an open door.

‘Oh, Harriet! What have you got?’

A woman was sitting there on a cosy sofa. Harriet’s tail dropped and only the tip of it wagged apologetically as she gently put me down in the woman’s lap. I lay there in total
shock. The woman’s lap smelled of bread and flowers. She gasped.