Solomon's Kitten (6 page)

‘Frozen peas,’ said the voice. ‘Bottom of the bag.’

More rustling, and something achingly cold and knobbly was put close to my back. My breathing eased a bit. I was coming alive again, coming back from my trip to the shorelines of the spirit
world, reclaiming my beautiful silver tabby and white body.

‘She’s still breathing.’

‘Come on, darling – it’s all right.’

Didn’t I know that voice? I focused my eyes and saw the lovely policewoman who had coaxed me into the cat cage and taken me home that day. I was glad, and disappointed too. I’d hoped
it might be TammyLee.

My eyes were burning and they wouldn’t shut. I tried to sit up, but my legs wouldn’t move. Yet I knew I wasn’t dying. I’d come back into my beautiful cat body, my long
silver tabby fur, my white socks and pink paws, my lovely tail. But none of it would move. I could feel it twitching, but I’d somehow lost control. It was scary. How could I play and live my
life? I didn’t want to be useless and immobile. I felt terribly afraid.

I wanted peace, and recovery time.

But it wasn’t peaceful.

A crowd had gathered, looking at me as I lay on the bench, still gasping for breath and twitching. A row was breaking out. I heard Gretel’s shriek of a voice and she was part of the
row.

‘My car,’ she cried. ‘It’s been broken into.’

‘Never mind your car,’ a man was shouting at Gretel. ‘Is this your cat? Look at the state it’s in!’

I felt the old familiar shockwaves coming from Gretel as she saw me there on the bench, and I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t put my tail up and run to reassure her. She was under
attack. People were shouting at her furiously.

‘How could you leave a cat shut in a car in this heat?’

‘Haven’t you got any more sense?’

‘Don’t you CARE about your lovely cat?’

Gretel was crying and crying. ‘Is she going to die? I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to.’

No one was being kind to Gretel. The shouting got even louder.

‘I’m reporting you to the RSPCA, and you’ll never keep an animal again. You CRUEL woman.’

‘But is she dying?’ Gretel kept asking. ‘I’ll take her to the vet’s.’

‘You won’t. It’s too late for that. If we hadn’t been here, she’d be dead right now. Poor, poor cat. She’s suffered so much.’ Now the other person was
crying, and I lay there, shuddering in the middle of it.

‘I’ll see that you pay for this. That cat will be taken away from you. You’ve no business keeping an animal.’

‘It’s disgusting.’

‘But I do love her. She’s called . . .’

Gretel didn’t get the chance to say Fuzzball, and I was grateful for that. The lovely policewoman with the blonde ponytail intervened.

‘Please calm down,’ she kept saying firmly. ‘The cat needs some quiet. Please!’

I felt Gretel slump down on the bench beside me, and she touched my wet fur gently. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,’ she wept, and I wanted to tell her it was OK, I’d
forgiven her, but I couldn’t even lift my head to look at her. I knew I’d never see her again, and I wanted to say thank you to her for giving me a home and a fluffy cat bed, and all
that food. The toys and the quiet evenings on her lap by the fire. I wished those people would stop attacking her.

‘Here’s the animal ambulance. Move back please,’ said the lovely policewoman, and I heard people shuffling back as a vehicle drove up. After that it went quiet and I heard the
soft pattering of the plane-tree leaves above me.

The voices became murmurs and I was picked up and carried, my tail and legs floppy, into a silent and beautifully cool van with a blissfully soft bed inside. A kind man with a bright light
around him sat beside me and kept trying to put my head inside a weird-looking cup of clear plastic.

‘Come on, sweetheart. Come on, breathe. It’s oxygen. Come on, try it. It’s good stuff.’

He didn’t hurt me, but held my head firmly, and I picked up on his thoughts. He wanted me to breathe a special kind of air that was inside the cup. I tried it, and it was cool and sweet. I
couldn’t get enough of it. This clear, pure, mysterious air he called oxygen was filling my body with the fizz of new life.

I was alive, but I still couldn’t move. I took a last look at Gretel’s tear-stained face looking in at me as they closed the doors. I felt the van driving away, with me in it, lying
there, a useless dysfunctional wreck of a cat.

What would become of me now?

I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but my life with Gretel was over. For long days and nights, I lay in the animal hospital on a white bed with a light in the
roof, listening to the whimpering and wailing from other cats and dogs who were stretched out in recovery beds in that place.

The humans looked after me beautifully, and stroked me a lot, but their talk was gloomy.

‘This cat is borderline,’ I heard the man saying. ‘We don’t know what long-term effects the heat stroke will have. She could suffer from multiple organ failure and have
to be put down. A pity. She’s only a young cat.’

Every day they stuck a sharp needle in me and, yes, they took some of my blood! I could see it in the syringe. Then they put something in through another needle, and I felt better afterwards.
Clever stuff. But I knew what I needed, and it wasn’t available.

‘What’s happening to me?’ I asked my angel.

‘It’s a window,’ she replied.

‘A window?’

‘A time of waiting, a time of transition between two life times.’

‘Am I going to die?’

‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘But you are like a cat sitting in the window, watching what is outside. You can’t move on to the new life we have planned for you until you help
yourself to get better. You will need to be a strong healthy cat to cope with what is ahead.’

‘Help myself!’ I was surprised. I thought I could just lie there and let the humans work their mysterious magic with those needles and tubes.

‘All the purring and the medicine can’t make you right again,’ said my angel. ‘You need to HELP YOURSELF to find the healing you know you need.’

How could I FIND anything? I was lying flat in an animal hospital. Angels can be so unreasonable, I thought, and twitched my back and tail. My paws quivered in frustration. I stretched each of
my front paws, splaying my toes and letting my claws curl out, then in again. Bits of me were working. It seemed a good time to wash, so I lifted each paw to my mouth and began licking and brushing
my pink pads and the downy fur between my toes. It felt good.

‘Oh, she’s washing!’ exclaimed one of the nurses who was walking past. She stopped by my cage. ‘Good girl!’ she said, like Gretel. Then the vet came and looked at
me.

‘I think we’ll let Roxanne look at her later. Has she eaten anything?’

‘Little bits. She still doesn’t want to stand up.’

‘But she’s washing. That’s a start.’

Later that day, the animal hospital went uncannily quiet. I wondered why. Then the main door opened and in came a girl in a blaze of light. Was she real? I stared, and found I could see a human
in there, inside that blaze of light, just an ordinary lump of a girl with a long dark plait over one shoulder. I wanted her close to me, immediately. I couldn’t wait.

My angel had told me to help myself, so I managed an echoing meow and at once the girl came to me and looked in with the most beautiful eyes.

‘We thought you should start with the dogs, Roxanne,’ said a nurse.

‘No.’ said Roxanne. ‘This cat. She needs me now. She’s right on the edge. I’ll do her first.’

First. I was first! I meowed in welcome as Roxanne came right up to me, and the light from her aura flooded into my cage. She unlatched my door, and looked deeply into my eyes, like TammyLee had
done.

‘I’m Roxanne,’ she whispered. ‘I’m an animal healer, darling.’

As soon as I heard her voice and felt her touch, I wanted to cry, and I sort of did by sighing and making little mewling sounds in my throat.

‘Is it OK to take her out?’ Roxanne asked the nurse, who hovered beside us, watching and learning.

‘Sure. She’s not going anywhere. She’s just laid there for days.’

Roxanne picked me up and sat down with me flopped on her lap.

‘What’s her name?’ she asked.

‘She hasn’t got one.’

Again, Roxanne looked deep into my eyes. ‘Then I shall give her one,’ she said, ‘it will come through to me.’ I tingled all over. This girl of the blazing light was going
to give me a name, a new, beautiful name, something I had longed for. I went on sighing and mewling, and with every sigh a stream of energy seemed to leave my body, as though my fur had been full
of heavy dust weighing me down for all of my young life, and now, under Roxanne’s healing touch, it was leaving.

I saw her hands, and they were full of colours as they moved over me. She went to my head first, and it felt like a soft cocoon of pure light was being woven around my skull, wrapping my face,
my long whiskers, my ears, my nose.

‘This cat is depressed,’ Roxanne said to the nurse.

‘Depressed!’

‘Oh, yes, and deeply so. She’s been hurt and it’s never been healed. That’s what is stopping her getting better.’

She knew. She’d looked into my soul. The relief was huge, it left my body in waves as her hands shone colours into me, deep emerald greens, hot white and glowing pink.

‘That’s it, darling. You let go of it all,’ she whispered to me, and my emotional pain shuddered through me, and began to leave. I saw it all. The very first hurt of my mum cat
not liking me, the terrible shock of Joe tipping us in the hedge like rubbish. Then Gretel. Calling me Fuzzball. Calling me a BAD CAT. Calling me a DEMON. Shutting me out in the freezing fog.
Locking me in the shed. And then leaving me to die in a hot car.

Gretel hadn’t meant to hurt me. She didn’t understand. I’d forgiven her, every time, but the pain had burrowed into my mind and made me depressed. Now this wonderful animal
healer, Roxanne, had chosen me – FIRST – and she knew what to do, what to whisper into my twitching ears. She wasn’t in a hurry. She spent ages healing me, sending colours into
every part of my body.

‘You take as much as you need, darling,’ she kept saying. And I did. I soaked up the colour and the healing energy like a starving soul. Gretel had stroked me and played with me, but
no one had loved me like this. I felt I’d come home. I felt lighter and lighter, as if I were a thistle seed that could blow for miles in the sunshine.

Then I heard purring, and it was me. I was purring.

‘And now – I’ll give you your name,’ said Roxanne. I looked attentively into her shiny dark eyes and waited. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ she said.
‘Your fur has the colours of a waterfall in the sunlight: silver and black with a tinge of gold and snowy white. And when you are well you will leap and dance and run fast like the mountain
streams. So I’ll call you TALLULAH. It’s Native American for “Leaping water”.’ She whispered this to me so softly, the words were like gossamer, precious and strong. I
wasn’t even sure whether I was hearing them or whether she was sending them by telepathy.

‘TALLULAH.’

I was thrilled. I had a name. A beautiful name that was full of music, a name that honoured my beauty and made me feel good.

A buzz of happiness started inside me, and I rolled over and managed to sit up and purr my gratitude to Roxanne. I was determined to touch noses with her, and I stretched up, wobbling a bit on
my legs, and kissed her glowing face.

I was healed.

I was a new cat.

I had become Tallulah.

On the day I left the animal hospital, I saw the mountains for the first time. They were peacock blue against the sky beyond the town and I wondered why I’d never noticed
them before. I studied them as we travelled along, through familiar streets, past the common and the elderberry tree where I had found Rocky. Dark berries hung from it now. It was late summer,
still hot, but the car I was travelling in was airy and quiet.

Being Tallulah made me feel proud and excited. Not knowing where I was going didn’t bother me. I couldn’t wait to arrive and start my search for TammyLee.

The car followed the river out of town, past its foamy places and waterfalls as it flowed down from the hills. I longed to get out and sit watching them, seeing the colours of my fur as Roxanne
had described them. Silver, black, tinges of gold and snowy white. I longed to climb trees, and explore, chase leaves through the woods, hide in the long grass, and stalk mice in the moonlight. I
was a free spirit now. I was Tallulah.

‘You must be patient for a while longer, Tallulah,’ said my angel as we turned into a farm gateway and down a track to a cottage. Immediately, I could hear the cats. There were other
cats there, and all of them meowing. I hoped they would like me.

But when the car stopped, I was again carried out in the cat basket. There was a lovely house, but we didn’t go inside. Instead, we went round to a yard at the back, and along the wall was
a line of wire enclosures, each with a cat inside. Cages. Prisons. What a let-down! I was put inside one, and it had double doors so that I couldn’t escape when someone came in.

‘Hello, my luvvy.’

A warm friendly woman welcomed me, and she smelled of cats. Her eyes sparkled at me. I meowed back.

‘I’m Penny,’ she told me, and I’m the cat lady, that’s what everyone calls me. I’m not adopting you, luvvy, but fostering you, and you can live in this lovely
Cat Protection pen until we find a super home for you.’

She came into the pen with me, and opened the door of my travelling basket. I stepped out politely, with my tail up and my whiskers shining in the morning sun.

‘Tallulah,’ said Penny thoughtfully. ‘That’s a nice name, and aren’t you just BEAUTIFUL! We’ll have no trouble finding you a nice home. You won’t be
here for long.’

She stayed in the pen with me, sitting on a chair while I explored my new home. It had some great perches I could climb up to and sit on. It had a little house with a window and a warm bed
inside. There was a huge litter tray, and a post with rope wound round it and I spent some time smelling it. Judging by the claw marks, dozens of cats had used it as a claw-sharpener. In a box on
the floor were some toys: a ball with a bell inside, a brand-new cat-nip mouse, a teddy bear and some other bits and pieces. I looked at them, but didn’t yet feel like playing. When I’d
inspected every inch of the pen and found no way out, I jumped onto Penny’s lap and she stayed there for me, smoothing my long fur while I purred myself to sleep.