Tigger (11 page)

My suspicions turned out to be well-founded: Tammy did not have one grain of sense; she was completely green. The world for her was this happy place where no danger existed and everyone was kind and friendly. In short: she was an open invitation to predators and prone to all kinds of accidents. So who was expected to watch and teach her? Me. I was saddled with her before I even knew it.

Mum wanted Tammy to stay in the house until she was a little bigger, which suited me fine. I could at least get some me-time away from her outside. While I was out, I had to trust my family to keep her safe, and generally they did. Her tendency to creep into any box or shopping bag very nearly became her undoing a couple of times, but fortunately someone always discovered her before she was thrown out with the rubbish. She also had a habit of going to sleep on the backs of sofas and in other high places, and then falling off. Luckily, she was just about cat enough to land on her feet each time.

Eventually, Mum pronounced Tammy old enough to go outside under my supervision. She asked us not to go beyond the garden fence and warned me that Tammy needed looking after. As if I didn't know! Even so, she managed to fall into the pool and I had to pull her out. That was one of her nine lives gone. She didn't worry about it for long though, as she seemed to be incapable of remembering anything that had happened more than five minutes ago. Mum shot me a sharp look when I brought Tammy home looking bedraggled, dripping water all over the kitchen floor. What was I supposed to do? Keep her on a lead?

Even without a lead, Tammy followed me everywhere, like a shadow. At the same time, she was very easily distracted by, say, a passing butterfly or a crawling insect, and before I knew it, she had disappeared. Then I would get the blame if she was lost. She also had the tiniest little voice which nobody except me could hear. Generally, I would find her skipping about somewhere in a happy daze and take her home, but there was also that time when she climbed up into the chimney from the fireplace. I saw her tail disappear into the blackness and was appalled. How could I get her down from there? I realized I was no longer nimble enough to follow her up, and anyway, I shouldn't have to: I was a cat; cats didn't climb up chimneys. Not normal cats, anyway. When the children came home from school, they were greeted by an eerie wail that echoed around the fireplace. They froze in shock, so I ran to get Dad. He eventually located Tammy by shining a torch up the chimney, where she was perched half-way up on a narrow ledge. Dad and Tammy were both as black as chimney sweeps when they emerged.

To be fair, there were also good times. Tammy was agile and quick, which made her an excellent hunter. My own figure now being slightly on the heavy side, I was at a disadvantage in that respect, but she caught her prey every time. Once she even caught one of the fat, scaly creatures I had encountered early on, who had moved back into our garden after the pool had been finished. She carried it into the house through the cat flap, which was an amazing feat, considering how long the creature was. She had to ease it through sideways; it was expertly done. Unfortunately, Mum had no eye for Tammy's outstanding talent. She unceremoniously bundled the creature into a shoe box, where it thrashed about and hissed, and took it back out into the garden. Later that day, I watched it emigrate again with its friend, probably forever this time. It was a shame, because Tammy was only just getting into her stride.

Over time, Tammy and I developed a number of games that we played with each other. My favourite one was ‘Chase and Tumble', where we chased each other around the house, and when I caught her we wrestled on the floor. The rules were simple: I won. The fact that I was much bigger and stronger than Tammy helped, and she was always a really good sport about it. Even when I bit her neck at the final climax of the game and dragged her across the floor she never complained. My family told me off though, when they saw me doing it, so we preferred to play in private. As time went by, Tammy got a lot better at defending herself and would often stand up to me quite bravely, landing a few punches of her own before I pounced on her for the final bite.

In the evenings, we shared the armchair and licked each other. That became my favourite time of the day. Mum lit some candles and sometimes the fire – she always checked carefully on Tammy's whereabouts before she did so – then we all had a cosy time together. Our family was very pleased with our new friendship and either all squeezed onto the sofa or sat on the floor to watch TV with us, rather than disturb us on the armchair.

I hated to admit it, but in spite of my earlier misgivings Tammy eventually brought fun and entertainment back into my life. I no longer sulked on the apple tree. I didn't have time even if I'd wanted to, as I was far too busy looking after her. Life was good once more.

When we had left America, Caroline had been very cross with Mum and Dad because she didn't want to leave her friends. She had cried and cried and said she was sure she would never, ever make friends again, in Melbourne or anywhere else. I felt dreadfully sorry for her. Sure, I was sad to leave grey cat Piglet, but I didn't love him anywhere near as much as Caroline loved her friends. Her heart was breaking; there was no doubt about it.

I was therefore surprised to hear her ask Mum about having a party for her 14
^th
birthday, not so long after we had moved. Who was going to come? All her friends were still in America. I was intrigued, particularly when Mum and Dad said yes and the ‘Rose & Crown' was readied for the party. Judging by the preparations, we were expecting quite a few guests. The carpet was rolled up, Robin's train set was dismantled and packed away, and Dad removed all the bottles from the shelves. Caroline set up an elaborate arrangement of boxes connected by wires that played very loud music, while Mum prepared masses of food.

When the big night of the party arrived, I watched from upstairs through the banisters as Caroline's guests arrived. I didn't recognize any of them and they definitely didn't sound American, but they did produce a lot of noise. I went outside to watch them through the big windows at garden level. Tammy was too scared to come with me. It was just as well, because there were some wild games going on in the ‘Rose & Crown', and the music was deafening. After a while, much to my alarm, a few of the guests discovered the door into the garden and decided to come outside, even though it was winter and quite cold. More and more of them followed. I hid under a bush.

At first, they just sat on a garden wall and talked. It was easier to talk outside, because the music was less loud, and they didn't seem to feel the chill. But the peace didn't last long. One of the boys discovered the small box that controlled a number of little black jets that squirted water on to the garden in summer. I knew those jets well and had learnt to listen out for the hissing sound which heralded their appearance above grass level just before they started squirting, early in the mornings. You didn't get much time to run once the hissing began, and some of them squirted quite viciously. There was one in the middle of the lawn that went round and round, pumping out water at a drenching rate. I'd had an encounter with it once and was not keen on a repeat. As the boy started fiddling with the little box, I jumped up on the garden fence to safety. Was I glad I did! There was the hissing sound – drowned out for the guests by the music and chatter – and then the black jet rose from its hiding place in the grass and began its mad dance. Round and round it went, shooting water in all directions, and particularly at the wall where Caroline's guests perched. There was a lot of screaming. One girl fell off the wall and landed in a shrub, legs in the air, a couple of boys leapt up and down on the wall as though that might stop the water coming; the rest ran back into the house. Soon Dad entered the scene with a spanner in his hand and received a good blast from the runaway jet before he managed to subdue it. It descended back into its hole with a disapproving splutter and the crisis was over.

The screaming in the party room subsided as the guests gradually dried off, but the thump, thump, thump of the music continued. I felt sorry for the neighbours and also for the rest of my family, who had to listen to the bedlam. The whole house was vibrating. Surely Tammy was a nervous wreck by now? I went in search of her and found her, as I had expected, in Emily's bedroom, where she was peacefully asleep on her bed in amongst the soft toys. If you didn't know, you would have taken her for a soft toy herself.

It was a relief to all of us when the guests' parents finally came to take them away. The ‘Rose & Crown' looked as though a tornado had passed through it. There were gift wrappings, paper garlands, bits of food and drink everywhere. Those guests who had been outside when the watering started up had left muddy footprints all over the room and all down the corridor. Mum and Dad looked very tired. They said it was too late to start clearing up today, but that we would all be called upon to help in the morning.

I was the first one up as usual and went downstairs to make a start. There were some very tasty leftovers on the floor; I've never had a better breakfast. By the time Mum came downstairs with the broom and mop, I had already cleared away much of the food and decided to get out of her way, which is to be recommended whenever she wields those gadgets. On my way up I met Dad carrying the vacuum cleaner down – my enemy number one – so I was doubly glad I had put in an early shift. Anyway, I needed a drink after all that spicy food.

It didn't take Mum and Dad all that long to clean the ‘Rose & Crown'. By the time the children got up, it was nearly all done. Caroline said it had been the best party ever. I was glad to see she had found herself some new friends after all, and that she had overcome her disappointment at having left America.

I returned from my early morning walk to find Emily in a state of wild excitement. She had already whirled Tammy around the room and made her dizzy; now she looked as though she might start on me. But I extracted myself from her grasp using my claws and called her to order.

She looked a bit sorry then and told me she'd just heard she was getting a pony. A what? Realizing I didn't know what she was talking about, she showed me a photo – it turned out to be one of the long-legged creatures that lived in the field next door. Whatever next? Were we to share the house with a hoof animal now? I wanted nothing to do with it. Emily assured me the pony would not live with us, but in the field next door, and that I didn't have to have anything to do with it if I didn't want to. I didn't; that much was clear to me from the start.

The pony arrived in the afternoon in a large box pulled by our car. Tammy and I watched from the relative safety of the garden wall as Emily guided the pony out of the box walking backwards and on to our driveway. Tammy's eyes grew rounder and rounder as the pony emerged; she was on the brink of panicking and running away. But curiosity got the better of her, and she stayed to watch.

The pony was brown and very chubby, with a large white patch on its face that covered one entire side of it. It didn't look as though it knew how much Emily had been looking forward to its arrival: it laid its ears back and aimed a couple of kicks in her direction. Fortunately, she was so in love with it already, she never even noticed, but walked instead to the front end that didn't kick and planted a big kiss on its nose. I could tell the pony was staggered by this welcome – I doubt it had ever been kissed before.

While it was still dazed by the experience, Emily led it off to the field next door, where it joined the bigger ponies who already lived there. Emily then unloaded a whole lot of equipment from the box and from the car. It seemed you needed a lot more things to keep a pony than you did for a cat. There were rugs and brushes, huge buckets, bulging bags of food, shiny leather straps and other strange implements I could not identify. She put everything into the wheelbarrow and wheeled it next door into a wooden shed. Then she set about brushing her pony until it got dark and she was no longer able to see what she was doing. Only then did she remember me and Tammy and came home, full of smiles but smelling oddly different – it was the smell of horse. We were to become very familiar with it over the coming years, as Emily's room would smell of it forever after.

Looking after the pony became Emily's main and favourite occupation. As soon as she came home from school, she put on her pony clothes – recognizable by their particularly strong smell and kept in a hairy pile in a corner of her bedroom – and ran next door. She brushed the pony first, then she put the leather straps on its head and a seat on its back, and finally she got on it and rode around and around the field for hours. There were a few painted logs in the field that she sometimes made the pony jump over. All in all, it didn't look very exciting to me. Emily, however, was thrilled to bits, so Tammy and I were happy for her as well. When she came back from riding, she changed her clothes and played with us before doing her homework. We were glad to see she hadn't forgotten us altogether.

Fortunately, there were others in the house to entertain us. Robin, for instance, had a new train set. He and Dad had built a wonderful landscape with tiny trees and houses, hills, roads and cars, and a train track that ran all around it and through two dark tunnels. There were several little trains that could run along those tracks all by themselves. I loved watching them from the sidelines and always made a point of joining Robin when he went downstairs to the ‘Rose & Crown' to play trains.

While I was happy just to watch, Tammy wanted to explore the landscape on the set. She was small and nimble enough to pick her way through the little village without upsetting the houses, and she was careful to get out of the way of the trains, so Robin didn't mind her doing it.

One day I woke from my afternoon snooze to find that Tammy had disappeared yet again. I sighed and set about looking for her in all the usual places: Emily's bed, the chimney, Mum and Dad's wardrobe, the empty shopping bags by the front door – in vain. When the children came home from school, they joined my search, but we all drew blanks. There was nothing for it but to wait and see – and for me to listen out for the tiny voice from a totally unexpected place. Meanwhile, Robin and I went to play trains.

Robin got a couple of trains set up, then turned the knob on the controls and off they moved, in opposite directions. One of the engines – my personal favourite – had little puffs of smoke coming from its tiny chimney. I watched it closely as it puffed its way through the trees and into one of the dark tunnels. It gave a little whistle as it entered. Just then, a commotion began inside the tunnel and something white shot out the other end, followed closely by the little puffing train. Tammy! She had hidden in there and gone to sleep on the track. Now she looked scared and shook like a leaf. Robin thought it was hilarious. He laughed so much he rolled on the floor.

Tammy didn't like the train set any more after that, so Robin and I were left to play by ourselves – that's unless Dad joined us, of course.