Timba Comes Home (11 page)

I loved to hear humans laughing. It fired me up like nothing else. I charged across the floor and pounced on a horse harness, getting it in a tangle, and making Vati leap in the air like a
grasshopper. The house rang with laughter.

Only Graham was silent, skulking behind a crackly newspaper which was covered in gloom. The soles of his feet twitched as if he was annoyed by the fun rampaging through his house . . . and it
was his house, not Angie’s house, as he frequently reminded us.

The long hot summer was a happy time for Vati and me. We were young cats now, almost fully grown. Everyone admired me, and that helped me to become loving and confident. I
loved it when Graham looked at me and said, ‘That cat is really chocolate box.’

Angie spent a lot of time patiently teaching Leroy how to talk to me, how to hold me kindly, and how to tune in to my needs. He seemed like a different boy, the boy he wanted to be. On his
weekly visits I never heard him cry, and all the time his eyes were wide open with wonder at the new things he was discovering.

Graham refused to take much interest in Leroy, until one wet Saturday when Leroy sidled up to him with a book in his hand. ‘Will you read me a story?’ he asked.

‘Ask Angie,’ Graham said.

‘She’s getting lunch,’ said Leroy, and stood looking at Graham beguilingly. ‘Please.’

I decided to get in on the act and jumped onto Graham’s lap to soften the hard shell he was trying to maintain. A stare from my golden eyes and a silent meow soon had him sighing and
reluctantly taking the book. ‘Aren’t you a bit old to have stories read to you?’

Leroy looked disappointed. ‘But I like your voice,’ he said. ‘It makes the story come real and Timba wants a story too, don’t you, Timba?’

Graham gave in and started to read with Leroy sitting on the arm of the chair, his eyes wide and inquisitive, and me purring on his lap. It soon became obvious that Graham was enjoying it as
much as Leroy. Even Vati wanted to be part of it, and he draped himself over Graham’s shoulder from where he could see the pictures in the book and feel the rumble of Graham’s
voice.

I sensed the angels, and basked in the warm, smooth glow they were building around us, binding us together, wanting us to be a family. But Graham was still harbouring that secret in his eyes,
and when I stared into them it was a shadow dancing, waiting for its time.

On another Saturday, Vati and I were sitting in the sun on the hot stony slabs beside the pond. Vati was completely absorbed by something. Now and again he twitched his tail
and stretched his neck, as if whatever he was watching had moved.

‘What are you looking at?’ I asked.

Vati ignored me. He was too intent. So I moved round and peeped at his eyes. They glinted green with a mystic sparkle which I loved to see. Vati seemed to be twice as alive as me.

‘I’m witnessing a struggle,’ he said. Following his gaze I saw an ugly, crusty-looking creature clinging to a reed. It seemed to be stuck with its head in some kind of tight
casing, its sectioned body arched, straining to free itself. It had a rhythm of struggling and resting, struggling and resting, and nothing much changed. I got bored watching it, but Vati
didn’t. ‘I’m tuning in to this being,’ he said. ‘It’s desperate to fly free before the sun goes down. I think it’s going to be beautiful, and I want to
give it to Graham to show how much I love him.’

‘What you looking at, Timba?’ Leroy sat himself down next to us. He’d learned from Angie and the horses that he had to approach animals quietly, not at full throttle, so when
he arrived, neither of us moved. I did grant him a muted purr-meow and a sidelong cat smile.

His self-control vanished when he saw the creature heave and twitch to escape from its shell. Leroy jumped to his feet and pounded towards the house. ‘Angie! ANGIE . . . quick,
there’s a THING in the pond,’ he shouted.

‘It won’t be there much longer if you shout like that,’ Angie said as she emerged, drying her hands on her jeans.

‘Quick . . . quick! It might be an ALIEN,’ whispered Leroy, and the garden rang with Angie’s laughter.

‘Don’t touch it,’ she said firmly.

I sensed that Angie was stressed, despite the laughter. Earlier, she and Graham had been arguing about why he was always home late. As soon as the car turned in and Leroy’s ‘social
worker’ brought him to the door, the argument had stopped and hung in the air like a hostile rain cloud. Nothing had been resolved, and I’d done my best, walking to and fro between
them, trying to coax a spark of forgiveness. When Leroy came, Graham spoke to him briefly, then took his laptop to the music room. Angie pasted on a smile and pretended she was happy.

We cats see it all.

The four of us sat watching ‘the thing’ still struggling on the reed. A beam of sunlight touched the curve of its scaly body with a glint of brightest blue. It heaved, then stopped
and kept still.

‘Is it dead?’ Leroy whispered.

‘Probably not,’ said Angie.

Leroy started to take his shoes off. ‘I’m gonna paddle in there and help it get out.’

‘NO!’ Angie looked fierce enough to make Leroy freeze with one shoe in his hand.

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Because . . . it’s the struggle that makes it strong,’ Angie said, and as she spoke the creature gave a final heave and the rest of its body popped out and straightened into a
tail of iridescent turquoise. Two glistening wings slowly spread out to dry in the sun. Leroy gasped. ‘A dragonfly! It’s massive.’

The dragonfly turned its complex eyes and looked at us with luminous wisdom.

‘Hello, dragonfly,’ said Leroy. His smile beamed round the garden and his aura flared with light. ‘Can you fly now?’

I meowed to encourage the beautiful creature, and Vati’s eyes flashed green in the sun, the tip of his tail twitching. But Angie looked unexpectedly sad. I ran to her and rubbed myself
against her. In the deep heart of her mind a pain was rising. I could feel its unstoppable power.

Something was wrong with Angie.

‘You stay and watch it fly away,’ she said quietly to Leroy. ‘But don’t touch it. Promise?’

‘Promise.’ Leroy beamed and banged his hand against hers.

Angie tried to smile but her face was stiff. She stood up and walked slowly back to the house, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. I ran beside her with my tail up, and she was repeating
and repeating the words: ‘It’s the struggle that makes it strong.’

For once she didn’t pick me up for a cuddle. I sat on the windowsill and watched over her, offering the odd fragment of a purr, as she whizzed around the kitchen chopping vegetables and
scooping them into a pan. Her aura was unusually dark, and her eyes joyless. She didn’t want to stop and look at me, and I figured it was because she knew that I knew. Talking about it, even
to me, would be too painful.

Moments later a harrowing sound rang through the garden. Leroy was crying, louder than ever before. I peeped out and he was lying face down on the lawn, beating the earth with his fists. And
Vati was padding proudly through the kitchen with the dragonfly hanging, broken, from his mouth. Resolutely he headed through the open door of the music room with his precious gift for Graham.

The singing stopped. Graham’s nose and mouth curled in disgust as he saw Vati’s gift lying by his shoe. At arm’s length he picked up the broken dragonfly by one of its glassy
wings. ‘Yuk!’ Snarling, he crossed the room and held it high up above the trash can, which was a shiny tin with music notes painted on it. Graham dropped the dragonfly in there, and we
heard the ping as it landed. ‘You horrible cat!’ he growled at Vati. I winced. Vati’s eyes filled with shock and pain. Running low and scared, he streaked out of the music room,
his tail down, his eyes dark and frowning.

I followed Vati to the edge of the horse field and found him crouched inside an old barrel that was on its side in the hedge. He was devastated.

‘I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘I took Graham the nicest gift, the best thing I’ve ever caught, and he called me a horrible cat. And Leroy wants to kill me. What is
it with humans?’

There were no words to comfort him, so I kissed his face and licked him, purring and caring. He soaked it up in silence, but he wouldn’t come back to the house with me.

‘I want to spend time with the moon and the stars,’ he said, and looked towards the blue hills far away across the fields.

‘This isn’t a very nice place to sit,’ I remarked, sniffing at the dirty old barrel he had used as a haven.

‘Oh . . . but it is,’ Vati said. ‘Open your eyes, Timba. This barrel is on a sacred node point where two of the golden lines intersect. Surely you can feel it?’

I couldn’t.

‘It energises me to sit here,’ Vati said. ‘If you want to listen to your Spirit Lion, you should come here and it will be easy for you.’

‘So what’s wrong with Graham?’ I asked.

‘He is trapped, like the dragonfly was, and struggling to get free.’

Leroy cried for hours over the dragonfly. To him it was a tragedy, to Vati it was a triumph and a perfect gift. To Graham it was something horrible.

Angie took the crying Leroy back out into the garden. She opened the shed, and he peered in. ‘We’re going to do something AMAZING,’ she said, and put a spade into his hand.
‘You carry that.’

I followed them with my tail up into the vegetable garden, where I sat watching. I wanted to learn how Angie would stop Leroy crying so much. ‘I know it’s sad,’ she said,
‘but we’ve done enough crying, don’t you think?’

Leroy shook his head miserably.

‘Well I’m going to move on,’ said Angie, ‘otherwise I’ll miss out on some of the other miracles happening in the garden. Now . . . do you remember what we buried in
the ground, Leroy? Ages ago, in the spring?’

His eyes brightened. ‘A potato,’ he said huskily. I ran to him and rubbed my fur against his bare legs, purring, trying to coax him out of his grief.

‘Well, now we’re going to dig down and see what’s happened to it. Who’s going to dig?’

‘Me. Let me!’

Leroy dug eagerly, flinging earth across the garden like a dog digging. I darted out of the way, flicking my tail, and sat up on a pile of wood to watch. I worried in case Leroy dug up the
sleeping badger.

Angie helped him loosen the potato plant, easing it out in a shower of earth. From its roots hung a bunch of creamy white new potatoes. Leroy gasped. His mouth and eyes opened in astonishment.
He scooped up the baby potatoes and dropped them into a bucket. ‘FIFTEEN!’ he shouted, and his radiance lit up the garden. ‘We got fifteen potatoes.’

‘There’s the old one . . .’ Angie showed him the dusty old potato in the middle of it all. ‘And there’s more . . . look!’

Together they scrabbled in the earth like two rabbits.

‘It’s like buried treasure.’ Leroy grinned happily, his hands covered in soil, his eyes shining. ‘I didn’t know you could get potatoes out of the ground.’

‘Shall we cook them?’ said Angie. ‘Quick, help me before Graham goes out. We’ll have new potatoes with butter.’

‘New potatoes with butter,’ repeated Leroy.

‘You’re strong. You carry the bucket.’

Leroy set off, proudly, the bucket clanking in his hand. ‘New potatoes with butter,’ he sang, and the three of us headed for the kitchen, me with my tail up.

Angie was definitely an earth-angel, I thought, and almost believed I saw the shimmer of her wings. But what had Poppy meant when she said, ‘Earth-angels always take on more than they can
manage’?

It seemed a long time to me before Angie finally got what she wanted. Vati and I were cats now and we had lived through our first autumn and winter. Our coats were glossy, and
we were beautiful and strong. The only bad time was when Angie took us to the vet to have us ‘done’! ‘Sorry, guys,’ she explained. ‘But it’s better for you
long-term, and better for the Planet. We don’t want you making hordes of unwanted kittens.’ Rick was gentle with us, and we went to sleep together and woke up together, and got safely
home in the luxurious travelling basket Angie had bought us.

When the blossom was on the apple tree and the bees humming in the spring sunshine, the social workers finally allowed Leroy to come and live with us. I supervised while Angie set up a bedroom
for him with a cosy bed. She put posters on the walls, and bought him a blanket with lions on it. He had a brightly coloured beanbag, which I loved, and a bookshelf, and boxes of stuff which I
remembered from his home. Even the old teddies were there, freshly washed and pleased with themselves.

The only thing Leroy wanted when he arrived was me. He seemed awed by the majestic cat I had grown into.

The other thing Leroy wanted to do was climb the apple tree, and we did that together, Vati and I showing off as we led him up through the branches. When he’d done it once, Leroy called
out to Angie, ‘I climbed the flower tree.’

‘The flower tree?’ Angie came out into the garden, looking puzzled.

‘That one,’ said Leroy, pointing to the apple tree.

‘Oh . . . that’s an apple tree!’ Angie said, her voice kind.

‘No it’s not,’ Leroy grinned. ‘It hasn’t got apples on it . . . it’s a flower tree.’

Angie smiled at him. ‘You come and look at this, and I’ll tell you a secret.’ She held one of the blossoms still for him. ‘See that little blob in the middle of the
flower?’

‘Yeah.’ Leroy frowned.

‘THAT,’ said Angie, ‘will turn into an apple.’

‘No it won’t.’ Leroy rolled his eyes incredulously.

‘It takes all summer,’ said Angie. ‘The petals fall off and that little green blob swells up like a balloon and becomes an apple.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No, it’s true. You’ll see it happen. In a few weeks the flowers will have gone and you’ll see tiny green apples, too small to eat. BUT . . . ’ Angie widened her
eyes even more, and Leroy looked mesmerised. ‘It won’t happen unless a bee goes into the flower. There’s one . . . look. Let’s watch it and see what it’s
doing.’

‘It might come out and sting you.’

‘No it won’t, it’s too busy pollinating.’