The Cat Who Came In From The Cold

by Deric Longden

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Marmite.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘It’s his elevenses – now if you’ll excuse me.’

  Thermal and I were developing a routine. The Marmite meant he had plenty of iron and it didn’t lie heavy on his stomach as we went through our punishing schedule for the day.

  I washed the pots as he pushed his saucer around the kitchen floor and then we went across to the office. He waited outside as I rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and then pushed it under the door.

  Thermal on the other side saw it coming and went berserk. I wiggled it about and he chewed it and bit it and thumped it until it was dead and then we went off together to bank up the fire.

  Nick had never seen me with a pet before and I tried to explain the relationship between a man and his cat.

  ‘It isn’t just a matter of letting it out at night and then chucking half a tin of Whiskas in a bowl when it comes back.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘We’re on the same wavelength – like the sheepdog and the shepherd on One Man and His Dog – we are one man and his cat.’

  ‘In other words he’s got you where he wants you.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Thermal sat on the hearth and watched as I poked the fire – his was merely a passive role until the moment I took the lid from the coke bucket. Then his expertise came into play.

  I picked out the coke with a pair of tongs and it was his job to sniff at each and every lump before I placed it in position on the fire – a sort of quality control if you like. He had yet to reject a lump, but it was best to be on the safe side.

  When that was done I was allowed to have five minutes with the paper whilst Thermal sat on the dining-room table and made faces at people passing by – I suppose it’s more or less what everyone does with their cat in the morning.

  To Nick this domestic scene of a man and his cat as one, in perfect harmony, was something new – something he had never experienced.

  He was puzzled when I pulled out the middle pages of the paper and laid them beside me on the floor. He picked them up and handed them back to me.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ I told him. ‘Thermal likes to sit on the paper when he’s finished pulling faces at people. If I don’t do that he sits on the bit I’m reading.’

  ‘Why don’t you just clip him round the earhole and tell him not to?’

  But that was just the point. I’m bigger that Thermal and if I wanted to I could beat the living daylights out of him – but then if I did, would he sit on my chest all the way through Coronation Street with a paw each side of my neck and his head tucked under my chin?

  Would he take just one bite of every meal I put down for him and then come looking for me to tell me that this was the best bit of fish he’d had in months before he went back and finished it off?

  Would he sit on my desk all afternoon, sunning himself under the anglepoise lamp, so that I could lean my notes up against him?

  No of course he wouldn’t, but Nick didn’t seem to understand and I was disappointed because you want those you love to love one another.

  I spent the rest of the day working at my desk while Nick slept off his jet-lag on the settee. Thermal sat to attention on the sideboard to make sure he didn’t run off with the silver.

  An hour later I took a break and popped in to see if all was well and found that the kitten had taken his courage in both paws and was sitting in the armchair from where he could keep an eye on the cushions as well.

  I made a cup of tea for Aileen and myself around six o’clock and on my way back to the office went to see if Nick was awake.

  He was still flat on his back and out to the wide. His chest was rising and falling with each gentle, fluted snore and on his stomach was a small white kitten, riding it like a surfer rides a wave.

  His concentration was absolute, but he looked up when he heard me come in.

  ‘He’s not much fun, is he?’

  I watched Coronation Street with Aileen. She didn’t sit with her paws either side of my neck or tuck her head under my chin – but apart from that she was quite good company.

  Then I poured some wine and took the joint out of the oven. Aileen drank my wine, apologized and then drank her own.

  ‘Better wake Nick.’

  I pushed the door open slowly so that I could bring him round in stages, but he was already awake and sitting by the hearth with Thermal.

  They were trying to save the fire from extinction and Nick was plucking lumps of coke from the bucket with the tongs. He held out each and every lump so that Thermal could have a good sniff before he placed them in position on the grate.

  With Nick’s enthusiasm and Thermal’s experience they made quite a good job of it and then my son unfolded the Independent on the carpet and began to read the television listings.

  Thermal frowned, shifted impatiently and cleared his throat. Nick looked up.

  ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t think.’

  He patted the little kitten on the head, plucked out the middle pages and spread them down by his side.

  ‘There you are, old son – park your bum on that.’

  That night we opened a bottle and talked into the early hours. It was well past Thermal’s bedtime and he slept on Aileen’s chest which, he had discovered – unlike Nick’s chest or mine – had a special inbuilt design-feature that prevented him from sliding down.

  He woke up as we were nodding off and looked longingly at the nearest plant pot.

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  I picked him up and carried him down to the rhubarb patch. The cold air didn’t seem to hit me until I reached the bottom step – there was a coating of white frost over the courtyard and I apologized as I put him down under a leaf.

  ‘Sorry about this.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  He gave me one of his looks and so I left him to it and spent the next minute or so persuading an enormous black tom-cat that this wasn’t a public right of way. Thermal must have finished by now.

  ‘You should have seen that one, Thermal – he’d have made ten of you.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘It’s all right – he’s gone now.’

  I couldn’t see him anywhere. There was a full moon and he was a white kitten – he’d almost glowed when I had brought him down the steps.

  ‘Thermal?’

  Where was he? He hadn’t come past me. I combed the rhubarb patch and the full length of the hedge – there was no sign of him. I remembered the cough.

  ‘Humph!’

  I coughed my way all around the courtyard and back to the gap in the hedge. He must have gone through to Patrick’s – he’d be sitting on his bucket. There was no other way he could have got out.

  I’d have to go round – through the gate and down the lane and then into Patrick’s, hoping he hadn’t got it locked from the inside.

  I fumbled my way across to the gate. It was a heavy black gate in a shadowy stone wall and it was wide open. We never left it open – must have been the paperboy with the evening Examiner.

  ‘Thermal. Come on, Thermal – there’s a good boy.’

  It seemed darker out in the lane somehow, the light from the windows didn’t reach this far.

  He could be anywhere and I had a funny feeling I was never going to see him again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I sat on the wall of the West Indian Club and tried to imagine what the world would look like if I were only six inches tall. Where would I go if I were six inches tall?

  Nick, who is six feet two inches tall, climbed the narrow steps from the park up to the dimly-lit lane and shook his head.

  ‘It’s no good.’

  We had searched for two hours now and unearthed a regular army of cats. Some were off-duty – fast asleep in tumbledown outbuildings – and they had panicked at the sound of us and then looked guilty at being caught catnapping.

  O
thers were wide awake and on guard. They spat at us, firing their rubber bullets indiscriminately. I was glad I wasn’t six inches tall.

  ‘We shan’t find him tonight – not now.’

  He was right. We walked back towards the house, sending the beam of our torches off into dark corners, pushing open gates with a nudge of the shoulder, listening to the intermittent roar of traffic on the main road not fifty yards away.

  We had looked there first – in the gutter. You always look in the gutter. Cats seem to spin off when they have been hit by a car – they are very tidy animals.

  We found three white paper bags that could have been him from a distance and a McDonald’s polystyrene burger-box that definitely was him from only a couple of feet away.

  ‘He’ll be back in the morning – you’ll see.’

  Aileen stood on the balcony and whistled. She had the sort of whistle that would make the hair on a pebble stand to attention. Cats from the outlying villages put their paws over their ears and composed letters of complaint to the evening paper. The locals called in to complain in person.

  They scattered as Nick and I pushed open our final gate for the night. Aileen hadn’t seen them arrive and she didn’t see them leave. For most of the time she treated her blindness as though it were no more than a slight cold, but at times like this she resented the fact that she had to be left behind like a child – to wait for the grown-ups.

  The very first thing next morning I crept downstairs so as not to wake the others. I pushed open the door to the inner hall and padded down the corridor. I could almost see Thermal sitting on the step outside.

  ‘He’s not there – I’ve looked,’ Nick shouted from the kitchen. I had a look anyway, just to make sure.

  ‘He’s probably sleeping it off somewhere,’ he comforted as he filled the kettle, ‘he’ll be back before long.’

  We heard Aileen feel her way downstairs, open the inner door and pad along the narrow hallway.

  ‘He’s not there – I’ve looked,’ I shouted. But she had a look anyway – just to make sure.

  The night before, draped in darkness, the lane had assumed an air of menace, as though it were auditioning for a Gothic novel. In the daylight you could see that it wasn’t up to the job. Don’t ring us – we’ll ring you.

  As a team we searched the gardens and outbuildings. Each of the old stone houses sprouted at least a shed or a garage apiece and some had an outside lavatory thrown in for good measure.

  Nick and I peered in through windows and guiltily tried the locked doors. Some didn’t have locks – some didn’t have doors. Aileen whistled and coughed in turn and lifted the lids from dustbins but there was no sign of Thermal and we trooped back to the house a beaten bunch.

  Earlier we had combed the park, like grouse-beaters spread out in an ineffectual line. We found an old man sleeping it off in a flowerbed, but he hadn’t seen a kitten.

  Before that I had climbed over the wall into Patrick’s. I was feeling very guilty about taking his cat away from him – if I had left well alone then Thermal might still be here and better equipped to cope with life in the jungle. I had spoiled him rotten.

  Nick had to leave that afternoon. It was Sunday and he was due down in Newport Pagnell for the start of a four-week course. We would have him for three more weekends before he flew back to Dubai.

  After we had seen him off I sat down and put together an advert for the lost and found column in the Examiner. I offered a small reward for Thermal’s return and if you are ever lonely and anxious to meet people I suggest you do the same.

  The small boy held a bright ginger kitten in his arms. Either he had spent weeks training it to look pathetic or it just had a natural gift for being miserable.

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry – mine was white.’

  ‘This one’s got some white on him.’

  ‘Where?’

  He turned the kitten over and examined its undercarriage.

  ‘I saw some somewhere.’

  ‘It’s not mine, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy it anyway. I can give you a choice – I’ve got three more at home.’

  The girl was a little older and she needed to be if she was to hang on to the cantankerous tabby she held in her arms. It was at the very least ten years old.

  ‘Are you the one who’s lost a kitten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘No – that’s Ranji. He’s Mr Patel’s cat. Where did you find him?’

  ‘In that garden on the corner.’

  ‘That’s Mr Patel’s garden.’

  ‘I’d better put him back then.’

  ‘I think you had.’

  The phone never stopped ringing and we made a trip up to Lindley to look at a likely prospect.

  ‘I’m sorry – it’s not ours.’

  ‘Thank God for that – I can keep it now without worrying.’

  Other calls we could have done without.

  ‘There’s men going round stealing them you know. They make fur coats out of them and gloves and things – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t been taken. They have a van and they just chuck ’em in the back. My son says …’

  I switched my brain off at that point – I didn’t want to know what her son said.

  Aileen rang the RSPCA, the PDSA and all the local vets and drew a blank each time. He couldn’t have just vanished off the face of the earth, and my biggest fear was that he was locked in a building somewhere very close. He could have heard us calling him. I would rather have found him dead in the gutter than have him starve to death.

  I kept telling myself it was only a cat, but nothing is only anything and it was my cat and, as such, unlike any other cat in the world.

  On the Wednesday morning I wrote a circular and wished I had thought of it earlier.

  Have you accidentally locked a small white kitten in your garage or outhouse? He disappeared on Saturday night and hasn’t been seen since. Would you please check.

  I added my address and telephone number and ran off a hundred and fifty copies. By lunch-time I had pushed a hundred and thirty-two of them through letterboxes, some of which I never knew existed. And then I waited – I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  The response wasn’t overwhelming, but then we only needed one reply. We had two – one in person, the other via the phone.

  The person was in his early twenties and he carried a half-starved cat under his arm. It was black and moth-eaten, with eyes so dull they seemed to have gone out.

  ‘I don’t suppose this is yours.’

  ‘No – I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I couldn’t remember what you said yours was, I lost your note. Good job I checked though – it must have been in my shed a week. I’ve given it a feed.’

  He put the cat down and suddenly it came to life. From the balcony we watched it race across the courtyard and out through the gate. It turned off the lane and on towards the main road – looking left and right before shooting straight across and up a garden path. The young man smiled.

  ‘It seems to know where it’s going.’

  At least my circular had done somebody a good turn.

  The phone call was from Patrick.

  ‘I see you’ve lost a white kitten.’

  ‘Yes – I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ve had a look, but he’s not here.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Hope he turns up.’

  ‘Yes – so do I.’

  He’d let me off lightly and I was very grateful.

  Everything seemed to wind down after that. There were no more callers but I still looked out for him. It had become second nature for me to peer in through shed windows and nudge open gates as I walked.

  Nick came home for one weekend and then another. Aileen and I worked hard on our books and life returned to normal except that every half-hour or so I took a stroll to the back door to see if Thermal had arrived home unannounced.<
br />
  ‘You should have given him a key,’ Aileen told me.

  And yet if I happened to delay one of my checks for more than five minutes, Aileen would be off across the hall to pull open the door and rattle my eardrums with her whistle.

  She had hauled his litter-tray down to the cellar where it wouldn’t be a constant reminder. The kitchen seemed much larger without it and one day perhaps, when the memories weren’t so sharp, we could convert it into a jacuzzi.

  I opened a cupboard one morning and noticed that his vast stockpile of Whiskas had disappeared.

  ‘I gave it to Mrs Barraclough. She took it for her Arnold.’

  I assumed that Arnold must be Mrs Barraclough’s cat, but knowing Mrs Barraclough it could have been her husband.

  Aileen thought she had cleared away all the reminders, but on the night after Thermal’s disappearance I had trodden on his sultana as it sat meditating on my office carpet. It was miles away, warming itself by the fan-heater.

  I apologized, gave it the kiss of life and pumped it back into some sort of shape. It was now under intensive care in a matchbox by the ashtray on my desk.

  I also managed to smuggle a tin of Whiskas beef and kidney into our wire basket as we slalomed our way around the aisles in Sainsbury’s. You never know – miracles do happen.

  At home Aileen plucked it out of the carrier bag and tried to make sense of the label. She peered at it – the tip of her nose nuzzling the tin.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Stewing steak – I thought I could do something interesting with it in an emergency.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I stowed the tin away on a top shelf and hoped that she wouldn’t feel peckish while I was out.

  On his final night in England we took Nick over to the Lodge Hotel at Birkby for a meal. They actually cook their food instead of buying it in boxes from Marks & Spencer and it always makes a nice change for us.

  Nick had to be at Manchester Airport by five o’clock in the morning and so we sat up talking until well after two. Aileen had fallen asleep twice already and now she was nodding again.

  ‘Why don’t you take her off to bed, Dad? I’ll doze in the chair here and then slip out – we can say our goodbyes now.’