Solomon's Tale

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Don’t get nasty,’ she said. ‘Just sit there.’

  Joe turned and left, slamming the door so hard that the whole house vibrated and the remaining shards of glass crashed into the hall.

  ‘I’ll kill the pair of you,’ he bellowed as he headed out.

  Ellen picked me up and wept into my fur.

  ‘What are we going to do, Solomon? What are we going to DO?’

  I just kept my head down and carried on purring into Ellen’s heart. She seemed frozen. Nothing I did made any difference. Perhaps that first row was the most difficult, at least it was for me anyway. And through it all Jessica was out in the garden, shamelessly chasing butterflies. For once I envied her ability to detach herself from family upsets. I made a mental note that detachment was a skill to be acquired in another lifetime. Right now I felt hopelessly inadequate, especially when Ellen put me down and picked up John, who was crying.

  ‘What did Daddy do?’ he was wailing.

  ‘He kicked the door in.’

  ‘It’s broken!’ John wailed even louder. ‘And the foxes will get in.’

  ‘We can mend it darling. Calm down. Daddy’s gone out now.’

  ‘Has Daddy gone away forever?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said he was.’

  ‘He won’t. He’ll be back. You’ll see,’ soothed Ellen, but her eyes were sad and frightened.

  ‘Jessica’s got a butterfly!’ shrieked John. He wriggled out of Ellen’s arms and both of them rushed into the garden. I didn’t understand why Ellen felt she had to rescue a butterfly when her own wings were broken.

  Exhausted by the rowing, I crawled onto my favourite cushion to doze through the morning. Blessed sleep took me quickly into the spirit world.

  ‘How are you doing, Solomon?’

  The sight of my angel’s beaming face stopped me moaning too much. The feelings of inadequacy and the pain in my ears melted into a stream of bright stars that healed my confusion. It was hard, my angel agreed, but warned me it would get worse, and in between the bad times I must concentrate on eating, playing and building myself into a strong cat.

  Refreshed and brave again, I awoke at noon to the silence of an empty house. I yawned and stretched, and walked into every room with my tail up, expecting to find Ellen. Even Jessica was nowhere to be seen. A plate of cat food was in its usual place in the kitchen so I ate most of it, thinking it had an odd metallic flavour. Rabbit, it said on the tin. Tin-flavoured rabbit. Well, it was different.

  I considered braving the cat flap, but it was too heavy for a kitten like me, only three months old, and it had a way of snapping shut on my tail. I decided to go upstairs to look for Ellen.

  The hall was full of broken glass, and the door had been mended with a piece of cardboard and parcel tape. John’s room was empty, and so was the bathroom, but Ellen’s bedroom door was shut. I sat outside it staring, trying to use my psi sense to find out if she was inside, but apparently she wasn’t. A few meows brought no result so I ran downstairs and jumped onto the lounge windowsill, and there, to my amazement, was Ellen. My fur stood on end, my tail bushed out like a bottlebrush. What I saw was so strange.

  Ellen was inside a silver door, about the size of the puss flap. She had shrunk to the size of a blackbird. I stared and stared, not daring to move in case it happened to me. It was definitely Ellen. She had blonde hair and she was smiling, her eyes were full of light. Then I noticed something that made my fur even stiffer. Only her head was there in that silver door, the rest of her was missing. Spooked, I looked carefully behind the silver door and nothing was there. I tried to touch noses with her but a glassy screen was across the door. I sat down, feeling I mustn’t take my eyes off her, and waited for her to come out.

  I heard the puss flap slam and Jessica came in with a dead starling in her mouth. She dumped half of it in the kitchen and half of it under the sofa before seeing me up there staring at Ellen in the silver door.

  ‘What are you all blown up about?’ she asked. ‘You look like a hedgehog.’

  ‘Something terrible has happened to Ellen.’

  Very few cats ever master the art of laughing. I certainly couldn’t. But Jessica knew exactly how to curl up her mouth, spark her eyes and roll on the floor as if she were laughing.

  ‘That’s a picture,’ she explained. ‘It’s not really Ellen. It’s a flat image on a piece of something.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Humans have lots of them.’ Jessica sounded bored and scathing. ‘Haven’t you ever noticed them? Look at that flat barn owl on the wall. And there are flat rabbits on the wall in John’s room. And there’s a flat horse at the top of the stairs. I don’t bother looking at them any more.’

  I did look at the flat barn owl and felt quite spooked by it, and angry with Jessica for laughing at me. I pounced on her from the windowsill and we wrestled, squealing on the floor. Then she chased me up the curtains. At that moment, in walked Ellen – the real Ellen, not the flat version. I was pleased to see her but she was not pleased to see me at the top of the curtains. That was our ill-timed mistake. The skin around her eyes looked red and her aura was dark. I wanted to love her but she shooed me into the garden along with Jessica, and a few minutes later half of the dead starling came sailing out too.

  I hated Jessica for getting me into trouble. Hate was something I should not be feeling. It was bad. It upset my stomach and clouded my vision so that I couldn’t tune in to my angel. Mist surrounded me. Earth mist. Hate mist. How to get out of it, I didn’t know.

  In this environment I could soon have lost touch with my mission and become a boring old cat who just ate, slept and survived. I walked into the road and considered leaving. The problem with leaving is that you are likely to regret it and go back, which is even more difficult. And embarrassing, I thought, when the car returned and Joe got out, shamefaced, and padded slowly up the path, a bunch of roses in his hand.

  THE BAILIFF

  Jessica hated the postman. She acted like a guard dog, lying in wait for him under the bushes by the front door, and pouncing on his shoelaces whenever he came near. On wet days she sat on the stairs glaring at the letterbox, and as soon as the postman pushed letters through onto the mat, she shredded them with ferocious claws. If Ellen didn’t get to them first, Jessica would then use the pile of torn paper as a litter tray. Her rage was infectious. Ellen and Joe, and even little John, screamed at her, and Jessica would disappear under the sofa at speed.

  She’d got a private collection of toys under there, a dead mouse, a blue and yellow Lego man, a shoelace and a Dairylea cheese portion pilfered from the kitchen table.

  One morning Jessica furiously attacked a crackly brown envelope that Joe obviously wanted.

  ‘You DEMON cat!’ he roared, purple in the face as he dangled the shredded letter in his hand. As usual, he turned on Ellen. ‘You would have to choose a manic moggy like her wouldn’t you? Well I tell you now, that cat is going down the RSPCA.’

  ‘No Joe,’ pleaded Ellen. ‘We promised to look after her, and anyway she can be a sweet little cat sometimes.’

  ‘Sweet little cat! She’s rubbish. And we can’t afford to feed one cat, leave alone two.’

  They were chilling words. I gazed at Joe from where I was sitting quietly on the windowsill enjoying the morning sun. Keeping calm wasn’t easy, but I was managing, even when I heard the dreaded RSPCA word. Later I padded across to the sofa and coaxed Jessica out. Her eyes were huge and black, but she emerged and sat beside me in our favourite chair.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘And Ellen does too. But why must you tear up letters like that?’

  Jessica said something surprising.

  ‘I only tear up the brown ones. They’re bills, and they make Joe bad tempered. Actually he tears them up himself, I’ve seen him doing it. And he hides them from Ellen.’

  Jessica fascinated me. One morning I sat and watched her in the garden. She spent half her time airborne, doing reckless leaps fr
om the garage roof to the cherry tree, then clambering up through the branches. Next she sat on the high wall and batted at swallows. The tiny birds dive bombed her, almost clipping her with a blade-like wing as they twisted out of her reach.

  ‘Do you wish you were a bird?’ I asked her.

  ‘No.’ She waited until I’d climbed through a prickly bush to the top of the wall to be with her. ‘Tiresome teenage kitten,’ she growled, lashing her tail at me. She took off down to the lawn, leaving me marooned up there, meowing. She slipped through the cat flap and I figured she would be in the kitchen eating from my dish. Moments later she emerged with a big brick of cheese in her mouth.

  ‘YOU PIGGING CAT!’ Joe burst into the garden and saw Jessica’s tail disappearing under the shed. ‘Why do I bother giving you a home? I worked my hands to the bone to pay for that cheese and you go and nick it. Thieving moggy. You’re nothing but trouble.’

  He seized a broom and banged on the shed with it. But Jessica didn’t come out. I saw Sue-next-door peering through her curtains, and I wondered where Ellen was. I felt scared on top of the wall, with Joe’s voice booming all over the garden. I wanted Ellen to come and coax me down.

  Horrified, I watched Joe lie down and ram the broom handle under the shed. Jessica would be killed. The shed was creaking and rocking as Joe attacked it. I looked up at Sue-next-door, who was standing firmly at the window with her arms folded, and I sent her a silent meow. She responded by rolling her eyes.

  Jessica popped out from the other side of the shed, still with the cheese in her mouth, and streaked across the lawn. I saw a flash of white paws and pink pads as she cleared the fence into Sue-next-door’s garden. Joe hurled the broom after her with such force that it snapped a row of tomato plants which Ellen had been growing against the sunny fence. A hot, dusty smell rose from them and green tomatoes rolled over the grass.

  Joe stood there, his aura steaming. His face was red and his hands trembled. Slowly he walked over and picked up a green tomato, and looked at it in silence. He picked up the two halves of the broom, tried unsuccessfully to fit them back together, and stalked back towards the house. He walked right past me but didn’t look up, and I saw big fat tears on his furious cheeks. I sensed his pain.

  I wished Ellen would come back. But she didn’t. Instead, a purple silence filled the garden.

  Jessica had called me a ‘tiresome teenage kitten’ but that wasn’t true. I was a healing cat. If I saw tears on human cheeks I had to do something. So I climbed down through the prickly bush, and trotted into the house with my tail up. I could tell where Joe was by the sour smell of beer. He was slumped in a corner by a pile of magazines, wiping his tears with the back of his hand, sniffing and slurping from a can. I ran to him as if he was my best friend. Being careful not to scratch him, I walked nicely along his leg and up his torso to his heart. It was bang-banging in there, and his arms were shaking. He looked at me in surprise.

  As soon as we had eye contact, I gazed into his soul and purred. I licked the salty tears from his face, but more of them came zigzagging down.

  ‘Oh Solomon,’ he whispered. ‘How can you love a bad-tempered bastard like me?’

  I purred louder, stretching my paws over his heart, and rubbed my head against his bristly chin.

  ‘The truth is, Solomon,’ he said, ‘I don’t like myself one bit. Everything I do goes wrong. I’m no good. In fact, I’m bloody doomed.’

  I pretended to go to sleep and let him talk, his hot hand smoothing my fur, and after a while he quietened down and my angel came close, shining her light over us as we dozed in the chair.

  ‘You’re doing a great job, Solomon,’ she said.

  After Joe’s outburst I needed another cat to curl up with. Jessica didn’t come back until it was dark and everyone had gone to bed, even the swallows. Moonlight spilled in through the window and polished her sleek fur as she came in. I ran to meet her. She condescended to touch noses with me, and I got to look into her eyes. In the night they were deep saucers of green, and her whiskers glistened magnificently each side of her little pink nose. To me she was exquisitely beautiful. Why didn’t she want to be friends with me?

  I followed her to her basket, but she wouldn’t let me in there. Sensing she was tired, I sat watching her. All I wanted was to curl up against her silky warmth.

  ‘Go away,’ she hissed. ‘You smell like that sour stuff Joe drinks.’

  ‘I’ve been lying on him,’ I said. ‘Healing him.’

  Jessica looked at me out of slitty eyes.

  ‘Traitor,’ she said. ‘You should have been scratching him after the way he treated me.’

  ‘I don’t scratch humans. I’m a healing cat.’

  ‘Poof!’ Jessica curled up into a silken mound and closed her eyes as if I wasn’t there. Confused, I watched her go to sleep, and respected her peace. I didn’t dare to even put one paw inside her cosy basket; I spent the night hunched on the cold floor just to be near her.

  In the morning her eyes were buttercup yellow again, and when she yawned, I saw the curl of her tongue and the pink roof of her mouth. She looked surprised and not pleased to see me there. We touched noses and it made me buzz all over with excitement. Her eyes hardened and she hissed at me, but not before I’d seen the sadness that lurked behind those golden eyes. Sadness – and anger. I wanted to know where it had come from, but Jessica wouldn’t talk to me.

  I’d fallen in love with a cat who didn’t want me.

  One evening Joe came through the back door with a bottle of wine and a pizza in a box. He had a rare smile on his face.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘Stop frowning, Ellen,’ Joe said, and he fished into his back pocket and took out some cash. ‘I’ve got a JOB!’

  ‘A job? Oh wow, that’s amazing.’ Ellen’s face lit up with a happy smile. She gave Joe a hug and pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited, it’s only casual work – in the bar at the pub. Three nights a week.’

  ‘Great,’ said Ellen, ‘but …’

  ‘Don’t give me that face, Joe said. ‘I won’t be drinking if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m going to look after my family.’

  Ellen sighed and opened the big pizza box.

  ‘Hmm. Yum. Do you want a little bit, Solomon?’

  The times when Joe went to work were peaceful for us, golden summer evenings in the garden, with John, Jessica and me racing around while Ellen worked on a little flower bed. On wet evenings I managed to persuade her to play the piano again. John got so excited, dancing and squealing and singing little songs. Even Jessica enjoyed it and she came and lay beside me on top of the piano, feeling the ripples of music and watching Ellen’s aura brightening as she played.

  ‘Will it be all right now that Joe has a job?’ I asked my angel. For a moment she was silent. Then she looked at me sadly and new colours flickered in the light that shone around her; deeper blues and purples.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s too little, too late.’

  Summer passed and the lawn thundered with falling apples. Ellen and John walked round the hedges picking lush blackberries and putting them into bags, and I insisted on going with them, always with my tail up very straight.

  ‘Like a snorkel,’ Ellen laughed as I dashed through the long grass.

  But she didn’t like me following her to the shop. After my trip in the lorry, traffic really scared me, and if I tried to follow Ellen along the main road it involved panicky dives into strange hedges and gardens. I followed Ellen everywhere. I would not let her out of my sight. Sometimes she shut me in and then I sat at the window like a sentry awaiting her return.

  Ellen was changing. Often she was angry and frightened, and exhausted by the frequent rows with Joe. But she always welcomed my love, and the supply of Kitekat continued. I was cuddled and brushed and sprinkled with flea powder. She even gave me vitamins and the occasional egg. I grew into a glossy tomcat.

&nb
sp; It was a cold winter night when Jessica finally let me into her basket. I held my breath and stepped in gingerly. Hardly daring to hope that this was happening, I silently eased myself close to her. She’d had a bad day and I knew she needed me, as I needed her. For once she didn’t push me away. She growled a little, and purred with me, and I sensed her silent need for a friend, a friend who loved her no matter what.

  Blissfully, I lay against her warm silky coat and let the stars of happiness cluster around us. After that night we always slept together with our soft paws intertwined. Jessica liked to lie with her chin on my neck and I loved to feel her there. Together we made a kind of music, love music made of little purrs and sighs and squeaks. Sometimes I slid my paw around her glossy back, and when the morning sun shone through the window, I lay dreaming, watching the colours of the sun glint on her black fur.

  Winter passed, and when spring came I was the boss cat. Jessica was now very flirty with me. She provoked me into wild chases, through the raspberry canes and up the cherry tree and over the garage roof. We mated all over the place, on the neighbour’s lawn, in the vegetable garden, even in the middle of the road. But the best time was on top of the tumble drier in the utility room, when it was running. Ellen opened the door and saw us. We froze, squared our eyes, and continued. Ellen got the message, smiled and left us alone.

  A month or so later Jessica became fat and heavy with my kittens.

  Soon she was too fat to crawl under the sofa. Being pregnant calmed her down. It calmed everyone down, including me. Jessica was contented. She left the postman alone, set up a new refuge for herself under Ellen’s bed, and on a hot night in June, Jessica gave birth all by herself to three silky kittens. My children.

  Ellen immediately moved them all downstairs to a basket in the kitchen, but Jessica insisted on moving them back, carrying each kitten in her mouth carefully up the stairs. She always left the little tabby one until last. It was a girl kitten, fluffy and very beautiful with tinges of silver and gold in her fur.

  ‘This is a special kitten,’ said my angel, ‘she’s come here to heal, like you, Solomon.’ So, in those moments before Jessica came back for her, I gave the tabby kitten lots of love and purring. One day she opened her baby blue eyes and looked at me as if she wanted to fix me in her memory forever.