It was the last happy day I remember. The house felt sunlit and peaceful. Ellen and Joe were friends, and John was playing happily in the garden.
And that was the day the bailiff came.
I was feeling fragile because a few days ago Joe had taken me to the vet who had put me to sleep and done something to me to stop me making any more kittens. It was painful, and humiliating, and I felt depressed afterwards, despite understanding the reason. I’d agreed this in the spirit world. Being a full tomcat would distract me from my true path. I had agreed to love Ellen and help her through a difficult time, but if I’d known how difficult it would be then I might not have volunteered. Ellen had let me have my fling with Jessica first. She’d wanted Jessica to experience the joys of motherhood and for John to see the kittens born and growing up.
That was Ellen’s idealistic dream.
On that warm June day my angel had alerted me at dawn. She’d shown me a picture of a man in a grey suit inside a large building with ‘County Court’ carved in stone letters over the door. The man had been writing Ellen’s name and address on a form. My angel told me that today he was coming to our house. Ellen didn’t know. I had to be there. To stay calm and keep purring. ‘Remember you are a healing cat,’ she said.
Joe had gone out and I had to sit up all day watching, even though I wanted to lie down after what the vet had done. By lunchtime I was worn out. No one had come. Ellen was pottering about the garden while John was splashing and squealing in a big water tub on the lawn. Eventually I fell asleep, curled up on the sunny doorstep. In my dreams bees were humming over the flowers, swallows twittered overhead and the long grass at the edge of the lawn was full of chirping grasshoppers. As I dreamed about the spirit world another sound dragged me back, heavy footsteps coming nearer. I opened one eye and saw a pair of gleaming shoes on the doorstep.
‘Hello puss!’ A man’s hand reached down to stroke me. The bailiff!
Compared to a tiger a cat is very small. So it’s no good acting like a tiger and attacking people. Cats have to be subtle and artful.
I displayed my hostility to the bailiff, completely ignoring him by staring into the distance with no response to his attempt to stroke me. After what the angel had said, it was surprising to find the bailiff was an ordinary human. But he was acting sinister.
His neck was locked stiff, his eyes icy cold and his heart encased in metal. I could hear it ticking as he knocked at the door.
Ellen opened it, carrying John who was wrapped in a blue bath towel. Her innocent eyes looked enquiringly at the bailiff.
‘Double glazing?’ she smiled. ‘No thanks.’
‘Mrs King?’
‘Yes. That’s me. And this is John.’
John didn’t look happy, even though Ellen was bouncing him about to try and make him laugh. His solemn eyes caught mine. He knew. The bailiff’s frozen aura was obvious and menacing to him.
‘Mrs Ellen King?’
‘Yes.’ The smile was shrinking on Ellen’s face.
‘And your husband is Mr Joseph King?’
‘Yes?’
The bailiff showed Ellen a card.
‘I’m a bailiff from the county court. I have a warrant to enter your property and seize goods to the value of seventeen thousand pounds, a debt your husband owes to the bank.’
I watched Ellen’s aura splintering. It was alarming. John chose that moment to start crying, and this upset Ellen. She screamed at the bailiff and her eyes were two cracks of blue fire.
‘How dare you come here, threatening us? Can’t you see I’m a mother with a small child? It’s not my debt, it’s HIS! I know nothing about it!’
I wormed my way into the hall and sat at Ellen’s feet, puffing myself up protectively. How I wished I was a dog, an Alsatian or a Rottweiler. It’s terrible having to hiss when you want to bark.
The man kept coldly repeating the same words, his voice a monotonous chant against Ellen’s hysteria and John’s crying. However, as Ellen’s distress grew, it was John who calmed her down by putting his fat little arms around her neck.
‘Mummy, talk nicely.’
Ellen’s legs were shivering. The bailiff’s gleaming shoes were squeaking across the doormat. My angel stood in the hall with a golden sword in her hand but no one except me could see her. Jessica was bolting upstairs with yet another kitten swinging from her mouth.
‘Ellen doesn’t have to let him in, Solomon,’ said the angel, and for a moment I feasted on the glorious sapphire light from the angel’s eyes, and basked in the energy streaming from the golden sword. I felt happy to see the angel here in our house, protecting Ellen. Happy, and then sad again, devastated that Ellen couldn’t see the angel and wasn’t comforted by any small gesture from me. The limitation of being a mortal cat was more painful than I could bear. In the pain of my helplessness I did a dreadful thing. In front of the angel, I ran away.
In bitter shame I climbed as high as possible, up the garden wall, across the garage and onto the roof. With my tail dragging, I crept up the tiles and sat against the chimney staring far away across the fields to the dark blue hills. I wanted to go home to the spirit world. Seeing the angel had unsettled me, and made me homesick.
The sun warmed the brick chimney, and scorched my glistening black fur. My whiskers felt hypersensitive, and the tips of my ears burned. I, Solomon, was a failure. Being a cat was too difficult. Sometimes my sleek black body was enjoyable, when it belted up and down stairs or flopped blissfully into a chair, especially when Ellen was stroking me. But inside I was a big shining lion of a soul, too big to fit inside a small black cat.
When I heard Joe’s car squealing to a halt outside the house, I sat up anxiously. He got out with a slam that sent flakes of rust flying from his car. His brows glowered at the bailiff’s shiny van in passing, and his aura was purple.
After he’d gone inside, an ominous silence followed, with not even a murmur of voices audible.
‘Look at that cat on the roof!’
‘Perhaps he can’t get down.’
The children were coming home from school, a group of them who often stroked me. Just now I really needed their love and it was tempting to go down. But the front door was opening and Joe appeared, looking like an unexploded bomb. The bailiff was with him, and Ellen was there with her shoulders hunched. She still had John’s towel in her hands, twisting it into a rope.
‘We’ll expect your settlement in seven days,’ the bailiff said, handing Joe a white paper. Joe passed it roughly to Ellen.
‘YOU had better have this.’
The ‘you’ was filled with hateful energy. Joe was on the brink of a storm. Sure enough, as soon as the bailiff had gone, the shouting began.
‘YOU get inside!’
‘It’s not my FAULT,’ Ellen screamed as the door slammed shut.
I crept close against the chimney, moving around onto the cool shadow. Thunder always scared me. Now the thunder was inside the house. Even the roof trembled. People in the street paused to listen, turning frightened faces towards the house.
‘He’s at it again,’ said Sue-next-door to a woman who was walking past. She rolled her eyes. ‘Poor girl. I don’t know how she puts up with him, and she’s got that lovely baby too.’
It was worrying to think of little John in there. Maybe I should have gone into his bedroom and given him some love. And poor Jessica. How wise she had been to have her kittens under the bed. Ellen had moved them twice, and Jessica had determinedly moved them back again one by one. What guts. I imagined her cowering under the bed, suckling my children and reassuring them, during my lonely vigil on the roof. Jessica needed extra food and support at this time. Maybe I should catch a mouse and take it up to her. The sun was turning amber, it must be round about teatime.
‘That cat’s still up there.’
‘If he’s not down before dark I’m going to knock their door.’
The two women marched past with a dog trailing complacently behind. Gazing at the blue hill
s brought me to dreaming instead of worrying. In my meditative state I remembered the heaven world, and suddenly in my mind I was back there, sitting on iridescent cushions of grass and purring out millions of stars. Then I purred them in again. Power stars. Love that would be needed. And they were all for Ellen, every single one.
The sound of the front door opening jolted me back to earth. Joe was leaving – again. He was hurling books and clothes into the car, and pairs of boots and a kettle. There was no sign of Ellen. Not a sound. Not a cry from John or a meow from Jessica.
The car wouldn’t start.
Joe sat there fuming, turning the key repeatedly, but there was not a spark of life. I worried that Joe would go inside again and take it out on Ellen.
Eventually he started to push the car on his own. Curtains twitched at windows but no one came out to help. The car gathered speed down the sloping cul-de-sac, with Joe lumbering behind. Anger really fires humans into athletic improbability. In a jumble of legs and elbows Joe overtook the car and leaped into the driving seat. The car fired up with a bang, roared down the cul-de-sac, turned and roared back even faster, and was finally gone, almost airborne, heading for the motorway.
The first door to open was Sue-next-door. I hurried down from the roof to be with her as she tapped nervously on Ellen’s door. Sue’s legs had jeans and pink fluffy slippers. We both stared at the door, as if staring would make it open. The fur on my tail started to bristle because I was so anxious. It was embarrassing.
‘Solomon, what a great big tail!’ Sue had a kindly voice, very reassuring. She bent down to stroke me, but I couldn’t concentrate on responding. The silence from the house was so spooky.
‘Supposing he’s killed Ellen,’ I thought.
Sue was calling through the letterbox.
‘Ellen! It’s Sue-next-door. Are you all right?’
We waited, listening intently, and at last there was a sound from inside the house, a tinkling of glass, and Ellen came slowly to the door. She stood there trembling, looking up and down at both of us with eyes like mouse holes.
‘I’m all right,’ she sighed and lifted her tired face into a defiant smile. ‘And I’m glad he’s gone!’
‘Is John all right?’
‘John is fine. Believe it or not he slept through it all.’
‘Has he hurt you?’
‘Not physically. He threatened to kill us both. But he loves John. He wouldn’t touch John. It’s me. He blames me for everything.’
Ellen began to sob from deep down in her stomach. Sue guided her to an armchair while I padded around with my tail up, inappropriately. Sue was comforting Ellen so I shot upstairs to check on Jessica.
Communal purring rippled from under the bed where she lay stretched out. All three of the kittens were vigorously suckling, their little pink paws energetically dough punching. Their heads were like wet pebbles with buds for ears. The little tabby and white one finished feeding first and she lay gazing at me with those blue eyes, opening her mouth and doing a squeak of a meow at me. She wanted to communicate with me.
Humans are lucky to be able to cry. Cats can’t do that. But in that moment I could have cried with overwhelming love and fatherly pride. I was a dad now, and the kittens would need me. There was so much to teach them, and I longed to ask them about the spirit world while it was fresh in their minds. My beautiful children. What an ego trip.
‘Get out, Solomon.’ Jessica growled at me. But she was too ecstatic to look fierce. She lay back, slitty eyed and purring, enjoying the experience of feeding my kittens. I retreated respectfully.
John’s bedroom door was open. He was asleep, so completely still that he seemed to be made of marble. I sat down by the cot and purred, enjoying the white mist of light that surrounded the sleeping child. It was particularly strong at the head of the cot, and intense concentration showed me the shimmer of an angel who was there guarding John.
Once more I left my earthly cat body and saw where John was in his dreamtime. He was playing in a meadow with a blue balloon on a string, and all around him flowers of light twinkled and glittered in the grass. An old man was with him, a dear round-faced man with tender hands, and beaming eyes which sparkled as John ran to him, laughing. John looked so different from the serious and often-troubled toddler he was on earth. In his dreamtime he was carefree and radiant.
Ellen found me asleep in John’s cot.
‘You shouldn’t be in here, Solomon,’ she said, and gently lifted me out. She couldn’t be cross with me when I cuddled up to her, purring, looking attentively into her eyes.
‘Dear Solomon.’ Ellen carried me over to the window and we stood admiring the evening garden, which was full of coral light and warbling blackbirds. Scents of newly mown hay drifted from the fields, and a midsummer moon was rising in the east.
‘It’s one year since you came. Happy birthday Solomon,’ said Ellen, and tears ran down cheeks which were already red from crying.
I wanted to tell her how much I loved this sunny house and express gratitude for such a lovely home. The sun-warmed stones and the soft lawn, the cherry tree, the nice people who walked past and stroked me. The puss flap and the wonderful stairs, the kitchen full of aromatic steam, the quiet corners where I loved to sit. And best of all, my special chair with the amber cushion. I wanted to say how sad it was that Joe had smashed yet another door, and broken Ellen’s china. But the house was still good. It was built upon an old cornfield and the spirit of the corn was still there inside its walls. The house was full of Ellen’s love and John’s playing, and now my wonderful kittens were purring upstairs. No matter what Joe did, the house would always be good. I’d lived two lives here now, and it was home.
These thoughts amplified my purring, during the time of sunset with Ellen. Sadly she couldn’t understand them, but I could understand her human speech and what she was saying came as a deep shock to me.
‘We’ve got to sell our house, Solomon. We’re leaving,’ she sobbed. ‘And I don’t even know if we can keep you.’
LEAVING HOME
I didn’t want to share the dreaded cat basket with Jessica. Joe had caught her by the scruff, bundled her inside and slammed it shut before she could reverse out. Jessica was good at reversing. Now she was in a cage. She turned around and stared out at everyone, her beautiful eyes desperate. I sat close to the basket, kissing her through the hard iron bars, trying to calm her down, but she wouldn’t be pacified. She was frightened, and broken hearted. Her three lovely kittens had gone out in that same cat basket the day before, and Joe had come back with it empty.
‘You did take them to the cat sanctuary didn’t you?’ Ellen asked.
‘Course I flaming did. What d’you take me for?’ Joe said angrily. He was in an ugly mood, slumped on the sofa with his head in his hands. ‘Just leave me alone, will you? It’s bad enough losing our home without you starting.’
I looked at him sceptically. I felt he was lying. What had he done with our kittens? I couldn’t help feeling that the little tabby and white one, my favourite, was lost somewhere and crying for me.
We didn’t know what was going on. All day we’d sat on the garden wall and watched two men carrying furniture out of the house.
Ellen wanted me in her arms when the two men were struggling with the heavy old piano. She touched it just once before they loaded it onto the lorry.
‘Mum bought me that piano,’ she told me. ‘It’s a real beauty. It’s so sad to let it go like this. It’s breaking my heart.’
I pushed my head into her neck, trying to tell her how well I remembered those magical hours of music when I’d sat on top of that same piano and marvelled at the stream of melodies that danced from Ellen’s hands, and the rapt expression on her young face as she played. She was inside the music, living it. ‘She’s so gifted,’ her mum would say, ‘but if you ask her to play for somebody she won’t! She only plays to the cat.’
Ellen’s piano, the sofa, the warm hearthrug, and our favourite chair were bei
ng loaded onto a lorry, and soon our lovely house was empty. Jessica and I had crept inside and tiptoed through the bare rooms and up the stairs where we had played so joyfully. Our tails were down, our eyes big with anxiety.
Ellen ran out to the lorry and snatched the amber velvet cushion from one of the chairs.
‘My mum made that,’ she said fiercely to the two men. ‘And you are not having it. Arrest me if you like.’
She stuck her chin in the air and glared, and one of the men just shrugged.
‘Let her have it. It’s only a cushion,’ he said, and with one flick of his arms he closed the back of the lorry and climbed into the driving seat.
Ellen stood on the lawn clutching the amber cushion, watching the lorry drive away, her cheeks streaming with tears. Joe was in the doorway, his eyes black with anger, his arms folded across his chest. He roared a swear word after the lorry.
‘Don’t start,’ said Ellen.
‘Don’t you start.’
I could see that Joe was struggling to control his temper. The air around him was steaming with it. Right inside the cloud of anger was a burning pain. It was hurting Joe, and it would hurt Ellen. I was torn between staying with Jessica, comforting Ellen, or calming Joe, and I chose Joe. The most important thing was to stop his anger exploding. First I imagined myself surrounded by the sparkle of healing stars, then I ran to him with my tail up and purred my loudest purr.
‘Oh Solomon.’ He stooped and picked me up. I leaned against his chest, gazed into his eyes and something magical happened. Big fat tears began to pour down Joe’s cheeks, into my fur, and the cloud of anger drifted away through the garden and over the rooftops.
I expected to be rewarded with a tin of sardines or a long cuddle, but Joe carried me to the cat basket where Jessica was shredding the rug. Somehow Joe managed to stuff me in there with her, and shut the cage door before I could turn round. Then he lifted the basket, swung it into the back of the car and shut the door.
Solomon's Tale Page 4
