Solomon's Tale

by Sheila Jeffries

  Time passed. Autumn, Christmas, and spring. Another year, and then another. I lost track of how many, but I was aware that my body wasn’t quite as agile as it used to be. My legs were stiff in the mornings, and I wasn’t so good at climbing trees. But I still loved to explore and make friends with badgers and catch mice when I could be bothered.

  One day when I was exploring the wild cliff-side beyond the garden, my angel told me to listen. I did, but heard only the seagulls and the wind in the bushes, and the zee-zeet of grasshoppers.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Listen deep.’

  I focused on the deep dark places under the thick canopy of gorse and heather, and listened again, picking up a brittle whisper of something moving in there. Then I heard a squeak that might have been a meow, and my hackles went up. After what happened to Jessica, I didn’t want to meet a feral cat.

  I sat quietly and waited.

  Minutes later I heard the squeak again, and a delicate golden face peeped at me from the undergrowth. It didn’t look or feel threatening so I meowed back. A small ginger cat crept out and ran to me eagerly. She was terribly thin and her eyes looked haunted. We touched noses, and my bristling fur subsided. I lay down and she snuggled next to me. I started to lick her ginger fur to reassure her, and I could feel her bones, she was so thin. I sensed her loneliness and hunger. She didn’t seem able to talk to me, but I knew she was in trouble, so I encouraged her to follow me. I led her along the path, under the gate and into the garden, right onto the patio outside the kitchen door where Ellen had put my lunch.

  I shared it with the tiny ginger cat, and she ate ravenously. When she was satisfied she sat with me on the warm stones, and washed her skinny little paws.

  But when Ellen came out of the back door, the little cat’s eyes went huge and black with alarm. She took off so fast that her claws left scratch marks in the dust. She vanished into the bushes and we didn’t see her again for several days.

  Then she returned, watchful and slinking, but she wouldn’t eat until Ellen put the dish further away from the house.

  ‘She’s a wild cat,’ Ellen said. ‘Not an old softie like you, Solomon.’

  Old? Me? I suppose I was getting old now, for a cat. We’d been at Isaac’s place for years and John was a big boy now, going to school on the bus with a stack of books in his bag. He was learning to play the guitar, and he liked me to sit on his bed with him while he practised. I didn’t know exactly how old I was.

  Ellen gave the little ginger cat a name, Lulu.

  ‘It gives her an identity,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll never tame a wild cat,’ said Isaac. ‘But let her come if she wants to. Poor little mite.’

  But Ellen and John were determined. Every day they put out extra food for Lulu. At first they put it near the bushes where she felt safe. I spent time in the bushes with Lulu, washing her and purring, and sometimes if she felt safe she cuddled up to me and slept.

  ‘Why are you so scared?’ I asked her one day. ‘Ellen is kind and lovely. She’d never hurt you.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one of those humans before,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what they were. They are huge and they look so scary.’

  ‘Where did you come from, Lulu?’ I asked.

  She sighed and looked sad.

  ‘I was born in the bushes where you found me,’ she said. ‘And I had a mum, ginger like me, and a sister too. She was ginger and white and used to play with me. But one day our mum led us across the road because she thought we would find more to eat over there. The cars were coming so fast, savage they were. I hung back, but Mum and my sister tried to run across and they got killed. So I was left alone.’

  I felt so sad for Lulu. I knew how painful it was for her.

  ‘You try to make friends with a human,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll have a happy life like me.’

  ‘I never will,’ Lulu said. ‘Never. Never.’

  It was no good trying to tell her.

  But Ellen had a plan.

  She started sitting outside in a chair, sitting quite still, and eventually Lulu got used to her being there and came to eat from the dish Ellen put out for her. Gradually Ellen moved the dish and the chair closer together until Lulu was eating her food within touching distance. While she was eating Ellen talked to her softly, sometimes she actually sang to her, and I could see Lulu flicking her ears to listen. If Ellen moved, Lulu looked up at her and hissed like a snake.

  I helped by rubbing myself around Ellen’s legs or draping myself over her lap to show Lulu it was OK. One day the dish was so close that Ellen reached down and gently rubbed Lulu’s back while she was eating. This went on for weeks and weeks, but it was Isaac who finally tamed Lulu. She couldn’t seem to resist his rumbly voice and the calm touch of his big hands. She even rolled on her back and played with his shoelaces.

  Then one chilly day in autumn, Isaac gently eased his hands around Lulu and picked her up. He put her on his lap and let go. Lulu lay there, looking surprised. She looked at me and I climbed up there with her and showed her how to lie and listen to Isaac’s slow heartbeat, and she did.

  John and Ellen stood motionless, watching with smiles on their faces. It was a moment of magic, and it changed Lulu’s wretched lonely life forever.

  Months later, Lulu was as daft as me, rolling over and purring, and climbing on laps. I taught her everything about living in a house, and we even played on the stairs. She made a lot of mistakes, but the wonderful thing about humans is that they are so forgiving and kind.

  I knew Ellen had forgiven me for not bringing Jessica back, but I had never forgiven myself. Befriending Lulu had been good for me. It was my way of saying thank you to the people who had rescued me – Karenza, and Pam, and Abby the vet. And I was grateful to Isaac for sharing his lovely home with us.

  I was a lucky cat now.

  The years rolled on, happy and peaceful, and then I started getting old. My bones ached, and I was stiff. I could still put my tail up, but I didn’t want to play. I didn’t go to look at the sea any more. I just wanted to lie by the fire and sleep.

  One day my back legs wouldn’t work any more, and I had to drag myself around.

  Abby came to see me with her vet’s bag in her hand. She picked me up and felt me all over.

  ‘He’s got arthritis,’ she told Ellen. ‘But he’s a very old cat now isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s twelve,’ said Ellen. ‘John was two when we found Solomon. He just appeared on our lawn in a thunderstorm. It was midsummer night. He was a skinny little kitten covered in car oil.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Abby was feeling my tummy. ‘That’s a good age for a cat. I suspect he’s got internal problems too. We might be able to do something but you’d have to bring him in.’

  I looked at Ellen and she had tears in her eyes.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to put him through all that now he’s old. I’d rather just keep him here and love him and let him go.’

  I looked at Ellen with gratitude. She loved me, but she was going to let me go. I was ready now. Ready to go home.

  ‘A wise lady,’ said Abby. ‘But call me, Ellen, if you want me to help him. You know what I mean.’

  THE DIARY OF A STAR CAT

  I am writing this diary again as a gift to Ellen. I want her to know where I am going.

  Because today I begin my journey to the stars.

  Ellen has done the right thing. She doesn’t want me to go to the vet and have surgery. She is going to love me, and let me go. Today she has put me on the amber velvet cushion in my favourite chair. She knows I can’t walk any more. My back legs are weak. She is feeding me little spoonfuls of tasty food, but I don’t really want it. I don’t want to be in this old body any longer.

  Thank goodness I can still purr. I can still open my eyes and see Ellen’s lovely face. I can hear her voice talking to me and she is saying ‘Thank you, Solomon. Thank you for being my cat. I’ll always love you.’ Some of the time Isaac is there too, and his touch on my fur is s
oothing and blissful. And John is there with me. He’s nearly a man now. He wants to cry over me but he won’t, so he sits beside me playing heavenly music on his guitar. He goes on playing into the night.

  It is morning and Pam comes to see me, and she cries and cries. Then she tells me stories about Jessica, and the Christmas concert, and the time I visited Ellen in hospital. When she is gone Ellen tells me I am a star. A star cat. It reminds me to think about stars. I imagine the blaze of sunlight on the sea that Jessica showed me. I go to sleep and dream of the dance of silver stars and how I believed that the shining sea was full of angels, if only I could see them.

  Another day and I am still on the amber velvet cushion. I’m sleeping most of the time. Today I have a surprise visitor, and it is Joe. ‘Don’t worry, Solomon,’ Ellen whispers. ‘I’m not going back with Joe. He just wants to say goodbye.’ I open my eyes. Joe looks different. He smells nice and his eyes are calm. He tells me he is sorry for the way he treated us, and I purr and reach out my paw to him to show I have forgiven him. Then I sleep on a silver bed in the silver stars that are drifting all around me.

  It is night time, and only Ellen is with me, stroking and talking, and Lulu is sitting on the arm of the chair, watching me. I am glad I found Ellen another cat. I can hardly see her now because the silver stars are clustered around me. They are lifting me, like a magic carpet, and carrying me away into the blaze of light. I am floating faster and faster, but I can hear Ellen’s beautiful voice, and I am still purring.

  Ellen and Lulu are like faraway pictures now. I can see the amber velvet cushion with the body of a very old black cat lying on it. I hear Ellen saying, ‘Goodbye Solomon. Darling cat.’ I am flying now, through the glittering stars, there are thousands of them whizzing past me, and they are turning from silver into gold. At last, I see the angels, and I burst through the golden web as if I am a firework.

  I have come safely home to the spirit world, to my idyllic valley where the grass is full of stars, and the rocks are like warmest velvet. I am a shining cat now, made of pure light, and it feels amazing. I sit up and gaze into the distance, and something is moving. A cat. Another cat. Dashing towards me with its tail up. It is a shining cat.

  And it is Jessica.

  A Note on Tuxedo Cats

  Solomon and Jessica were real cats who shared our home. Solomon actually lived until the grand old age of 23, and Jessica to 14. Both were Tuxedo cats with black coats and tails and a white chest and paws, looking as if they were wearing white shirts and dinner jackets.

  In legend the first cat to arrive in the new world was a Tuxedo cat named Asgerd, who sailed to North America on a Viking ship. T.S. Eliot’s Jellicle cat was a Tuxedo, and other famous Tuxedo cats include Felix the Cat, Tom Cat from Tom and Jerry, and Jess from Postman Pat. Both Sir Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare owned Tuxedo cats.

  Research has proved that Tuxedo cats are more intelligent than other cats and more creative in the games they play. Tuxedo kittens open their eyes 24 hours earlier than other cats, and they are able to see infrared light. Tuxedo cats are super sensitive and will often go off to find the person they feel is their rightful owner, as Solomon does in the story.

  The Real Life Solomon

  One midsummer night I was in bed listening to a thunderstorm when I heard loud persistent meowing. I got up and opened the window, and there, alone in the night, was a tiny wet kitten. He saw me and turned his meows up an octave. I ran downstairs and picked him up from the front lawn. He weighed almost nothing but his purr was immediate and powerful as he cuddled close to me. I woke my husband, and together we gave this scrap of a kitten a bath to remove the car oil from his fur, and discovered he was a tuxedo cat; black with a white bib and paws.

  Nobody claimed him, so we kept him, and named him Solomon because he was so wise and loving. Right from the start he gave us intense eye contact and love. My husband had a heart problem, and Solomon knew. He would spread himself out over Ted’s chest, stretch his paws across his heart, and purr so deeply that Ted could feel the vibration going into the depths of his heart. It seemed to be exactly the right frequency for the gentle healing he needed. Ted found it so comforting and we were sure it helped him recover.

  That was just the beginning of Solomon’s life as a healing cat. He didn’t hang about waiting to grow up but went straight to the work he had come here to do – healing. Solomon would look intensely at everyone he encountered, visitors, neighbours, and children. He waited until they sat down and then homed in on them, always finding a place of pain, a knee, a shoulder, or an upset stomach; but so often it was the heart, and even if there wasn’t a physical problem with it, that person would be suffering deep emotional pain, and Solomon knew. It got to the point where people didn’t come to see us any more. They came to see the cat!

  Solomon was always gracious and loving, but he had a quirky sense of humour which he used wisely. He would save it for times of tension or arguments in the family. He’d walk in with his tail up, look round, and decide ‘Hey, you guys are getting too serious.’ Then he would do something which had raised a laugh the last time he did it, like lying on his side and kicking the hearthrug, sliding all round it as if he was riding a bike.

  Later in his life, we had a vineyard and shop, and Solomon loved to welcome customers. If he paid particular attention to someone, we invited them to sit down with him, and many people experienced healing and were moved to tears by the love from this beautiful cat. Solomon lived to the grand old age of 23. I loved him so much, and so I have written this book, Solomon’s Tale, with him as the main character and narrator.

  It seems that dear Solomon really was my lucky black cat!

  The Orphaned Kittens

  One sunny day in mid-September I discovered four new born kittens under a potato plant in the garden. I watched from a distance as the mum cat, Minnie, trotted to and fro caring for her new children. Minnie was a feral cat, a pretty tabby with a sweet face. Over the summer we had tried to befriend her and she was beginning to trust us, sitting close sometimes, and enjoying the food we put out for her. With winter coming on we were concerned about how she would raise her family in the wild.

  About a week later Minnie carefully moved her kittens, taking them deep into a thick hedge. Fortunately the weather was warm and dry, and four weeks later we were delighted to see the tiny kittens, three black and one tortie, happily playing in the morning sun at the edge of the hedge.

  But one terrible afternoon Minnie was killed on the road. The car didn’t stop, but the girl who was following it had the decency to come to our door. She had tried to rescue Minnie and was very upset. Thank you, whoever you were, because what you actually did was save the lives of Minnie’s beautiful kittens who were now motherless and alone in the hedge. We worried about them all night and were relieved to see them emerge the next morning to have a go at lapping the ‘kitty milk’ I had mixed up for them.

  It was impossible to catch them and, concerned for their well being, we rang the Cats Protection League. An angel called Margaret came straight over, bringing a cat trap, sachets of kitten food, and lots of good advice and reassurance. The tiny kittens were not yet heavy enough to spring the trap, so we first got them used to going in there for their food. With the weatherman forecasting an Arctic Blast, we were convinced they would die of hypothermia or get eaten by a fox, so for a few days we were on a 24/7 kitten watch.

  One night I went out at 11.30 pm to check the trap and was thrilled to see two little faces looking up at the torchlight. We had caught two of them. I rang Margaret and she drove through the night to collect them, taking them home to her warm kitchen where she raises orphaned kittens in special enclosures. The next morning we caught the other two, and Margaret came once again. She told us that the first two were curled up by the Rayburn, and the future now looked bright for Minnie’s four lovely kittens. They had survived, and now they would learn to be friendly domestic cats, spayed, immunised, wormed and ready to go out to kind homes.


  A heartfelt thank you to angels like Margaret and the Cats Protection League for the wonderful work they are doing.

  Acknowledgements

  A warm thank you to my husband, Ted, my agent, Judith Murdoch, my editor, Helen Bolton, and to Solomon who really was my lucky black cat.

  About the Author

  Sheila Jeffries has been writing since she was young, and penned four children’s novels which were published before she left school. Written under her maiden name, Sheila Chapman, in the popular ‘pony story’ genre of the time, the books continued to sell worldwide until the eighties.

  After studying at Bath Academy of Art, Sheila spent many happy years teaching in UK schools. She had eight more children’s novels published under the name Sheila Haigh, and her most successful book, Little Gymnast, was a best seller in America.

  Solomon’s Tale breaks new ground in her writing career. It’s a book truly from the heart, and though it is fiction it is based on two real cats, Solomon and Jessica, who shared and enriched her life.

  Sheila lives in Somerset where she enjoys teaching meditation and running workshops for writers.

  Copyright

  Avon

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

  Copyright © Sheila Jeffries 2013

  Cover photographs © Juniors Bildarchiv GmbH/Alamy (cat)/Istock (background, rug and collar)

  Cover design © Emma Rogers 2013

  Sheila Jeffries asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.