by Julia Romp
I wasn’t allowed to see the cats myself. Instead a poor Australian man who worked in the office at the yard had to describe each one to me. I think he’d got a bit sick of my endless questions after about the first week.
“The tabby is chipped,” he’d tell me. “Then there’s a ginger but that’s not yours. There was one found in Brentford but it’s white.”
In the end, the man kept being very busy whenever I turned up, but I’d just sit and wait until he saw me. I knew people found it a bit strange that I was so desperate to find a lost cat. In fact, the dustmen knew me so well by now that one of them meowed when he saw me. Nob had told me that some people were beginning to wonder about me, but I couldn’t let it worry me. How could anyone possibly understand what Ben meant to me and George? People might think I was ridiculous, but I was just doing what had to be done.
Night after night George would go to my bedroom window, where he had once stood to call Ben inside, and I would watch as he stood with his back to me and his body shook while he cried, his shoulders jerking. Each breath that ripped out of him sent a wave of panic through me.
“Do you think he’s out there?” George would ask as he sobbed.
“Yes,” I’d tell him. “And I’m going to find him.”
“I kissed his nose,” George said as if I hadn’t spoken. “I rubbed his ears, I told him I was going on holiday to see the fishes and then he left me. He’s gone.”
Sometimes I tried to tell him about all I was doing to find Ben. But he didn’t want to listen, so I would stand quietly with him—sometimes for up to an hour—until he finally stopped crying. Once I’d had Ben to help me comfort George or bring him out of himself, discipline him or make him laugh. Now there was no one but me and my voice was not enough.
“He will never be here again,” George would say when he finally turned away from the window.
“Would you like a cuddle?” I’d ask him softly, hoping each time that he might let me near him.
“No. Don’t touch me.”
“I’ll find him, George. I’ll keep looking.”
“He’s dead. Now leave me alone.”
That was why I had to keep going. I didn’t have any other choice.
It was during my trips to the depot that I’d met Norma, the local council dog warden. Tall and slim, with brown curly hair and glasses, she’d been doing her job for years. She wasn’t what you’d call the cuddly type. In fact, she’d got so used to plain speaking and telling people to put their dogs on a lead, make sure they picked up their mess and generally what was what that she didn’t mince words with anyone.
“There’s six dead in the freezer today,” Norma would say when I went to see her. “And none of them is chipped.”
As I started wailing at the thought of all those poor animals who would now go to a pauper’s grave because no one had chipped them, Norma would look at me.
“Are you all right?” she’d ask with a surprised look on her face.
“No!” I’d cry. “Why can’t people just chip their cats?”
“Story of my life, love. It’s like this day in, day out.”
But however much Norma didn’t seem to understand how soft I was about it all, she had a good heart. I lost count of how many posters she put up for me in the council canteen and on bulletin boards; she had also e-mailed all the charities and animal organizations she worked with to tell them about Ben.
Norma was just one of the many kind people I met. There was also the builder who’d fed a stray his lunchtime sandwiches as he rang to tell me he’d been seeing it around the site he was working on; and the youth leader from the estate who’d fed a cat all the ham she’d got for the kids’ lunches because she thought it might be Ben. Neither of those cats turned out to be him, but I appreciated the help—just as I did the kindness of strangers who’d talked to me as I stood outside a supermarket giving out leaflets one Saturday. I’d decided the pet aisle was the place to find people who noticed the comings and goings of stray cats.
I hadn’t been there long when a member of staff came to move me on.
“I’m really sorry but you can’t hand out leaflets here,” she said.
“I won’t force them on anyone.”
“I know. But we just don’t allow it.”
Then she whispered that no one would get too worried if I stood outside the front door of the shop as long as I made sure not to block it. So I went outside with my huge bag of leaflets and tried to give them out. But people wouldn’t look me in the eye or come anywhere near as they rushed in and out of the shop, and I felt ready to cry even when I did manage to get a leaflet into someone’s hand because they usually dropped it; seeing Ben’s face being trodden into the pavement just made me even more upset. I told myself that I couldn’t start weeping and wailing because it would put even more people off. I had to get a bit more direct.
“I’m not trying to sell you anything,” I started shouting. “I just need to find my cat. Please take a leaflet and see if you can help.”
Everything changed the moment I said that. When people realized what I was doing, they were only too happy to take a leaflet. One bloke with a huge beer belly even came up to give me a quick hug.
“Don’t worry, love,” he said. “He’ll come home soon.”
I met so many people that day who told me about the cats they’d loved and it made me feel better because I didn’t feel quite so alone. Even the security guard ended up smiling at me, and they’re not usually a barrel of laughs, are they? Most people can understand what it is to love an animal and feel lost without them. Some even knew how it felt to wonder if the world has ended when the animal you love so very much is gone.
It was because of that love that I’d run through all the gardens on a terraced street in Whitton chasing a cat that hopped over the next fence the moment I touched down on someone’s lawn, and gone to every church in the area to put Ben’s name in the prayer books. All I could see was a picture of Ben’s and George’s happy faces in my mind as I walked the streets of Brentford for hours one freezing night in thunder and lightning because a woman was sure she’d seen Ben. As I wandered around, soaked to the skin, I knew I wasn’t going to find him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to give up yet. So I carried on walking until I was too exhausted to put one foot in front of the other, and only then did I finally go home.
Some days it felt as if I was being given a hundred bits of advice on how to find Ben and all of them were flying round my head. When someone told me cats could drown in rain barrels, I couldn’t walk past one without looking in it; when someone else said they could get stuck in houses by going in through the cat flap when people were away and getting trapped, I started keeping an eye on houses on the estate that looked empty; and I can’t tell you how many Neighborhood Watch people came out to make sure I wasn’t up to no good when I went to areas where no one knew me and tramped around with a tin of biscuits shouting Ben’s name. I didn’t understand that, to be honest, because what kind of burglar would keep going back to the same place and drawing attention to themselves by shouting a cat’s name?
That wasn’t the end of it. Ben’s face was plastered all over the Internet and I even got his picture in the local newspaper after putting an advertisement in and getting a call from a journalist. When someone told me that cats could get stuck up trees for weeks, I started staring into every one I saw, just to check I didn’t see a familiar face 30 feet up. I even asked my neighbors if they’d had visitors who might have taken Ben home in their car by accident.
Deep down, I still could not get rid of the feeling that Ben was alive somewhere—however impossible it seemed—and that’s why I had to go to every sighting. Mum was with me on the day I saw a cat in the distance and started chasing it. When it disappeared up an alleyway, we got back into the car as we wondered what to do next. Just then, the cat dashed past again and as it squeezed itself through a tiny hole at the bottom of a gate, I flung myself on to the ground to see where it had gone.<
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“I’ve lost it, Mum,” I shouted back to her. “I can’t see it anywhere.”
Then I got struck by something as I stared at the garden in front of me and couldn’t help but tell Mum, “They’ve done a lovely bit of planting here.”
As I said that, I saw a foot appear on the other side of the gate. I pulled my head back far enough to stare up into a huge pair of nostrils. The homeowner had come out to see who was badgering his poor cat and I got the giggles so badly I couldn’t get the words out to explain to him what on earth I was doing.
Those were just some of the things I did on my search and there were more—far more. The worst one? Probably the trip I made to the river each day because, try as I might, I couldn’t stop wondering if Ben had drowned there. I went every single day, and it wasn’t enough to just walk along the bank: I had to get into the river, just to make things really difficult. I made a huge mistake the first time I did it by wearing my wellies. After walking down a shallow stretch of the river, I could see that the water was about to get deeper and decided to get out next to a pub garden that was packed with people smoking. But as I tried to get on to the bank, water rushed over the tops of my wellies and I got so weighed down that I couldn’t lift my feet. After standing there swaying for what felt like ages, I finally managed to drag myself on to the muddy riverbank, where a crowd of people stared at me.
“Going for a swim, love?” one asked.
“Training to cross the Channel?” another cried.
“Is it fish for tea tonight, then?” another voice said.
After that, Nob got me a pair of waders to wear in the river and I’d stroll by the old people who lived in the bungalows down the road every day carrying them.
“All right, Julia?” they’d cry when they saw me.
“Fine!” I’d shout back as they gazed at me, wondering if I’d finally lost my marbles.
It was either that or I was spreading the contents of my Hoover bag beside the river. Ben had been gone for so long now that there couldn’t have been much of his scent left in the house, but I was still convinced it might help. Once again, the pensioners would smile when I walked past carrying my vacuum bag. But a man who lived on the estate obviously got a bit more worried when he kept seeing me either in the river or spreading dust around whenever he went for a walk with his dog.
“Are you OK?” he’d ask.
“Just looking for my cat.”
“Really? Out here?”
“Oh yes.”
“When did it go missing?”
“Two months ago.”
“Well, I’d get out of the river because I don’t think you’ll find your cat in there now.”
I think I managed to convince him that I was just about OK, but I was learning that there’s almost nothing you won’t consider doing if you want something badly enough. If I stopped looking I would have to accept that I could do nothing to help George, and I could never do that. I just had to keep going, keep searching, until I found Ben.
It was late November and I had to talk to George about Christmas. People were starting to put up their lights, and the shops were full of decorations and presents to buy. The staff and pupils at Marjorie Kinnan were also going to start rehearsing for the Christmas concert soon. I couldn’t put off speaking to George about it all any longer. We had not talked about the plans we’d had last year for another winter wonderland because neither of us could do it without Ben. But while we usually started getting the inside of the house ready for Christmas in the middle of November, and would normally have at least two trees covered with baubles and lights up in the living room by now, we hadn’t done a thing yet.
So when George got back from school one afternoon in early December and shut himself in his bedroom, I climbed the stairs to knock on his door.
“George?” I said as I opened it.
He was sitting on his bed with his shinies collection, rearranging them just as he had done again and again since Ben had left, and he didn’t look up when I walked in.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” I said as I sat down beside George.
He pulled himself a bit further away from me.
“I wanted to talk to you about Christmas,” I said gently.
“No,” George said. “Not if he’s not here.”
“But I’m sure Ben would want you to have fun.”
George started to cry, big, fat tears rolling silently down his face. This was how he cried now, without making a single sound, and I’d see him with wet cheeks as he brushed his teeth or as I dressed him. Once he’d even cried as he looked at his fish fingers and I knew he was thinking about how much Ben liked them.
“It’s OK to cry,” I said. “We’re both sad, aren’t we?”
“This happens to me,” George replied. “Tears just come.”
“I know they do. They come to me too.”
Neither of us said any more as we sat together. I was running out of ways to reassure George, to tell him that I would find Ben. When I tried to talk to him now about what I’d been doing to look for Ben, George did not want to listen.
I sat beside him, longing to take his hand as tears rose up in me too. I ached for George, all we’d had and the light that had shone out of him when Ben was with us and we were the three musketeers together.
“Go away,” George suddenly cried, angry that I was still sitting beside him. “Leave me alone. Shut my door. You lost Ben. Get out.”
My heart twisted inside me as I got up to leave. Then as I reached the door I stopped. I had to try once more to get through to him.
“Are you sure about Christmas?” I asked. “I really hope Ben will be back in time for it. Are you sure you don’t want to get everything ready for him?”
“No!” George screamed. “There’s no Christmas without Ben. Get out.”
There was nothing more to say. George was further away than he’d ever been before and I was worried that soon I would never be able to bring him back to me. As he became more like a shadow with every day that passed, it felt as if I was seeing my own child give up on life itself. George’s heart was wasting away inside him and mine was breaking too.
Chapter 17
Whenever the phone rang late at night, I’d run down to answer it. Sometimes it would be kids laughing and at others there would be silence. But this time there was someone on the other end, and I could hear the roar of traffic in the background as he spoke.
“I have seen your cat,” he said. “It’s in the road.”
My heart turned over, just as it had done when the postman rang. I’d been called to two other dead cats since then and both had upset me just as much as the first. One was in Twickenham and by the time I got to it, a woman living nearby had already come out to get the cat off the road because it was hers. I watched her sadly as she walked away. The next was in nearby Kingsley Road. Two people had rung me to say that a cat had been hit by a car there. It had already been collected by the council cleansing team by the time I arrived, so I’d rushed round to the depot and waited two hours for the truck which had picked up the body to get back.
“Can I see the cat?” I asked the driver when I finally saw him, my heart drumming in my chest.
“I’m sorry but we’ve already disposed of the body,” he told me.
Panic filled me when he said that. “What do you mean? You can’t have. I’ve got to know if it’s my cat or not.”
“It was too badly hurt,” the driver said sadly. “Its head was off and its body was crushed. We had to put it in the bins.”
“But you shouldn’t have done that! You should have brought it here.”
“It was too badly hurt to bring back.” Then the man explained that he’d seen all the posters of Ben and he looked at me with sadness in his eyes. “I’m pretty sure it was your cat,” he said.
“But how could you know if it was so badly hurt?”
“I could see enough, love. I’m sorry but I really think it was yours.”
My breath rushed out of me. After nearly three months of searching, Ben had died on a road five minutes from our house? I couldn’t understand what he would have been doing there. If he had been so close to home, surely he would have got back to us somehow? I wouldn’t believe it was him. I wouldn’t listen to what this driver was telling me.
“Ben’s got a white patch shaped like a butterfly under his nose,” I insisted. “It’s really unusual, so you couldn’t miss it. Other cats are blotchy but he’s not. Did you see that on the cat?”
“I’m sure it was him,” the driver replied sadly.
But I went home angrily telling myself that I didn’t know for sure if the cat was Ben and I wouldn’t believe it was until I did. The driver was so certain, though, that he’d even rung me later that day to tell me again what he thought.
“I want to put your mind at rest about all this,” he said. “I know you’ve been looking for your cat and I’m a hundred percent sure the one we picked up today was him.”
“Thank you, but we can’t be sure and until we are I will keep on looking,” I said firmly.
But although I tried to forget what the driver had said, I just couldn’t. Thoughts of the cat kept going round and round and they still were when I picked up the phone to be told that another cat had been found dead.
“It’s on Powdermill Lane,” the man told me.
“Where?”
“By the mini roundabout.”
If Wendy came over I could be there in minutes.
“I’ll leave now,” I said.
Five minutes later I was in the car and rang the man back to tell him I was on my way.
“I’ll be there soon,” I said. “Can you just stay with the cat until I get there?”
“I’m so sorry but I can’t,” the man said. “I’ve got to get the last bus home. The lady from the pub is here and she says she’ll wait.”
