Bad Cat, Good Cat

by Lynne Reid Banks

  But at home, David’s mum said to his dad, “That cat will have to be Seen To.” She meant an operation that makes boy cats stop spraying.

  David’s dad, who was reading the paper, crossed his legs and said, “All right, but not just yet.” He liked the cat, which was lucky, because David’s mum didn’t like him at all, and she liked him less and less as the days passed. She was secretly wondering if buying David this cat – which, by the way, was incredibly expensive – had been such a great idea.

  6. A Good Wash

  One evening a few weeks later, Turk didn’t come in when David called him for his dinner.

  David was very worried. What if he’d run away, or got lost? But he hadn’t. He pretended not to hear David calling. He hid under a bush, until it got dark. Then he jumped on the wall and started making the most horrendous noises.

  Boy cats often do that. They yowl and they growl and they screech. Then other boy cats come and join in. It’s like a cat-party, only often they have a fight. That makes even more noise.

  David’s parents and Paloma’s parents couldn’t get to sleep because of the awful row Turk and his pals were making.

  “Let’s not get Paloma a cat, if it’s going to make a noise like that!” said Paloma’s dad.

  “We’ll get her a girl cat,” said her mum. “Girl cats don’t yowl and screech and fight.”

  Next morning David woke up early. He ran downstairs in his pyjamas and opened the back door. Right away he saw Turk.

  But he got a shock. Turk wasn’t even grey. He was black – and red. He’d been fighting and rolling in the dirt. One of his ears was bleeding where another cat had chewed it.

  David rushed out in his bare feet and picked Turk up in his arms. He didn’t care about anything except that his cat was hurt.

  “Oh, you poor thing!” he said, stroking him. Turk was tired and hungry and his ear was stinging. Being stroked felt good. Just what I need, he thought. David carried him indoors.

  When David’s mum came downstairs to make breakfast, she was tired and cross from not sleeping. She found David, with dirty feet and dirty pyjamas, sitting on the floor of the kitchen. The fridge door was open. David was feeding Turk bits of raw fish. (Delicious! thought Turk, and nipped David’s finger trying to grab a bit more.)

  “Just look at that awful cat! He’s filthy! Put him down, David!” she said. “And stop feeding him! That fish was for our dinner!” She slammed the fridge door. “Isn’t it enough he kept us awake half the night?”

  David could tell she was really annoyed. But he didn’t put Turk down. He held him tight and ran upstairs with him to the bathroom.

  “What you need is a good wash,” David said to him. “If you’re not clean, Mum will want to get rid of you!”

  He shut the door so the cat couldn’t get out. Then he ran some warm water into the washbasin. He picked Turk up and tried to dip him into the water to wash him.

  It’s funny that all those cat books David had read didn’t tell him that cats don’t like getting wet.

  When Turk felt his legs going into the water he let out a cat-shriek and shot into the air. He fell into the bath. There was no water, but Turk jumped out so fast, you’d have thought it had a shark in it.

  David tried to catch him. Let me out of here! thought Turk, and did another jump – right into the toilet.

  Now David made his big mistake. Before Turk could scramble out, David flushed the toilet. He thought that would give his cat a good shower to clean him. Turk let out an ear-splitting yowl. David’s mum came running up the stairs.

  “What on earth’s going on?” she cried, opening the bathroom door.

  That was her big mistake.

  Turk came shooting out like a rocket. He got tangled up in her legs. She lost her balance and landed on the floor. On her behind, which hurt. Turk went streaking down the stairs, hardly touching them, like a – well, like a cataract. He was the wettest cat you ever saw. And the angriest and scaredest.

  They’re trying to kill me! he thought.

  He ran all over the ground floor of the house, leaving wet footprints and drips everywhere. He was trying to find a way out, but there wasn’t one. David and his mum found him lying on the sofa shivering and muttering under his breath. There was a big wet puddle on the sofa – a dirty puddle with earth and white hairs in it.

  David’s mum picked Turk up. She held him out in front of her so as not to get wet. She ran into the kitchen and almost threw him out of the back door. Then she shut it, so he couldn’t get back in.

  Just at that moment, the front doorbell rang.

  It was the neighbour from the other side. She’d come to complain about the cat-party in the night. David heard his mum saying how sorry she was. “I really don’t know what we’re going to do about that awful cat,” she said.

  One of the subtitles on the warrior-cat film was: “Your Doom Is Sealed!”

  David and Paloma liked to say it to each other in special doomy voices when one of them was in trouble. It always made them giggle. Now these words went through David’s head, and it wasn’t a joke. If Turk didn’t stop doing bad things, David really thought he wouldn’t have his precious cat much longer.

  7. A Good Cat Arrives

  Turk had to lick himself now, boring or not. He sat on the cold patio and licked and licked. In the end he was a very skinny-looking cat, with all his fur sticking to him.

  He didn’t feel like staying outside. He was hungry. And where was his food?

  Inside the house, of course. He needed to get back in, only he couldn’t, because his family hadn’t got round to fitting a cat flap yet. But when he hopped over the wall into Paloma’s garden, he found the back door of her house open.

  He slipped inside.

  There was nobody in the kitchen, but Turk could smell there was some food on the table. He jumped right up there. He found a bowl of cereal and milk, and he lost no time in polishing it off to the last delicious drop. But just then he heard someone coming. He jumped down very quickly, and managed to knock the cereal bowl on to the floor.

  Crash!

  Paloma came running in. She saw Turk streaking out of the back door and over the wall, and saw her cereal bowl on the floor. Luckily it was plastic and hadn’t broken.

  She was just going to call for her mother when she had a Thought: If Mum sees what David’s cat did, she won’t let me have one.

  She quickly picked up the bowl, and wiped away the paw-marks with a cloth. When her mum came into the kitchen and saw the empty bowl, she said, “Good girl, you ate all your cereal!” (I have to tell you that Paloma was a bit of a fusspot about food.)

  Paloma didn’t want to tell a lie, so she just went “Mpfff.” Then she said, “When are we going to get a cat, Mum?”

  “Maybe soon,” said her mum. “Maybe even today! I’ve heard of someone who has some kittens for sale.”

  “Are they white ones?” asked Paloma eagerly.

  “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Paloma felt incredibly happy. She ran next door to see David.

  “We’re going to get my kitten today!” she said, all alight with excitement. “A white one, like yours!”

  David didn’t seem to be listening.

  “I’m really scared,” he said. “Mum doesn’t like my cat. I think she’s going to want to get rid of him.”

  “What? She can’t!” cried Paloma.

  “I’ve got to think how to make her like him.”

  Paloma thought about it. “Does he sit on her lap?”

  “No. He won’t. He doesn’t sit on laps much.”

  “Try putting him on her knee. I’m sure she’d get to like stroking him, he’s so soft and yummy to touch.”

  David said he’d try.

  8. White Cat? Black Cat!

  Paloma’s mum and dad took her out in the car that same afternoon. They drove to a house where a strange lady invited them in to look at her kittens.

  “They’re really adorable,” sh
e said. “I hate to part with them. You’re going to love them, sweetie, I bet,” she added to Paloma. “You won’t know which to choose!”

  Paloma was madly excited. She forgot to be shy and ran to the deep basket where the kittens were. She was so sure that they’d be white that when she peeped in and they weren’t, she couldn’t believe it.

  “But they’re black!” she almost shouted. “And they’re not fluffy!”

  She was so disappointed she plonked herself down on the floor and burst into tears. Her mum stooped beside her and put her arms around her.

  “Don’t you want one, then?”

  “No! No! I wanted a white fluffy one like David’s!”

  She was crying so loudly, it sounded a bit like the noise boy cats make when they’re having a night party. (She was caterwauling.)

  Her dad didn’t say a word. He picked one little black kitten out of the basket and put it into Paloma’s hands.

  It was the smoothest, softest, warmest thing she’d ever touched. And the most alive.

  She forgot to cry. She began to stroke the little thing. It stood up on her leg and stretched itself. It had a pointed face, pointed ears and a little pointed tail. When it finished stretching and yawning, it opened its eyes. They weren’t blue. They were green. It looked straight at her, and meowed. A high kitten-meow.

  Paloma had spent so many hours playing with her toy cats, and talking cats with David, that she could understand cat-language. She knew this kitten was saying, “I want to belong to you.”

  She sat there on the floor, stroking it. She forgot about wanting a fluffy white cat. Her tears dried on her cheeks. This little black thing was her cat and she wanted no other.

  “This one,” she said softly. “This one.”

  9. The Second Peony

  Luckily the one she’d chosen was a girl cat. I mean, kitten. Paloma immediately announced that her name was Peony.

  “But isn’t that what David calls his cat?” asked her mum.

  “I don’t care. It was my name that I thought of. I can’t help it if David—”

  She didn’t want to say ‘stole it’. David was her friend and stealing, even a name, was bad. But she wasn’t going to not call her cat Peony just because David had called his cat that first.

  “Won’t it be confusing?” her mum asked.

  Paloma said, “Oh, he’s changed his cat’s name! His is called Turk. Didn’t I tell you?”

  They stopped at the shops on the way home. They bought two bowls, and a post with rope wrapped round it. That was so Peony could scratch and sharpen her claws. They bought a litter-tray and a bag of litter, which was to make a loo for the kitten, and of course they bought lots of kitten food.

  “I’ll cope with the litter-tray, but it’ll be your job to feed her,” her mum said.

  Paloma said, “Of course. I’ll never forget. She’s my cat and I’ll be—” She stopped.

  “Cat-sponsible?” joked her mum.

  “That’s not a proper cat word, but I will be, I promise,” said Paloma seriously, though inside she was laughing with happiness.

  When they got home and had arranged everything, the next thing Paloma did was to put the kitten back in its carry-box and take it next door to show David.

  She did their special ring. When David came to the door, Paloma saw at once that he looked miserable

  “What’s up?” she asked. “Has there been a cat-astrophe?”

  “Well, a bit,” he said. “I did your idea. I put Peony on Mum’s lap for a surprise. He… he sprayed her.”

  “Oh! Well, maybe you could tell her that’s cat-language for ‘I love you’.”

  “I did,” said David with a shudder. (His mum had said, “Is that so? Well, please tell me in cat-language how to say, ‘If you do that again, I’ll wring your neck!’”)

  Paloma didn’t realise how bad this was. She was too excited to worry about David’s problem. “Look what I’ve got!”

  She put the carry-box on the doorstep and took off the lid. David crouched down and stroked the kitten.

  “He’s a bit of black magic,” he said.

  “He’s a she,” said Paloma.

  “It’s so great now we both have cats,” he said. “What are you going to call her?”

  “Peony, of course!”

  “Well, that’s OK. Good that I changed mine.”

  “Yes!” she said happily, then added quickly, “Turk’s a much better name for a boy cat anyway.”

  Just at that moment, Turk came strolling down the passage to the front door. He’d smelled another cat in his territory.

  He walked to the carry-box and put his head in. The new kitten shrank down inside.

  “She’s scared,” said David. He picked up Turk. Paloma picked up Peony. They brought the two cats’ noses together. The kitten put out her little tongue and licked the big white cat’s pink nose.

  David’s bad cat growled. He put up his paw with all the claws out.

  “Oh, look,” said David. “You see, he’s got protractible claws. That means he can stick them out.” That was information straight out of his favourite cat-book.

  “Pro-nothing! He’s being nasty!” Paloma said, backing away.

  David was embarrassed. It was true. He backed away too. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Never mind,” said Paloma. “They’ll get to like each other. They’ll have to. They’re going to be neighbours.”

  David thought she was being very nice about it. But when she’d gone, he told his cat off. “You mustn’t be nasty to Paloma’s kitten!”

  Turk took absolutely no notice. He was thinking, If that other cat comes anywhere near my territory, I’ll… Well. He didn’t know what he’d do. But it would be something really bad.

  10. Turk Does Himself No Good

  Paloma’s kitten grew up fast. She wasn’t a bad cat like Turk. She was probably as good as any cat ever is.

  She soon learnt to use her litter-box. She was very dainty and careful and didn’t knock things over. When Paloma tied a cotton mouse to a piece of string and the string to a garden cane, and pretended to fish for the kitten, she jumped up to grab the bait just like a trout out of a stream. Paloma couldn’t understand why she’d wanted a fluffy white cat. More and more as she grew, Peony looked like Slinky Malinki.

  Paloma’s days were changed. She played with the kitten before school, and put her food down for her, and all day she looked forward to getting home and finding Peony there waiting, ready to play and be loved. When Paloma stroked her, she purred like a motorbike engine.

  The sound of Peony’s purring made Paloma feel all warm inside. It seemed so easy to make her happy. All you had to do was feed her and love her and she was happy and good.

  Well… she did have one bad habit. She stole Paloma’s toy cats. She would creep up to Paloma’s bedroom and pick up a toy in her teeth and carry it off to one of her favourite places in the house, and play with it. At first Paloma got in a panic when a toy was missing, but she soon learnt where to look. She thought it was funny, Peony stealing toys for herself. She only minded when Peony took them into the garden and they got rained on.

  Her mum, like David’s, made rules. Peony wasn’t allowed on the beds, or the table. Unlike Turk, Peony didn’t break the rules. Her favourite place was on the back of one of the big armchairs in the living-room.

  Paloma boasted to David about how good Peony was. But she still liked to hear what terrible things Turk had got up to.

  One day Turk came into the house, through the new catflap, carrying something in his mouth. Something limp and smelly. He carried it carefully to where David’s mum was sitting in the kitchen, quietly drinking a cup of tea, and laid it across her feet.

  She looked down. There on her best shoes lay a dead rat. Turk was looking up at her through his blue, innocent eyes.

  Well, of course, she let out a scream, and leapt up so suddenly that the cup and saucer went flying, and so did the tea. So did the rat. “Ugh! Oh, you disgusting cat,
it’s horrible, take it out!”

  David came running. He found her shaking her skirt, which was all wet with tea. The saucer was broken. The rat lay on the floor. Turk was crouched over it. He picked it up and looked as if he were offering it to her.

  “Get it out! Get it out!” she kept shouting.

  “Mum – please – you don’t understand – it’s a present!”

  “A what?!”

  “Yes! It says in the cat book! When they bring you something they’ve caught, it means they love you!”

  “That cat,” said his mother between her teeth, “doesn’t love anybody. And don’t ask me how I feel about him! Now take that hateful thing away!”

  “Mum! Turk’s not hateful!”

  “The rat, I meant!”

  (But I’m not so sure she did mean the rat. And neither was David.)

  David picked it up by the tail and carried it out into the garden, where he dug a hole and buried it. Turk followed him. David stroked him.

  “She didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said. “But don’t do it again. And don’t try it with a bird, either.” He shuddered. If it had been a bird…! His mum loved birds. That would’ve been the end, for sure!

  Suddenly his mum burst out of the house. Turk turned tail and fled. He knew danger when he saw it – she was after him! He even had a sort of idea what he’d done wrong.

  “He’s done it again!” she shouted. “He’s sprayed in the living room, I can smell it! That’s IT! He’ll have to be Seen To or – or – he’ll just have to go!”

  David rushed up to her.