But David and Paloma couldn’t completely enjoy themselves. They couldn’t help worrying about their cats.
“Are they missing us? Are they being looked after properly? Have you phoned the cattery to see if they’re all right?”
They asked questions until the grown-ups were ready to scream. Especially with what they had on their consciences – you can imagine.
One night in the cottage the children couldn’t sleep. The grown-ups were downstairs, talking. There was something about the way they were talking that made the children want to listen.
They crept to the top of the narrow stairs and crouched down. The cottage was small and the stairs led straight into the tiny living room.
“I’m sure they’ll be all right,” David’s dad was saying. “They’re not like dogs, after all. They know how to take care of themselves.”
“What do?” Paloma whispered to David.
“Shh! Listen!”
“But what if they wander off and don’t come back? What’ll we tell them then?”
“They’ll never forgive us if that happens,” said Paloma’s mum.
“Who won’t? What are they talking about?” whispered Paloma.
David stood up slowly. He walked down the stairs.
All the grown-ups’ heads turned at once. You never saw such guilty faces. Paloma’s mum jumped to her feet. David’s dad put his head in his hands. The other two just stared as if an angel with a fiery sword was coming down the stairs.
“You never took them,” David said. “I knew the carry-box hadn’t been used. I knew it! It was all dusty!”
Paloma suddenly understood. She let out a scream.
“You didn’t take them?” she cried. “Why not? Where are they? Where did you leave them?”
The two mothers rushed to the stairs. The two dads just stood there.
“Darlings, let us explain! We’re terribly sorry! We didn’t know what to do—” the mothers both burbled at once.
David stood absolutely still on the stairs.
“Where are they?” he asked in an almost grown-up voice.
“They are all right,” said Paloma’s dad, very loudly. “I’m absolutely sure of it. They’ll find food for themselves, and when we get back, there they’ll be.” He told them what had happened, how the cats had disappeared, how they had to pretend or the children would never have agreed to come to Wales.
“No, we wouldn’t!” shouted Paloma. “Oh, poor Peony, poor little girl!” And she set up the loudest caterwaul any of them had ever heard. Well, you can’t blame her.
Everyone talked at once, Paloma howled, David ran back up the stairs and shut himself in the bathroom so no one would see that he was crying too. It took half an hour to talk him into opening the door.
You can probably guess what the end was.
The children simply said they wanted to go home. And the parents couldn’t think of any reason not to agree. The rest of the holiday would have been hopeless, anyway.
So the next day they packed up and drove home – a week early.
19. Where Are They?
The long journey home was strangely silent. Usually there were car games and everyone talked and played CDs or the radio. But this time it was different.
The children weren’t talking to their parents due to anger. The parents weren’t talking to each other due to shame. The children, who rode together in the back of Paloma’s car, weren’t talking to each other either, because there was nothing to say. They each sat quiet in their own thoughts.
Paloma really had only one thought. Would the cats be there when they got back, and if so, what state would they be in after a week without any food? She could feel Peony’s loneliness and hunger in her heart and her tummy.
David sat hugging his favourite cat book. Every now and then he opened it and read a bit. He read about feral cats, how they coped without families. Some feral cats had never had families to feed and shelter them. They were just like wild creatures. If kind people put food out for them, they might eat it, but they wouldn’t let anyone touch them.
Maybe Turk would be like that – if he was there; if he hadn’t run away for good. How could Turk ever love and trust him again after he’d gone off and left him? That’s the trouble with animals. You can’t explain things to them. You can’t even say you’re sorry.
The two cars arrived home at about the same time. The minute their car stopped, the two children jumped out. They stood on their doorsteps, waiting impatiently for the dads to open the front doors. As soon as they did, the children rushed in, through their houses to the back doors, and out into their gardens.
It was evening. The sun was low. There was no sign of anything alive. Even the bird-table in David’s garden was empty. It seemed to both the children that a kind of emptiness lay across the gardens, sad, like the long shadows made by the setting sun.
They both called and called.
“Turk!”
“Peony!”
Nothing.
Meanwhile Paloma’s mother was ringing the next-door bell. The nicer neighbour came.
“Did you see the cats while we were away?” Paloma’s mum asked eagerly.
She shook her head.
“I heard them meowing, and I called, but they never came.”
“Oh… oh… This is awful!” Paloma’s mum muttered, nearly crying. She turned away without even saying thank you.
The two mothers and the two fathers came out into the gardens to help call. But in the end they had to give up. The dads opened up the catflaps.
“Maybe they’ll come back in the night. I’m sure they will,” said David’s dad.
David said nothing. He was quite sure they wouldn’t. Why would they? They must have tried to get in and bumped their heads on the catflaps that wouldn’t open. Turk wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t keep on bumping his head.
Next door Paloma was crying. Not caterwauling. It was too bad for that. She just lay on her bed surrounded by all her toy cats and tried to let them comfort her while her tears fell on them.
Her mum came.
“Darling. I’m so terribly sorry.”
“Maybe she’s dead.”
“Dead! Oh, no, I’m sure she’s not! She’ll come back. She will. We must believe she will!”
Paloma cried herself to sleep. Her mum nearly did too. Her dad went out into the dark garden and called again, quietly. He felt like a criminal. He hadn’t said a prayer for years, but now he did. “Please God, send our cat home.”
20. Peony in a Mess
Peony wasn’t dead. But she had got herself into a bad place.
It was because of the tree, the one leaning against the wall. By now she’d climbed it so often, it seemed the easiest thing in the world. So she thought climbing all trees was easy.
After the bin-men came and took the black sacks away, she and Turk had to go back to hunting. They didn’t go out in the street any more, because that was where the fox was. But, just as the cats were now scared and wary of the fox, all the birds and other creatures were scared and wary of the cats. The birds didn’t come down to the lawns or to sit on the garden furniture. They stayed high in the trees.
And Peony and Turk could hear them up there. Their songs sounded like jeering: “Cheep, cheep! You can’t catch us!”
Then there were the squirrels. Squirrels did come down into the gardens if there was any food there, but they never went far from a tree. And they could shoot up a tree like an arrow. A few times Turk, lurking in the bushes, would pounce out at a squirrel, but it would shoot out of reach in a flash, leaving Turk clinging to the bottom of the tree, furiously lashing his tail.
Peony, watching, thought she could do better.
She saw where one squirrel went – up a tree with smooth bark. Very tall. The first branches were far above her head – much higher than the wall. But two days after the bin-men took their food away, Peony was hungry. Very, very hungry.
She hid in some bushes at the foot of the squirrel’s t
ree.
She kept very still, waiting.
At last, the squirrel came down its big tree into a garden where there was a bird-feeder full of nuts. The squirrel ran along a wire that crossed the garden and held up the bird-feeder. It tore the feeder open to get at the nuts, but most of them fell out. The squirrel ran back along the wire, down a post and onto the ground to get them.
Peony had been waiting for this! She leapt out of her hiding-place. The squirrel saw her coming. It dodged her and fled up the tree as easily as if it were running along the ground. Peony, with all her new-found speed and bravery, sprang after it.
This tree was not like her other tree. It was smoother. But she was so hungry she didn’t notice. She protracted her claws and scrambled up and up, keeping the squirrel’s tail in sight. She climbed and climbed, pushed by her need to catch the squirrel and eat it, every last bit of it.
Well, maybe she’d share with Turk. It was a big, fat squirrel; enough for two.
But – where was it?
Peony realised she’d lost sight of it. And she was high up in the branches of the tree. When she lay along a branch and looked down, she got a fright. She’d never been so high. Much, much higher than the wall. She could go head-first down the wall, but she couldn’t do that now. It was too high and the tree was too smooth.
She began to meow for Turk. “Come and help me! Get me down! I’m frightened!”
21. Turk To The Rescue
And, three gardens away, Turk heard her.
He’d been stealing the food of the rotten dog. This dog liked to eat his food in his kennel which was out in his garden. A cat had to take a big risk to get it, but Turk waited till he knew the dog was off somewhere with his person. Then he sneaked down to the kennel and was just helping himself to a nice bit of dog food when he heard Peony calling him.
He climbed up onto a shed and stood on the roof. He looked all round, his ears pricked. He was looking in the gardens, on the walls, on the sheds. She wasn’t there.
He ran along the shed roof towards the sound of her voice. He jumped onto the top of a fence and ran along it. It was narrow and he nearly fell, but he got to a wall and ran along that. He was getting nearer. But where was she?
“I’m here! I’m here! Look up and see me and come for me!”
He saw her! But she was impossibly high. Turk knew he couldn’t get her down. He didn’t stop to think, to remember that his family had gone. He raced for home.
David was making a Lego castle to take his mind off things when he heard – the clack of the catflap.
It was the best sound he’d ever heard.
He jumped up off the floor, his heart in his throat, and ran to the kitchen. And there he was! Turk! His beautiful Turk! – but changed. Thinner. His white fur marked with dirt and fights. David ran to him, picked him up, cuddled and kissed him, saying his name over and over again.
“Turk! Turk! My lovely, lovely Turk, you came back! You came back!” (Before you ask, yes, he was. Crying. No shame in that.)
Turk, as soon as he could, jumped to the floor and went back through the catflap.
“Turk! Don’t go! Come back!”
David threw open the back door. Turk was standing there on the patio, waving his tail and looking straight at him. His blue eyes were fixed on him. But then he looked away and started to run down the garden.
He climbed on to the shed at the bottom. Then he disappeared into the garden that backed on to theirs. A minute later, David saw him on another shed roof, and then another wall, further away. A white shape, disappearing and reappearing, getting smaller as he went into the distance.
David had stopped calling. He climbed on to a garden chair and then on to the picnic table. That way he could see further. He scanned the walls and shed roofs. And then he saw him! A little white shape.
Turk was standing still on a wall about four gardens away. David narrowed his eyes and stared as hard as he could. What was Turk doing?
He was staring upward. Over his head were the branches of a tall tree.
David didn’t waste a moment. He jumped down, ran through the house, out the front door, into the street and up to Paloma’s door. He rang their special ring. He rang it three times one after the other as hard as he could.
Ding… Ding-ding-diiiiiing!
Paloma came running. She threw open the door.
“I think I know where she is,” said David. “Come quick!”
Getting Peony down from the tree, which was in a rather far-away neighbour’s garden, wasn’t easy. In the end they had to call the fire brigade.
Usually when the fire brigade is called for something that isn’t a fire, they don’t make a special noise driving through the streets, but this time they did. Probably because Paloma’s dad had sounded so frantic over the phone, that they thought at the very least his house was burning down, possibly with him in it. So the red engine came roaring and blasting its siren and clanging its bell, and all the neighbours came out to see where the fire was.
Luckily the tree was near a street wall and the firemen were able to run a ladder up it from the pavement. All the neighbours stood around staring upwards. When the fireman backed down the ladder, clear of the leaves, holding Peony in one arm, there was a mighty cheer that scared her so much she nearly bolted back up the tree again.
But the fireman hung on tight and brought her down, and handed her to Paloma.
“Oh… thank you! Thank you!” she cried, and kissed his belt, which was as high up him as she could reach. He went as red as the engine, patted her on the head, and the fire engine drove away while all the neighbours clapped. It was the best show they’d seen all week; much better (and much more real) than reality TV.
Paloma, David, and Paloma’s mum and dad went home with Peony and made the biggest fuss of her that any cat has ever had. Made of her. Fuss. If you see what I mean. (I’m sorry. I’m a bit over-excited myself.)
And Turk? Well, of course Turk was the hero of the hour.
22. Peony Springs a Surprise
A few months after the Great Rescue, Peony disappeared.
Paloma was frantic. She hunted for her, and called for her in the garden. Her mum and dad looked too. They looked everywhere. But they couldn’t find her.
Paloma was more grown up now. She hardly caterwauled any more. But it was hard not to cry when she came home from school every day and there was no Peony waiting for her. Had she gone forever?
And then, three days later, Peony showed up! She came streaking down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out through the catflap. The family looked at each other. Paloma felt happiness flowing through her like hot chocolate on a cold day.
“She’s been in the house all the time!” said Paloma’s dad.
“But where? Where’s she been hiding?” asked Paloma.
Her mum said, “Don’t try to catch her. Just watch where she goes.”
After a little while Peony streaked back in again. She gulped down some food and almost flew upstairs. Paloma followed her. Peony went into the spare room and shot under the bed.
Paloma lay down on the floor and peered into the darkness. No Peony! She’d disappeared! Where could she have gone?
Paloma wriggled her way under the bed on her tummy. Then she noticed. There was an old doll’s cradle under there, in the corner. Well, I told you Paloma wasn’t into dolls. Someone had given it to her ages ago and she’d never used it.
Now she reached into it. She touched something warm that moved. It wasn’t Peony. It was lots of little soft balls of fur. All snuggled up together. And as she poked around, she heard noises.
Squeaks.
Paloma wriggled out backwards and ran downstairs.
“I’ve found her! And… I think…”
“Ah!” said her mum, with a big smile. “She’s had her kittens!”
Paloma stared at her. “You knew?”
“Er – well, yes, that’s why she got so fat.”
“I thought she got fat because she’d
been so thin! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s a long time to wait. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
Paloma felt a thrill go down her back. “Can we see them?”
They all went upstairs and Dad very gently pulled the doll’s cradle out from under the bed.
And sure enough, there in amongst the soft doll’s blankets was Peony. And lying close to her tummy were: one, two, three, four, five tiny kittens.
Two of them were black. Two were white. And one was black and white. Their eyes were closed and they had tiny pink mouths.
I won’t try to tell you Paloma was happier than when she got Peony back after thinking she’d lost her for ever. But she was very, very happy, just the same. Even when her mum and dad told her she mustn’t – no, absolutely not – pick up any of the kittens yet. Or even touch them. (That was all they knew, because they hadn’t read any cat books.)
You can guess the first person Paloma wanted to tell.
David’s face lit up.
“How many?”
“Five. And two of them are white.”
David felt almost as if he himself had just become a dad. He had that same proud grin on his face that new dads often have. They ran back to Paloma’s house and up to the spare room.
Paloma put her finger to her lips. “We mustn’t disturb them.”
They sat on the floor and gazed into the doll’s cradle.
“We should bring Turk to see them,” Paloma whispered.
“I don’t suppose he’d know they were his,” David said. “Shall we think of names for them?”
“Yes! You name the white ones and I’ll name the black ones.”
David thought of the whitest things he knew. “What about School Shirt and Kleenex Tissue?”
Paloma laughed so much she rolled on her back, kicked her legs in the air, and showed her knickers. “That’s the silliest—”
Bad Cat, Good Cat Page 5
