Ginger the Buddha Cat

by Frank Kusy

  All of a sudden, Frou-Frou caught sight of Sparky and stopped looking bored. She waved him forward, and he pushed through her significant fan-base to pay homage at the ledge of her window.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed through the pane. ‘This is for adults only!’

  ‘Well, Ginger’s an adult,’ called up Sparky. ‘And he really needs you!’

  ‘Ginger? What, that old grump? All he needs is a lesson of manners! He’s about the rudest, least gentlemanly, cat it’s been my displeasure to meet!’

  ‘He’s changed, Frou-Frou, he really has! Can you come right now?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t, cutie pie. I have to wait for my humans to wake up and let me out.’

  ‘Why aren’t they awake now?’ asked Sparky curiously. ‘Your friends are making an awful lot of noise!’

  Frou-Frou’s pudgy little nose crinkled with amusement.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know, do you?’ she purred through the thin window. ‘This block of flats is for humans whose ears do not work. Half of them are away on holiday, and the other half have their hearing aids switched off.’

  ‘But you can come in the morning?’

  ‘No more talk about past lifetimes?’ said Frou-Frou cautiously. ‘And no more weird stuff about chanting humans?’

  ‘Promise!’ said Sparky eagerly. ‘We’ll be on our best behaviour!’

  ‘Alright, honeybun. I’ll see you soon...’

  *

  The following morning, as Ginger was nursing a hangover, a surprise guest arrived on his lawn.

  ‘What are you doin’ ‘ere?’ said Ginger, shocked out of his skin. ‘I thought you was too good for the likes of me!’

  ‘Charming!’ sniffed Frou-Frou, fluffing up her fur. ‘Is that any way to greet a lady?’

  Ginger stopped himself from a rude reply. He was remembering his dream, and his promise to Sparky to be nice to her.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he mumbled uncomfortably. ‘What I meant to say was, welcome to my manor.’

  ‘Well, thank you, kind sir. I’m happy to be here.’

  ‘Are you really?’ snapped Ginger without thinking. ‘Then why ain’t you smiling?’

  ‘This is me smiling!’ said an affronted Frou-Frou. ‘You obviously don’t know many Persians!’

  ‘Persians? Oh yes, you’re the ones with the scrunched-up faces. Oh gawd, no, I meant “classic features”!’

  ‘You’re digging yourself a hole, big boy,’ snarled Frou-Frou, her green eyes flashing. ‘Take care you don’t fall into it!’

  Ginger squirmed with embarrassment as he tried to think of something nice to say next. But his mind drew a blank.

  ‘Your little friend Sparky sent me?’ prompted the precious pure-breed helpfully. ‘He said it was important?’

  ‘Oh, yes...no...yes,’ said Ginger, taking a sudden interest in a blade of grass and toying with it. ‘I got to apologise to you or sumfink.’

  ‘You’ve got to? Or you want to?’

  ‘A bit of both, as it happens. Give me a minute...’

  Frou-Frou studied the large bulk of Ginger with new interest. Yes, he was no picture, with his squinty left eye and his ears in tatters, but he was funny. He also had something she found appealing. Now, what was it? Oh yes, a certain je ne sais quoi.

  ‘Have you got any kittens?’ she said teasingly.

  ‘I don’t know, missus. None that I stuck around long enough to find out about anyway...’

  ‘Would you like some?’

  ‘You mean, some I do hang around for? ‘Ere, what’s your game?’

  Frou-Frou’s mouth turned up at the corners as she fought back a smile. This was even more fun than playing with mice.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said innocently. ‘Just making conversation.’

  ‘Well, I’m not so hot on conversation,’ protested Ginger. ‘I have to get by on my natural charisma!’

  Frou-Frou’s eyes squinted in silent merriment.

  ‘You mean your “winning personality”?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. I can charm the birds off the trees, me. Though I’d much rather chase ‘em.’

  ‘You weren’t very charming the other day,’ Frou-Frou reminded him. ‘And weren’t you going to apologise to me?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Ginger mumbled off-handedly. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Is that it?’ she said after a long pause. ‘It that all you’ve got?’

  ‘Okay, very sorry! And I’m not saying it again!’

  ‘Well, that’s not good enough, Mister Grumpy! Now you’re going to have to prove it!’

  ‘What? You want blood? Okay then, what will make you happy?’

  Frou-Frou clapped her dainty paws together with joy. ‘Oh, you mean like a task? How exciting! First, let me ask, what will make you happy?’

  ‘Apart from getting this stoopid Buddha off my head?’

  ‘Yes, what are you dreaming about right now?’

  ‘A sossidge,’ said Ginger without hesitation.

  ‘Well, there you go, then. Bring me the best sausage in the world, and don’t eat it along the way.’

  ‘In the world?’ echoed a stunned Ginger. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’’

  ‘You’ll find a way,’ said Frou-Frou, jumping back over the fence. ‘And when you do,’ she added with a wink, ‘I’ll be very forgiving...’

  *

  Sparky couldn’t find Ginger at first. He looked all over the garden for him, and then in the surrounding woodland, but there was no sign.

  Then he heard a low growl in the shed, and there was Ginger, mumbling darkly to himself in a corner.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said softly. ‘You look tired.’

  Ginger’s good eye latched blearily onto him.

  ‘Well, so would you be, if you hadn’t slept all night. I don’t dare close my eyes now, unless you’re with me. But don’t tell no-one else, hear? Or about me losin’ the plot last night. I just had an “episode”, that’s all!’

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ Sparky reassured him. ‘Now, did you see Frou-Frou?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And were you nice to her?’

  ‘Oh yes, I was nice,’ snarled Ginger. ‘Too bloomin’ nice. Now she’s got me traipsing all over the world for a sossidge! Who does she think I am, Hercule Parrot?’

  ‘She wants you to bring her a sausage?’

  ‘Not just any sossidge, but the “best sossidge in the world.” Though I could get her any old sossidge. She wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But you would,’ said Sparky sternly. ‘And if it was a test, you would have failed it.’

  ‘Thanks for that, mate,’ grunted Ginger. ‘Tell it how it is, why don’t you?’

  *

  Just then, there was a loud banging in the kitchen, and something flew out the open window.

  It was a saucepan, and it had been aimed at Joe.

  ‘What do you mean, you “just scored a sausage in the market!” the cats could hear Madge screaming. ‘Is this your idea of dieting?’

  Joe shot out into the garden, a guilty smile on his face and the remains of a bun between his fingers.

  ‘This is what I call a sausage!’ he told the cats happily. ‘No greasy chunks in the middle, fresh and crispy on the outside!’

  You like it then Sparky wrote on his trouser-leg.

  ‘I certainly do. I’m going back for another one!’

  Is it the best sausage in the world?

  ‘Hmm...’ considered Joe between mouthfuls. ‘Well, it’s certainly the best one in Surrey. And please don’t write any more messages on me. I’m starting to look like a blackboard.’

  ‘Ask him will he get us one!’ Ginger urged Sparky. ‘It sounds just the ticket!’

  But when the message was passed on, Joe’s face darkened.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ginger, but no chance. I have this recurring nightmare that I’m a sad old monk stuck under a tree. And I’m guessing you’re the awful little god-cat that put me there. If I help you, I fear, nothi
ng will change.’

  ‘Wot’s he saying?’

  ‘He’s saying, we’re on our own.’

  ‘Bloomin’ Buddhist hippy!’ snarled Ginger. ‘Well come on, Sparky, we don’t need him. You can do your sad n’ pathetic pussy routine again – it’ll be just like Barcelona!’

  But Sparky wasn’t sad and pathetic anymore. He was a very round, very well-fed, black and white football.

  And when they reached Joe’s sausage stand in the town market-place, they met a brick wall. Sparky tried everything – looking lost and forlorn, acting cute, doing roly-poly on the pavement – but nothing worked. Instead of throwing him a sausage, people started calling him a sausage.

  In the end, he tried to appeal to the vendor’s better nature.

  We’re not allowed to beg he wrote on the ground, but if you give us one anyway, that would be very nice

  But Rolf, the vendor, didn’t have a better nature. He had seen this kind of circus trick back home in Romania, and no matter how convincing, there was always some sneaky old gypsy behind it. Deeply suspicious, Rolf was not parting with any of his sausages.

  *

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ sighed Ginger back home. ‘You were rubbish!’

  ‘I’m not a cute little kitten anymore,’ protested Sparky. ‘What did you expect?’

  Ginger felt like saying he expected a sausage, but then he thought better of it. This was his challenge, after all, not Sparky’s – and besides, he couldn’t risk losing his only friend.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last, ‘you did your best, pal, you really did. Now it’s my turn...’

  Chapter 9

  Sparky goes online

  Ginger’s idea was simple. He returned to the sausage stand and pooped on it. On the grill, to be precise. And while Rolf was running around, looking for the hidden gypsy, he frightened one of his customers into dropping a big, juicy kaseknacker.

  ‘This is just the ticket!’ he crowed to himself as he sauntered back home. ‘Frou-Frou’s gonna just love this!’

  But Frou-Frou didn’t love it. She took one sniff at the sausage and said, ‘Oh no, I can’t eat that. It’s got cheese in it. I’m lactose intolerant!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Sparky as her bushy tail disappeared from sight. ‘Well, there’s only one thing left to do.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ said Ginger, eyeing the rejected sausage unhappily.

  ‘We’ll have to go online.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Online. On a pooter. Whenever ol’ Joe wants something not in Tescos, he sits in his chair, plays with a mouse, and asks this very clever box to find it for him.’

  ‘He plays with a mouse?’ marvelled Ginger respectfully. ‘Cor, he really was a cat last time round, weren’t he!’

  ‘It’s not a real mouse,’ explained Sparky. ‘It just tells the pooter what to do. Maybe we can ask it to find you a sausage.’

  ‘A top sausage?’

  ‘Why not? Let’s go try right now.’

  And with that Sparky leapt across the garden fences, Ginger following wheezily behind, and returned to the pussy palace they both called home.

  Here, to his delight, he found Joe absent and the computer still switched on.

  ‘All we have to do now,’ he informed his orange friend, ‘is talk to a nice human called Google.’

  And with a pencil clenched between his practiced little teeth he typed in:

  Whatsthebestsausageintheworldandwherecanifinditplease?

  A whole host of strange messages popped up, including an advertisement for drain cleaner.

  ‘I don’t think he knows,’ said Sparky disappointedly. ‘I think he’s sleeping.’

  ‘Whaddya mean, he don’t know?’ snarled Ginger, elbowing Sparky aside. ‘Ere, let me have a word with him!’

  And with that, he banged down on the keyboard with two heavy paws like a crazed phantom of the opera.

  ‘Oi, Mister Google!’ he screeched. ‘Wake up and give me a sossidge!’

  Several miles away, at No 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister was puzzled to receive the following email:

  GAAAAARRRRGUUUBRRRRRJIPPPIT

  ‘I wonder who that is?’ he thought to himself. ‘Is my butler drunk again?’

  Chapter 10

  Carpet Guy

  A day passed, and then another, and then – just as Ginger was about to give up and beg Frou-Frou for an easier task – there was a loud, insistent banging at the front door.

  It was Lee, Madge’s favourite carpet guy.

  ‘Allo, missus!’ boomed Lee in his cheeky-chappy cockney accent. ‘I know I’m a bit early, but I’ve been waiting outside an hour and I’m keen to get going. Where’s his lordship?’

  ‘Oh, Joe? He’s still in la-la land.’

  ‘What about his little lordship?’

  ‘What, you mean Sparky? He’s sleeping on Joe.’

  A door behind them slowly creaked open, and a crumpled monk-like figure – covered in a dark-brown hooded robe – issued forth. It was Joe, and he wasn’t happy.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he complained. ‘Nobody told me you were coming.’

  ‘Nice to see you too, mate,’ said Lee. 'It’s your yearly carpet call!’

  ‘How do you know it’s a year?’ enquired Joe, reluctantly pulling out his earplugs. ‘It feels like last week.’

  ‘Because Chelsea were playing Preston in the third round of the FA Cup,’ Lee reminded him. ‘And today is the third round of the FA Cup!’

  Madge grinned, and adjusted her fluffy turquoise dressing gown.

  ‘That’s right!’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s the first Saturday of April. I remember Joe going upstairs to chant, and you shouted up to him: “Don’t forget to chant for Chelsea!”

  ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ boomed Lee. ‘I didn’t realise he was a secret Chelsea fan.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Joe blearily.

  ‘Well, but I can live in hope. And you know what, they went on last year and they won it. I went to the final, they played Portsmouth – yeah, it was fabulous!’

  Joe was puzzled. It had been cloudy all week, yet Lee’s ruddy face was a lot ruddier than he remembered it.

  ‘What’s with the suntan?’ he rudely enquired. ‘Have you been on holiday?’

  Lee’s bright blue eyes crinkled with amusement. ‘You could say that. Someone nicked my Tesco’s van and left me stranded in Barcelona. Best thing that ever happened to me, mate, it really was. Dumped my old job, took up carpets full-time, even found myself a girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s from Frankfurt, and she’s got a few quid, which is a result. And I’m going to see her soon, cos I loves sausages and Frankfurt is sausage land. It’s where frankfurters come from, so it’s got to be the place.’

  Ginger, who had finally wedged himself into the house through the cat flap, felt his tattered ears prick up.

  ‘Sossidges?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Who said sossidges? Gawd, it’s my ol’ mate Lee. What’s he doing ‘ere?’

  There was a pause, as Lee lugged miles of rubber tubing into the hallway, and then Sparky, who was sat at the top of the stairs, tore past Ginger. He knew what was coming next.

  ‘I think you frightened my cat again,’ complained Joe.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Lee. ‘I hope he don’t go up the pipe.’

  ‘The pipe?’

  ‘The cleansing hose. If you see a lump going through the hose, it’s probably your cat!’

  Joe and Madge exchanged a look of concern.

  ‘...Because I’ve done this before,’ explained Lee. ‘And this woman what had feathers all over her floor was saying “Have you seen my budgie?” And I really thought I’d hoovered it up, but it wasn’t me. It was just moulting!’

  ‘Well, I’d love to hear more,’ said Madge uneasily. ‘But I’m off to university. I’ve got to finalise my paper on the role of cats in East German cinema.’

  Joe opened his mouth to protest, but was sile
nced by an over-excited Lee with a bucket.

  ‘Check this out, mate! I would say you don’t want to see the dirty water, but you do. I’ve done just this one carpet, and it’s come up lovely. You definitely want to see this!’

  And with that he tugged Joe away from the door – permitting Madge a hasty exit – and ushered him towards his brand-new suction machine.

  *

  ‘Ere, Sparks!’ whispered Ginger. ‘I got a new plan!’

  He had just located his fragile friend round the back of the garden shed.

  ‘Oh no,’ shivered Sparky nervously. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I got one word for you – sossidges. No, make that two words – sossidge land!’

  Sparky’s head was buried in a pile of leaves, and his front paws were clamped to his ears. He hated loud noises and he wanted his old, dirty carpet back.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ he whimpered. ‘I don’t want to hear you!’

  ‘Yes, you do. That’s my old mate Lee in there – remember him from Barcelona? And he reckons the numero uno top sossidges in the world come from Frankfurt. Where is Frankfurt, by the way? Is it in Surrey?’

  Sparky opened one eye, and lowered a paw from one ear.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he informed his eager orange companion. ‘It’s in Germany – a very long way to go for a sausage – and it doesn’t even have the best ones.’

  ‘You had another chat with Mister Google, didn’t you?’ said Ginger accusingly. ‘What place does, then?’

  ‘Munich. It’s where my humans went at Chrissymouse to see that baby Jesus. Didn’t you see how fat ol’ Joe was when he got back? He said he ate his weight in sausages!’

  Ginger’s eyes glazed over with gluttony. If only he could eat his weight in sausages. It was almost too much to hope for.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ he said crossly. ‘I’m a cat on a mission!’

  ‘And I’m a cat with a nice home. I don’t want to leave it.’

  ‘Well, the sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll get back,’ Ginger informed his skittish young friend. ‘Get your map – we’re going to Moonik!’

  Chapter 11

  Fly me to the Moonik