‘Right, then. Let me know if you need anything. I’d better get serious about the job hunt,’ Erica said. She struggled back onto her feet while thinking in one moment, I’m talking to a bloody cat, and in the next, Christ I’m too old for this squatting-down business, as she almost fell backwards onto her arse and had to have a second go to get fully upright.
Erica took the laptop to the study and settled in to look at and then apply for jobs. She’d been engrossed for a while when she was startled by a bang. She tensed, held her breath and cocked her ear to listen. But that was it. And then she remembered Boris. She’d completely forgotten him. She’d only meant to leave him to settle for a little while and check out the house on his own terms. How long had she been in there? She’d filled out several online job applications. Each one seemed to take forever. And the worse thing was she suspected it was unlikely she’d even get an interview for any of them due to large stores tending to want younger staff because they were cheaper. But you had to be in it to win it, as they said. None of the jobs made her feel warm and fuzzy with excitement or anticipation, but at this point a job was a job. And she’d at least made an effort. She closed the computer lid and then the door on the study and went back down the hall to the kitchen to see what Boris was up to. As she looked through the glass doors she was surprised by how much time had passed. It was late afternoon because the light into the garden was low, not helped by the sky being heavily laden with cloud. Still no rain, though, she thought, peering out. It was proving to be a very dry winter. Thankfully the house was holding enough heat so far and she didn’t need to put any heating on yet.
In the kitchen she squatted down to see if Boris was still in his box and was a little startled to find it empty. Shit, did I lock him in the study? But the bang she’d heard. Uh-oh. Was that him? Where was he and what had he done? She turned to go back and check, but out of the corner of her eye sensed movement. She whirled around. There he was ambling along under the dining room window, keeping so low his belly fur and tail were barely above the floor, if at all. No doubt checking out the space via the perimeter.
‘Hello there, lovely boy,’ she said. He really was a handsome cat. Big. Fluffy. Orange and stripy. His body was fluffy, but his tail was enormous, dark and bushy, not unlike that of a fox. He walked to her and stood looking up and then gave a slow blink of his enormous ochre-flecked yellow eyes. She bent down and stroked his back, his beautiful fur feeling soft and silky under her hands. He arched his back up against her and then wound himself around her legs – first one and then between them and around the other, his tail tall and taut, but for the tip that was bent over slightly. Erica longed to pick him up and cuddle his big soft plushness to her, but she was too scared. Best not to tempt fate, she thought, picking up his bowl instead and depositing a couple more biscuits in it.
‘Don’t tell your mum. It’s just because you’re new. And tomorrow is a different day,’ she said as she put it down in front of him. She rubbed her hand along his fur while he ate. When he was finished, Boris sauntered off and sat on the large black and white loungeroom rug in front of the glass doors and proceeded to lick a front paw and then wipe it across his face.
Erica stood at the bench and thought about an early dinner for herself. She’d forgotten to have lunch. But she became mesmerised by Boris’s routine. He seemed to have a specific order to the way he went about cleaning himself. It was fascinating. Face and ears first, then along one front leg, from paw to armpit, then the other, working his way down. When he got to his bum, he sat himself upright like a Buddha and then bent almost double into a ball in order to get right into his delicate nether regions. In that position, he must have sensed Erica watching because he looked up and over at her with a piercing look.
‘Sorry, I’ll give you your privacy, sir,’ Erica said, feeling chastised, and busied herself with getting a glass of water. What interesting creatures cats are.
Feeling uninspired about cooking and deciding on a toasted cheese sandwich for dinner, Erica ate, and after checking Boris was happily snoozing in his bed in the lounge, she got the step stool out and changed the clock battery. Again. Then she retreated to her bedroom to watch TV. She left her door open in case Boris decided he’d like some company. She liked the idea of cuddling up with him, but not that she might do the wrong thing and end up with a series of scratches or bite marks. As she turned on the TV, she tried to remember if her tetanus vaccination was up to date. It was every ten years, wasn’t it? She tried to think if anything had happened that had necessitated a booster in the last decade and came up empty. Though she was most likely up to date because she was meticulous about her, Stuart and the girls having all their vaccinations. Oh well, if she did happen to get scratched, she’d go to the clinic and get the shot just to be sure.
Having consumed enough reality TV, Erica got up and did a final check on Boris – who was still happily snoozing on his bed and opened one eye to survey her – and then returned to her bed and turned off the light to go to sleep.
At one point she woke to the feeling of pressure beside her and then warmth and a harrumph as the big orange cat snuggled up against her, spooning. She could feel a gentle vibration and hear a deep-toned purr. She let out a long breath of contentment and put a hand out and tentatively stroked him for a while before going back to sleep with a smile on her face.
Chapter Sixteen
Erica woke with a start. Her eyes flew open and even before she was fully awake her chest was pounding and her heart was seemingly trying to leap out of her. She remembered Boris and felt around for him. He was gone. What had woken her up? Him jumping off the bed? No, it was a sharper sound than that and much louder than his weight could make, right? She couldn’t be sure; she’d been asleep. What had she’d heard?
Bang, scrape. Erica tensed. What the hell is that? She tried harder to listen, lifted her head away from the pillow and covers and cocked her ear higher. The noise seemed to have come from above and behind her. But that couldn’t be right. She’d made sure to close the doors to the walk-in behind the wall the bedhead sat against. Could Boris have somehow got in there and gone up into the top shelves? Erica was wide awake now. She leant over and turned on the bedside lamp and looked around. Nothing was out of place, though she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Boris was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t want to get up. She was suddenly too scared to leave the safety of her bed. She snuggled down and pulled the quilt over her again.
But it didn’t help and she couldn’t make herself relax, despite detecting no more noises. In a way that was almost worse. The more she thought about it, the more she worried about Boris. He might have tipped something over on top of him and become trapped or injured. As she pushed back the covers, she paused and tried to reconcile what the noise had been with her memory. She’d heard it before somewhere or some time. She was sure of it. But here in this house? Or somewhere else? No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t place it. She also wasn’t sure she knew where exactly it had come from.
Reluctantly she dragged herself out of bed. She went out into the hall, turning on the hall lamp. She didn’t want too much light; she was hoping to go back to sleep.
In the kitchen she looked around in the moonlight flooding in. She couldn’t see anything out of place. And the space was silent except for the hum of the fridge. It must have been something being knocked over outside. She wasn’t keen enough to know to go out there or even open the curtains, but she probably should find Boris and make sure he was okay. Maybe he had simply bumped into his bowl or carry box, though Erica couldn’t rid herself of the feeling she’d heard the sound before. But she had been asleep so there might have been more to it, or less. Or it might have been nothing at all; she might have dreamt it. She got the torch from its spot on the bench, turned it on in the orange setting and pointed it towards Boris’s carry box. It was empty.
About to go and check under the lounges, she was suddenly gripped with fear. She ran back to her bedroom
, leapt into bed and pulled the covers up over her now quivering body. She longed to close the door behind her to feel safer but didn’t know where Boris was. No matter how much she told herself she was being absurd and to stop it, the fear remained. She was shaking all over.
Slowly she calmed down enough to contemplate at least checking under the bed. God, she so didn’t want to, though. But then she reminded herself that people only hid under beds in movies and had to get inside the house first. While she didn’t use an alarm, her house was locked up tightly – nice and secure.
She knelt down and had the thought that she was very vulnerable before taking a deep breath and peering under with the help of the orange glow from the torch. And there he was. If she was a betting person, from the look of him she’d put money on him being frightened. Or perhaps she was projecting. His eyes were huge. Or perhaps she was the source of his fear – her big face appearing in the small gap along with a strange coloured light. That would do it.
‘Are you okay, puss? Just a scary noise. Was it you who made it?’ She tentatively reached a hand in to try and reassure the cat, but pulled it back when he retreated further under the bed. ‘It’s okay. It’s gone now. You can come out.’ Please come out and cuddle me. Erica really hoped this being scared business wasn’t a sign of things to come. Just a noise outside. Could have been anything. Possum, cat. Anything, she told herself as she got back under the covers and tried to settle. So why was she so afraid?
***
Erica woke again with the horrible grogginess of not having had much more sleep. It was light enough in the bedroom to make out shapes and when she sat up she saw Boris crouched at the end of the bed staring at her. She didn’t think he looked afraid now, but he certainly didn’t seem completely settled or relaxed either. Or maybe this was a lording-it-over-you posture cats adopted when you were late feeding them or attending to some other need.
‘Sorry, I am a bad servant,’ she said to the cat, who immediately jumped down off the bed and left the room as soon as she began getting up. As the cat wound himself in and around her legs while she prepared his breakfast, Erica was relieved he seemed to be back to normal after their fraught night. She was still frazzled. Thank goodness I don’t have anywhere to be today, she thought as she stared at him eating, unable to tear her groggy, vacant gaze away. Her brain kept fading out.
Glancing around she realised Boris’s carry box was askew. It had been lined up against the wall in the corner. And now the door was closed. Shit.
‘Sorry, Boris. I hope you didn’t want to go in there last night. Poor puss,’ she said, going over to open it. It was hinged on one side, so must have got bumped shut with him rubbing against it. But when she struggled to open it – the mechanism required her to press two steel bars together in order to get the lugs to come down out of the holes securing the door – Erica was mystified. The door could be bumped closed, but there was no way it could be accidentally latched. I’m sure I didn’t shut it, she mused as the straightened it up and put a door stop against it. She remained standing there staring down at it, her brain refusing to work.
When Boris appeared in her vision and sniffed the box, she apologised again. She felt terrible that in his fear he hadn’t been able to get inside his box to feel safe. Without another thought, she bent down and scooped him up into a tight hug against her chest. God, he felt good: big, soft and snuggly, though a little stiff. And then after a few moments he became restless. She put him back down gently and tried to focus her attention on getting her day under way. Breakfast. Coffee. Did she want to search for the source of the noise from last night? While she tried to tell herself Boris bumping into his box and inadvertently closing the door was what had woken her up, she knew she wouldn’t have heard that from all the way down the hall in her bedroom at the front of the house. Had she? Could she? Maybe she had. She couldn’t see anything else. Even in the safe light of day she didn’t want to go outside to look. She wasn’t sure why.
Chapter Seventeen
Erica had finally stopped watching silly cat and dog videos online and was engrossed in searching for jobs when she was startled by a loud thump somewhere in the ceiling above her head. It was so loud she looked up half expecting to see a gaping hole with something showing through. Her heart raced a little at hearing more noises – a scraping and general movement. She held her breath, unsure why, and concentrated on trying to ascertain the origin of the sounds. But they had stopped. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Boris just inside the door. He was looking up and around him in the same direction as her. His usually large yellow eyes were enormous and his whole body appeared twice its normal size with his hair standing out. At the sound of another noise above him, the cat ducked his head and then ran, careering from the room out into the hall. As Erica heard the dull thumpity thump of paws on the rug over the floorboards, she was glad she’d made sure his carry box door was open. No doubt he’d be in there seeking sanctuary.
‘It’s only a possum, Boris, sweetie. It’s okay,’ she called. It was the only logical explanation. She listened for more noise, desperately hoping she wouldn’t need to go up into the roof space and check. Dealing with the step stool was one thing, but just the thought of pulling down the attic ladder in the laundry ceiling made her shudder.
Possum, or whatever you are – bats maybe? – you found your way in, you can find your way back out.
As she returned to her job hunting, Erica found her mind wandering to trying to work out when they’d last had a possum in the roof – or anything else for that matter – and came up empty. Though, just because we haven’t to date, doesn’t mean never. We might have just been lucky up until now. And maybe the wildlife is getting craftier. And more desperate. She felt bad that the creature might be hungry and for a split second moved to get up and go and put something out for it in the garden. Possums liked fruit, didn’t they? But then she stopped. No. While she wanted to encourage it down out of her roof, she didn’t want it to bring its whole family or colony or whatever into her yard.
Unable to resettle to her task, she got up to check on Boris, but stopped short at the study doorway when she looked out to see the cat in the middle of the hall staring up. Thankfully Boris’s eyes didn’t seem as large and he was back to his normal size – she thought he seemed more curious now than afraid. Erica followed his gaze. Was he looking at the ceiling because of wildlife in the roof space or was there a bug, moth or, eek, a spider inside the house? Steph had often told Erica how good Boris was at catching insects and small vermin, but she couldn’t see anything up on the high ceiling. Though something could be hiding among the plaster foliage of the decorative ceiling rose. Steph was also often extolling the virtues of cats, including their superior hearing and eyesight. Erica paused beside the cat, squatted down and rubbed his fur. But he ducked out of the way and seemed to give an annoyed harrumph or get-out-of-my-way-I’m-busy noise. While he’d moved, his gaze was still pointed up at whatever it had been on before. When he growled, a disconcerting noise that came from within him and seemed larger than the cat himself, Erica pulled her hand back and stood up again.
‘Sorry, I’ll leave you to it,’ she said with a laugh. She recognised the sound; she’d heard it on plenty of cat videos as ‘back off’ when owners had disturbed a feeding cat or tried to take away a favourite toy or other object. She laughed at remembering a huge noise that had come out of the tiniest kitten who’d managed to steal a slice of pizza. Even a grown man had backed away under the roar and piercing gaze of the little creature.
She poured a glass of water and stood at the end of the hall watching Boris. He was now moving around, changing his position: same stance, different direction. She admired his focus and commitment then reminded herself she had better things to do and reluctantly returned to applying for jobs she didn’t want but needed to get. Having found nothing in makeup, even sales, she was applying for every customer service or vaguely related job within a half-hour drive. Fingers crossed, she said, sitti
ng back down and settling into filling out the first of the applications. If nothing came of this round, she’d widen her search to suburbs further afield. Hopefully that wouldn’t be necessary. There seemed to be a lot of ads, though how many were genuine and not just companies advertising to meet regulations but planning to fill the positions in-house she didn’t know.
Erica baulked at seeing a request on a job ad for the applicant to add links to their social media accounts. What the what now? Fuck off. No way. Not that she ever posted anything controversial. She rarely commented on any public posts full stop; she was more a lurker and confined herself to liking friends’ photos and sharing stuff. On principle she objected to the intrusion on her privacy, but with a reluctant sigh she added the details. Six months ago she might have said something like happy to provide them if I progress further along the recruitment process, or something. Now she didn’t feel she had a choice but to comply. She was powerless. In everything.
Tears prickled and she roughly swiped at two stray ones that slowly rolled down her cheeks, and swallowed the pain rising in her chest. And told herself, It’ll be okay. Something will come up. You have to keep going.
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