Мелисса Дэйли - Molly And The Cat Cafe

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Molly And The Cat Cafe: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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When two-year-old tabby, Molly, loses her beloved owner, her world falls apart. Re-homed with three cat-hating dogs, she decides to take matters into her own paws and embarks on a gruelling journey to the nearest town. As Molly walks the cobbled streets of Stourton, she begins to lose all hope of finding a home . . .
Until one day she is welcomed into the warmth by caring café owner, Debbie. Like Molly, Debbie is also an outsider and, with a daughter to care for, she is desperate to turn around the struggling café.
But a local battleaxe is on the warpath and she is determined to keep out newcomers, especially four-legged ones. It looks as if Debbie will have to choose between the café and Molly. Yet maybe the solution to their problems may not be as far away as they think.
Will Debbie and Molly be able to turn their fortunes around to launch the Cotswolds' first Cat Café?

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Debbie gets up to go into the kitchen, and Sophie leans against the sofa, engrossed in her new mobile phone, a gift from her mother. Sophie isn’t looking at me, but I blink at her anyway. I am fond of Sophie, and I know she is of me. She no longer exudes pent-up anger whenever I am around, and I can’t remember the last time she called me a fleabag, or complained about my hair on her clothes. Sometimes I even sleep on her bed.

Downstairs, the bell above the café door tinkles.

‘That you, John?’ Debbie calls, over the noise of the kitchen radio.

‘No, it’s Father Christmas,’ John replies.

‘Even better!’ Debbie laughs. ‘Come on up. I hope you’ve remembered the orange juice – I could murder a Buck’s Fizz right now!’

There is a pause. ‘You might just want to come down here first,’ John says.

Debbie steps into the hallway, perplexed. ‘Why – what is it? Please don’t tell me it’s the boiler again . . .’

‘No, it’s not the boiler. It’s just that there’s someone here who seems to want to come in.’

Alarm flickers across Debbie’s face. She takes off her apron and heads downstairs to the café. Intrigued, I jump off the dining table and follow her.

John is standing by the door in the empty café, loosening the scarf around his neck. I register the bag of wrapped gifts on the floor by his feet, and I am aware that he steps towards Debbie and kisses her. ‘Happy Christmas,’ I hear him say.

But I am not looking at them. I am looking at the window.

Perched precariously on the windowsill outside is a cat. He is looking over his shoulder at the street behind, his ears flicking in the wind. He looks nervous, twitchy, as if he is fighting the urge to run.

Sophie has come downstairs too, followed by the kittens, who want to know where everyone has gone. Now we are all standing in the café, looking at the cat on the windowsill. The cat turns back to face the café and his eye catches mine through the glass.

‘That cat looks just like Eddie!’ Sophie exclaims.

‘Indeed he does,’ Debbie agrees. I am not looking at her, but I know she is watching me, and I can hear the smile in her voice. I feel like I am frozen to the spot, dumbfounded.

‘Someone must have told him Molly’s Cat Café is the place to be,’ John jokes. ‘He’s a handsome chap, too. You’ve got room for another one, haven’t you, Debs?’

Debbie pauses, and I can feel her eyes on me. ‘What do you think, Molly, shall I let him in?’

Hearing her say my name rouses me from my daze. I turn and look at her, but my mind is blank. She laughs at me, but her laugh is not unkind. It’s a laugh that suggests she knows what’s going on, and that she understands. I watch as she opens the café door and leans out.

‘Come on, puss, in you come,’ she calls.

The tomcat looks at her and I see his tail twitch. I remember his words to me in the alley: I’m not really a ‘nice lady’ kind of cat. Surely this café full of strangers will be too daunting for his solitary nature? His tail twitches again and his green eyes turn back to me. It occurs to me that he is waiting for me to invite him in. I blink at him slowly, and immediately he jumps down onto the pavement. A moment later he is standing inside the doorway, his head held high in a show of confidence that must have taken more courage than he is letting on. The kittens rush over to him, fascinated and slightly in awe of this mysterious stranger.

‘Well, I guess that’s settled,’ Debbie laughs. ‘I suppose I’d better set another place at the table!’

I creep forward. My mind is buzzing with questions, but the kittens are crowding around the tomcat, all eager to be first in line for his attention. He patiently allows them to sniff him, but then his eyes look up to find mine and I can see they are smiling.

It is mid-afternoon, and the tomcat and I have left everyone eating turkey in the café, to head out into the empty streets of Stourton. We pad along the alleyway behind the café, down through the churchyard, and start to wander towards the square, our only witnesses the cawing crows on the chimney stacks. There is a chill in the air and, as the tomcat and I walk, we stick close to each other’s side, our footsteps naturally falling into a shared rhythm.

‘So, where have you been all this time?’ I ask, shyly. Glancing at the side of his face, I notice he’s gained a few scars since I last saw him.

‘Oh, just wandering,’ the tomcat replies, wrinkling his nose. ‘Life on the road isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,’ he says sagely.

‘I could have told you that,’ I joke.

‘And besides,’ he adds, ‘I missed the tuna mayonnaise.’

I stop walking, momentarily affronted, but then he catches my eye and I realize he is teasing me.

We turn the corner into the market square. The winter daylight is beginning to fade, low clouds scud across the sky and, above them, the pale crescent moon is already visible. All around us the square is decked out for Christmas. Colourful lights blink prettily in every window, and the tree in the middle of the square points vigorously upward, wreathed in white bulbs. Devoid of people and traffic, the square feels like it belongs to us, and us alone.

I wonder how it is possible for Stourton to look just as it did a year ago, as if nothing has changed. So much has changed for me in the last twelve months that I sometimes feel like a different cat from the one who arrived, rain-soaked and half-starved, after weeks in the open country. I feel sorry for the cat I was then, so desperate for someone to take pity on me and give me a home. And yet I am also proud of that cat. Pitiful she may have been, but were it not for her determination, I would not be here now.

The tomcat and I have made our way back to the cobbled street outside the café. The blinds are drawn, but I can see slivers of light around the edges of the window, and hear Debbie singing along to Christmas music inside. The tomcat is standing to one side on the doorstep, allowing me, chivalrously, to enter the café first. I nudge the door open and the warm atmosphere inside the café envelops us.

At a glance, I take in the crackling fire in the stove, our kittens dozing around the room, and the smiling faces of Debbie, Sophie and John as they read aloud jokes from their Christmas crackers. The tomcat stands beside me, gazing benignly at the scene before us, and I swell with pride to think of how much the café has changed since it became my home. But I also feel humble, because I know that the journey I have been on over the past year was not just about finding a home; it was about finding myself. I have been many different cats since losing Margery: a desperate stray, a self-sufficient alley-cat, a cherished pet, and a loving mother. I have been all of those cats, and they will always remain a part of me, because they have made me who I am.

The Real Cat Cafés

I first became aware of the existence of cat cafés in 2014. As a cat fanatic, I loved the idea of relaxing in a café full of laid-back felines. But I was also intrigued to imagine how a cat café comes into being, and what the background stories of the cats in such a place might be.

This was how the idea for Molly and the Cat Café was born. Although its inspiration comes from the real cat cafés, however, it is a work of fiction. When writing about Molly’s cat café, I sometimes had to allow the demands of plot and character to take precedence over factual accuracy. So it seems only fair to correct some misconceptions the book may have conveyed about the work done by the real cat cafés.

Japan is considered to be the spiritual home of the cat café: there are said to be nearly forty in Tokyo alone. In recent years, cat cafés have begun to appear around the world, springing up in Asia, North America, Australia and across Europe. In Britain there are currently cat cafés in London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Nottingham and Birmingham, with more planned for other parts of the country.

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