Шейла Нортон - Charlie The Kitten Who Saved A Life

‘But at least we eventually pounce on the prey and eat it,’ one of the boys had said, and I’d had to agree, the whole thing about watching television really did seem like a pointless exercise to us.

This particular day, it was raining, with a stiff breeze blowing up the shopping street from the sea, and most of the humans must have stayed inside their houses, so Big and I spent a while staring at the moving pictures in the shop window. One of the television screens was showing pictures of almost naked humans swimming in a big bath of water. When the first one reached the edge of the bath, he threw both his front paws into the air and the humans who were watching stood up and clapped their paws together. Very strange. On another screen, there were pictures of pairs of humans holding on to each other and swaying together in very strange, unnatural looking positions. The females were wearing fancy flamboyant dresses so I could only surmise that the smartly dressed males were trying to stop them from tripping over.

‘It’s true,’ I commented to Big now. ‘The longer I’m away from my humans, the more I agree that they’re all a bit odd.’

And then I looked at the next television screen. And I nearly jumped with all four paws off the ground.

‘Oh my claws and whiskers!’ I meowed. I was beginning to pick up some of the boys’ vernacular. ‘It’s me! Big, look, it’s me on there, for the love of catnip!’

‘It can’t be!’ Big was staring at the same screen now. ‘It must be some other tabby with the same eyes …’ He glanced at my still slightly swollen right eye. ‘And the same scars on his head … and … oh. The same limp when he runs. That’s a coincidence. And …’ He broke off. ‘Bloody catnip, Charlie! It’s you !’

We both stared at the picture on the screen as it continued to show me running forwards across the pavement and then leaping into the air, and then the seagull flying off with an angry squawk and the old lady stumbling, dropping her chocolate ice cream, and being helped by the two young humans.

‘It’s me,’ I repeated.

‘It is,’ he agreed, turning to stare at me now. ‘How in the name of all the dogs and foxes did you do that?’

‘I didn’t do anything! It’s … I don’t know! Somehow my life has got repeated in pictures on that television.’

‘That’s impossible! You haven’t been inside that shop, have you?’

‘No, of course I haven’t. I don’t understand it any more than you do. I told you I think someone has put a picture of me in a newspaper, but …’

‘Yes, and that was unbelievable enough – I thought you were making it up. But this …’ He stared back at the shop window again, where the television screen was now just showing a male human with his mouth opening and closing as if he was talking to us, with a lot of Human writing running along the bottom of the screen. ‘This is just impossible . It defies all common sense.’

‘I know. But it was definitely me, wasn’t it. It was me jumping up at that seagull.’

‘Yes, it was, although if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d say you’d finally taken leave of your senses.’

We stayed there in the rain, with the wind whistling around our whiskers, for quite a long time after that, in case we saw the pictures of me again, but it didn’t happen. In the end we waited so long, we got drenching wet and cold, and didn’t bother with searching for my holiday home that day after all.

‘Let’s not tell the other boys what we saw in that shop,’ Big said quietly as we headed back to the yard. ‘They’ll think we’ve both been at the catnip.’

‘OK,’ I agreed. I was beginning to wonder if I’d dreamt it, anyway. It all seemed so unreal and unlikely. ‘But we did see it, though, didn’t we?’

‘Yes.’ He turned to stare at me again. ‘And I’m still trying to make sense of it. The only thing I can think of is that you’ve got some kind of magic power – what with this, and understanding Human, and the way you were brave enough to come back and attack me, all on your own, that first day we met. It never did seem quite natural. Are you sure you’re really a normal cat?’

‘Yes, I am!’ I meowed, feeling a bit scared now.

I had no idea what had happened there. But if I’d really had magic powers, there was one thing I was sure of: I’d have magicked myself back to my human family by now and would be sitting on Caroline’s lap, purring into her ear, and not caring if she spent all day every day looking at strange moving pictures on the television, just as long as I never lost her again.

The following day, we were walking past the pub at the harbour when we saw another strange thing. Inside the pub window was a big piece of paper with a picture of a cat on it and some large Human writing underneath. This time it was Tail-less who noticed.

‘Blinking codfish, Charlie!’ he meowed. ‘That cat in the picture looks just like you!’

Big, still feeling spooked by what we’d seen on the television screen, immediately crept up for a closer look.

‘It does look like you,’ he told me, almost accusingly, when he came back, ‘but I don’t think it is. That cat looks fatter, and more groomed, and it hasn’t got scars on its head or a nasty eye, like you.’

‘Right,’ I said. Even from a little distance, I could see it was true that the cat in the picture didn’t have my wounds.

Of course, I wasn’t sure exactly what I looked like, apart from what my humans, and other cats, had told me. Caroline had sometimes picked me up and held me in front of that shiny thing they call a mirror, and said things like ‘Ah, Charlie, look at you!’ – but all I could see was the little tabby kitten who always seemed to appear in the mirrors around the house, copying whatever I was doing. When I was very young, I thought he was another kitten who lived in the house, but Ollie soon put me right on that, explaining that he wasn’t real – he had no scent and if I tried to rub faces with him, all I’d get was the hard shiny surface of the mirror. I presume you all think the same as Ollie and I do – that the mirror cats are something like the pictures on television.

So the mirror cat in our house may, perhaps, have been a picture of me. If it was, then I had a good idea what I used to look like before I got lost and started living rough. Before I got badly beaten up by a gang of alley cats, almost lost the sight in one eye and apparently gained some scars that I supposed would last my whole nine lives. But I didn’t want to freak Big out any more than I’d done already.

‘OK. Obviously not me, then,’ I said.

We saw another picture, exactly the same, in the café window. Another one in the window of the fish and chip shop when we went scavenging that evening. Next day, there was one in the bookshop, one in the bread shop, and one in the window of the Chinese takeaway shop. When we walked back past the café, Shirley and Jean were sitting in their usual spot outside. I lingered behind the fence for a while to listen to their conversation, and Big waited for me. He didn’t mind me using my two friends as sources of inside information, as long as he was there to keep an eye on me and I didn’t venture too close.

‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it,’ Shirley was saying. ‘They must be so desperate to get him back. The pictures are going up everywhere.’

‘Yes. Well, of course, since it was on the News, everyone knows about that cat who chased the seagull away from the old lady. The family who put up the notices seem to be convinced it’s their cat, don’t they? They were staying here all through August, I heard – down at the Oversands end of the bay, in one of those rental cottages, apparently. The little girl’s inconsolable. There’s some story about her being very ill, and she seems to think it’s her fault the cat went missing.’