Шейла Нортон - Oliver The Cat Who Saved Christmas

He was searching in a drawer now, and then, having found a pen and a pad of paper, to my horror he turned round and walked towards my side of the conservatory. Once again I nearly fell off the ledge on top of Tabby, but luckily, the man was looking down at the floor, and just sat down on a chair with his back against my window. His head was so close to mine, if I’d knocked against the glass with my collar he’d have jumped. I knew I was asking for trouble now. I should just go, and be grateful he hadn’t seen me. But he was still talking to himself, and if curiosity really did kill the cat, I was probably about to lose a life.

‘Dear Laura,’ he said out loud as he wrote quickly on his pad. ‘The way I spoke to you on Saturday was unforgiveable, so I won’t attempt to excuse it. You’re so understanding and sympathetic, I don’t have to tell you that it’s my overwhelming anxiety about Caroline, and the sleepless nights I have, worrying about her condition, that have made me so constantly on edge that I snap at the slightest thing. But there’s no excuse for taking it out on you, so I can only appeal to your kind and caring nature, to overlook my bad temper once again and accept my apology. If you only knew how much I actually care about you…’

He stopped, chewing his pen, staring out of the opposite window again. Then he suddenly got up, almost scaring me, yet again, into toppling off the ledge, and he ripped the page out of the pad. He screwed it up fiercely into a ball and lobbed it into a wastepaper basket.

‘What’s the point?’ he exclaimed crossly to himself. ‘She hates me and I deserve it. I’m wasting my time.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, God – what am I doing still here? I’ve missed my train now. Where are my car keys? There’s probably no parking left at the station. Damn! I’m going to have to drive into the city, now.’

And with that he strode out of the room, and I threw myself off the window ledge.

‘Quick!’ I hissed at Tabby. ‘Hide!’

We belted across the grass and ducked behind a shrub. A few minutes later the door of a garage block on the corner opened and a big, sleek, shiny car purred out and disappeared round the side of the house.

‘He’s gone,’ I said with relief. ‘We’re safe.’

‘Was that him? ’ Tabby squeaked. ‘He was here? Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t we run off straight away?’

‘Because he was talking to himself, and…’

‘To himself? See, I told you he was mad.’

‘I wanted to listen. And it was very interesting. Now…’

‘Now we can go home,’ he said, looking all around him nervously. ‘I don’t like it here.’

‘It’s fine now he’s gone. He’ll be at work all day. Come on, I’m going inside.’

‘No!’ he squawked, running in front of me and trying to block my way. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Ollie, it isn’t safe. Come back!’

‘There’s a window open up here,’ I told him, jumping up onto the ledge again. ‘We can easily squeeze through.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ he muttered, but with a bit of huffing and puffing, he followed me, jumping down after me into the conservatory and still muttering his disapproval. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘We are trespassing, Ollie – I suppose you do realise that? What are you doing?’

I’d made a dive for the wastepaper basket and knocked it over.

‘Here it is,’ I said, picking up the screwed-up page in my teeth. ‘Come on! I’m taking this to show Laura.’

‘The cat’s gone completely bonkers,’ he moaned to himself, nevertheless trotting obediently after me. ‘We’re going to get thrown out, probably kicked out…’

Just then a shadow fell over us. I glanced up, and to my relief, it was only Laura. But she didn’t look pleased. I suppose she didn’t want any more trouble for allowing one cat into the house, never mind two.

‘What…?’ she started. I dropped the ball of paper near her feet, but she didn’t even notice, kicking it with one foot as she came towards me. ‘Oliver! How did you get in, and who is this? ’ She gave Tabby a disapproving look, and he shrank away from her. The paper ball had rolled towards him, and he promptly knocked it back to me, trying to show it had nothing to do with him.

‘Oh, look, ’ came a little voice from behind Laura. It was Caroline, holding onto Laura’s arm as she watched us. ‘Ollie’s brought a friend with him, and they’re playing! ’ She laughed. ‘Aren’t they cute?’

‘ Cute! ’ Tabby meowed to me indignantly.

‘Yes!’ I replied. ‘Be cute. Play!’

I knocked the ball of paper to him with my paw, and waited for him to bat it across to me again. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the ball-of-paper game, however nervous he was feeling. When he knocked it back to me, I deliberately sent it towards Laura’s feet.

‘They want us to play with them,’ Caroline squealed.

But this time Laura bent down and picked up the paper. I held my breath. Was she just going to throw it back in the bin? No! She smoothed it out and started reading it. I watched her face. Her eyes widened, and when she got to the end, she flushed very red. For a moment, we were all frozen there – Laura staring at the note, Tabby and I poised to make a run for it, Caroline watching us.

‘Huh!’ Laura exclaimed suddenly, making me jump. ‘Why am I bothering to even read this nonsense? He must have been drunk when he wrote it.’

‘What is it?’ Caroline asked.

‘Just a bit of rubbish.’ And she screwed it back up and dropped it in the bin. ‘And I’m sorry, Caroline, but the cats have to go. You know what your father said.’

She opened the conservatory door and shooed us out.

Well, at least, I suppose, we didn’t have to climb back out of the window.

So I’d been through all that trauma, and achieved precisely nothing. I felt a failure. I’d tried to be a helpful cat, a cat who made people happy, and in the end all I’d been was a silly little cat who got people into trouble.

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Tabby said cheerfully. Funny how he’d perked up now we were on the way home and out of danger – but then, to be fair, at least he did come with me and didn’t run away when the heat was on, like a scaredy-cat. ‘It was an adventure. Something we can show off to the females about.’

I laughed and rubbed heads with him. ‘Thanks, Tabs. I’m glad we’re friends.’

‘Me too. You’re a much braver little cat than I ever thought. I don’t know why you used to let me call you timid.’

But in my little heart, I felt sad and sorry. I’d started off my new life as a foster cat with too high an opinion of myself, I now realised. Because I’d given a few people in the village the idea of getting together in their homes, I’d thought I was the mouse’s whiskers, but I obviously wasn’t as clever as I thought I was. I went back through the cat flap into Sarah’s kitchen and spent most of the day asleep.

When the children came home from school, the rest of the Foxes came round, and spent some time playing with me while Sarah looked through the papers they’d been writing about me during the last few weeks.

‘Well done, girls,’ she said eventually. ‘You’ve all completed your “Pet” projects now and they’re very good. I’ll pass these on to Brown Owl, and you can get started on the other sections of the badge.’

The children clamoured around her as she read out some options from a book.

‘The zoo!’ Grace shouted. ‘Yes! Let’s go to the zoo!’

‘Yes, the zoo!’ they all chorused.