Шейла Нортон: Oliver The Cat Who Saved Christmas

And it was Rose’s little voice that answered: ‘I hope so. I want one exactly like Oliver.’

Later on, after we’d all tired ourselves out with a game of jumping out at each other from behind the sofa, and another one of rolling a ball of wool across the floor and pouncing after it, the friends got their coats on and waited for their parents to come and walk them home. It was dark outside, and raining, and I was wondering how much longer I could put off going out to empty my bladder. I’ve always been a very clean cat and it would have been unthinkable to me to have an accident indoors, especially when I was really a guest in the house. But the sound of the wind and rain was putting me off. I sat with my nose against the cat flap, thinking about it, and the children watched me, laughing.

‘We could study Oliver for our Brownies’ “Friend to Animals” badge,’ one of them said suddenly.

‘Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,’ Grace said. ‘All of us in our Six could work on the badge together!’ She sounded very excited. ‘As I’m Sixer of the Foxes, I think I should be the one to tell Brown Owl we want to do it.’

Foxes? I turned round and stared at them in horror. What was all this about foxes?

‘But we aren’t having any Brownie meetings, are we,’ the other friend said, sadly, ‘because of the village hall.’

‘So?’ Grace said. ‘I’ll ask Mummy if all the Foxes can come and meet here every week.’

I’d heard enough. I pushed the cat flap open and jumped out into the garden. It might have been cold and wet, but if they were going to start having foxes in the house, I was going to have to get used to making myself scarce.

I admit I was a coward where foxes were concerned. And yes, it was true, I’d always been a bit of a scaredy-cat about being touched by strange humans. But ever since the incident with the young male who was horrible to Rose, and especially after I’d been called a brave boy, and a tiger, because of it, I could actually feel myself becoming bolder and more adventurous. I did sometimes have bad dreams about the night the pub caught fire, and getting lost in the woods. And when the other nightmare – the one I’d been having since I was a little kitten – happened, I woke up shaking all over with my heart racing, just as I’d always done. But I was beginning to realise that most humans seemed to be all right, after all – that although George would always be my favourite, he wasn’t the only one who could be kind and gentle.

When I lived in the pub, I only ventured out into the village when George had to go out and I was bored of being on my own. There were a few other cats nearby and we sometimes met round the back of the shop, where the dustbins were. So a day or two later, when Sarah was out and I was alone in their house, I decided I’d recovered enough from the shock of the fire to risk a little walk around the village on my own.

I went straight to the shop and looked round the back, but just my luck, none of my cat friends were playing there that morning. I’d been looking forward to telling them all about my heroic rescue of George, to say nothing of the way I’d escaped the fox and seen off the aggressive young human. Me, a scaredy-cat? They’d soon change their opinion of me! But it seemed like I’d have to save my stories for another day.

I wandered back round to the street, and there in front of the shop were two human females, both pushing those wheeled contraptions they called prams, and trying to chat to each other over the mewing and meowing noises coming from inside them.

‘Oh look,’ said one of the women. ‘It’s Oliver, George’s cat from the pub. We were wondering what had happened to him. I hope he hasn’t just been living rough somewhere since the fire.’

‘He doesn’t look like he’s been living rough,’ the other one said.

‘No. Hopefully someone’s taken him in. Is someone looking after you, Oliver?’

‘Yes,’ I meowed. ‘I’ve got two nice foster homes, thank you.’ But of course, neither of them spoke Cat, so they just kept looking at me as they carried on their conversation together about how sad it was having no mother-and-baby group meetings.

I wandered off, further down the street to the village green in case my friend Tabby and the other cats were hanging out there instead. But instead of them, I found another human with a pram. It was Hayley, who’d been at Sarah’s house with the baby Jack, on the day of my heroic confrontation with Michael Potts. She was sitting on the bench, holding the handle of her pram, and just staring at the ground. She looked up when I trotted towards her, and said: ‘Oh, hello, Oliver.’ But she didn’t sound particularly happy.

I jumped up onto the other end of the bench and meowed a hello to her, but she just sighed and said, ‘Are you all on your own today too?’

I thought it was a strange thing to say, because obviously she wasn’t on her own – she had Jack with her. But apparently she just wanted to talk to me, even though I was only a cat, because she went on, ‘I wish I could still see the friends I had at work. I shouldn’t have given up my job, Oliver, but I couldn’t imagine how I’d manage, commuting and working and looking after a baby, or paying a child minder. Oh, I had no idea it was all going to be so hard. I feel so tired all the time, and I suppose I’m just lonely. I wish I had some friends in the village. Just some other mums I could talk to about things – it would make such a difference, but now there’s no mother-and-baby group.’

My ears pricked up at this. How strange, it was exactly what the other two females had been complaining about. I jumped down off the bench and meowed loudly at Hayley, walking backwards and forwards and twitching my tail urgently at her. If we went back now, we might be in time.

‘What is it, Ollie?’ she said, watching me curiously but not moving an inch.

Oh, come on! I meowed impatiently, and finally she seemed to get the message.

‘You want me to come with you? Back to Sarah’s house perhaps? What a clever boy you are – you must have understood every word I was saying. It’d be lovely to see Sarah again, but I can’t keep depending on her. She’s got her own worries, and her children are older. I need…’

I was ignoring her now, running ahead of her down the street without even waiting for her to keep up with me. Yes! As I rounded the corner, I could see the other two women still standing outside the shop with their prams, still talking away like yappy dogs. I walked round them three times one way, and twice the other way, making them laugh and wonder aloud what I was playing at. And finally, Hayley came into view pushing her own pram, and the three women looked at each other and started to laugh as if they were already old friends.

‘Anyone would think Oliver brought me here deliberately to meet you,’ I heard Hayley exclaiming after they’d introduced themselves and done a bit of Goo-goo -ing over each other’s prams. ‘Silly, I know – he’s not that clever.’

Well, honestly. Sometimes we cats don’t get any credit for our intelligence. I left them to it, and went back to Sarah and Martin’s house, feeling worn out and ready for a nap. It had turned out to be a busy day of helping people, but there was only so much I could do, after all. I figured that if eight- and nine-year-old girls could come up with the idea of holding their meetings in each other’s homes, hopefully three fully grown females could work it out for themselves too.

The following day, Sarah came home from a shopping trip accompanied by yet another female. They were chatting as they went into the kitchen and started making coffee, and it sounded like, once again, it was the closing of the pub and the village hall they were worrying about.