Rachel Wells - Alfie the Doorstep Cat

AVON

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Rachel Wells 2014

Cover image © Shutterstock 2014

Cover design © Emma Rogers 2014

Faith Bleasdale, writing as Rachel Wells, asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008101626

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008101619

Version: 2014-09-15

To Ginger, my first cat who I took on walks on his lead and let me treat him as if he was a doll. You are long gone but never forgotten.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Epilogue

About the Book

About the Author

About the Publisher

‘It’s not going to take too long to pack up the house,’ Linda said.

‘Linda, you’re so optimistic; look at all the junk your mother collected,’ Jeremy replied.

‘That’s unfair. She’s got some nice china and you never know, some of it might be worth something.’

I was pretending to be asleep but my ears were pricked up, listening to what was being said as I tried to stop my tail flicking in agitation. I was curled up on Margaret’s favourite chair – or rather, the chair that had been her favourite – watching her daughter and son-in-law discuss what would happen; determining my future. The past few days had been so terrifyingly confusing, especially as I didn’t fully understand what had happened. However, what I did understand as I listened, trying my best not to cry, was that life would never be the same again.

‘You’ll be lucky. Anyway, we should call a house clearance place. Lord knows we don’t want any of her stuff.’ I tried to sneak a look without them noticing. Jeremy was tall, grey haired and bad tempered. I had never really liked him, but the woman, Linda, had always been nice to me.

‘I’d like a chance to keep a few of Mum’s things. I’ll miss her.’ Linda started crying and I yearned to yowl along with her, but I kept quiet.

‘I know, love,’ Jeremy’s voice softened. ‘It’s just that we can’t stay here forever. Now the funeral’s over, we need to think about getting the house on the market and, well, if we get it packed up, we can be off in a few days.’

‘It just seems so final, though. But you’re right, of course.’ She sighed. ‘And what about Alfie?’ I bristled. This was what I was waiting for. What would happen to me?

‘We need to put him in a shelter I suppose.’ I felt my fur stand on end.

‘A shelter? But Mum loved him so much. It seems so cruel to just get rid of him.’ I wished I could voice my agreement with her; it was beyond cruel.

’But you know we can’t take him home. We’ve got two dogs, love. A cat just won’t work for us, you know that.’

I was incensed. It wasn’t that I wanted to go with them, but I absolutely couldn’t go to a shelter.

Shelter . My body shuddered at the word; such an inappropriate name for what we in the cat community thought of as ‘death row’. There might be a few lucky cats who got re-homed, but then who knew what happened to them? Who was to say that the family that re-homed them would treat them well? The cats I knew unanimously agreed that a shelter was a bad place. And we knew full well that for those that weren’t re-homed, the death sentence loomed.

Although I considered myself a handsome cat with a certain kind of charm, there was no way I was going to take that risk.

‘I know you’re right, the dogs would eat him alive. And they’re very good at these shelters these days, so he might be re-homed quickly.’ She paused as if she was still mulling things over. ‘No, it has to be done. I’ll call the shelter in the morning and the house clearance company. Then I guess we can get an estate agent round.’ She sounded more sure of herself and I knew my fate had been sealed unless I did something about it.

‘Now you’re thinking straight. I know this is hard, but Linda, your mum was very old and honestly, it’s not like it was a huge surprise.’

‘That doesn’t make it easy though, does it?’

I put my paws over my ears. My little head was reeling. In the past two weeks I had lost my owner, the only human I’d ever really known. Life had been turned upside down and I was heartbroken, desolate and now, it seemed, homeless. What on earth was a cat like me supposed to do?

I was what was known as a ‘lap cat’. I didn’t feel the need to be out all night hunting, prowling or socialising, when I had a warm lap, food and comfort. I also had company; a family. But then it was all taken away, leaving my cat heart totally broken. For the first time ever I was all alone.

I had lived in this small terraced house with my owner, Margaret, almost my whole life. I also had a sister cat called Agnes, although she was more like an aunt, being so much older than me. When Agnes went to cat heaven, a year ago, I felt a pain that I had never thought possible. It hurt so much that I didn’t think I would ever recover. But I had Margaret, who loved me very much, and we clung together in our grief. We had both adored Agnes and we missed her with every ounce of our beings, united in our suffering.

However, I recently learnt how incredibly cruel life could be. One day, a couple of weeks ago, Margaret didn’t get up from her bed. I had no idea what was wrong or what to do, being a cat, so I lay next to her and yowled as loudly as I could. Luckily, a nurse who came to see Margaret once a week was due, and when I heard the doorbell I reluctantly left Margaret’s side and leapt out of the cat flap.