Tigger (16 page)

We had lived on our property through many seasons, and it felt like home. The dogs had settled down so well under my care, they were even allowed into the house occasionally, where they were restricted to Dad's office, which had a tiled floor and a very old sofa that Max adopted for himself. It was my job to make sure the dogs did not step over the threshold into the carpeted lounge or, worse, into the corridor that led to the kitchen and our food bowls. Max never even tried, but Mishka trespassed whenever she could. Once she made it all the way to the kitchen and helped herself to a whole box of dog biscuits from the pantry shelf. While she was in there, she also gobbled up all the food in our bowls. I was thunderstruck when I discovered her and chased her back into Dad's office, where she settled down comfortably and licked her lips, well pleased with herself. Of course, Mum soon discovered the chewed-up box of dog biscuits and some tell-tale hairs on the kitchen floor. Everyone was cross with Mishka, but she was fast asleep after her big meal and didn't give two howls about being told off.

While we had all been busy settling down in our various ways, something odd had happened: the children had grown up. All of a sudden I realized that Robin no longer played with his Lego blocks and his toy cars, but instead spent hours on his computer; that Emily was in charge of big horses and wore reading glasses that made her look terribly clever; and that all Caroline's dolls and teddies had moved from her bed into cupboards some time ago, to be replaced by books, a telephone of her own and a range of sparkling party clothes, all of which she tried on every time she went out. There was no question about it: things had changed.

It all came to a head one late summer day, when Caroline and Mum pulled the big blue trunk out of its dusty corner in the shed, swept the cobwebs off it, gave it a good clean with soapy water and brought it inside. The big blue trunk belonged to Dad and was very old. It had moved with us wherever we went and normally contained the Christmas decorations, but now it was empty.

They carried it into Caroline's room, and over the next few days she gradually filled it with her belongings. This was an alarming development. I was well used to suitcases being packed from time to time: both Mum and Dad travelled regularly for work. They went off for a while, but always came back again, tired but happy to see us, the contents of their suitcases smelling of strange places. But the big trunk was something else altogether.

Tammy, who can never resist a good box or bag, let alone a big trunk, jumped at the chance of sitting in it whenever the lid was open. I, on the other hand, wondered exactly
why
the trunk was being filled. Call me suspicious, but I had been around packing crates and wrapping paper often enough to know what they generally led to. Would our happy lives be shattered yet again by the ogre of
change,
which seemed to follow me wherever I lived? Vigilance was called for.

To my relief, there were no signs anywhere else in the house that pointed to upheaval. All the packing was happening in Caroline's room only. So what was going on? Surely, she didn't want to leave us? This was her home; she belonged here, with us! True, I had noticed that her school uniform had been put away, to be replaced by new pairs of jeans, fancy tops and non-regulation shoes. She had also acquired new bedding, pots and pans. I had to face the fact that this could only mean one thing: Caroline was moving out. But if I felt gloomy about that, Caroline herself certainly did not. She was very excited and spent even more time than usual on the phone to her friends. Wherever she was going seemed to be a place of great wonder and thrill.

And so, one sunny morning in early autumn the big trunk was heaved into the car along with several other bags and, finally, Caroline herself. She seemed very pleased to be leaving home for her new life and gave Tammy and me a big kiss on the nose. She didn't kiss the dogs; she just patted them. I watched the car drive down the road, and then she was gone.

As I had suspected, the house became eerily quiet without Caroline. Sometimes you could forget we even had a telephone, it rang so rarely. Mum soon moved her computer into Caroline's empty room, and Tammy and I were able to sit on Caroline's bed and watch Mum work, just as we had watched Caroline. It still looked like Caroline's room, but without her in it, it felt different.

I was concerned that Emily would be next to leave. Tammy was quite beside herself when I mentioned it to her, as she could not imagine life without Emily. Fortunately, Emily decided to stay with us and with her horses. Her grey horse had been exchanged for a really big, brown mare, who was quite wild and not to be trusted. She trained her herself and seemed to know everything there was to know about horses and most other animals, so she was definitely in the right place with us. Therefore, even after she stopped wearing her school uniform, she and Robin continued to go on the train each morning and came back in the afternoons, as before, which was a relief. By and by, we all got used to life without Caroline, and of course she did come back to see us in the holidays, but it was never quite the same again as having her there with us all the time.

Strange how life goes: one minute you're surrounded by innocent little children listening to good-night stories, and the next you are the victim of their attempts at growing up.

It dawned on me a while after Emily had finished school that whatever she was doing now between the time when she left on the train in the morning and when she came back in the evening might be bad news for me.

It began when she suddenly prised my mouth open one evening, as we were all happily watching TV, and announced that my teeth needed cleaning. Before I had even taken in what this might mean exactly, I was hauled off to the vet, who pricked my leg with a huge needle. I must have fainted with the shock of it, because next thing I knew, I woke up with a splitting headache and a mouth full of wounds. I couldn't eat a thing for days. My teeth did look much cleaner – Emily made me look at them in the mirror – but was it really worth the pain? Emily thought so. No sooner had my wounds healed than she tried to clean my teeth
again
with a little rubber brush. Well – let's just say we both soon realized there was no future in that. Instead, she produced a bag of new cat food that was supposed to keep my teeth clean. I was immediately suspicious: I don't like newfangled recipes and fancy ingredients. As far as I was concerned, the food I had eaten for years was fine. However, there was no arguing with Emily this time: my old food disappeared, and she made it quite clear that it would have to be the new food or nothing. What choice was that? I was finally persuaded to try a little of the new food, and then a little bit more. On my third try, I had to admit it was better than it looked; in fact, it wasn't bad as new foods went. I decided to choose my battles wisely and to accept the new food for the time being.

Next, Emily appeared with a strange contraption, one end of which she plugged into her ears while with the other she poked my tummy until she found what she said was my heartbeat. This took a long time, and at first she announced I didn't have a heart at all. The poking was very unpleasant. I tried to get away several times, but in vain. When she had finally satisfied herself that I did indeed have a heart and that it was beating, I was relieved, both to know I was fully intact and to be released from her vice-like grip. Emily then moved on to Tammy, who simply rolled over on her back and let Emily prod her tummy. She even pretended to be enjoying it. Emily made a huge fuss over how good Tammy was. She even gave her a treat while I was watching!

For a long time after that, every animal on our small farm had their heart rate and their teeth checked daily. We also had to submit to having our bodies prodded in search of organs, and our legs bent and stretched in all directions to make sure we had the right kinds of bones. I was fortunate to have the rat house, where I was able to hide well out of the way of Emily's instruments. I began to spend more and more time there. Others were not so lucky. The sheep were to be pitied more than anyone else: Emily invited her friends over to wrestle them on to their backs, where they were helplessly at the mercy of Emily's friends and their heartbeat instruments. I could tell the sheep were not at all happy about that: they began to run away and hide as soon as any cars appeared at our gate.

Every spring, Molly the ewe produced a tiny black lamb that bounced about in the paddock, watched by its mother and all the other sheep. The lambs were no bigger than me when they were born and had funny little bleating voices. The spring when Emily first got her new toy, she tried to listen to the lamb's heartbeat almost as soon as it was born. She hadn't reckoned with Molly, though: she stamped her feet furiously and pushed Emily out of the way until she put the silly instrument away.

While Emily developed these unfortunate tendencies, Robin, not to be outdone, decided to learn how to shoot arrows. This was all Robin Hood's doing, of course – the man in the Story Book. He had been a really good shot, and Robin was inspired. Mum and Dad were somehow persuaded to buy him a long, slim bow and a set of lethal-looking arrows. He made himself a rainbow-coloured target from bits of wood, hauled it into a paddock and practised his shooting skills there every day after school. The whistle of the arrow as it flew through the air and the dull thud as it hit the target became familiar sounds to us. Every animal learnt to vanish when they heard it: the horses and sheep melted away down the hillside, the dogs disappeared deep into their kennels, and Tammy and I slipped through our cat door into the house.

Mum and Dad, meanwhile, were hardly ever home any more. Their suitcases were constantly being packed or unpacked as either one or the other took off for some far-away place. We were lucky if they overlapped at home for an hour or so. The household was in danger of falling apart. What choice did I have but to pick up the pieces? I sat with Robin every day while he did his homework; I reminded Emily when it was time to feed us; I kept a sharp eye on Mishka and rescued Tammy on more than one occasion; and I made a pact with Max to alert each other to the presence of intruders. My circumspection paid off: our existence, though precarious, was never seriously threatened, thanks to me.

I guess it was predictable that Emily should leave us sooner or later, and frankly, by the time her training had advanced to minor surgery I didn't object when she left. There are limits to my endurance.

Which is why, much as I still loved her and wished her well, I waved good-bye to her with a certain amount of relief when she drove down our road in her new car, towing the big horse box containing the mad mare she had never quite managed to tame, but from whom she could not bear to be parted. One last whinny of protest from the bowels of the box, and they were gone.

This left me with just three humans to look after, but with a whole lot of other animals, too, which was a concern, considering Mum and Dad's incessant travel. We could only hope there would always be
someone
left to provide the essentials needed for survival. Any luxuries we had been used to in times long gone, such as lazy afternoons spent by the pool or around the fire, bedtime stories and three-course meals with tasty leftovers, were things of the past. Now we had to get used to life in the fast lane.

Robin and Mum drove off in the car at the crack of dawn each morning – with Robin in the driver's seat! – and Mum didn't get back until it was dark again. In between, we were left at home with Dad, or else all on our own if he was away somewhere. Tammy and the dogs took to sleeping all day, and I did what I could to keep things going.

Probably as a result of all the stress I was under, I developed a lump on my head that had to be removed, and Max got a lump inside his mouth. We both went to the vet on the same day to undergo the traumatic experience of what they called ‘minor' surgery. It seemed pretty major to me: we each had to have several stitches. Our recovery was long and painful, but we became quite fond of each other as we shared the old sofa in Dad's office.

The final straw for me during that turbulent time was the removal of my armchair: Dad and Robin simply carried it outside and deposited it by the roadside one day. I just could not believe what I was seeing! My armchair had been my favourite sleeping place for as long as I could remember. It had moved with us from house to house, always a light at the end of the dark tunnels of the unknown. Tammy had come to love it as well. So what if I'd scratched it a bit on one side. Well…both sides. And that little bit on the top where the stuffing was hanging out – who cared? I loved that chair!

I ran outside and sat in my armchair by the side of the road, in silent protest. It was quite nice, actually, watching the world go by – except for the dust that blew into my face when cars went past. My armchair stayed out there for several days, and I spent every available minute in it, until a big truck came and took it away. It was a sad moment for me, and it took me years to get over it, in spite of Mum's assurances that they were going to buy me a lovely new chair very soon. In the event, no one thought to consult me on the purchase, and consequently they bought a useless piece of junk. It rocks when you jump on it; the material is so tough I can't even get my claws in; and it reclines with a noise like a machine gun. I refuse to sit on it.

The frantic pace of life continued, and now I didn't even have my armchair to recover in. One afternoon in spring, Robin fell off his bike and broke a bone that took a long time to heal. He was in a lot of pain and needed attention, so I moved into his room, where I slept on his pillow and made sure nobody touched him. Even when he was able to get up and resume his school work, I stayed on and provided moral support. Someone had to.

With Emily's mad mare gone, her lonely companion wasn't too pleased. He called and called for his friend until we were all upset. That was when Mum hit upon the idea of letting him into the garden. A persistent drought had just about killed everything there anyway, and the lawns were rock hard and brown, so she reckoned his hoofs would make no difference to them. I, on the other hand, knew they would make a big difference to
me
. Old Brandy had a mischievous streak and was known to charge at unsuspecting fellow animals when the fancy took him. I would have to be on my guard once again and wondered morosely how long it would take me to train a horse into submission; probably a very long time.

Brandy was of course delighted with his new status as a companion animal and spent his time happily sniffing and nibbling at shrubs and dead flowers as he circled the house. When someone called at the gate, he was there along with Max to greet the bewildered visitors. The bird bath became his favourite drinking spot, which he emptied in one easy slurp, much to the disappointment of the birds. When Mishka and Max played with their ball, he joined in with his tail held high, his head down and his ears back. Mishka was a little scared of him, I think, and gave up the ball much more readily when Brandy was involved. He also appeared by the deck whenever we had dinner outside, to check out the food and join in the conversation. He would have come into the house as well, but Mum's sympathy with his situation stopped at that.

Because of the drought, Mum and Dad decided to reduce our herd of sheep. Several of them went off on trailers to find new homes, and there were no more lambs. Our lush, green paddocks of earlier days had grown hard, brown and dusty, providing excellent camouflage for me whenever I went for a walk. Unfortunately, walking became very hard work in the heat at any time except at dawn. The remaining sheep knew that, too: they congregated in the shade of the big gum trees as soon as the sun was up and never moved all day. There was no point, actually: there was no more grass for them to eat. They had to be fed with feed from the stable every day, along with Brandy, so they just waited in the shade until dinner was served.