Timba Comes Home (7 page)

I wriggled out of Angie’s grasp and leaped, spreadeagled, to the floor. My little legs couldn’t yet land from such a height and I fell on my face in a jumble of panicking paws. I
gathered my scattered limbs and fled into the garden. Graham went on ‘singing’, but Angie laughed her bubbly laugh.

Quivering, I crouched under an umbrella of rhubarb leaves and tried to calm down.

‘That was so funny!’ I heard Angie say, but Graham wasn’t laughing and he had stopped ‘singing’.

‘Better get him in before he digs up my seed bed,’ he said, and I could tell from his voice that the frown was back.

‘Oh let him go. He’s a free spirit now,’ Angie said. ‘He’ll find his way around, and come back when he’s ready.’

A free spirit. A FREE spirit! My mood lifted. Was I free for the first time in my young life? Free to explore the green garden and the mysterious world beyond? I needed to get a sense of
direction and make a map of what would become my territory, find out who lived there, who passed through, and who might be asleep under the ground or in the branches.

Excited, I sat under the rhubarb leaves, my nose twitching, my eyes noticing every tiny movement, even the flick of an insect’s antenna. I watched a ladybird working its way up a stalk,
and I stared back at a hard-faced grasshopper who was regarding me with yellow eyes. The silvery purple seed heads of grasses arched out into the light where they danced and sparkled. I considered
playing with them, but play was not on my agenda right now. This was serious stuff . . . adult-cat stuff.

A hole led under the garden fence, with a well-worn track, obviously used by creatures of the night I had yet to encounter. I sniffed at wisps of fur and droppings, not all of which I could
recognise.

I waited, wanting to go through and see the world, but something was happening. The ground under my paws was shaking, and there was a rhythm to it, a one, two, three, four. Mesmerised, I stared
through the hole and saw four huge hard round feet plod past on the other side, darkening the light that shone through. Then something snorted and a set of yellowy teeth tore at a tuft of grass,
ripping it out from under the fence.

My fur bushed out with fright. My tail went stiff. I felt as big as two cats. Obviously this grass-grabbing giant had no idea that a black kitten sat just a whisker away from its nose.

I ventured through on tiptoe, my stiffened fur making it awkward for me to find room to move. Should I, who had slept between the paws of a lion, be so scared of this unknown creature? I made my
neck longer and peeped out at the green field stretching away to wooded hills. The grass bobbed with yellow flowers, and to my right was a gleaming chestnut rump with a long tail swishing.

The horse must have sensed me, for it turned, snorting, its head low to the ground. I was the bravest kitten ever. Poised for a quick exit, I sat there and made eye contact. The liquid-brown
benevolent eyes looked back, politely interested in me. The energy was female.

Start as you mean to go on, Timba, I thought, and I sent her a telepathic message. ‘I’m the new cat in this household. I’m Angie’s cat.’ I felt proud of that
status. Angie’s cat!

The horse was not impressed. She blew a blast of hot air at me, ruffling my fur, and sent me a message back. ‘I’m Angie’s favourite horse. Try not to get under my
feet.’

She started to walk away, her nose skimming the grasses, then stopped and looked at me.

‘You do realise that Angie is an earth-angel,’ she said. ‘And earth-angels always take on more than they can manage.’

I watched her meander across the field towards a group of smaller horses. I was a lucky cat. An earth-angel, and a Spirit Lion, and now a polite horse. I must be someone really special.

It felt good to rest in the barley grass at the edge of the field in the mellow sun of late afternoon. I needed to keep absolutely still, like an Egyptian statue of a cat, for I sensed a miracle
was about to happen, which would link me with Vati. Stillness. Waiting.

It came silently. The air above the grass shimmered with millions of the tiniest imaginable spiders, each on a thin thread of gossamer, each beginning a magical journey. The grass was bedecked
with a network of silver, and the sun made a pathway of gold stretching far away across the fields.

I wasn’t sure what it meant, but Vati would know. Vati was like the other half of my consciousness. Somewhere out there he too might be watching the sun glisten on gossamer. Vati would
know where the secret roads were, and how to find them when the sun went down. He would know how to feel the energy beneath his paws, and use it to bring us home . . . to each other.

‘It’s only for one night. I promise,’ Angie said, stroking me protectively as I lay beside her on the sumptuous pillow. I snuggled into the crook of her neck,
my little paws buried in her sweet mane of hair.

‘You know I don’t like cats in bed,’ objected Graham who was sitting up reading a leathery black book. Its fat wad of gold-rimmed pages fluttered tantalisingly when he turned
them, and he noticed me watching. I bobbed back nervously, hoping he wasn’t going to ‘sing’.

‘But Timba’s just a poor lost baby. Mmwha!’ Angie gave me one of her kisses.

Graham glowered and pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘Don’t let him get his claws into the satin duvet.’

‘I won’t. He shall be a model kitten!’ said Angie, and I got another kiss.

Feeling pampered and important, and with a full tummy, I drifted off to sleep.

As the morning sun rose over the woods, I sat in the window and thought hard about Vati. ‘Talk to me,’ I pleaded. ‘Where are you, Vati?’ I visualised his wistful face
with the white dot on the nose.

A golden thread glinted in the sun. In the night a spider had swung out from the edge of the roof, spinning her silk ever longer, wilder and wilder, until she touched a leaf on the apple tree
and clung there, leaving her lifeline stretched through the dawn as if to remind me how to find Vati.

I sent him a golden thread of love, and waited. His eyes looked into mine from across those fields where the badgers were. East, into the rising sun . . . and he wasn’t far away. But in
front of his wistful face were squares of wire. Vati was in a cage. He wasn’t free like me. I felt his longing. I’ll find you, I vowed. We shall be together again.

So profound was my stillness and concentration that I did not notice Angie close to me, sharing the sunrise. She must have understood I was in a trance that was not to be broken . . . except by
food of course!

We headed for the kitchen, and I realised that Angie was dressed in an old shirt, jeans and long brown boots. While she mixed my kitty milk she talked to me.

‘I’m an early bird . . . like you, Timba! I have to get up and help Laura with the horses, and the rabbits and chickens. Then I grab toast and coffee, shower, and go to work.
You’ll have to stay here with Graham while I’m at work . . . then you’ll be on your own for the afternoon when he goes to the theatre.’

I lapped the milk while she sailed to and fro across the kitchen, watering plants and putting silver spoons and shiny plates on a table. Then she flung the door open and stepped into the
dew-spangled garden. She stood in the sun and lifted her arms and face to the sky.

With the door wide open, I thought some of the night creatures might want to come crowding in and share my kitty milk. So I finished it quickly and dragged my fat tummy to the doorstep. It
proved to be a brilliant place to sit washing myself and observing. A doorstep was a ‘between place’, offering choices and helping me to establish territory.

I was learning how to smile. When Angie turned to look at me and said, ‘Timba!’ in a loving voice, I noticed how her long Egyptian eyes sparkled just because of me! So I put my tail
up and tried to smile by tilting my head from side to side to make my eyes twinkle in the sun.

‘You are the BEST little cat in the Universe,’ she said, and picked me up tenderly. ‘The Universe has brought us together, don’t you think so, Timba?’

At the end of the garden path was a gate leading into the drive where Angie’s car was parked next to a gleaming black limo. On Sunday afternoon, Angie carried me down
there to see it, helping me to understand the layout of our home.

‘Try not to scratch Graham’s precious Volvo,’ whispered Angie. ‘He likes everything pristine!’

She showed me the quiet lane beyond the drive, and pointed. ‘That way goes to the main road . . . don’t you go down there, Timba, but you can go the other way. It leads to the
woods.’

I took it all in, aware that Angie didn’t know how much I understood. I wanted to tell her about Vati, but she was human, and humans have mostly forgotten how to use telepathy.

But suddenly Angie was tense and annoyed. ‘Who on earth is that? Oh no . . . I can’t believe that woman knows where I live.’

A car turned into the drive with a squeal of tyres and a smell of hot rubber. Janine got out, dressed in black tights and a shiny black jacket. I thought she looked like a beetle.

‘Don’t panic, Timba,’ Angie whispered, her hand protectively on my fur. ‘You go on purring. She’s not having you back.’

Angie kept the lid on her anger and spoke to Janine kindly. ‘Hello! I wasn’t expecting to see you, Janine.’

‘Yeah, I know . . . sorry . . . but I really need to talk to you.’ Janine looked at Angie with a blend of defiance and desperation in her eyes. ‘And I had the chance of a lift.
This is Dave . . .’ She waved an arm at the man in the car. He nodded without smiling. Then he turned the stereo up and sat with his elbow out of the window.

‘Ten minutes, babe.’ Dave tapped the chunky metal watch on his wrist. ‘I’ll wait in the car.’

Angie led Janine to a seat by the garden pond.

‘Timba’s adorable,’ she said.

‘Yeah . . . I haven’t come to get him back,’ Janine said. ‘It’s about Leroy. I need to . . . like . . . explain something.’

‘I’m listening,’ Angie said, and her eyes were full of love.

Janine seemed to be struggling. I went to and fro, from one lap to the other, trying to decide which of these two women needed me most. I settled on Janine’s heart, and she started to
cry.

‘Take a deep breath, and just tell me,’ said Angie kindly.

‘It’s Leroy,’ Janine sobbed. ‘I’m on the brink of putting him in care. I can’t cope with him no more. I do love him. I do. But now he’s getting bigger,
it’s one long battle from morning to night. I’m exhausted . . . and not very well . . . and . . . and I’m actually terrified of my own son.’

‘That’s so sad for you . . . and for him,’ Angie said.

‘I’m under the doctor,’ Janine wept. ‘I get migraines and depression, and I never sleep cos Leroy gets up in the night and draws all over the walls, or he turns the TV on
and watches stuff he shouldn’t be watching. He’s out of control. I don’t know what he’s going to do next . . . and then there’s the bullying, it never stops, and
it’s always because his clothes aren’t pristine and he hasn’t got decent trainers. I can’t afford stuff, Angie, I’m in debt . . . I had no one to turn to . . . not
till Dave came along. I’m going to . . . like . . . lose my house if I can’t pay rent any more, and Dave wants me to move in with him. But he won’t have Leroy. I’ve got such
a difficult choice to make.’

‘That’s tough, really tough. I sympathise,’ Angie said, and her eyes looked sad.

‘But I’ve partly come here to warn you,’ Janine said, talking more calmly now. ‘Leroy went ballistic over losing Timba. He’s trashed his bedroom. He knows where you
live, Angie, and he says he’ll walk over here and get Timba back . . . he would too.’

A cold anxious feeling filled me as I understood what Janine was saying. Leroy intended to snatch me away from my beloved Angie.

‘There has to be a better way of dealing with it.’ Angie looked thoughtful.

‘Not for people like me there isn’t.’

The conversation ended abruptly when Graham came stalking mystically out of the house with angry eyebrows and his hair boiling up like a thundercloud. ‘Would you mind turning that
objectionable racket down?’ he said to the surprised Dave. ‘I am a professional opera singer, and I don’t want my practice ruined by you and your stereo.’

The music stopped and Dave grinned out of the car window. ‘Keep yer cool, mate. It’s good music,’ he said, and called out to Janine, ‘Come on, babe. Before I get
evicted.’

Janine scurried back to the car. ‘Don’t forget . . . what I warned you . . . about Leroy,’ she said to Angie. ‘You keep an eye on Timba. Heaven help him if Leroy gets
hold of him.’

Chilling words. I felt threatened yet again. Why couldn’t they just let me grow up and be a cat in peace?

When Monday morning came, Angie reminded me that she had to go to work. I was to be left alone with Graham for most of the day.

‘Tomorrow I’ll take you to see the horses,’ she said. ‘Today you must stay around the house and garden. Get used to the place . . . it’s your home now.’

She put me down on the doorstep and ran, her hair flying, round to the back of the house. I heard the horses making a weird noise in welcome, and a thundering of hooves, lots of squealing and
stamping around. Angie was talking to them and laughing. She seemed like a flame, bringing light and warmth to every living being.

I stayed on the sunny doorstep until she returned, red-faced and happy, and before long she had changed into her swirling skirt and posh shoes. She picked me up, kissed me and popped me into a
round basket with a sumptuous red cushion in it.

‘You sleep, little cat. I’ll be back later . . . and I shall tell Leroy how well you’re doing. Mmwah!’

I hadn’t planned to sleep, and the mention of Leroy bothered me. Supposing he came to get me like he’d threatened! The compelling thought drove me into the garden again to check out
some hiding places. If Leroy did come, I’d be ready.

The fear got hold of me. Without Angie there the place was new and full of dangers. Graham might decide to ‘sing’. The horses might stampede into the garden. Leroy might turn up.
Then there were two buzzards wheeling overhead, crying their wild cry. What if the buzzards got me!