Christmas at the Cat Cafe

10

‘Because it’s my cushion, that’s why.’

Jasper had followed me out onto the doorstep and was looking at me with a mixture of bafflement and concern. ‘But, you weren’t here. How was Ming supposed to know the cushion’s yours?’

My tail thrashed angrily by my feet; my initial shocked dismay had been replaced by unadulterated fury, and Jasper’s attempts to reason with me were making things worse. ‘You could have told her!’ I hissed, turning to face him, my eyes narrowed. ‘But then I suppose you were all too busy playing happy families to think about me.’

I turned away to look down the parade, feeling my eyes prickle and my heart thump. I was cross not only with Jasper, but also with the kittens, for not telling Ming that the window cushion belonged to me; they should have known I would not take kindly to such an invasion of my personal territory. But it wasn’t just the fact that she had been on my cushion that had upset me. It was something intangible that I had sensed as I observed them from the carrier: an atmosphere of relaxed familiarity, which had seemed to pervade the whole room and suggested, to me, that the kittens and Jasper felt quite comfortable in Ming’s presence, and she in theirs.

Jasper sat beside me, looking contrite, but I was not in a forgiving mood.

‘Oh, never mind,’ I muttered, pushing past him and back through the cat flap. With as much dignity as I could muster, and keeping my eyes fixed on the flagstones in front of me, I strode through the café and upstairs to the flat.

I awoke on Monday morning to a queasy feeling of dread. I had spent the night at the end of Debbie’s bed, flitting between feelings of self-pity at the unfairness of having to share my home with a rival feline, and rage at everybody else’s apparent inability to recognize my distress. In a few hours’ time Debbie would open the café and I would have to bear witness to Ming’s moment of glory, as she was unveiled to the public. Of course I could avoid the café altogether and spend the day outdoors but, after the previous day’s trauma, I worried that to absent myself completely might have even worse consequences. Not only was there a high likelihood that Ming would lay claim to the window cushion again, but people might assume she had taken my place as the café’s figurehead. So, after eating a breakfast for which I had very little appetite, I crept downstairs.

Ming was on her platform, surveying the room regally while Debbie prepared to open the café.

‘We’ll need to keep a close eye on Ming today,’ Debbie told Linda, emptying a bag of coins into the till drawer. ‘I don’t know how she’ll react to the customers.’

I padded past the cat tree with my eyes averted from the platform, as had become habitual for me since Ming had taken possession of it.

‘If she looks like she’s distressed, we’ll need to take her upstairs,’ Debbie continued, ‘and that might mean putting Beau in his carrier. We don’t want her being frightened by him, either.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ replied Linda airily, avoiding Debbie’s gaze as she pulled her Molly’s apron over her head. I pictured Beau’s bulging carrier in the living-room alcove and knew there was no way he could use it, unless Linda removed all her shopping first. Linda walked up to the cat tree and smiled approvingly at Ming. ‘Besides, I have a feeling the customers are going to love her.’

One by one the kittens appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Purdy headed straight for the cat flap while the others stalked across the floor, rubbing their whiskers against the chair legs or batting catnip toys across the flagstones, before taking up their usual positions around the room. Even the normally timid Maisie seemed unfazed and jumped happily into the domed bed directly underneath Ming’s platform.

Just as Linda had predicted, the first customers gravitated immediately to the cat tree for a closer look at Ming. A grinning Linda shepherded them to a nearby table, explaining that Ming was the ‘new addition to the Molly’s family’. The customers, an elderly couple whom I recognized as regular visitors, normally requested a table near the window so that they could sit near me. On this occasion, however, they could barely take their eyes off Ming, even to look at their menus. ‘What a gorgeous cat!’ one exclaimed. ‘Exquisite,’ the other agreed.

I observed Ming from the windowsill, looking – hoping – to see signs of distress or, at the very least, mild displeasure at the increasing number of people filling the room. A party of day-trippers arrived just before lunchtime, chatting loudly and laden with shopping. As Linda bustled around them, scraping chairs and tables together across the stone floor, I fixed my eyes on Ming; surely this would disturb her equilibrium? But she continued to sit calmly on her platform with her eyes closed and one forepaw extended. She delicately licked the inside of her long, slender leg, unruffled by the commotion going on around her.

The day wore on, and I began to feel as if I were invisible on my cushion in the window. The buzz of conversation and the click of cutlery on plates were punctuated by coos of delight across the room whenever Ming moved. Linda stood earnestly beside the table of each new customer, revelling in telling them all about Ming. I noticed how, over the course of the day, she began to embellish details of the story, until Ming eventually became the victim of an abusive home, whom Linda had personally rescued, at great risk both to herself and to Ming. The customers lapped it up, oohing and aahing at the different beats of Linda’s story.

When, at the height of the lunchtime rush, Ming yawned, stretched and jumped lightly down from her platform, an unnatural hush fell across the café. The customers all paused mid-conversation, to watch her sashay across the room. ‘So elegant!’ one lady gasped, as she sauntered past their table. Seething, I turned my back on them to stare furiously out of the window.

The week continued as it had started. There was something masochistic about my determination to remain in the café, largely ignored, while Ming was lavished with praise and attention. I took some sort of perverse satisfaction from it, as if each compliment paid to Ming confirmed my conviction that she was deliberately trying to upstage me. The kittens, however, continued to go about their daily routine as though nothing had changed, playing with their toys, napping or, in Eddie’s case, scrounging for titbits at people’s feet. Purdy seemed to be spending more time outdoors than usual, but she had always been more adventurous than her siblings, so this could hardly be considered cause for alarm. It was almost as if the kittens hadn’t noticed the change in the café’s atmosphere, or the way we had been relegated to the status of supporting artists to Ming’s show-stopping diva.

My resentment about the way my kittens had accepted a rival female into the colony continued to rankle, but feline pride made me want to hide my hurt feelings from them. Though I kept my anger to myself, I was aware that my behaviour towards the kittens began to change. It was a subtle shift, almost imperceptible at first, but there was less casual intimacy of the sort that would have come naturally to me in the past. If I saw one of the kittens trying to wash a hard-to-reach spot between the shoulder blades, I no longer padded over to lick it for them; and if we caught each other’s eyes across the café, I no longer instinctively blinked affectionately. I had no conscious desire to punish them, and in my more self-pitying moments I told myself peevishly that, if they had noticed the change in my manner, they probably didn’t care anyway.

As the week wore on, my frustration at the kittens’ blasé attitude to our new living arrangements was wearing me down, and my efforts to maintain any semblance of composure were beginning to exhaust me. So when, on Friday morning, Eddie jumped onto the window cushion next to me, something gave way inside me.

Before Ming’s arrival, I would never have begrudged sharing my cushion with Eddie; when the kittens were tiny they had all done so, burrowing deep into my fur for warmth and comfort. Over time they had outgrown the practice, with the exception of Eddie, who seemed reluctant to abandon the physical closeness of our bond. But, on this occasion, Eddie’s proximity felt like an intimacy too far. When he sprang nimbly onto the cushion beside me, my heart did not swell with tenderness; instead, I felt a flash of rage at the invasion of my personal space. I hissed at him – a vicious, heartfelt hiss, which somehow gave vent to all the pent-up anger I had been feeling since Ming first set foot in the café.

Eddie’s body retracted in shock and he cowered, flattening his ears against his bowed head. I instantly regretted my response. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .’ I stuttered, horrified by his reaction. But before I had a chance to explain, Eddie had jumped down from the windowsill with a look of abject mortification. Shame and remorse flooded through me as I watched him slink across the floor with his tail between his legs; the shame made worse by the realization that the other kittens were watching and had no doubt witnessed what I had done.

I turned to face the window, feeling utterly wretched. Behind me I heard Linda talking to a customer, recounting what had now become an epic tale of Ming’s rescue. When she had finally finished speaking and was jotting down the order on her notepad, the customer remarked, ‘Molly ’n’ Ming – now that’s got a ring to it,’ and Linda cackled in agreement, ‘You’re so right; it does!’

I had heard enough. The café, which for so long had been my safe place, my haven from danger, suddenly felt claustrophobic. The room was airless, the heat from the stove made my fur itch, and Linda’s voice was as grating to my ears as her long fingernails on the Specials board. My head began to swim as I felt a wave of nausea rise from my stomach to the back of my throat. I tore across the café and out through the cat flap and did not stop running until I reached the alleyway.

It was a relief to leave behind the café’s stifling atmosphere, its fawning customers and, of course, Ming. The November wind felt biting, but I took a few deep lungfuls of icy air, waiting for my nausea to subside. I found Jasper in the churchyard, prowling among the headstones. He looked surprised to see me; my withdrawn manner had also kept him at a distance, and we had not met for our usual evening stroll for several days.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked solicitously, sidling up to me.

‘Yes, fine,’ I snapped; but I felt my facade of indifference start to crumble beneath his concerned scrutiny. ‘No, not really,’ I admitted, dropping my gaze to the ground.

Jasper sat down beside me on the carpet of dry leaves and we remained in silence for a few moments, listening to the magpies cawing in the branches of the horse chestnut above us.

‘Is it . . . Ming?’ he began, tentatively. I let out a snort at the mention of her name, aware that the tip of my tail had begun to twitch angrily by my feet. The remorse I had been feeling about Eddie seemed to evaporate, and anger swept in to take its place.

‘Ooh, Ming, what a gorgeous name! Oh, isn’t she beautiful! So elegant!’ I mimicked, while Jasper listened patiently. ‘More like stuck-up, stand-offish and rude, if you ask me.’ My tail was now thrashing so hard that the dry leaves on the ground rustled noisily. Jasper’s body remained still and his face composed, as he contemplated the moss-covered gravestones ahead of us.

‘I know it’s a shock,’ he began in a careful, measured tone, ‘but it can’t be easy for her—’

I felt my stomach clench and turned sharply to face him. ‘Can’t be easy for her?’ I interrupted, incredulously. ‘What, exactly, can’t be easy for her? Having a café full of people drooling over her? Having her every whim catered for by Debbie and Linda? Having the whole of Stourton think she’s the most beautiful creature ever to grace this town? Oh, it must be really difficult for her,’ I spat.

I paused for breath as Jasper sat in restrained silence, waiting for me to finish.

‘Do you know,’ I continued, feeling my cheeks burn, ‘she has been here a week and she has not said one word since she arrived. Not one word.’ I paused for emphasis, hoping to see some acknowledgment of Ming’s indisputable rudeness, but Jasper’s face remained impassive. ‘At least she hasn’t said one word to me,’ I added, suddenly seized by a cold pang of suspicion. I narrowed my eyes as the thought entered my mind that, perhaps, it was only me that Ming hadn’t deigned to speak to. Did she chat happily to Jasper and the kittens when I was not around? Was this how they had spent Sunday morning, while I had been visiting Margery? A shiver went through me, as though someone had poured ice down my back.

Jasper’s face was still infuriatingly blank. ‘I think maybe she just needs time to settle in,’ he said calmly, deftly evading the question that hung, unspoken, in the air between us.

I looked away in disgust. His reply seemed to confirm my worst fears: Ming’s haughty demeanour was reserved for me alone. For all I knew, she and Jasper might already be firm friends . . . or more. Did that explain why the kittens were so relaxed around her, because they were following their father’s lead? My heart began to race as the implications hit me. Ming was playing a game, of that I was sure. She was trying to isolate me from Jasper and the kittens. She was planning to take my place – not just in the café, but in my own family.

The kittens were sweet-natured and trusting; was it any surprise they had been taken in by Ming? But I was disappointed by Jasper’s gullibility, his inability to see the situation for what it was. It was typical of him to be chivalrous, to give other cats the benefit of the doubt. Such generosity was one of the qualities I loved about him, but right now I found it maddening. It was one thing for him to be chivalrous towards me, quite another to be chivalrous towards a beautiful Siamese impostor.

Mustering what remained of my dignity, I stood up to leave. ‘Besides, she’s not perfect, you know,’ I hissed, throwing a cursory glance over my shoulder. ‘Have you noticed how she squints?’

As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew how they must sound: petulant and spiteful. But I didn’t care. Jasper could think what he liked about Ming, but I knew the truth.