Christmas at the Cat Cafe

26

It was past midnight when Debbie and Linda finally agreed it was time to turn in for the night. Beau watched drowsily from the rug as Linda cleared away the wine glasses and Debbie prepared the sofa-bed.

Returning from the hall cupboard with an armful of pillows, Linda stumbled over a shoe and, flinging one arm sideways to regain her balance, dislodged a mound of jackets from the coat rack. Hearing her sister’s yelp of alarm, Debbie abandoned her attempt to wrestle the duvet into its cover and staggered over to the door. She leant against the doorframe, giggling at Linda’s clumsy efforts to reunite the coats with their pegs.

‘Just leave them, we’ll sort it out tomorrow,’ Debbie hissed in a theatrical whisper.

Once Linda’s bed had been messily assembled, I followed Debbie as she swayed upstairs. She peeled off her clothes, threw them across the bedroom in the general direction of the laundry basket and dropped, face-down, onto the bed. When I jumped up beside her, she mumbled something indistinct and ran her fingers through my fur, but her hand quickly fell still as she drifted off to sleep.

Through a gap in the curtains, the moon threw a strip of light across the quilt and I lay awake for some time staring at it, mulling over the evening’s revelations. Now that I knew it was Linda who was being rehomed, and not me, I felt a little foolish. With the benefit of hindsight, I knew it was ludicrous to think that Debbie would consider giving me away; we had been through far too much together. I pressed closer to Debbie’s side and lowered my chin onto her outstretched fingers, purring with sleepy contentment.

When her alarm went off the next morning, Debbie sat bolt upright and looked around wildly, before batting the clock into silence. I chirruped at her, but she sank back on the pillows with a weak moan, shielding her eyes from the morning light with her arms. She had just drifted into a light doze when the relentless beeping started up again and, with a furious thrashing of limbs, she reappeared from beneath the duvet.

‘I know!’ she shouted, as if in mid-argument with some invisible adversary. ‘I heard you the first time.’ She grabbed the clock roughly and switched it off, before heaving herself out of bed.

The kittens were pacing the hallway, waiting for breakfast with their tails expectantly aloft.

‘Oh, all right, cats,’ Debbie said, treading a careful path between them and the pile of coats still lying on the carpet. She was squeezing out a cat-food pouch with an expression of mild nausea when the living-room door opened.

‘Morning,’ Linda croaked groggily across the hall. The pristine baby-pink cashmere sweater she was wearing looked somewhat incongruous against her sallow skin smudged with make-up, and her scarecrow hair.

‘Lovely top, Lind. One from Beau’s carrier?’ Debbie asked huskily, registering the telltale crease marks where the sweater had lain folded for the past few weeks.

Linda picked up the kettle and edged past Debbie to the sink. ‘Perhaps,’ she answered offhandedly, her cheeks flushing the same shade as her knitwear.

With the help of several strong coffees and a couple of paracetamol, the effects of the previous night’s drinking seemed to subside, and Linda was back at work in the café as soon as she had fetched her belongings from her friend’s house. The café was busy and Linda worked the room like a party hostess, asking customers about their plans for Christmas and chatting to them as if they were old friends. Her enthusiasm for Ming’s Fortune Cookies was as ardent as ever, and soon the tables were littered with the telltale red cellophane wrappers and paper mottoes.

‘You know what, Debs,’ she said proudly, as she rooted around inside the Tupperware box of paper slips behind the counter, ‘I’m going to have to print off a new batch of mottoes soon. We’re nearly out.’

In an effort to prove she had abandoned her favouritism towards Ming, however, Linda made an impromptu addition to the Specials board – the ‘Molly & Chandon Champagne Tea’ and persuaded several customers to order it on the basis that, ‘If you can’t treat yourself at Christmas, when can you?’

By closing time, both Linda and Debbie looked worn out. Blue shadows circled Linda’s eyes as she wiped down the tables, and the sound of Debbie’s yawns emanated from the kitchen at regular intervals. With her chores completed, Linda pulled up a stool to the serving counter, climbed wearily onto it and let her eyes settle on Ming, who was absorbed in a leisurely wash on her platform.

‘Do you ever wonder what Ming’s thinking?’ she mused when Debbie came through from the kitchen.

‘Can’t say I’ve had the time to give it too much thought,’ Debbie replied distractedly, searching for something on the shelf beneath the till. ‘Why?’

‘No reason,’ Linda said lightly, stifling a yawn. ‘It’s just that, compared to the other cats, Ming always seems to be . . . in a world of her own. But then I don’t really know much about cats, so it’s probably nothing,’ she added, self-deprecatingly.

Behind the counter, Debbie straightened up and looked over at Ming. ‘Well, she hasn’t fully integrated into the colony yet,’ she said, but there was a note of concern in her voice.

Ming was cleaning her face with her eyes closed, licking the inside of her slender wrist, before using it to groom her whiskers punctiliously. She seemed oblivious, or indifferent, to their scrutiny. After a couple of moments of deliberation, Debbie peeled off her rubber gloves and stepped around the side of the counter. ‘Ming?’ she called tentatively.

Ming continued to wash, unperturbed. Making sure to keep out of Ming’s eye-line, Debbie stepped nearer to the cat tree, held out her hand a few inches from the back of Ming’s head and clicked her fingers. There was no reaction: Ming didn’t startle and her ears didn’t flicker.

‘Oh my God,’ Debbie said, turning to face Linda with a dismayed look. ‘Linda, you’re right. I think Ming might be deaf!’

I felt a dip in my stomach, of shock mixed with incipient guilt. I spooled through my memories, desperately trying to recall an occasion when I had seen Ming react to something – anything – that she had heard. None came to mind. I vividly recalled our first meeting, when she had snubbed my attempt to introduce myself and Eddie in the café. She had looked down at us from the armchair, and I had read imperious disdain into her expression and had taken her silence for rudeness. It had never crossed my mind that there might be another explanation: that she hadn’t answered me because she hadn’t heard me.

The following morning Debbie phoned the vet first thing, and shortly after lunch she hung up her apron and fetched the cat carrier from upstairs. Ming reacted with her usual placidity as Debbie lifted her into the carrier, her deep-blue eyes remaining entirely impassive as she gazed out through the wire door.

I watched them leave with a feeling of apprehension. Seeing Ming in the carrier brought back a strange stab of memory, of the time I had been to visit Margery. I had returned to find Ming on the window cushion, seemingly having made herself at home in my absence. I cringed inwardly as I recalled how the sight of Ming and the other cats looking relaxed in the café had driven me into a jealous rage; I had been so sure – so utterly convinced – that Ming had been talking to Jasper and the kittens while I was away. How ludicrous and mean-spirited my suspicions would prove to have been if it turned out that she was deaf.

As I awaited Debbie and Ming’s return, my eye kept being drawn to the empty platform on the cat tree, and I found myself unable to settle. As the afternoon wore on, the chatter of customers began to grate on me, and the continuous chug and hiss of the coffee machine made my head ache. Craving fresh air, I slipped out outside and stood on the pavement, grateful for the chill breeze in my fur. The snowfall of the previous week had largely thawed, leaving only the occasional patch of grey slush on the pavements. A dustbin lorry turned the corner onto the parade and began its slow, growling progress up the street, so I ran along the pavement and darted into the recessed doorway of Jo’s hardware store. Waiting for the lorry to pass, I peered through the door. With the shifting reflections of passers-by in the glass, I found it difficult to be sure, but I thought I saw a glimpse of a tabby cat striding down one of the shop’s aisles.

The dustbin lorry pulled up outside the hardware shop and two men in luminous yellow jackets made their way towards the wheelie bins by the kerb. Keen to escape the lorry’s ear-splitting hydraulics, I nudged at the shop’s door. It swung open with very little resistance and, relieved, I slunk inside.

I had never been into Jo’s shop before. I was struck by its musty smell and the fact that, although it was similar in size to the café, the piles of stock that cluttered every surface made it feel smaller. I took a few tentative steps on the faded linoleum, past the serving counter on my right, where Jo was on the phone, complaining about an unpaid invoice. I could hear Bernard’s snuffly snores as he slept by her feet. I padded slowly up the central aisle, past shelves lined with cardboard boxes full of screws and hooks. At the back of the shop, next to a wire rack full of tea towels and dusters, I sensed movement and spun round to find myself almost nose-to-nose with Purdy.

‘What are you doing in here?’ Purdy asked, her tone faintly accusatory.

‘I thought I saw a cat through the window,’ I said, somewhat pointlessly.

At that moment, the door swung open and a man leant in. ‘Got any WD-40?’ he said gruffly. Jo nodded and gestured towards the back of the shop. The man began to head in our direction, his face set in a stern grimace. Purdy and I instinctively darted away from him, dashing down the outer aisle and through the door, before it could swing shut.

In the parade, spots of rain had started to fall, adding to the urgency with which people strode past us. I stood facing Purdy on the cobbles outside Jo’s shop.

‘Do you come here a lot?’ I asked.

‘A fair bit. Why?’

For some reason I couldn’t quite articulate, it stung to think of Purdy spending time in the hardware shop rather than at home. But there was something about her manner that made me want to proceed warily; she seemed to be avoiding my gaze, and her face wore a mask of impatient defiance.

‘I know it’s been difficult lately, with Ming, and Linda and Beau,’ I prompted, feeling that she needed encouragement.

‘It’s got nothing to do with them,’ Purdy replied evasively. ‘This is just somewhere I can come to get away from . . . things.’

‘Oh?’ I said and, in the silence that fell between us, I felt the first tremors of misgiving in my stomach.

Her alert green eyes held mine for a moment and then she said, ‘I just don’t really like being in the café. I’m not sure I ever have.’

‘I had no idea . . .’ I replied, stalling for time while I digested her words.

Perhaps Purdy sensed my inner turmoil, because she began to explain. ‘I don’t like being on display, with strangers fussing over me all day. It’s not really my thing. And sometimes there are just too many . . .’ She trailed off, looking at the ground, uncertain whether to continue.

‘Go on,’ I urged.

‘Too many . . . cats,’ she said, glancing up at my face anxiously.

The rain was falling with increasing force and, all around us, people were shaking open umbrellas and quickening their pace.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling a sudden surge of remorse. ‘I had no idea you were unhappy.’

‘I’m not unhappy,’ she corrected me, droplets of moisture glistening on her whiskers like crystals. ‘I’m just . . . not as happy as I could be, I suppose.’

I knew our conversation would soon be curtailed by the weather, but I desperately wanted to say something to show that, although I was saddened by what Purdy had said, I was grateful for her honesty. But, instead, I heard myself say, ‘Please, don’t run away.’

The disappointed look in her eyes let me know that I had catastrophically misjudged my response. Purdy had found the courage to tell me how she felt, but rather than listen to her, I had panicked. Instead of reassuring her, I had put my own anxiety first, and sought reassurance from her.

‘Of course I won’t run away,’ she replied breezily. Her tail had started to twitch and she glanced back over her shoulder, making no effort to hide her desire to be on her way.

I opened my mouth, wanting to undo the damage caused by my clunky, ill-chosen comment, but it was too late. A car had passed too close to the kerb, splashing passers-by with murky water; and, in the ensuing commotion, Purdy turned and trotted away. Within seconds she had disappeared over a wall and I was left standing on the cobbles, with cold rain beating down on my back, and Christmas shoppers rushing past me.