A Cat Called Alfie

Chapter Twenty-One

I woke, feeling refreshed until I remembered that today we had to take on Tom and Salmon.

Claire was humming as she gave me my cat ready meal for breakfast and made coffee and toast for Jonathan. She hummed as she walked upstairs to take her shower and she was still humming when she came back downstairs dressed for work.

I watched them both get ready to leave. Jonathan as usual couldn’t find his house keys — which were in the bowl by the front door where they were always kept, and Claire hurried him out of the house, still humming happily.

I breathed in the silence of the empty house for a few minutes. I hadn’t been alone for a while and, although I loved being around people and fellow cats, it was nice to have a bit of time to myself for once. I thought about the day ahead and resolved that I would seek out Snowball later on. I needed to see her, just to get a glimpse of that beautiful white fur and to speak to her, even if she was horrible to me. I missed her. My heart started beating faster at the thought.

I heard my cat flap bang, which was my doorbell equivalent. I went through to the kitchen and found Tiger sitting on the outside.

‘You could have come in,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t sure if the humans had left yet.’

‘I don’t think they’d mind if you did come in. After all, the first time I came into this house I was uninvited.’

‘No, but Jonathan can be a bit grumpy, so I’d rather not risk it.’

‘Fair enough.’ I rolled on my back for a minute, looking up at the blue sky. The sun was almost coming out and it promised to be a warm day. I hoped that it would also be a good day. After lolling in the warming sun for a few moments we set off.

‘Do you know where Tom will be?’ I asked, trying, and failing, to feel brave about telling him to lay off Snowball.

‘It’ll be fine, Alfie, I’ve got your back,’ Tiger said, as if she could read my mind.

Tom lived in a house at the end of the street, but wasn’t there much of the time. It was a small house and he lived with a man who wasn’t as old as my Margaret had been, but he wasn’t far off.

We decided to make our way there as a starting point and I felt braver with Tiger by my side. I’d had numerous run-ins with Tom in the early days of Edgar Road; he was a bit of a loner cat, and he seemed not to like anyone. Apparently he got that from his owner.

It’s funny how people say that cats are like their owners — or humans as I prefer to think of them — after all, we all know who the real owners are. For example, Salmon is a busybody, just like his humans. Tom is a loner, just like his. Tiger is a bit like hers; they’re homebodies and before she became friends with me she rarely ventured far. And me, well I have so many humans that maybe I am combination of all of them, or perhaps, more accurately, they are a combination of me.

We found Tom licking his paws in his small front yard. It was always a bit overgrown and messy; his human was lucky that he was far enough away from the Goodwins, otherwise they’d be over there leaving notes. Perhaps they already had but he just ignored them.

‘Hi, Tom. Are you all right?’ I asked in my friendliest voice. He stopped mid-paw and looked at us.

‘It isn’t often I get visitors, to what do I owe this pleasure?’ When he said ‘pleasure’ he licked his lips, as if he was about to devour us, but then he softened.

‘Look, Tom, we’ve got no beef with you as you know but some cat told us that you had an altercation with Snowball from number forty-eight and we just wondered what the problem was.’

‘So I guess Rocky spilled the beans. He’s such an interfering cat.’

‘Yes, well he was just concerned actually, as are we,’ I said. Tom stood in front of us now on all paws, but his stance wasn’t aggressive. I relaxed slightly, making it clear there was no confrontation here.

‘All right, if you must know, I was just asking her why she was so rude, and then when she was even ruder to me, things got a bit out of hand.’

‘What did you do?’ Tiger asked.

‘Look she started it. OK, so maybe I shouldn’t have stopped her but most of the cats on this street get on all right these days and I just wanted to know why she wouldn’t even say hello to me.’

‘Go on?’ I said.

‘She hissed at me, told me to go away and when I laughed at her, she swiped me with her paw. Look, she’s scratched my head.’ Tom bent his head and we could indeed see a small scratch there.

‘But what did you do?’ Tiger asked.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt her but I lost my rag, swiped at her and I caught her a bit with my paw. She was bleeding but I realized what I was doing and stopped, but before I could say I was sorry, she just ran off.’

I was angry with Tom but also surprised to see he did look contrite.

‘You need to stop being aggressive,’ Tiger said to Tom, who looked even sorrier.

‘I know, Tiger, and I regretted my actions as soon as she ran off. I tried to find her to apologize but she’s probably refusing to leave her house.’

‘Just leave her alone, OK?’ I said and Tom agreed. Although I was angry with him, I could see he was sorry but that didn’t fix the problem that now Snowball would be even more solitary than ever.

‘OK, one down, one to go,’ I stated as we walked away from Tom. ‘Although what do you think about what Tom said?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think he meant to hurt her,’ Tiger said carefully. ‘I think Tom finds it hard to put his old aggressive days behind him sometimes.’

‘Let’s see what Salmon has to say then.’

‘Oh yes, and dealing with Salmon will make Tom look like a … a pussy cat!’ She laughed at her own joke. We both slowly made our way in search of Salmon. We passed some of our cat friends on the way, but we didn’t invite them along. As Tiger said, it wouldn’t do to go in heavy-handed as we wanted information from him, not to annoy or scare him off.

As Tiger and I tried to strategize, I came up with a plan. I could charm most people and actually a fair few cats, but Salmon was more like a hostile dog refusing, steadfastly, to be nice to any of us. Not only was he a busybody but he also thought himself human and above all us cats. That was what made him so tricky to deal with.

‘We’ll just have to try to kill him with kindness,’ I suggested.

‘I get the first bit, not the second. Maybe we should have got the others to come with us and we could have pinned him down and made him talk.’

‘Tiger, sometimes your aggression takes me by surprise. You sound like Tom!’

She grinned at me, she could be one feisty cat.

We reached Salmon’s house and found him sitting staring out of the living room window, with the net curtain hanging behind him.

‘So what now?’ Tiger asked. I instinctively jumped up onto the windowsill in front of him, only the glass separating us. He looked a bit taken aback as I smiled, charmingly. I raised my paw and gestured to him to come outside. He scowled. I could see his whiskers twirling as he contemplated his next move. After a while he jumped down and disappeared.

‘Let’s go round the back,’ I said to Tiger and I jumped down to rejoin her.

We ran round to the back of the house and waited by the back door.

‘He’s not coming,’ Tiger said, after waiting for what felt like ages, and lying down on the small but immaculate lawn that the Goodwins had. Their garden was very pleasant in fact. They had lots of flowers and attractive bushes, the perfect place for playing and chasing butterflies. It was a shame that Salmon would never let us play here.

Tiger was rolling on the lawn and I was playing with some rather nice leaves that were swaying in the breeze, when we heard the cat flap clank and Salmon finally appeared.

‘Hi,’ I said, breezily. ‘How are you?’

He narrowed his eyes at me, flicked his tail, and bared his teeth.

‘What on earth are you two doing here?’ he asked. Before I could reply, he continued. ‘And don’t think that I am at all happy about you jumping up at me like that.’

‘Sorry but we were just trying to get your attention. You see, my owners were talking about the meeting they had here the other day, you know about the bad neighbours,’ I said. Tiger started to object but I silenced her with a look.

‘Bad neighbours?’ Salmon gave me another suspicious look. ‘Last I heard you were all keen on them, or on that white ball of fluff anyway.’

‘No, not at all, well I was to be honest but I heard my owners talking about how they were definitely not good for Edgar Road.’ My plan to ingratiate myself with Salmon to get information was underway. I would have made a great spy, I thought.

‘Really? Well it’s about time the other residents came round to our way of thinking. I know Vic and Heather have been pretty upset by people trying to argue against us.’

‘Oh I think you’ll find that they’ll be with you from now on,’ I said. I hoped I didn’t sound as insincere as I felt. Tiger had turned her back, she was probably trying not to laugh.

‘Well that’s good.’ He still didn’t sound convinced.

‘But anyway, I heard that that “white ball of fluff” was horrible to you, so we thought we would come and offer support.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘She hissed at me.’

‘She hisses at everyone.’ That much was true.

‘Anyway, I might as well tell you. I told the others, as we’re really close to finding out what they’re up to. The police have been round again and although they didn’t arrest anyone, it’s obvious that they’re actually a criminal gang, masquerading as a normal family.’

‘What?!’ I was incredulous. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever—’ I saw Salmon’s eyes narrow at me suspiciously and I remembered my plan. ‘I mean really? It seems incredible but it would make sense,’ I quickly corrected myself.

‘Vic and Heather saw a film once and it was similar. They live in a middle-class street and pretend to be normal but actually they’re criminal masterminds.’

‘What criminal activities are they supposed to be doing?’ I was sure this was all fantasy but I couldn’t help feel intrigued.

‘That’s what we don’t know, but clearly the police are onto them. Although Vic says the police can be really dumb so can’t be relied on.’

‘So what are you guys going to do?’ I asked. Surely this was all ridiculous. The angry beautiful cat, the father who looked worried, the mum who was on the verge of breaking down, the teenage girl who confided her loneliness to me, and the surly boy — none of them seemed likely to be members of the criminal underworld.

‘Well, my family think it could be a number of things. It could be something called a white-collar crime, or money laundering, or forgery. They could even be jewel thieves,’ Salmon continued, excitedly, hostility forgotten. His eyes were glinting eagerly — after all, being the street’s busybody cat, he couldn’t resist a good gossip.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s interesting, what are they going to do?’

‘Oh don’t worry, Alfie, we’re onto them and on top of this. We’re going to get them removed from the street. They rent the house you know, they don’t own it, so it’s only a matter of time. And that is what I told Snowball. She’d better get used to being homeless.’

‘Really?’ I asked, seething inside. ‘OK, well you know where we are if you need any help. Isn’t that right, Tiger?’

‘Huh?’ Tiger said. She’d been sunning herself on Salmon’s lawn, and was now chasing a butterfly as we interrupted her.

‘I said we would help Salmon if he needs us to.’

‘Oh, OK?’ I realized that Tiger hadn’t even been listening. Some bodyguard she was.

We went to play in the park as I wanted to be away from the street, so I could think. As we walked there I relayed the conversation I had just had to Tiger.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t listen,’ I moaned.

‘I got distracted by the shadows the sun cast on the lawn, it was really fun chasing them.’ At least she had the grace to sound contrite.

‘So what are you going to do when Salmon actually asks for our help?’ Tiger asked, after I’d explained what happened.

‘It won’t come to that, Tiger. The thing is that now I know what the Goodwins are up to, we know what we’re dealing with. Now all I have to do is to find out exactly what’s going on with Snowball’s family, that’s my next step.’

‘Great, Alfie.’ Tiger shook her head. ‘I still don’t know why you even care.’ We were lounging in a warm flower bed, swatting the odd fly that came our way.

‘You know me, I like everyone to be happy, cats and humans alike. It means a lot to me.’

‘Are you in love with her?’ she asked me seriously.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied, honestly.

‘Tell me how she makes you feel?’ she asked, suddenly getting onto all fours and looking me in the eye. I knew this was a touchy subject, but I wanted to be honest.

‘She’s mean to me but I still want to see her all the time. I think about her before I go to sleep and when I wake. My tummy does little flips whenever I catch a glimpse of her, I want to be near her, even if she doesn’t want to be near me. That’s pretty much it.’

‘Well, it definitely sounds like you’re in love with her,’ Tiger said.

‘How can you be so sure?’ I asked.

‘If you haven’t figured that out you’re not as clever as you think.’

‘Huh?’

‘I can be sure, Alfie, because that’s how I feel about you.’

I was stunned as Tiger shot me one last glance, before running away, leaving me alone in a flower bed with a fly buzzing around my ears.