Alfie In The Snow

Never one to give up, I had found a way of introducing George to Hana. We both stood at her patio door and we had a conversation through the glass. We had to shout and sometimes words got a bit lost, but it was better than nothing. And Hana said she looked forward to our visits – well, I think that’s what she said, we couldn’t be sure. We’d started going round to see her most days. Remembering how Connie was worried she was lonely and bored, we took it upon ourselves to make sure she wasn’t.

‘Why don’t you try to come out?’ George asked.

‘I don’t know how, or if I’ll like it,’ Hana said. ‘And after watching Alfie get stuck in the window …’

The only window in the house that was ever open – and not always – was the one I had squeezed through. I wasn’t sure Hana, having never gone out, would be up to it. After all, it had nearly defeated me, a far more experienced cat.

‘Maybe one day I can come in and see you?’ George said but Hana obviously didn’t hear. Instead, she squinted at him.

‘What does “comtinbeya” mean?’

I sat back a bit and let them continue the conversation. I was right, George and Hana seemed to have hit it off, even in this unorthodox way. As I listened I marvelled at Hana’s nature. She was always sunny it seemed, she never complained, although to my thinking she had a lot to complain about. Her family were unhappy still. Although Sylvie put a brave face on when she visited my humans, she was still crying most nights and not coping as well as she was pretending to. Sylvie would let her tears drop onto Hana’s fur and Hana would try to comfort her, but she didn’t know what to do. And Connie was still being quiet and solitary. She barely spent time with her mum, despite Sylvie trying very hard. She spent most of her time in her room, on her phone, and Hana didn’t know what was going on there either. George told her Aleksy was the same and we all hoped it was just this illness known as ‘teenage hormones’, and that it would soon pass.

But although it seemed that Hana had a lot on her plate, she never complained, not even that she was stuck in the house alone for most of the day, and I thought we could all take a lesson from her.

‘It is nice that you come and see me,’ she said, or shouted, as we got ready to go home for lunch. ‘It does brighten up the day.’

‘One day you will come out with me,’ George said, confidently.

‘I don’t know about that.’ Her eyes widened. ‘But maybe one day you can come in. If they ever leave the bigger window open …’ We all glanced at the closed windows.

We bid her farewell, she put her paw up on the door, and George and I matched it on our side, before we set off back next door.

‘You know, if I was ever going to fall for a girl again I would probably fall for Hana,’ George said, sweetly.

‘And if you hadn’t sworn off them forever then I would probably give you my blessing,’ I replied with a grin.

I did have one resolution though. I’d heard it said that no one should be alone on Christmas Day, it was something I’d learnt throughout life and I didn’t want that for Hana either. If her family was spending the day with us, then she would too. I just had to figure out how.

After lunch I put my thoughts of Hana aside as I had to go and find Tiger. I had ignored it for the past few days, but I had growing niggling doubts about her. I had barely seen her since she’d told me she was fully recovered from her illness. Even George was complaining that he hadn’t been able to find her. The other Edgar Road cats had also noticed that she was acting out of character. Not only was she barely around, but when she was she was quiet and not her normal feisty self. She hadn’t even bothered to be rude to Salmon the other day. I had a bad feeling, and was pretty sure something wasn’t quite right. I could feel it in my fur.

So, without drawing George’s attention to it, I needed to go and sort it out once and for all. I was quite a perceptive cat and my intuition said that all was not well, and for once I refused to be fobbed off. If Tiger wasn’t wanting to spend time with me any more then she had to tell me. But she couldn’t do that to George; he thought she was his mum and that was a relationship that you didn’t get to walk away from. Or you shouldn’t get to walk away from anyway. I went from worried to angry and back to worried again. I really did need to get to the bottom of this.

George had gone out, saying he had things to do. He really didn’t but I went along with it. However, I was grateful, as I wanted to confront Tiger on her own. I wasn’t going to let her wriggle her way out of this one.

I bashed on the cat flap and waited. It seemed to take a long time, so I bashed again. Eventually she appeared and as she came through the small door my first reaction was shock. She looked thinner than the last time I saw her.

Tiger had been a bit chunky when we first met; she liked her food and she was lazy but I had introduced her to the joy of exercise and she’d slimmed down, but even so the cat in front of me looked as if she was mainly skin and bones. I wondered how long it had been since I last saw her, maybe a week. How did she get to be like this in a week?

‘Tiger,’ I said simply. I found my voice choking. I missed her, my boy missed her. We were a family.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you, Alfie,’ she said. ‘But you know, I’m not exactly looking my best,’ she tried to joke, but it fell flat between us.

‘What’s going on? I need to know, not just for me but for George too. He misses you and he’s only young. And you look terrible.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I corrected.

‘I don’t know how to tell you.’ Her voice became sad. ‘I’ve been avoiding you, both of you.’

‘What, have you met someone else?’ I asked. It would explain the weight loss. Claire said she always lost weight when she first fell in love. Tiger narrowed her eyes at me.

‘God, you are ridiculous sometimes, Alfie. No, I haven’t met anyone else,’ she snapped.

‘Then what?’ My heart was beating right out of my body and my legs had turned to jelly. I sat down.

‘I lied to you. When I went to the vet I wasn’t just having a check-up, I wasn’t feeling too good. I’ve been feeling tired for ages, and I’ve been struggling to eat, and they ran loads of tests. I did have some tablets, like I told you, and I did feel a bit better for a while, but there’s bad news, Alfie.’

‘No,’ I said, but then I reasoned that she could get more tablets. It might just take longer than she first thought. Poor Tiger, all that dried food though.

‘I, I thought if I carried on as normal it might just resolve itself but it isn’t going to. I’m tired all the time, I can barely get to the end of the garden let alone the street. Alfie, my family were talking and I don’t have long left.’

‘What do you mean?’ I felt a chill in my fur. My heart sunk into my paws.

‘I’m dying, Alfie. I’m so, so, sorry but I’m not going to be here much longer.’

‘No, that’s not possible.’ I couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying.

‘Alfie, it’s true, I’m not going to get better and I don’t have long left.’ I blinked. She sounded so matter of fact about it.

‘I can’t, I can’t …’ Words failed me.

‘Oh Alfie, I’ve been trying to come to terms with it, you know, but it’s so hard. I don’t want to leave you, I certainly don’t want to leave George. I love life but it’s quickly slipping out of me and there’s nothing we can do. I have to accept it and unfortunately that means you do too.’

‘Surely there must be something someone can do. The vet, another vet? I could make a plan—’

‘We’ve exhausted everything. My family are sad which is heart-breaking. They are old and they’ve had me since I was a kitten, they say they’re going to be lost without me.’

‘I’m going to be lost without you,’ I said, selfishly.

‘I know. But you know, you have great families, you have great friends, and you have George.’

I shuddered as the thought hit me square between the eyes.

‘How are we going to tell George?’

‘I don’t know.’ I saw Tiger falter then. She had been so strong when she spoke, composed, but not any more.

‘We’ll tell him together,’ I said. ‘But not today, not yet, I need to let it sink in too. It doesn’t feel real.’

‘No, I understand, it’s taken me a while and I still wake up and forget.’ We both looked up at the grey sky. A lone bird flew overhead, the wind whistled, the clouds threatened to unleash some rain. And next to me was Tiger, my love, my best friend, the cat who, next to George, meant most to me in the world and I was losing her. I knew as I looked at her, trying to remember every stripe in her fur, every speck of colour in her eyes, that I would have to say goodbye, and I felt as if part of me was dying too.

I have had more than my fair share of goodbyes in my life. When I was younger and lived with Margaret I had to say goodbye to Agnes, my sister cat, who was much older than me and died. That was hard, but then Margaret died, which was even worse as it rendered me homeless. I had to say goodbye to Snowball, although she didn’t die, but I knew I would never see her again. I had to say goodbye to Tasha and her son Elijah when they moved to Dubai, although I did expect to see them again sometime. I have said goodbye, in my words and heart, many, many times and, you know what, as I looked at Tiger and committed every inch of her to my memory, I realised that it didn’t get any easier. Saying goodbye never got any easier.