Christmas at the Cat Cafe

27

I returned to the café and, ignoring the customers’ good-natured overtures, headed straight for my window cushion. I turned my back on the room and stared out of the glass, castigating myself for the way I had handled the encounter. In my fretful state, Purdy’s and Ming’s suffering became conflated in my mind. I was convinced I was to blame for both, and that my self-absorption had blinded me to what they had been going through. If life in the café had been making Purdy unhappy, then surely, as her mother, I should have noticed? Similarly, as the colony’s matriarch, I should have been less quick to judge Ming’s odd behaviour. With both Purdy and Ming out of the café, however, I could do nothing except stare watchfully out over the damp street and wait for their return.

The rest of the day seemed to drag on inexorably, and it was not until after closing time that Debbie finally brought Ming home.

‘I’m back,’ Debbie called, crouching down on the flagstones to unlock the cat carrier.

Ming crept out cautiously, glanced in both directions, sniffed the air uncertainly, then dashed towards the cat tree.

Linda came out of the kitchen with a querying look.

‘We had to go to the animal hospital for tests,’ Debbie explained as she made for the nearest chair and sat down.

‘And?’ Linda asked, pulling off her apron and hanging it on the peg.

‘She’s deaf,’ Debbie replied sadly. ‘Almost certainly since birth. A congenital defect, probably.’

I felt my breath catch in my chest.

‘Poor Ming.’ Linda sighed, pouting with concern.

Looking relieved to be back on her platform, Ming had started to wash, unaffected by the melancholy mood in the room.

‘Do you think it’s okay for her to stay in the café? I mean, is it cruel, if she can’t hear anything?’ Linda asked, looking sorrowfully at Ming.

‘It’s something to think about,’ Debbie agreed. ‘Perhaps she would be happier somewhere less . . . busy.’

Linda walked over to the cat tree and reached out her hand to touch Ming’s back. Startled, Ming turned towards her and, when Linda gently caressed her spine from her shoulders to her tail, blinked in pleasure.

‘You know, if you think it would be for the best, I’d be happy to take Ming with me to Margery’s cottage,’ Linda said diffidently, as the room began to fill with Ming’s rumbling purr. ‘I should be the one to take responsibility for her, since it was me who brought her here in the first place.’

From her chair near the door, Debbie watched her sister closely. ‘Thanks, Linda, I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said appreciatively.

Later, when Debbie and Linda had gone upstairs, I stared across the dimly lit café at Ming. She lay in a neat circle, the perfect arc of her body disrupted only by the single, angular protuberance of her left ear. I was struck anew by her effortless elegance, and the uncomfortable realization that Ming’s beauty had been a major factor in my distrust of her. The adulation she had received in the café had stoked the flames of my envy, and I had never stopped to consider what coming to the café must have felt like for her. She had been an outsider, unexpectedly introduced to a colony of cats in an environment where privacy and solitude had not been an option. Any cat would have struggled in such circumstances, let alone one who couldn’t hear. I felt a wave of pity rise up inside me. I had been determined from the outset to read disdain into Ming’s reserved demeanour. Now I had to accept that, though there had been disdain, it had been on my side, not Ming’s.

Sporadic twitches seized Ming’s paws and whiskers as she dreamt, then she awoke with a sudden jerk. Her enormous eyes sprang open and she looked around in alarm, catching sight of me watching her from the window. Her dream had left her with a disorientated look, but I held her gaze for a few moments. Then, for the first time since meeting Ming, I blinked at her, slowly, in a sign of friendship. She tilted her head quizzically to one side before responding with a blink of her own, her azure eyes disappearing momentarily behind chocolate-brown eyelids.

I was overcome by a bittersweet elation. There was something so mundane, and yet so momentous, in that silent communication – the simple gesture of nonaggression that had passed between us. But my happiness was tinged with regret that it had taken me so long to attempt this most basic of feline signals, that I had wasted so much time looking for evidence to confirm my prejudices, rather than give Ming the benefit of the doubt.

Ming continued to look at me for a few moments, her cerulean gaze as steady and intense as ever and yet, this time, I saw it for what it was: curiosity about a baffling, soundless world, rather than an expression of her superiority. With a look of serene contentment, she lowered her head and licked the tip of her tail a few times, before tucking it neatly under her chin. Then she closed her eyes and swiftly fell back to sleep, to return to the world inside her head, perhaps the only world she would ever fully understand.

Sleep proved more elusive for me and when, after an hour of half-hearted washing and repositioning myself on my cushion, I did eventually doze off, I fell almost immediately into a dream. I was back on the rain-soaked street outside the hardware shop, watching Purdy disappear over the wall. I tried to call after her, but my voice was drowned out by growling lorries, and when I turned to run back to the café, I saw Ming cowering on the doorstep, staring at me dolefully through the rushing legs of pedestrians.

By the time the weak December sun rose over the rooftops, I had been awake for several hours, mulling over my situation and the way I had failed both Ming and Purdy. But I had come to a resolution: I was determined to make amends for my mistakes. Linda might have set her heart on taking Ming to the cottage, but I would do everything in my power to make Ming feel welcome, in the time she had left with us. As for Purdy, I would apologize for my reaction outside the hardware shop, and tell her that whatever she decided to do, I would support her.

Now I just had to wait for her to come home.

‘But we thought you didn’t like Ming,’ Abby said, with a look of puzzlement. I had intercepted the kittens at the bottom of the stairs later that morning. They stood around me on the flagstones, listening attentively.

‘We thought you didn’t want us to talk to her,’ Bella chipped in, trying to be helpful.

I looked from one inquisitive face to the next, acutely aware of the hypocrisy of asking the kittens to be friendlier to Ming when, in the past, I had sulked if they went anywhere near her.

‘I never said I didn’t like her,’ I protested unconvincingly. If cats had eyebrows, Bella’s would have shot up.

‘But you were the one who . . . ’ she began, but trailed off when she noticed my thrashing tail.

‘That was before I knew she was deaf,’ I replied sharply, aware that such a justification was feeble at best. ‘I didn’t realize that was why she was acting so . . . standoffish.’

I felt my cheeks burn beneath my fur as the kittens looked back at me with identical expressions of bemusement.

‘I just thought she was shy,’ Eddie remarked diffidently.

‘Me too,’ concurred Maisie.

Their guileless reaction compounded my guilt, confirming that I was the only one to have read superciliousness into Ming’s silence. But I was grateful for their sweet-natured willingness to do as I asked, and for the fact that, if they did judge me for my hypocrisy, they kept it to themselves.

‘Has anyone seen Purdy this morning?’ I asked as they filtered out across the café floor.

‘Not yet,’ Eddie replied, and the others didn’t disagree.

I left the kittens in the café and slipped through the cat flap. I felt a niggling suspicion that Purdy might have spent the night in Jo’s shop. It was a cold, blustery day and the low clouds threatened rain. I had taken a few steps along the pavement when the hardware-shop door swung open and Jo came out with Bernard.

I halted mid-step, momentarily baffled by what I saw: rather than walking side-by-side with Bernard on his lead, Jo was carrying the dog like a baby, cradling his bulky hindquarters in her arms, while he rested his chin on her shoulder. Locked in their awkward embrace, they made an ungainly, slightly comical pair, but Jo’s face was set in a look of tense concern. She hovered in the doorway, shifting Bernard’s weight sideways as she locked the shop door behind her. Then, staggering slightly under his weight, she lurched towards the van, clumsily opened its rear doors and lowered Bernard carefully inside. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the dog’s dejected expression, before Jo slammed the door shut and hurried round to the driver’s seat. Within seconds, the van had accelerated away and disappeared around the corner.

I ran over to the shop door and peered through the glass, but it was dark and empty inside. Fighting off a growing unease, I made my way back round the side of the café to find Jasper sitting at the alleyway’s entrance. After the events of the previous twenty-four hours, the wave of relief I felt at seeing him made my throat start to constrict. He seemed to sense my agitation, and our strides quickly fell into step as we walked together down the alleyway.

‘So . . . ?’ he prompted, as we pushed through the conifers into the churchyard. I took a deep breath; I had so much to tell him that I wasn’t sure where to start.

‘Well, you were right. Debbie wasn’t planning to rehome me. Linda’s going to be moving into Margery’s cottage – that’s all.’ I braced myself for a response of the ‘I told you so’ variety, but Jasper merely blinked in tacit approval. Heartened by his reaction, I said, ‘Also, Ming’s deaf. That’s why she never talked to any of us.’

At this, his eyes widened slightly. I waited for him to say something, but he maintained his diplomatic silence.

‘Go on then,’ I said, slowing to a halt among the headstones.

‘Go on then, what?’ Jasper replied.

‘Say “I told you so”,’ I said, through clenched jaws.

‘I never said I thought she was deaf,’ he pointed out, generously.

‘No, but you thought I had misjudged her, and you were right.’

Jasper looked away, apparently distracted by a pair of magpies cawing argumentatively in a nearby tree, but I suspected he was sparing me the embarrassment of having to look him in the eye while admitting that I was wrong.

‘Just like you were right about Debbie not planning to rehome me,’ I said sullenly.

‘What’s done is done,’ he said, returning his gaze to the muddy turf in front of us. ‘I’m sure Ming will forgive you.’

‘I’m not sure she’ll be around long enough to forgive me,’ I replied churlishly. ‘Linda wants to take her to the cottage when she moves out.’

At this, Jasper’s ear flickered and his eyes narrowed a little. I wasn’t sure whether his expression indicated surprise at Linda’s offer, or disappointment that Ming might be leaving us.

‘There’s one more thing,’ I said, glancing nervously at him. ‘I’m worried about Purdy.’ For a fleeting second I thought I saw a flicker of ‘What now?’ in his eyes.

‘Why’s that?’ he said guardedly.

‘She told me she doesn’t like living in the café. I’m worried she might run away,’ I explained. ‘In fact,’ I added, trying to fight my rising angst, ‘she hasn’t been home since yesterday.’

Jasper surveyed me calmly through his amber eyes. I knew what he must be thinking: no sooner had one of my anxieties been allayed, than another had rushed in to take its place. ‘Purdy has an adventurous spirit. We’ve always known that,’ he said steadily.

‘I know,’ I snapped, resenting his unruffled tone. ‘But I think it’s more than that.’ I could feel my frustration suddenly rise up like bile in my throat. ‘Do we just wait till one day she decides she’d rather live on the street than in the cafe? That is, if she hasn’t already . . .’

I looked away. My eyes were tingling and I felt desperate as my conviction grew that it might already be too late to change Purdy’s mind, and that, just as I had with Margery, I had wasted my last chance to say goodbye to her.

‘She’s half alley-cat, remember,’ Jasper said, with a slight puffing-out of his chest.

‘So?’ I hissed, my tail twitching irritably.

‘So,’ Jasper replied with infuriating calmness, ‘she’s also a grown-up now. If she doesn’t want to live in the café any more, there might be nothing we can do about it.’