Molly And The Cat Cafe

16

‘Guess what, Soph. We have a new member of the family!’

Debbie swung the café door open triumphantly, brandishing the cat carrier in front of her. Sophie was sitting on a stool behind the serving counter, frowning as she swiped her thumb across her phone. A slight rolling of her eyes was the only indication that she had heard Debbie’s words. Her apathy did nothing to dent my euphoria, however, as Debbie released me from the carrier into the empty café.

She gave me a quick rub behind the ears, before pulling an apron over her head and disappearing into the kitchen. Without acknowledging either of us, Sophie wordlessly grabbed her coat and vanished out onto the street. Realizing that I was free to explore, I headed upstairs, keen to see Debbie’s home, and the rooms I had fantasized about for so long.

The flat was low-ceilinged and felt rather cramped, as if more rooms had been fitted inside than there was space to accommodate. A narrow hallway opened into a tiny kitchen and bathroom on one side, and a square room that overlooked the alley on the other. The room was fairly large, but was dominated by the dining table and chairs immediately in front of the door, and by a deep three-seater sofa along the wall. A modest television set stood in the alcove next to the open fireplace, which, I was disappointed to note, showed no signs of recent use. There was yellowing woodchip paper on the walls and a threadbare carpet underfoot, but Debbie had gone to great lengths to make it homely, with flowers on the dining table, soft rugs placed over the carpet and colourful pictures on the walls.

A short flight of stairs led from the hallway to Debbie and Sophie’s compact bedrooms, tucked under the building’s eaves. I poked my head around the door on my right, peering into what I deduced must be Sophie’s room. I picked a fastidious route between the dirty clothes, balled-up tissues and damp towels that littered the floor. As I brushed past a chair I dislodged a messy heap of clothes, which had been thrown onto the seat-back. The pile toppled over, startling me as they hit the floor behind me. I dashed out of the room, hoping that, given the state of the rest of the bedroom, Sophie wouldn’t notice the additional mess.

Debbie’s room was no larger than Sophie’s, but was much more welcoming. The bed was covered by a pretty patchwork quilt in shades of blue and silver. I padded across the floor to the dressing table, on which bottles and jars stood in neat rows. A heart-shaped wreath of dried lavender hung from the window above. I breathed deeply, detecting the faintest trace of a scent that would forever make me think of Margery.

Heading back down to the living room, I heard the radiators tick unevenly as the central heating slowed, and I took a moment to savour the fact that, since entering the café the previous day, I had not once felt cold. In the living room I jumped onto the sofa and washed thoroughly, in preparation for a nap, which I knew would be more comfortable than any I had had for months.

Over the next few days I began to settle in, and the flat and café gradually started to feel like home. Sophie was the only obstacle to my complete assimilation to life in the flat. She had been unimpressed by my arrival and remained stubbornly impervious to my attempts to charm her. She rarely noticed my existence and, if she did, her attitude was invariably hostile.

One afternoon, during my first week in the flat, I was asleep on the sofa when she got home from school. She flung her rucksack across the room at the sofa, where its flying plastic clips caught the back of my head. I flew into the air in panic, my hackles raised and my tail fluffed. She did not apologize for her clumsiness, nor did she even acknowledge my presence. As I tried to wash away my mortification afterwards, the thought crossed my mind that she had known I was there and had thrown her bag at me deliberately. I could not understand why Sophie would have a grudge against me, but her behaviour left me in no doubt that she disliked me.

Debbie had placed a cardboard shoebox in the café’s bay window for me, which was where I often spent my mornings, observing the people who walked along the cobbled street in front of the café. The first to appear every day were grey-haired couples in waterproof coats and sensible shoes, on their way to the market square. Late morning was the time for young mums pushing buggies, with small children trailing behind them distractedly. Whenever the children noticed me in the window, they would drag their mothers over and point at me through the glass: ‘Look, Mummy, cat!’ and their mothers would smile wearily before pulling them away, with no time to dawdle.

There was one old woman who walked past the café on a daily basis, always wheeling a shopping trolley behind her. Something about her appearance perplexed me. Her posture and lined face reminded me of Margery, but rather than Margery’s silvery-grey waves, the lady’s hair was a strident reddish-brown, set fast around her head like a helmet. Her hair fascinated me as it never seemed to move, even when a strong wind was whipping up the canopies along the parade. Every time she saw me in the café window she scowled at me and, intrigued by her curious hair and angry expression, I would stare back.

Hardly any of the people who passed by on the street stepped foot inside the café, and it didn’t escape my notice that the café attracted very few customers at all. A few workers from nearby shops and offices would pop in for a quick sandwich at lunchtime, but other than that it was not uncommon for the café to remain empty from dawn till dusk. I understood now why there had always been such generous quantities of leftovers in the dustbin in the alley. As an alley-cat, it had been a blessing, but now I realized that it had been a sign that the café was struggling.

Almost a week had passed before it even crossed my mind to go outside and return to the alley that had, until recently, been my home. There was no access to the alley from the flat, and Debbie did not like me using the kitchen door, so my only route in and out was through the café’s front entrance. I waited till the café was about to close, reasoning that I would catch the tomcat as he came in search of the day’s leftovers. As soon as the church bells announced six o’clock, I slipped out of the café and around the corner to the alleyway. It was strange to see it again, through the eyes of a house-cat rather than a stray. I was struck by how exposed it was, and how draughty it felt, compared to the cosy flat up in the eaves. I sniffed the wall for the tom’s scent marks, but there was no trace of him. I jumped onto the dustbin lid to look for the tell-tale rips in the rubbish bags that would indicate his presence, but the black polythene remained intact.

Puzzled, my tail twitched. Surely the tomcat would arrive soon, I figured, so I sat down on the dustbin to wait. I waited until my paws felt stiff with cold, but still he did not appear. It was only now that I understood how much I had been looking forward to seeing him again, and telling him everything that had happened since I had crossed the café’s threshold. I was disappointed and hurt, feeling irrationally as if he had abandoned me. But my hurt quickly turned to guilt as I remembered the sudden nature of my departure, and that I had never told him of my plans. Had he wondered what had happened to me – maybe even worried for my safety? I felt a sharp pang of remorse for being so self-absorbed that I had not sought him out before now to explain what I had done.

I found my old sleeping place under the metal fire escape and settled down, determined to wait until he returned. But, apart from a squirrel dashing along the top of the dustbin, there was no sign of any other living thing in the alley apart from me. Eventually the café’s back door opened and Debbie poked her head out. ‘Molly, where are you? Here, puss.’ I could hear alarm in her voice; this was the first time I had left the café since she had taken me in, and I had been out for hours.

For a moment I didn’t know what to do: whether to stay out of sight under the fire escape and wait for the tomcat’s return, or follow Debbie back into the warmth and security of the café. Debbie stepped out into the alley in her slippers, shivering with cold as she called my name again. I caught a glimpse of her face through the paint tins – a shadow of panic was plain to see in her eyes. My mind was made up. Regardless of what the tomcat might think of me, I couldn’t bear to see Debbie so concerned for my well-being. I crawled out from the fire escape and trotted towards her, mewing in greeting. ‘Oh, there you are, Molly!’ she smiled. ‘You naughty thing, I thought I’d lost you.’

She shepherded me quickly through the kitchen and I waited by the serving counter while she locked up. Sophie had gone out for the evening, so the flat was uncharacteristically quiet and peaceful. Debbie and I curled up side by side on the sofa, and she stroked me until we both began to nod off in front of the television, her bare feet cushioning my head. It felt just as I had imagined it would – an easy intimacy in which we were each soothed and reassured by the other’s presence. And yet something niggled at the back of my mind, taking the edge off my happiness. It was the guilt I felt for the way I had treated the tomcat, for abandoning the alley with no thought for the impact it might have on him.

In Debbie, I had found everything I ever wanted, but my joy was tempered by the suspicion that, although I had undoubtedly gained much, I might have lost more than I realized.