Oliver The Cat Who Saved Christmas

CHAPTER TWO

It was getting colder, with a dusky sort of look in the sky, by the time I heard a new sound coming towards me. I sat very still, my ears up, listening carefully. It was like music, but different. The fox sat up too, and was looking around him nervously, and then he suddenly loped off, giving me an angry backward glance as he went. The sound was coming closer. I waited, my head on one side, trying to remember where I’d heard it before. And then it came back to me. Whistling! That’s what they called it. Humans did it by putting their mouths into a funny shape and pushing their breath out. It made a kind of tune that wasn’t always very pretty. Finally I heard the footsteps of the whistling human, treading on the dead leaves on the ground. And there he was, just a few trees away from me, walking quite quickly. If I didn’t shout now, he’d be out of earshot – humans don’t have very good hearing, you know. But was he someone I could trust? I wasn’t good at trusting humans, especially strange male ones – but that’s a story for another time. Well, this time I didn’t have a lot of choice, and I made a quick decision. If he was doing that whistling thing, he probably wasn’t in a bad mood. I’d noticed before that they did it when they were cheerful. So I stood up again on my branch and yowled as loudly as my little lungs would let me.

He stopped whistling, stood still just a little way from my tree and stared around him. Just a little further on, the fox was standing looking back too, but I hoped he wouldn’t risk coming back while the man was there. I don’t think foxes like humans. There are stories in cat folklore – and they might be made up, of course – that humans long ago used to ride around on horses, blowing horns and using dogs to hunt foxes. It sounds a bit unlikely, but I wouldn’t put anything past some humans. Anyway, there I was, crying and screaming out to get this man’s attention, and there he stood, looking up, down, and all around him with a puzzled expression on his face. Like I say, they don’t have very good hearing. But luckily, eventually he caught sight of me and it was the way he said, ‘Well, hello, up there’ in such a nice friendly way, that made me relax a bit and think perhaps I’d be able to trust him.

In fact he carried on talking to me as he approached my tree, smiling up at me and calling me a ‘nice puss’ and asking whether I’d got stuck up the tree. Although I was very glad he was being so friendly, I felt a little bit patronised then, as I’m sure you can imagine. Stuck up the tree, indeed! Anyone would think I was an inexperienced little kitten like you. I wanted to tell him that if he’d only use his eyes, he’d notice there was a great big nasty snarling fox hiding in the undergrowth, watching us from a safe distance. Otherwise I’d have got down from that tree on my own, no trouble at all, thank you very much!

But I must admit, he was a pretty good tree climber himself. He was a fairly young, lean human and made good use of his front paws to swing himself up through the branches. He kept saying things like ‘All right, good puss, sit tight, don’t panic.’ Then as soon as he was close enough, he reached out and grabbed me with such a sudden movement I nearly toppled off the branch with fright. I let him hold onto me going down again, which was a bit awkward for both of us, but I wanted to let the fox – if he was still watching – see that I now had a protector. When we were nearly at the bottom I jumped down, but stayed by the human’s feet, giving him a little display of gratitude, rubbing myself on his legs and purring. He looked down at me, a bemused expression on his face.

‘OK, you can run off home now, puss!’

I continued my rubbing and purring. He watched me for a bit longer.

‘What is it, then? Are you lost?’

Hooray! He’d got the message. I purred a bit louder. He picked me up again and looked at the little disc on my collar.

‘Oliver,’ he read out. ‘And no address, just a phone number.’ He got one of those mobile phone things out of his pocket, tapped it and sighed. ‘No signal here. Well, maybe I’d better take you home with me, Oliver, and give you some milk or something and then I can try…’

The mention of milk had reminded me of how hungry and thirsty I was, and I practically jumped into his arms this time when he bent to pick me up again. I’d decided I liked him. Perhaps he was a good one, like George. But then, to my horror, he picked up a bag he’d left by the tree trunk and pushed me into it, quite clumsily, head-first so that my tail nearly got caught in the zip as he did it up. I yowled my head off in protest. So much for trusting him! But as I felt him lift the bag up, he was talking to me through the flap.

‘Sorry about this, Oliver. You’ll be safer in the rucksack on my back, see, while I walk home with you. Otherwise I’m frightened you’ll jump out of my arms and run off when we get to the road, and there’ll be cars, and it’ll be dangerous. All right, all right!’ he said as I carried on complaining. Well, honestly! It was so undignified, to say nothing of bringing back some terrible memories for me. ‘It won’t be for long. Just try and sit still like a good puss.’

So I had to bump along in that bag as he strode off, whistling again. The bag was smelly and uncomfortable, with some bits of twigs at the bottom of it, and the walk seemed to take forever. Eventually I could tell from the sound of traffic that we were out of the woods, and then it wasn’t long before I heard him unlocking a door, closing it behind me and calling out, as he put my bag down gently on the floor:

‘Hello? Are you home, Nick?’

Then there was someone else’s voice – a young female by the sound of it.

‘Oh! You were quick! I’ve only just got in from the shop. Did you manage to get some firewood?’

‘No. Sorry.’ I felt him lift the bag again. ‘Look what I found instead.’ He started to undo the zip – I braced myself to jump out and hide in a corner somewhere until I’d made sure it was safe here, wherever I was. But then he stopped and asked: ‘Are all the doors and windows closed?’

‘Of course they are! It’s freezing out! Why, what on earth have you got there?’

And the bag was opened, and I made a dive for it – straight up the curtains at the nearest window.

‘A cat!’ squealed the female person. ‘Where did it come from, Daniel? Why have you brought it home?’

‘He was stuck up a tree! I got him down, and he wouldn’t leave me. I think he must be lost. He’s got a name tag on, with a phone number, but I didn’t have any signal, so I thought I’d better bring him home.’

‘Poor little thing!’ she said, looking up at me now, having apparently got over the shock of seeing me run up her curtains. ‘He looks scared stiff. Come on, kitty cat – what’s his name, Dan?’

‘Oliver. He’s very friendly. Come on down, Oliver,’ he added in that nice kind voice I liked. ‘I’ll get you some milk.’

Great. I was gasping for a drink. I jumped back down and followed him into a little kitchen where he poured me out a nice dish of milk, which I lapped up immediately and licked the dish clean.

‘I reckon he’s hungry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long he’d been stuck up that tree. Can we give him something to eat, Nicky?’

The girl started emptying tins out of a shopping bag onto the kitchen counter.

‘I’ve got some sardines here,’ she said doubtfully. Sardines! Yes – result! I immediately started winding myself round her legs, purring for all I was worth. ‘But they were supposed to be for lunch,’ she added quietly.

‘We can have something else, can’t we? You’ve got baked beans there. I’ll phone his owner as soon as he’s eaten. We won’t have to keep on feeding him.’

They were looking at each other with worried faces. I wondered what the problem was. I just wanted those sardines!

‘OK,’ the girl called Nicky finally agreed. She started opening the tin. The smell made me feel faint with hunger and longing. ‘Here you go, Oliver.’ She put the dish down on the floor and I fell on it. ‘Good grief, Dan, he must be starving!’ she added, laughing. ‘Fair enough, his need’s even greater than ours.’

Out of the corner of my eye, while I wolfed down the food, I saw him put his arm round her and give her a kiss. That was good. I’d seen people sitting together in the pub doing that, and it usually meant they were happy.

‘I’m sorry about the firewood,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll go out again later.’

‘No, it’s five o’clock now and it’s dark already. Leave it till tomorrow and I’ll come with you. We can carry more, together. I just don’t think we can afford to put the heating on.’

‘I know. How much was the shopping this time?’

‘Not as bad as last week. The butcher gave me some cheap mince, and I got special offers on tea bags and butter.’

‘Well done.’ He gave her another kiss. ‘We’ll manage, Nick. If we can get through the winter, things will get better.’

And they stood like that, arms round each other, watching me till I’d finished eating. I had the impression they liked me but at the same time, wanted me to go home as soon as possible. And sure enough, the minute I’d finished the last morsel, Daniel picked me up and called out the number on my identity disc, while Nicky punched the numbers into her phone.

‘There’s no reply,’ she said after a while.

‘OK. Well, the owner’s probably just gone out somewhere. Looking for their cat, probably!’ he added, but Nicky didn’t laugh.

‘We can’t keep him, Dan,’ she said.

‘I know. Of course I know that.’ He stroked me, and I gave him a little purr. I wanted to go back to George, obviously, but I was feeling full and safe and warm now, and could easily have fallen asleep right there in Daniel’s arms. It had been a terrible time, what with the fox, and the trauma of the fire …

The fire! I meowed and twitched my tail anxiously as it all came back to me. Poor George! My poor pub. Did I even have a home to go back to now? I wanted to explain to nice Daniel and Nicky that the number on my disc might belong to a phone that was lying in a burnt-up wreck of a building where nobody could live anymore.

‘He still seems a bit distressed,’ Nicky commented, and she gave my head a little stroke. ‘Perhaps you’re right, he might have been lost for ages. Although he doesn’t look too thin.’

I took that as a compliment.

‘Let’s just try the phone number again later on,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m sure someone will be out looking for him. He’s such a lovely cat and he looks well cared-for.’

I knew he was a human I could trust. He had good taste in cats. I was purring to myself happily as he put me down on a sofa, and I dozed off into a nice peaceful sleep.