The Cat Who Liked Rain

Fourteen

And then?

What happened next?

Night never came back. He had vanished forever in the wonderful Rainy-Weather Land that Lukas dreamed about all the time.

Whenever it was cloudy and rain was pattering on the windows, Lukas would stand by his window, his nose pressed up against the pane, and try to see Night. Sometimes he thought the patterns made by the raindrops on the window reminded him of Night’s face. Some trickles would suddenly look like whiskers, and two shiny drops could have been Night’s eyes. Oh yes, Lukas could see his cat in the rain, and he was happy to think that he had the only cat in the world who liked rain. He’d loved rain so much that he was now in a land where it rained all the time: the secret Rainy-Weather Land that was beyond all roads, all mountains and all seas.

But naturally, Lukas hoped that one day Night would come back and jump up and lie down next to him on his pillow. He would sleep for a whole day and a whole night, and then he would tell Lukas all about the many adventures he’d had.

But Night didn’t come back. Soon, several days could go by without Lukas thinking about Night at all. Then Lukas would be worried in case he forgot all about him. And so he wrote a note that he stuck up on the inside of his door, reminding him to think about Night every single day, for at least five minutes.

Lukas got more and more school work to do. When he thought about Night, it seemed that he was beginning to see him from a distance. At first, soon after Night had disappeared, he had always seemed to be very close by. But now it was almost as if Lukas saw him as a little black dot, far, far away.

Several years passed.

Lukas grew bigger and became older. One day his mum asked him if he’d like another cat.

‘I’ve already got a cat,’ Lukas told her. ‘I have Night. Even if he’s not around at the moment.’

‘But he’s been missing for several years now,’ said Beatrice.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Lukas. ‘I don’t want to have two cats. I have Night, even if he’s not here.’

Lukas sometimes dreamed about Night. It was always the same dream, repeated over and over again. Night sat alone on top of his rock, it was nighttime, and the moon was shining down on him. He was sitting washing himself, stroking his paw over his face and licking hard at his fur. But suddenly he would prick up his ears, as if he’d heard something. In his dream, Lukas knew that he was what Night had heard. Then Lukas would be standing at the bottom of the rock, and he and Night would talk to each other, until everything faded away and vanished.

Night never came back, and it was a mystery where he’d got to. But even when Lukas had grown up, he would always stop every time he saw a cat, and entice it to come and be stroked. He knew that it wasn’t Night. But it was as if every cat he came across had a little bit of Night in it. It was as if all the cats knew that Night was doing fine, that they had met him, and that he was sending greetings to Lukas through them.

‘Say hello to Night,’ Lukas used to say as he bent down to stroke the unknown cat. ‘Tell him everything’s fine here as well.’

Everybody who knew Lukas knew that he loved cats. No matter how ugly or vicious a cat might be, Lucas always bent down to stroke it. There were some people who thought Lukas could talk to cats.

He couldn’t really, of course.

It was just that he could never forget Night.

As long as he lived, Lukas kept on thinking about Night, and kept seeing him wandering along the road, on the way to the mysterious yet wonderful Rainy-Weather Land.