The Cat Who Liked Rain

Three

And so Lukas began his new life with Night.

It was soon clear to him that everything had changed since Night joined the household. Every morning when Lukas woke up, it was Night who’d woken him. He would jump up onto the bed when he thought Lukas had slept for long enough, and lie down on his face. Deep down in his dreams, Lukas could hear a purring noise: he would slowly wake up and open his eyes. The fur was so soft, and there was a smell of leaves and rain about Night.

The only problem was that the cat couldn’t tell the time. He sometimes woke Lukas up at four in the morning. Lukas tried to explain to Night that it was too early, and that he wanted to sleep longer than that. But Night just carried on playing, and when Lukas pulled the covers over his head, Night would continue to tug away at the sheets and bite Lukas’s toes. Lukas had no choice but to get up, go to the kitchen and pour out some milk for Night, in the saucer on the floor next to the cooker. Then he would close the door and hurry back to bed. Night would sit in the kitchen, squealing and squeaking, but there was nobody to let him out until Beatrice and Axel got up to make breakfast.

Needless to say, Whirlwind had argued about where Night’s litter tray ought to be. At first, Lukas had thought that the best place would be in the kitchen, where it would be easy to clear up any sand that Night had scratched and kicked onto the floor. But then Whirlwind started complaining about the smell being so awful that he couldn’t eat. Lukas hadn’t noticed any smell at all, and neither Axel nor Beatrice had mentioned any such thing until Whirlwind started going on about it. Eventually, Axel grew annoyed and said that Lukas should have the litter tray in his room. That was when Lukas resolved to teach Night to hiss every time Whirlwind spoke. But the main thing was that Night should grow up a bit. He was still only a kitten that jumped and scampered around, climbed up the curtains and played around with all the shoes in the hall.

For some time after Night had arrived on the scene, he wasn’t allowed out. Axel said he needed to get used to his new home first. Otherwise there was a risk that he might run away. And Lukas was scared that somebody might steal his cat if he showed itself outside the house. Several times when Lukas shouted for Night and he didn’t appear, Lukas was afraid that the kitten might somehow have found its way out and vanished. Then his heart started pounding, exactly like when he’d woken up out of a nightmare. He shouted for Night, searched the whole house, but there was no sign of him.

Lukas soon discovered where Night used to hide away when he wanted to be left in peace and go to sleep. He would often lie on the laundry basket in the bathroom. Sometimes he would be hiding in Axel’s wardrobe. Occasionally he would jump up and lie on top of one of the highest cupboards in the kitchen. But sometimes, Lukas couldn’t find him anywhere. When Beatrice noticed that Lukas was so upset that his lower lip started trembling, she would help him to look. And they would eventually find him. On one occasion Night had managed to get into the garage, and bedded down in a box full of rubbish. But every time Lukas found Night, he was so pleased that all he could do was to sit absolutely still, gazing at his very own cat. That was something quite new for Lukas — being so happy that the only thing it was possible to do was to sit quite still. Before that, being happy meant shouting out loud, or jumping for joy. But now that Night had entered Lukas’s life, something totally new had happened.

The big problem was Whirlwind. Lukas was soon absolutely sure that Whirlwind really was jealous because his little brother had a cat. Whirlwind sometimes pulled Night’s tail. Not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to make Night squeal. That made Lukas so furious that he started punching at Whirlwind, who naturally did nothing but laugh. If Axel was at home, he sometimes became so angry that it all ended by Lukas taking Night into his room and shutting the door. He had noticed that Whirlwind was careful to annoy him and Night when their father was at home, and preferably when Dad was tired or in a bad mood. Lukas suspected that Whirlwind hoped Dad would become so fed up with all the messing about that he would refuse to allow Night inside the house.

That was a horrible thought. Lukas didn’t know what he could do about that, apart from always keeping a little parcel of food in the fridge. If Night wasn’t allowed in the house, Lukas wouldn’t want to be there either. They would go off together.

Once, when his dad had been in a really bad mood and complained about all the arguments taking place every day, Lukas had asked his mum if Dad now regretted having given Lukas Night as a present. Mum calmed him down and said that of course, they would never even dream of taking the cat away from him. Lukas thought that was probably right. But then again, he wasn’t quite sure. Every day he made up his little parcel of food, and hid it behind the milk at the very back of the fridge.

The best thing would have been if Whirlwind had been given a cat of his own. Or perhaps even better, a different animal. A dog probably wouldn’t be a good idea. But some goldfish, perhaps, or canaries? Lukas wondered how he could be cunning enough to fix things so that he could give Whirlwind an animal as a birthday present. One day when he was out shopping with Beatrice, he persuaded her to take him into a pet shop. But he was depressed when he saw how expensive an aquarium was, even though it was the smallest one in the shop. And he’d never be able to afford a bird cage, complete with birds.

But Night was giving Lukas more than enough to think about. Every new day brought with it a new problem. Even so, every day made Lukas think that his cat was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Every night, before he went to sleep, Lukas would lie in bed and talk to Night, who was generally curled up on the pillow beside him. Every time Lukas closed his eyes, it was like closing an invisible door and entering a new world that belonged only to him and Night. It was a secret world that nobody else knew about. Even if it only existed inside his own head, it was absolutely real. You could wander around inside that world behind his closed eyelids, and everything looked just the same as it always did — despite the fact that everything was different.

It seemed to Lukas that this secret world was a fairytale world, full of trolls. There were troll streets and troll houses, troll shops and troll skateboards. In this secret world everybody spoke a troll language, and wore troll clothes. Sometimes a troll sun shone, and sometimes troll rain fell. Everybody ate troll food and played troll games. Laughed troll laughter and got troll scratches when they tripped up and scrubbed their knees. Everything was exactly the same as in the real world. But when Lukas put the word ‘troll’ in front of things, everything became secret and exciting. He was lying in bed, dreaming about all the adventures he, Troll-Lukas, and Troll-Night, would be able to experience together. As soon as summer came, and it was warm again.

And summer did come eventually. Lukas and Whirlwind helped Dad to spring-clean the caravan parked next to the garage. They scrubbed and rinsed with the hose pipe until they were soaking wet through. Then one day in early June, they towed the caravan to the camping site by the lake where they always used to spend every summer. Before Axel had his holidays, they would spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday out there. But once the holidays started, they lived in the caravan for a whole month.

Lukas had been dreading the first journey Night would have to make in the car. Would he be nervous? Would he try to run away? But to his great relief, Axel had thought about the problem and one day came home with a collar and lead for Night.

‘Now you’ll have to teach the cat how to wear a collar, and go for walks on a lead,’ he said.

Lukas found a black laundry pen and wrote Night’s name on the collar. For safety’s sake he also drew a skull, so that nobody would dare to try to steal Night.

Night didn’t like wearing a collar at all. Nor was it easy to teach Night how to go for walks on a lead. All Night did was to chew the lead and get tangled up in it. Whirlwind watched what was happening, with a broad grin on his face. But Lukas didn’t give up. He knew that Night would have to learn, or there would be problems.

It was a long, hot summer in the caravan. Lukas took Night to the little cabin he’d built the previous year — it was really only a gap between two big rocks, with a roof and a back and a door. It had collapsed during the winter, and split open in two places. Lukas made a new roof using branches and pine twigs with lots of needles, and when you stood outside and looked at it, it wasn’t easy to see that there was a cabin there at all. Lukas crept inside, and let Night off the lead. They often stayed in there for hours on end. Lukas would close his eyes and imagine that they were far, far away in the troll world. Only when he heard Beatrice shouting to say that they should come and eat would he put Night back on his lead, and crawl out of the cabin.

‘You’ll have to shout for Night as well,’ he said to Mum. ‘He’s also hungry.’

‘Oh, I forgot that,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’ll try to remember next time.’

Whirlwind had his own set of friends, and didn’t have time to annoy Lukas and Night during the summer. He spent most nights in a tent with his pals, and so Lukas could be alone in his little bed in the caravan with Night. Axel and Beatrice didn’t mind Night jumping up onto their bed during the night. Lukas grew more and more calm, the longer summer went on. Nobody was going to take his cat away from him!

Lukas also had friends of his own who lived in other caravans in long rows next to the lake shore. When he was playing with his friends, he would leave Night in the caravan, and Beatrice promised to look after him and not let him out.

The only thing wrong with summer was that it didn’t last long enough. Lukas tried not to think about the fact that it was August already. He would be starting school soon, and he was both looking forward to it and also worrying about what it would be like. It was best not to think about it at all. But days passed by, and Axel sometimes commented on how it was already getting darker in the evenings.

Lukas sometimes wondered why there weren’t any schools for cats. Why shouldn’t cats also need to learn various things? He tried to imagine a row of little cats at desks, putting their paws up and saying their names to a cat teacher at the front.

One night, before going to sleep, he made up his mind that he would start a school of his own with Night. He would try to teach him the same things that he’d been learning at school.

Then he fell asleep; and a few days later they moved back to Rowan Tree Road. They left the caravan by the lake, because they would still be going back there every weekend.

But Axel’s holidays were over, there was nothing anybody could do about that. And in three weeks’ time, Lukas would be starting school.

Lukas thought they would be three very long weeks. Three more weeks to go before his very first day at school came around.

But nothing turned out as he had expected.

One morning, Night disappeared.