The Cat Who Liked Rain

Five

The third day after Night’s disappearance turned out quite differently from what Lukas had expected.

What on earth had he sparked off?

Early in the morning the telephone started ringing, and people came knocking on the door carrying cats of every colour imaginable. An old lady came trudging through the rain with a cat that was orange from top to toe, and asked Axel — who was only half awake — if this was the cat that had run away.

‘Eh?’ said Axel. An orange cat? Our missing cat is black, apart from some white at the very tip of his tail.’

‘Well,’ said the old lady, ‘maybe this is him even so?’

‘No,’ said Axel. ‘But thank you for coming.’

As he closed the door, the telephone rang; Beatrice answered, and she had barely put the receiver down when it rang again. Axel didn’t even have time to get dressed, as he was running backwards and forwards to the door all the time.

Black cats, grey cats, ugly cats, handsome cats, young cats, cats with evil eyes, cats that purred and rubbed up against your legs. They were all being carried in cardboard boxes, or inside raincoats.

‘What’s going on?’ Axel wondered in the end. The whole town is coming with their cats to our house. What on earth did you write on those notices you stuck up yesterday?’

‘That the missing cat was black with a little white patch at the tip of its tail,’ said Beatrice. ‘I don’t understand why all these people are coming with cats that aren’t even black.’

All this time, Lukas was fast asleep in bed, and had no idea about all these people who thought the cat they had found was Night. It wasn’t until he’d got up and Axel had gone to work, leaving all the chaos behind, that he realised what he had started.

‘Can you imagine how many people there must be who can’t read?’ asked Beatrice with a sigh.

‘I certainly think they can read,’ said Lukas. ‘I wrote on all the notices that the reward for finding Night was a million. I probably spelled it wrongly, but people must have understood even so.’

Beatrice was so surprised that she almost fell over one of the kitchen chairs.

‘You did what, did you say?’ she asked.

Lukas repeated what he had said.

‘I told you I was going to buy a comic,’ he said. ‘But what I really did was to go round the notices and write in that the reward was a million kronor.’

Lukas was surprised to discover how easy it was to tell the truth. It was as if everything that had been so difficult before had been swept away, now that Night had disappeared. Since that was the only thing that mattered to Lukas, everything else became much easier.

Beatrice shook her head.

‘Lukas,’ she said slowly, ‘why did you do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lukas said. ‘I just had to.’

That was as far as they got, because there was another knock on the door.

‘I haven’t the strength to look at any more brown cats,’ said Beatrice.

‘I’ll go,’ said Lukas, leaving the kitchen.

When he opened the door he found a man standing there with a big bag hanging over one of his shoulders. Lukas wondered if the man had a cat hidden inside it.

‘Is this where you can get a reward of a million kronor if you find a missing cat?’ the man asked.

‘Yes,’ said Lukas.

The man laughed as he responded.

‘Can a cat really be worth as much as that?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Lukas. ‘Night is worth that much.’

‘Night?’

‘My cat is called Night.’

Beatrice arrived at that point.

‘It’s a misunderstanding, of course,’ she said. ‘We don’t have a million to pay as a reward.’

‘I’m a journalist,’ said the man. ‘I thought I’d write something in the newspaper about this cat that’s worth a million kronor.’

Beatrice was horrified.

‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘We’ve had people coming here all morning, bringing cats of every description you can think of. There’ll be even more if you write about it in the newspaper. They might even come with other animals as well. Dogs and chickens and goodness only knows what else...’

‘It would be great if there was something in the paper about it,’ interrupted Lukas. ‘Especially if there was a photograph of Night as well. Then lots of people will see him. Maybe one of the readers will recognise him? By the way, I have a million in toy money. I can use that to pay the reward.’

‘Lukas,’ said Beatrice, ‘stop talking about money.’

But the journalist thought it would be a brilliant idea to write about Lukas and his cat, even if all that about such a big reward wasn’t really true.

‘I understand that you are so fond of your cat,’ he said. ‘I shall write about that. People like reading in the newspaper about people who are so fond of their missing pets.’

And so a photograph of Night appeared in the newspaper. Axel had taken it in the summer, when Night had been lying on Lukas’s knee outside the caravan. The journalist wrote about Lukas, where he lived, and that he hoped somebody would soon find his Night.

But there was still no sign of Night.

Even so, Lukas could think about nothing else. He thought about how Night would be hungry and wet and cold, he thought about nasty people throwing stones at him or pulling his tail. He thought so hard about Night that he almost turned into a cat himself. It was as if he had acquired black fur and pointed ears. But most of all, he thought that the best way of protecting Night was for him to think about the cat all the time. As long as Night was there inside Lukas’s head, he wouldn’t be in danger.

When he’d gone to bed that night, and Beatrice had tucked him in, Lukas made up his mind once again that he would have to run away. He couldn’t wait any longer, it would have to happen now.

But at the same time, he also thought of something else.

The currant bush.

The big, wild blackcurrant bush growing just outside the fence of Lukas’s garden.

The currant bush where Night had so much liked to curl up when it was warm, and when he wanted to be left in peace and sleep. There was something special about that currant bush. It was growing all on its own, with no other bushes anywhere near. Axel had often said it ought to be cut down. But when Lukas asked why, his dad hadn’t been able to give him an answer. It was as if currant bushes had to grow inside fences. They weren’t allowed to be wild. It seemed to Lukas that it was a bit like dogs having to wear collars. A fence was a sort of collar that currant bushes had to have.

Night had liked that wild currant bush so very much. Lukas sometimes thought that what grew there in the early autumn was really troll black-currants. They were very special berries, with a secret.

If you ate them, you could see straight into the troll world without needing to shut your eyes first.

Lukas stayed in bed, thinking about that bush. Needless to say, that was where he ought to start looking for Night.

Why hadn’t he realised that sooner!

Of course he would put Night’s special food saucer there, the one with the blue hoop round it, with a crack at one point on the edge. That saucer would be bound to entice Night back again.

He felt that he needed to act right away. But when he slid out of bed and tiptoed to the door, he could hear that his parents were still up. They were watching some television programme or other. He could hear his father yawning. Lukas went back to bed. He would have to wait until they’d gone to bed and fallen asleep. Then he would be able to sneak out of the house with the saucer.

Eventually, everything fell silent. Lukas put some clothes on over the top of his pyjamas. Then he tiptoed into the kitchen and carefully opened the fridge. He almost burst into tears when he saw the open tin of cat food standing there on its own, behind a pack of butter. It seemed to him that what he was looking at was poor, abandoned Night, not a can of cat food with no lid.

He put everything that was left onto the saucer.

Then he wondered what to do with the empty tin. Mum would doubtless think it was odd. She had a remarkable ability to see everything that nobody ought to be able to see. That somebody had eaten the cat food even when Night wasn’t there, for instance.

Lukas put some of the food from the saucer back into the can, and added a few drops of milk to make it look a bit more than it was. Then he closed the fridge door and tiptoed out into the hall. He listened to his father’s snores as they came rolling out from the bedroom. Then he carefully unlocked the front door and put it on the latch so that he wouldn’t be locked out when he’d closed it behind him.

It was still raining. It felt very cold, and Lukas shuddered. He wasn’t wearing any socks. He’d just stuck his feet into his Wellingtons. It felt creepy in the dark garden. Lukas hesitated before daring to enter the darkness beyond the light cast by the lamp over the door.

The currant bush was a long way away in the darkness. When it was light, Lukas used to think it wasn’t far at all to the fence. But now that it was dark, it felt as if the fence was as far away as a star in the sky. A black star that didn’t glisten.

He didn’t have a torch with him. But nevertheless, he would have to be brave and dare to walk into that darkness even so — and the splashing of the rain would prevent him from hearing if anybody came creeping up behind him.

But he had to do it. He needed to do it for Night’s sake. He had to be brave, even if there was nothing so difficult as daring to do something you didn’t dare do.

He closed his eyes tightly and ran through the darkness, holding tightly onto the saucer of food. He stumbled when he came to the fence, and spilled half the food. But he didn’t dare to pick it up, he didn’t even dare to look round. He clambered over the fence. He came to the currant bush, placed the saucer on the soaking wet ground, and ran back towards the welcoming light over the front door.

Then he went back to bed, his heart pounding.

He wasn’t yet sure what was worse: Night having disappeared in the darkness, or him daring to do something he didn’t dare to do.

He eventually fell asleep.

The next day, after he’d woken up, he ran through the garden to the wild, mysterious currant bush — then stopped dead.

Night wasn’t there.

But the saucer was empty.