The Killer Cat Runs Away

16

No Hope of Rescue. None.

Whistling cheerfully, the vet carried me back down to his van and unfurled me out of the fluffy pink towel into a cage. He dumped the cage down on the passenger seat.

So boil me in bunny juice. I hissed and spat.

‘Temper, temper,’ he said reprovingly.

We drove a mile or two and then his mobile rang. The vet pulled off the road and rang the number back. I only heard his side of the conversation. ‘Hi, Arif. What’s the problem?’

Arif must have explained because the next words were, ‘You need a cat?’

Excuse me? Was he talking to a madman? Who on earth needs a cat? I mean, we don’t do anything useful. We cost a lot to feed. We ruin the furniture. We do exactly what we want.

I ask the question again. Who needs a cat?

But clearly this Arif did, because when I tuned in again it was to hear the vet ringing Ms Whippy to check she didn’t mind if he lent me to some other vet he knew. ‘It’s only for half an hour, and I must say your Pusskins would be perfect for the job.’

Hear that? ‘Perfect’.

Obviously Ms Whippy agreed. So I admit that, by the time we met Arif somewhere around the park five minutes later, my head was already swelling.

‘Watch him!’ the vet warned as he handed my cage to Arif. ‘He’s in the foulest mood. But he’s the only cat booked into the surgery this evening. I have to give him all his shots tonight, so he can fly to Spain tomorrow.’

‘If the plane gets off the ground!’

I didn’t get the joke, but they still shared a laugh and then the vet climbed back in his van. ‘Be careful,’ he warned Arif, just before driving off. ‘That cat is horribly fierce so, whatever you do, don’t let anyone open his cage!’

Oh, thanks a bunch! What happened to my being ‘perfect’, I wondered as we set off down the street. I can’t say that Arif was the most considerate cat-cage carrier. He swung it till I was slipping from side to side like someone on board a ship in a gale. I paid him out by spitting through the bars and reaching out a paw to pull so many woollen threads out of his fancy jumper that I was practically hidden behind the tangles.

But my heart wasn’t in it. I was miserable. You know me. I am not one to wallow in despair and live my life in fear of what might lie round the next corner. But I admit that I was feeling really glum. I had set off with such high hopes: a better life, a nicer home and more appreciative company. People who recognized my true worth. People who saw me for the handsome, valiant, resourceful cat I am.

Now look at me. Stuck in a cage. Halfway to getting a heap of horrid injections I didn’t need, then lent out for all the world as if I were some rusty loft ladder, or a set of car jump leads.

Not to mention the insults. Ellie had never in all her life called me ‘horribly fierce’ or ‘in the foulest mood’. (She called me ‘spirited’ instead.) She’d never lent me out, or swung me in a cage, or wrapped me up like a sausage in a fluffy pink towel. Or threatened to take me off to Spain for ever, far away from my old friends.

My friends! Dear Tiger! Fun-loving Bella! Sweet Snowball! Where would they be right now?

Mucking about, no doubt, as happily as usual on Acacia Avenue.

Having a good laugh.

Without me.

Oh, how I wished I’d never got all huffy and run away! Why had I let that grumpy Mr Glad-To-See-The-Back-Of-That-Cat drive me away? How silly of me to have allowed myself to become jealous of that tiny fluff-ball Tinkerbell, and even that tiny human baby.

A baby! Why, the sweet little poppet had probably not been laughing at me at all. She had probably been laughing with me.

That is so different.

I had been so wrong! And I had nobody to blame but myself and my own foolishness. And now there was no hope of rescue. None.