To Be A Cat

The No-Hoper

BARNEY WAITED ON the porch for a while, expecting his mother to realize he wasn’t anywhere in the house and hoping she’d make the connection. But the door didn’t open. It just stayed there, a gigantic piece of unfriendly wood, which Barney’s dad had painted three years ago when he still lived there.

The usually quiet street felt full of a hundred noises – twittering birds, distant traffic, crisp packets scraping concrete as they travelled with the breeze.

Another noise. Rustling, coming from the little juniper bush in the garden. Two green cat’s eyes staring at him.

‘Hello?’

‘Who are you?’ the cat asked tenderly, in a voice as soothing as hot cocoa. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

She stepped out of the bush. She was a sleek, chocolate-brown cat that Barney vaguely recognized as belonging to Sheila, the new arrival at number 33.

‘Yes, you have,’ Barney said as this other cat came and rubbed her head against the side of his face. ‘I’m the boy who lives here. In this house. It’s just … I’ve changed … and I don’t know why.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and then she said it again (only this time in italics). ‘Oh. Oh, you poor thing. You poor little sardine. You’re one of them.’

‘One of who? Wait … does this happen to other people too?’

‘Oh yes. It does. I’m Mocha, by the way, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She purred, but then her mood switched at cat-speed and the purring stopped. Mocha started to look anxious.

Barney, though, needed answers. ‘Look, do you know why I’m like this? Do you know how I can change back? Could you help me?’

Mocha was looking past Barney now to the street. Her tail twitched, and her whiskers were curling slightly. She was sensing something. ‘I think, sweetie, we’re being watched.’

‘Watched? By who?’

‘By swipers, most probably.’

‘Swipers? What are they?’

Mocha turned to Barney and gave a rushed explanation, her soothing hot-chocolate voice now fast and nervous, like his mum’s after too much coffee. ‘There are three types of cats,’ she said, then named them. ‘There are swipers, who are tough street cats, and who you need to be scared of. Then there are firesides, like me, who have owners and who generally prefer staying at home. We aren’t scary, as a rule, not unless you try and bathe us. Well, apart from the …’ She hesitated, as if frightened to finish her sentence. ‘Apart from the Terrorcat.’

‘The Terrorcat? Who’s that?’

Mocha came closer, to whisper. ‘I hope you never find out.’

‘Why? What makes him so scary?’

‘He was just a normal cat once, but then he changed, just as a night follows a sunset,’ Mocha said with a shudder. ‘He developed powers, dark and evil powers, and became something else. He looked the same. But he was very, very different …’

‘What made him change?’

But Barney wasn’t going to get an answer on this one. You see, Mocha had just spotted something: a fat, thuggish ginger moggy on the other side of the street, lying under a parked car, staring straight at them. Or rather, straight at Barney.

‘Is that the Terrorcat?’

‘No, my dear. You would know about it if that was the Terrorcat. That’s Pumpkin. A swiper. He’s stupid. But violent. And he’s got a lot of equally stupid, equally violent friends.’

‘Why’s he watching me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and suddenly seemed less keen to be friends. ‘Now, I’d love to hang around, truthfully, but my owner – Sheila – she’s going on holiday today and I’m going to the cattery, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘I thought cats hated catteries.’

‘Not this one. It’s lovely.’

The cat started to trot away down the side of the house. ‘But wait!’ Barney called after her. ‘What about the third type of cat? You only mentioned two.’

Mocha stopped, tail-twitched, turned. ‘That’s your type. Former humans trapped in cat bodies.’

‘What are we called?’ Barney said, stalling for time and wanting Mocha to stay with him as long as she possibly could.

‘The no-hopers,’ Mocha told him sadly. ‘Because it’s true. You really have no hope.’