To Be A Cat

D. I. E.

BARNEY HAD FELT a bit like this before, in the old days before his parents divorced. Obviously he’d never actually been a cat, but he’d felt that feeling of not having a voice. Or rather, not having a voice that anyone properly listened to.

You see, Barney’s mum and dad used to have lots of arguments. They’d row about almost anything. They’d row every time they drove in a car together. They’d row about his dad leaving old milk in the fridge when it had gone sour. About whose turn it was to walk Guster last thing at night.

And, after a while, there were no spaces between the rows.

Barney’s mum and dad had become trapped in a never-ending argument, and no matter how many times Barney told them to stop, or got them to promise they’d never do it again, they always did do it again.

And it was horrible.

When he was in bed Barney used to put his hands over his ears and close his eyes tight shut, trying to cancel out the shouting. ‘Be quiet,’ he used to whisper. ‘Please, just be quiet.’

But even though he hated his mum and dad getting cross with each other, he hated it even more when they told him they were getting a divorce. When he was younger he didn’t really know what ‘divorce’ meant, although he knew it wasn’t good. How could a word with the letters ‘d’, ‘i’ and ‘e’ in it – in that order – mean something nice?

‘Dad’s not going to live with us any more,’ his mum had said.

‘What? Why?’

‘Because we think you will be happier – and everyone will be happier – if me and your dad live apart.’

‘So, you’re splitting up because of me?’

‘No, Barney, of course not,’ his mum said.

‘Well, good. Because I want you to stay together. Why can’t you both stop arguing? It can’t be that hard. At school we learned about Carthusian monks who don’t speak for years. Why don’t you just not speak? Then you couldn’t argue.’

But Barney couldn’t convince her. Or his dad, for that matter, who put his hand on Barney’s shoulder and said, ‘Barney, sometimes what seems like a bad thing is really the best thing.’

‘But I won’t ever see you.’

‘You’ll see me on Saturdays. We’ll have fun together.’

Barney wasn’t impressed. He already had fun on Saturdays. It was Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays that needed improving. And having a Dad-less house certainly didn’t make them any better. In fact, Barney found himself actually wanting to

hear his mum and dad have an argument, because it would have been better than hearing his mum on her own, crying.

He spent nearly a year like this.

Saturdays with his dad trying too hard to be Mr Fun-Father, going to zoos and theme parks and football matches, which he would never have taken Barney to before.

‘You’ve had fun, haven’t you?’ his dad always said at the end of each Saturday.

‘Yes,’ Barney would say, and he’d sometimes mean it, but it was never enough fun to balance out six days of non-fun.