To Be A Cat

A Whisper

HE WENT LEFT. He didn’t know why. Left just felt better than right. Instinct. And left was better, because he recognized the next street he came to, with its bigger detached houses and sky-high trees. It was where the Primm twins lived, but that’s not how Barney knew it. He knew it

because it was a street he had been on many times in his life. Because it was on the way to Blandford Library. Where his mum worked.

Where his mum was working right now.

He would go there.

Yes.

He would go there and make his mum understand. Somehow he would tell her the truth.

Her son was now a cat.

A cat, whom Miss Whipmire, along with half the swipers in Blandford, wanted dead.

Oh, and his dad was alive.

Yes, that really would take quite a bit of explaining.

A giant human appeared miles in front of Barney. It was one of his mum’s friends taking out heavy shopping bags from the boot of her car.

Claire! he shouted. Claire! Claire! Claire!

He stood at her ankles. Miaowing. Worth a shot, he thought. After all, Miss Whipmire won’t be the only former cat around here …

But it was no good.

Claire didn’t even look down as she crossed his path, nearly knocking him out with one of her bags as it swung boiler-sized tins of beans at his head.

Barney kept going, feeling very small indeed.

Walking down the road towards the library was like being in the depths of a valley, with enormous parked cars on one side of him and houses on the other. These houses, like all the houses in Blandford, were suddenly bigger than skyscrapers. It was weird. These were the streets he knew better than any other in the world, yet it might as well have been another planet.

Again he had the feeling that someone was watching him. He turned and saw nothing but a dark brown tail sticking out from behind the wheel of a parked car. The tail quickly whipped away.

Time to speed up, Barney said to himself.

He galloped, cat-style (of course), to the library, turning round every time he heard the tinkling of a collar.

Then, a whisper.

‘They’re after you,’ came a voice.

Barney looked. Couldn’t see anything except the wheel of a car.

‘What? The swipers?’

‘They follow Caramel,’ said the same dark brown cat he’d seen behind the car as he walked to the library, who – incidentally – was Mocha’s sister, born in the same litter (even if she hadn’t seen her sister for seven years). ‘She rewards their loyalty with sardines and catnip. In return she gets protection from some of the most deadly swipers in Blandford.’

‘Oh,’ said Barney, remembering what he had seen outside the school gates. ‘You mean Miss Whipmire.’

‘They’re getting closer. Hide.’ And then she darted away. A fast blur of chocolate-brown fur.

Barney only had a short distance to go, across the road and then the bowling green, but he felt exposed, and he panicked, the way he had seen insects panic when he’d turned over stones or lifted up plant pots in his garden.

I’m never going to scare an insect again, he told himself, if this is how it feels.

Then it was there.

One of the largest buildings in Blandford, made of glass like a giant greenhouse. Not the best hiding place in the world, now he thought about it.

There was his mother’s Mini in the car park.

He trod through a puddle of old rain and looked up at the steps which led to automatic doors. He doubted he’d be able to get them to open on his own. But then he saw a woman and her little boy arrive, so he waited and snuck in behind them, looking in every direction for his mother.