To Be A Cat

A City of Books

IT WAS A city of books.

Every aisle between the towering bookshelves was street-sized. The shelves themselves seemed impossibly high, but at least he was unseen here. Barney had deliberately chosen an aisle with no people. He looked up and saw the same label on all the shelves: Classic Literature. Authors S–Z.

He saw books with spines as tall and wide as doors, large names on them: William Shakespeare. Leo Tolstoy. Mark Twain. Voltaire. Barney had no idea that all four of these very famous dead writers had, at one time or another, been cats. Or that one of them had even admitted to having been a cat. (That one was Mark Twain, who had written very brilliant books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, who were both boys but acted more like wild and adventurous cats, and were based on Mark Twain’s own early years as a tomcat. Hence the clue, Tom Sawyer.) Indeed, as I think I’ve told you, most of the really brilliant people who have ever lived have been cats at one time or another. And that is because many of the great cat geniuses, in cat form, get very fed up of not having the kind of wiggly thumbs and fingers that let you write a book.

And you know when people say, ‘I just don’t know where she (or he) gets it from’ – the ‘it’ meaning imagination or talent or nastiness? You can be pretty sure he (or she) gets it from having been a cat somewhere along the line. Or knowing or loving someone who used to be a cat.

Anyway, I digress. Let’s get back to—

Barney.

He was trying to lift his neck as high as possible to look over the lowest row of books. He saw the desk, but there was only a man at it. A man with orange hair and an orange moustache, eating an orange. Barney had seen him before, when he’d been here with his mum. The man was called Jeremy, Barney remembered, and he had been a bit grumpy.

He still looked grumpy now, actually, as he chewed his orange and stared crossly towards a noisy little girl and her mum who were in the far corner looking at picture books.

‘BORING!’ the girl was yelling as her mum showed her a book about crocodiles. ‘Want DVD!’

And she really liked saying ‘DVD’ so she kept on saying it, as a kind of chant. ‘DVD! DVD! DVD!’

Barney turned back round. If he didn’t find his mother soon, then someone else was bound to find him, and he’d be thrown outside to fend for himself against those evil and obviously super-powered cats.

And there she was!

Three bookshelves along. He could see her jeans. She must have been stacking more books back in place. The trouble was, there was no way of reaching her without stepping out into the view of the orange man. And, anyway, he couldn’t just reach his mum with no plan. How could he prove who he was? Then inspiration struck.

He had it!

It was perfect!

And a stroke of luck aided his plan. Barney heard an incredibly loud wail coming from the picture-book section. The little girl was now crying and screaming, throwing books all over the place.

‘No like croccy-dile! No like teddy bear! DVD! DVD! DVD!’

Her mother – a blonde lady wearing a lot of make-up – was crouching over her, hands hovering nervously, as though her daughter was a very dangerous and complicated bomb.

‘Calm down, Florence. It’s all right. Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home and watch a DVD. You can watch Princess Piglet. That’s your favourite. And you can have some jelly stars too!’

‘No want jeh-wee stars! Want choc-lutt! CHOC-LUTT!’

‘You can have some chocolate. Just, please … get off the floor.’

‘No, Mummy! No! No-aaaaagh!’

Meanwhile orange man, Jeremy, had finished eating his fruit and was now stepping out from behind the desk to walk over and get cross with the little girl in pink and her mother.

So, this was the moment.

Barney ran, fast and low, feeling yet again like a panicking ant, down the aisle, over a book that had fallen off the shelf with the words: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the cover. Then he reached his mum. Staring up at her face, he realized she looked worried. What he didn’t know was that she had already heard the message Rissa had left this morning by using her mobile to check her home answering machine. But Rissa hadn’t said much. She’d been cut off, so Mrs Willow didn’t have a clue what it had been about.

Barney’s mum had tried phoning back but there was no answer. So she had then phoned the school, and the secretary had put her through to Miss Whipmire herself (who Barney’s mum hadn’t even asked to speak to).

‘Oh, yes, don’t worry,’ Miss Whipmire had said in a most reassuring voice. ‘He’s at school. I just saw him only a moment ago. But I’m afraid he will be very late home as he got into a bit of trouble in the school corridor.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Yes. Bullying. Picking on other Year Sevens.’

‘Bullying? That doesn’t sound like Barney.’

And Miss Whipmire had laughed. ‘What? After the fire alarm?’

‘Fire alarm? What fire alarm?’

‘Listen, no mother ever likes to believe their son could be a little monster. But let me assure you, he’s been a little monster these past two days. I’ve seen it with my own eyes … So I’ve had no choice but to give him a detention. He won’t be home until eight o’clock tonight.’

‘Eight? A four-hour detention? That seems a bit excessive.’

‘Excessive deeds require excessive measures, Mrs Willow.’

It had been a strange conversation. And it was the reason why she looked troubled as Barney miaowed up at her.

Mum. Look. Down here. Look at me.

And she did look, as she slipped a thin book of poetry onto a high shelf.

‘It’s you,’ she said.

She recognized him! But then Barney’s heart sank as she said, ‘The cat from this morning. What are you doing here? Come on … no cats are allowed in the library.’

Barney waited for his mum to reach down for him and, at the last available moment, sprang away from her, wanting her to follow. He looked up at the sides of the bookshelves until he was where he wanted to be.

Classics: A–K.

He ran along, looking desperately at the spines of books.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice … Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights … Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner …

Then he got there. To the Ks.

His plan was to find his favourite book, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. It was an old book that he had found one evening and which hadn’t been taken out of the library since 22 August 1982. It was a bit of an odd story really, about a boy who falls into a pond and turns into a weird creature called a Water Baby. Anyway, Barney liked it, odd or not, and he’d read it about ten times when his parents first divorced. Plus a few times since.

And his mum knew he liked it because he had kept asking her to get it out for him again and again. So he thought that if he deliberately went over to that book and touched it with his paws, even tried to pull it off the shelf, then he might just get her to realize he was her son. And he knew the book would be on the bottom shelf because that was where it always was.

Trouble was, The Water Babies was nowhere to be seen, which was very weird because Barney was sure he was the only person who ever took it out of the library. Well, since 1982, anyway. So Barney looked for another book that he liked, but he couldn’t see any except The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, which he hadn’t actually really liked very much but which was at least a book his mum knew he’d read. It was on the third shelf so he tried to jump. But Barney couldn’t get anywhere near where he wanted to be. All he did was bring down another book. A hardback which fell on top of him. He could see the cover, with the scary-looking block capitals KAFKA and METAMORPHOSIS falling towards him, before the inevitable clunk on the head.

So, his plan had failed.

Barney hadn’t been able to look like anything but an insane cat, and now his mother’s hands were on his ribs, trying to pull him off the carpet his claws didn’t want to leave.

She carried him – past all the books made specifically for human hands, books he knew he might never have the chance to read again. And now there was someone else.

Jeremy.

The orange man.

‘What is that doing in here?’ he asked, disgusted.

‘No idea,’ said Barney’s mum. ‘Believe it or not, I’m pretty sure this is the same cat I saw in my house this morning. You know, the one I was telling you about.’

‘Odd,’ said Jeremy. ‘Oh well. This isn’t a zoo.’

He pointed to the automatic doors, meaning for Barney’s mum to throw him out of the library. And she would have done if it hadn’t been for the little girl in pink. The one who had been screaming ‘DVD’ moments before.

Florence.

‘Mummy, look! Look, Mummy! LOOK NOW!’

Her mummy looked.

‘Oh, gosh! It’s Maurice.’

Maurice?

Who was Maurice?

Barney saw them both walk over, and the woman tell his mum and Jeremy that the cat belonged to them.

‘How can we be sure the cat’s yours?’ asked Jeremy suspiciously.

Florence’s mum got out her phone, and moments later showed them a picture of a black cat with a white patch of fur around its left eye. To Barney’s horror, the cat was dressed in a fairy costume, complete with wings, and looked very uncomfortable.

‘Wan’ go home!’ Florence was wailing. ‘Wan’ go home an’ see Gaff-Gaff!’

‘There you go,’ said Mrs Willow, handing her son over to a complete stranger.

Mum. It’s me.

For the one thousandth time.

Barney saw the automatic doors slide behind him and his mum standing inside the library, watching him leave.

I love you, he said, because it seemed like a very long time since he had told her that, and because he didn’t know if he would get the opportunity again.

Not that it meant anything.

It was just another faint miaow, lost on the breeze.