To Be A Cat

63 Sycamore Terrace

SYCAMORE TERRACE WAS THE most normal-looking street you have ever seen. It was so normal-looking that even if you had never been on it before you would think you had, because it was like so many other streets you’ve been on. It had normal-looking houses. The houses had normal-looking doors and windows. True, there was one piece of graffiti, on a wall near the end of the road, but the street was so boringly normal and uninspiring that the graffiti just said, ‘Graffiti’. And the most absolutely normal thing of all was the house at number 63.

Sandwiched in a terrace between the still-pretty-average 61 and 65 – where the Freeman children had once lived (the ones who had blown away a certain cat’s tail with a firework) – number 63 was so achingly normal it made its otherwise bland neighbouring houses look positively crazy with their patterned curtains and Neighbourhood Watch window stickers. Seriously, number 63 was so boring-looking, with its door and its three windows and its roof, that you could forget what it looked like even as you looked at it.

But as Barney arrived outside in the fading evening light he felt anything but bored. After all, he knew who lived at this house. And he knew that if he had a chance of becoming his true self again then this was the most obvious place to start looking.

He was relieved to see no sign of Miss Whipmire’s silver car. It was Wednesday evening. The weekly school governors’ meeting. This was good. Hopefully he’d be able to go inside, find Maurice and be out by the time she came back.

Barney went through the passageway between 63 and 65, under the wooden gate.

‘Wait, cat,’ mumbled a kind-hearted woodlouse clinging upside down to the damp wood. ‘It’s dangerous in there.’

‘Thanks,’ said Barney, but ignored the advice. He crossed the back yard, noticing the smell of fish getting stronger as he approached the cat flap in the back door. The cat flap was transparent plastic but it was too clouded to see what was inside. Before he pushed his head through, Barney had a quick look at the garden. It was considerably overgrown, the lawn didn’t look like it had been mown for years, and the flower beds were full of weeds. By the back wall of the house leaned the real Miss Whipmire’s old bicycle, now unused and covered in rust. Barney realized that the sleek silver car that Miss Whipmire now drove must have been purchased after the head teacher and her cat had swapped places.

Barney pressed his way inside. He was in the kitchen, and at first he could think of nothing but the smell. Fishy smells filled his nostrils and wet his tongue. And he could see why. The kitchen was full of fish. The kitchen table was covered in fresh silver trout. There were open tins of pilchards and tuna on the scruffy units, and a pile of unopened sardine tins. And all around the floor there were fish bones – complete skeletons, sometimes, with the heads still untouched.

Barney crossed through as quietly as he could, trying to ignore the dead trout eyes staring blankly up at him.

Then he heard a voice.

‘Excuse me!’ it squeaked. ‘I appear to be a little bit stuck.’

Barney followed the voice and reached a wooden board, on which was fastened a brown mouse trapped beneath a thin rod of metal. A mousetrap.

‘Sorry …’ The mouse could hardly breathe. The metal was digging fast into his neck, only minutes away from slicing his head clean off. ‘I don’t make a habit of asking cats for help, of course. And I wouldn’t mind, really. I mean, my life’s not been much to write home about. But I’ve got little ones who depend on me. I … I smelled the cheese and I couldn’t help it, it’s gorgonzola …’

Barney didn’t know what to do. If he’d still been a human it would have been one thing. But with paws, diminished size and feeble strength it was quite another. Barney noticed a jar of fish oil sitting nearby, knocked it on its side so that it poured over the mouse and the trap, then tried his best to pull back on the metal with one paw while pressing down on the wood with another. With the oil making things slippery, the mouse managed to slide his head out and free as the trap slammed against the wood, taking a few whiskers with it.

‘Most rare,’ he said, confused, as blood leaked from his neck. ‘What kind of cat are you? Saving a humble little mouse like old Moosh here.’

‘Actually, I’m a—’

Moosh the mouse suddenly looked terrified and scuttled back to a tiny hole in the skirting board, dripping neck blood and fish oil as he went.

‘Wait,’ said Barney. ‘Where are you go—?’

‘Run for your life, kind cat!’

Barney heard the cat flap.

It was the cat with bat-sized ears. Lyka.

Barney quickly ran to the hallway, then upstairs. There were dead fish and their bones up there too, along with bowls of creamy milk lining the landing. He heard a noise downstairs. Then another one, from somewhere upstairs. The sound of a yawn. Someone was waking up. Barney didn’t know whether he should be hiding or looking for Maurice. After all, if Lyka was here there were probably other swipers too. In fact, he knew he had to get out. It was too dangerous. But before he could think how to do this he noticed another smell. A delirious, wonderful, soul-tickling scent like none he’d ever known. As soon as he smelled it he felt hypnotized, and could do nothing but follow where it led. Which was past the bathroom, over rugs and fish bones and cat fur, to the last room on the left.

He entered. Saw a room full of identical plants in pots. He recognized the plant from when he used to help his dad with the garden. It was catnip. Known to send cats into a state of delirium. He could do nothing but walk forward into the room to get closer to the plants.

Just as the wonderful scent had taken over every part of his brain, Barney heard a faint and high-pitched voice behind him.

‘Meee-ow,’ it said.

It was obviously an order to attack as the next thing Barney knew, something was covering him. Something soft, but pressing down hard on his back. Whatever it was blocked the smell of catnip and was bringing him to his senses again.

‘Get off me,’ he cried. ‘Please, let me go.’

But he was now being pushed – or dragged – in what he realized was a cat blanket. ‘Please, get off me!’

It was no good.

He was still being dragged out of the room, across the landing, his claws struggling to cling to the small woollen loops. But whoever was dragging him must have been strong because he kept being pulled with the same steady force. ‘Look, this is a mistake. If you let me go I’ll just leave. Honestly. No questions asked. Please, it’s all a mistake. Let me go.’

Still no good.

His attacker seemed to be turning him round another corner into a different room. Pressing his face against the blanket he could see through it, but even with cat’s eyes it was only shapes and shadows that didn’t make much sense.

Then, eventually, he stopped moving and the pressure of the blanket lightened.

‘All right, kittens,’ came a voice he recognized. ‘Release him.’

Kittens?

He had been assaulted by kittens?

It was true. The blanket peeled back and Barney was in a room full of bright light. He looked behind him, blinking, to see seven small kittens with giant ears, each biting the edge of the blanket. All seven of them like miniature Lykas. Through Barney’s human eyes they would have looked cute, but now they looked like nasty little bullies. Barney turned, just in time to see Lyka and a couple of other swipers closing the door. Then she turned to her kittens. ‘Well done, my babies.’

Barney looked back towards the voice he had heard, and saw Pumpkin sitting on top of an old, switched-off TV that must have once belonged to the real Polly Whipmire. Beside the TV was one of her old books. The book was called How To Be A Thoroughly Nice Person To Pretty Much Everyone by Tiffany Thoroughgood. And next to that were bones. And this time they didn’t belong to a fish. They were more solid. Cat-sized, but missing a head.

Then Pumpkin spoke. ‘Right, swipers, let him have it.’ And a large cat came up to Barney. He was a large, old tortoiseshell with a bit of a limp. There were other bits of him that looked like they were wounded – patches where his fur seemed thinner or not there at all. It gave him the look of someone who had been roughly put together like a rag doll. But he could certainly swipe, and fast and hard too. Barney hardly knew where he was as the cat’s paws and claws sliced at him.

Then other swipers joined in. Lyka, the kittens, Pumpkin, the bronze and black tabby, all of them. And Barney was just a blur of pain and fear.

But then the door opened. The cats stopped and waited, as Barney looked desperately around for an escape. The door to the room was open but it was well-guarded on every side. And there she was, Miss Whipmire, with Maurice standing there behind her in the body he’d stolen from Barney.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Miss Whipmire. ‘It looks like you swipers have managed to do something right for once.’

‘Mum, what are you going to do to him?’ asked Maurice, looking worried.

Miss Whipmire turned to her son. She would have liked to kill Barney there and then but doubted her child had the stomach for the wails. So she picked up Barney, who was dazed and throbbing with pain.

‘Nothing, darling. Now, don’t you worry about it. I’m going to take him for a little drive. You go and enjoy some catnip.’

‘But Mum—’

‘No more buts, darling,’ snapped Miss Whipmire. ‘We’ve talked about this.’

As Miss Whipmire started carrying him downstairs, Barney heard Pumpkin.

‘Before you be goin’, what about our sardines? Will you open some tins for us?’

Miss Whipmire turned, furious. ‘No, you are getting too slow and fat. I think I need to keep you swipers a little bit hungrier.’

And the swipers stood out on the landing, mumbling their unhappiness as Miss Whipmire crunched her way over fish bones and out of the house, squeezing Barney breathlessly close.

‘So, you thought you could come here and speak to my Maurice without me, did you? You really are a sly thing, aren’t you? Oh, well, it looks like that’s another subject you’re bad at, doesn’t it? Staying alive.’

And Barney left the foul, filthy hallway and was carried out into the cold, uncaring wind.

‘Now, Mr No-hoper, let’s grade your chance of survival,’ Miss Whipmire hissed evilly, seconds before hurling him hard into the boot of her small yellow car. ‘Let’s give you an F. For Fatally Failing Feline.’

Then the blackness came, with the sound of the boot closing, along with all possible hope.