To Be A Cat

I am Barney

BARNEY WOKE.

It was still night outside the windows of the barge, and the stars remained in the sky. He was alone on the rug, exactly as Rissa and her parents had left him.

He could hear the river lapping at the barge. He looked up at the wooden walls and the paintings of plants. One was of a cactus in a desert, with its long shadow stretching back across the sand. It looked more beautiful than any painting he had ever seen.

He could see Robert’s guitar lying in the corner of the room next to the tiny kitchen area, and the remainder of the marmalade-flavoured carrot cake lying in a saucer near his front paws.

There are worse lives, he thought to himself, than the life of a cat on a barge. Being warm, sleeping on a soft rug.

He could stay here.

Safe.

For ever.

But then he remembered. His dad was alive. And right now his mum was living with a former cat. And what if that former cat was as deadly as that former cat’s mother? If that was the case his mum and Rissa could be in danger. No. He had to solve this. Somehow, he had to become human again. All he needed was to find out how, and he had a feeling he knew who’d be able to tell him. He didn’t know why, but he kept on thinking of the Terrorcat and that strange, sad green eye staring at him, and the warmth he had felt inside. The feeling that he had something to say but hadn’t.

Barney looked at the time on the old wooden clock on the wall.

It was half-past five in the morning.

Before he left he had some more milk, which had been left out for him, along with a nibble of the carrot cake too, as he knew he’d need all the strength he could get.

Then he had an idea.

Slowly, with his paws, he picked apart at the cake until it was a thousand little crumbs. Then he carefully pawed the crumbs onto the floor and shaped them into words on the light wooden floorboards:

I am Barney

It took him ages. Then he left, out of a tiny open window in the bathroom, and landed easily on the grass of the river bank.

He headed off in the direction of town, thinking about the shining green eye of the Terrorcat he had seen in his dream.