Alfie in the Snow

After lunch I put my thoughts of Hana aside as I had to go and find Tiger. I had ignored it for the past few days, but I had growing niggling doubts about her. I had barely seen her since she’d told me she was fully recovered from her illness. Even George was complaining that he hadn’t been able to find her. The other Edgar Road cats had also noticed that she was acting out of character. Not only was she barely around, but when she was she was quiet and not her normal feisty self. She hadn’t even bothered to be rude to Salmon the other day. I had a bad feeling, and was pretty sure something wasn’t quite right. I could feel it in my fur.

So, without drawing George’s attention to it, I needed to go and sort it out once and for all. I was quite a perceptive cat and my intuition said that all was not well, and for once I refused to be fobbed off. If Tiger wasn’t wanting to spend time with me any more then she had to tell me. But she couldn’t do that to George; he thought she was his mum and that was a relationship that you didn’t get to walk away from. Or you shouldn’t get to walk away from anyway. I went from worried to angry and back to worried again. I really did need to get to the bottom of this.

George had gone out, saying he had things to do. He really didn’t but I went along with it. However, I was grateful, as I wanted to confront Tiger on her own. I wasn’t going to let her wriggle her way out of this one.

I bashed on the cat flap and waited. It seemed to take a long time, so I bashed again. Eventually she appeared and as she came through the small door my first reaction was shock. She looked thinner than the last time I saw her.

Tiger had been a bit chunky when we first met; she liked her food and she was lazy but I had introduced her to the joy of exercise and she’d slimmed down, but even so the cat in front of me looked as if she was mainly skin and bones. I wondered how long it had been since I last saw her, maybe a week. How did she get to be like this in a week?

‘Tiger,’ I said simply. I found my voice choking. I missed her, my boy missed her. We were a family.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you, Alfie,’ she said. ‘But you know, I’m not exactly looking my best,’ she tried to joke, but it fell flat between us.

‘What’s going on? I need to know, not just for me but for George too. He misses you and he’s only young. And you look terrible.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I corrected.

‘I don’t know how to tell you.’ Her voice became sad. ‘I’ve been avoiding you, both of you.’

‘What, have you met someone else?’ I asked. It would explain the weight loss. Claire said she always lost weight when she first fell in love. Tiger narrowed her eyes at me.

‘God, you are ridiculous sometimes, Alfie. No, I haven’t met anyone else,’ she snapped.

‘Then what?’ My heart was beating right out of my body and my legs had turned to jelly. I sat down.

‘I lied to you. When I went to the vet I wasn’t just having a check-up, I wasn’t feeling too good. I’ve been feeling tired for ages, and I’ve been struggling to eat, and they ran loads of tests. I did have some tablets, like I told you, and I did feel a bit better for a while, but there’s bad news, Alfie.’

‘No,’ I said, but then I reasoned that she could get more tablets. It might just take longer than she first thought. Poor Tiger, all that dried food though.

‘I, I thought if I carried on as normal it might just resolve itself but it isn’t going to. I’m tired all the time, I can barely get to the end of the garden let alone the street. Alfie, my family were talking and I don’t have long left.’

‘What do you mean?’ I felt a chill in my fur. My heart sunk into my paws.

‘I’m dying, Alfie. I’m so, so, sorry but I’m not going to be here much longer.’

‘No, that’s not possible.’ I couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying.

‘Alfie, it’s true, I’m not going to get better and I don’t have long left.’ I blinked. She sounded so matter of fact about it.

‘I can’t, I can’t …’ Words failed me.

‘Oh Alfie, I’ve been trying to come to terms with it, you know, but it’s so hard. I don’t want to leave you, I certainly don’t want to leave George. I love life but it’s quickly slipping out of me and there’s nothing we can do. I have to accept it and unfortunately that means you do too.’

‘Surely there must be something someone can do. The vet, another vet? I could make a plan—’

‘We’ve exhausted everything. My family are sad which is heart-breaking. They are old and they’ve had me since I was a kitten, they say they’re going to be lost without me.’

‘I’m going to be lost without you,’ I said, selfishly.

‘I know. But you know, you have great families, you have great friends, and you have George.’

I shuddered as the thought hit me square between the eyes.

‘How are we going to tell George?’

‘I don’t know.’ I saw Tiger falter then. She had been so strong when she spoke, composed, but not any more.

‘We’ll tell him together,’ I said. ‘But not today, not yet, I need to let it sink in too. It doesn’t feel real.’