Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life

‘Not very nice!’ Tail-less mimicked. ‘What an understatement, eh, boys? They’re thieving, spiteful, vicious hoodlums, that’s what they are,’ he added in a hiss. ‘We hate them, and they hate us. They’ve been known to kill cats, you know.’

That’s rich coming from you lot! I wanted to meow, knowing how close they’d come to killing this particular cat themselves. But I thought better of it, since I’d apparently now been adopted as their slightly odd posh friend.

‘I can well believe it,’ I said instead, limping after them. ‘One of them bit my human kitten’s finger.’

‘It probably deserved it,’ Big said dismissively. ‘But that’s not the point. We don’t go anywhere near the bins when they’re awake, right? We wait till the eating houses are closed for the night, then we go and get as many scraps as we can before the gulls wake up.’

‘It’s bad enough risking life and paw when the fishing boats come in,’ Stinky told me. ‘The gulls follow the boats back in from the sea – loads of them, all swarming together and shouting their heads off. If we want to try sneaking a fish when they’re unloaded, we have to be very quick and very crafty.’

‘One of us makes a run for the fish, while the others watch out for gulls and try to protect him,’ Big explained.

It sounded so dangerous, I wondered why they bothered, instead of just hunting for easy prey like mice. But then I remembered how delicious a mouthful of lovely fresh fish tasted, and my mouth started to water. I was weak with hunger. I’d have to take my lessons from these boys, whether I liked it or not.

By now we were approaching the area where all the shops were. I stayed close to the ferals, unsure what the procedure was.

‘Stay in that doorway, and watch me,’ Big said.

He stalked towards a rubbish bin outside the shop next to the one where I was waiting, and with a quick glance around him, leapt up onto the top of the bin, grabbed something in his mouth and ran back to me. It was all done in the flash of a cat’s eye.

‘Here you go,’ he said, dropping his trophy at my paws. ‘Help yourself. I’m going back for more.’

I sniffed the lump of food. Fish! Yes – just what I needed. I took a hungry bite and my appetite diminished straight away. What kind of fish was this? The outside was hard and crunchy! I spat it out, and tore at what was left of it with my teeth to investigate further. The inside looked nice enough – good white fish meat, a bit bland, but I had to be grateful for small mercies.

‘What on earth is it?’ I asked Big when he returned with another lump from the bin. ‘It’s all crunchy and horrible on the outside!’

‘Bit ungrateful, aren’t you?’ he remarked. ‘Is it true what they say about domestic cats – you’re so pampered, you can afford to be fussy eaters?’

‘Sorry,’ I said, immediately feeling ashamed. ‘You’re right. I’ve been used to the lovely food my humans hunt for me in the supermarkets. I suppose I am spoilt.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said easily. ‘You’ll have to eat whatever you can get now, like us, or you’ll starve. This is the type of fish humans buy from fish and chip shops. For some reason they like it covered in this stuff. Batter, they call it. Ruins the taste, doesn’t it, but the fish meat inside is OK, until it starts to go off, anyway. That’s why we only take what’s at the top of the bin.’ He took a bite of the second lump of food he’d brought back. ‘Want to try some of this?’

‘What is it?’ I asked doubtfully. It looked like mouse meat wrapped in bread.

‘They call it a burger. Don’t your humans eat them? I thought they all did. Round here, they even walk along the street eating them. Crazy! Then they wonder why the seagulls attack them!’

‘I think they do have them at home sometimes,’ I said. Just thinking about Laura cooking the dinners for my family made me feel sad all over again. ‘But I’ve never tried one.’

‘Help yourself. I’ll see what else I can find. Then we’ll move on to catch the others up at the Chinese takeaway. That’ll be an experience for you!’

I nibbled at the burger, discarding the bread, and then felt bad for being fussy. The meat part wasn’t bad, but it was smothered in something yellow and spicy that made me want to throw up. Then Big came back again, this time with a mouthful of chips. I knew all about them – I’d occasionally stolen one or two from my humans’ dinner plates when they hadn’t eaten them all. But these were different: greasy and slimy. I forced one down and hoped I wasn’t going to have an upset stomach.

‘If this is the sort of food humans eat around here,’ I commented, ‘they must have very strange tastes.’

‘Well, let’s face it,’ he said. ‘Humans are just plain weird. I’ve given up trying to work them out. I can’t understand what you see in them.’