Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life

‘But then again, we’ve both been saying our little one doesn’t really behave like a feral, haven’t we. He seems too trusting.’

I’m sure you can imagine how I felt as I listened to all this! I was mewing to myself like crazy and twitching all over with distress.

‘What the dog’s bum is up with you?’ Big kept asking me, but I was too intent on listening, to reply. Julian was looking for me! It seemed that so much time had passed, my family must have actually gone home to Little Broomford, but they hadn’t forgotten me. Caroline was pining for me! Julian had come back specially to put up pictures of me, he was walking the streets calling me! If only he would walk past here right now, I’d run to him, and I’d be rescued. I’d be taken home, I’d see Caroline, I’d be back to my old life, to you, Oliver, and you, all my other old friends in Little Broomford.

But then I mewed again with a new bout of anguish. What if he never happened to walk along the same street or path or alleyway at the same time as me? What if he gave up, like Big had suggested I ought to give up looking for the holiday cottage? Then he’d go back home without me, telling Caroline I was nowhere to be found. The pictures would be taken down again, and all the humans around here would stop talking about me the way Jean and Shirley were doing now, and nobody would look for me, and I’d have lost my only opportunity of going back to my real life. How could I afford to take that chance?

I glanced at Big. He was looking at me with such concern, meowing quietly to me about calming down and not getting myself upset, and why didn’t I tell him what the humans were saying? And I felt yet another wave of distress as I realised how fond I’d become of him and the other boys, how they’d taken me into their gang and looked after me, despite the fact that I was so different from them, and despite them thinking I was weird and posh and possibly magic on top of everything else. They’d be upset with me for leaving them now. Or perhaps they wouldn’t – perhaps they’d just think that was part of my weirdness, and forget about me as quickly as they’d accepted me.

‘Well,’ Jean was saying, ‘even if it really is our little cat, Shirl, there’s not a lot we can do until we see him again – then we could have another good look at him. Now, shall we get the bill? I need to get back and start a bit of housework.’

So this was it. I had to trust those two females; trust them, and trust my own grasp of Human language, or my chance was gone. I poised myself, preparing to make a dash for it.

‘Where are you going, Charlie?’ Big said, but there was something in his voice that made me think he’d guessed this was goodbye.

‘I’m sorry, Big,’ I meowed. ‘Thanks for everything. Say goodbye to the boys for me. I’ll miss you all.’

‘Charlie!’ he yowled as I ran straight round the end of the fence and threw myself at the legs of the nearest of the two females. ‘For the love of bloody rats’ intestines, don’t do it! They’ll skin you alive! They’ll roast you and eat you with their stinky red ketchup!’

‘Goodbye, Big,’ I mewed back to him loudly, as Shirley, gasping with surprise and squawking to Jean about what a coincidence it was that I’d turned up at that very moment, bent down to pick me up. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I called back as he continued to yowl after me ‘But I’m going home.’

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

It wasn’t until I was being held tightly in the arms of this human female I’d adopted as my friend, that I realised just how much I’d changed since I’d been living rough with the feral cats. She was squashing me against her enormous chest with her big plump arms, she was so determined not to let me go, and I was having to clench my teeth, shut my eyes tight and force myself to lie still, so strong was my instinct to nip her sharply on her wrist, jump down and run away. But even while I was struggling with myself I was wondering how it was that I seemed to have lost my trust in humans. I’d never been frightened of them in the old days. Oliver had taught me that although there were definitely some bad ones in the world, most of them were kind to us cats and wanted to be our friends. Yes, I’ve always remembered that, Ollie, because I was impressed that you’d learned to trust humans again despite having had a horrible experience with a very cruel human when you were a tiny kitten.

I was thinking about this now, telling myself to remember Oliver’s wise words, as Shirley was holding me in her tight grip.

‘Isn’t this incredible, Jean?’ she was saying. ‘Just as we were talking about him, he turned up!’

‘Yes, it’s amazing,’ agreed Jean, ‘it’s almost as if he was sat behind the fence listening to our whole conversation.’

‘I wonder if he is the missing Charlie. You’re right, though, he’s not like the picture in the poster. His coat is in a terrible state, and he’s got a few battle scars. And I don’t like the look of that poor eye.’

‘Well, the poster says he’s microchipped, so there’s only one way to find out whether it’s him,’ said Jean.