Charlie the Kitten Who Saved a Life

‘Yes!’ I meowed urgently. ‘The only way is to take me to Julian! He’ll recognise me straight away! Call his number! You said it was on that notice!’

But instead, they were fussing around, paying for their tea, getting their handbags and suddenly I was being carried off, out of the café and along the road.

‘Where are we going?’ I squealed, struggling furiously, as they carried me further and further away from the yard and my new friends. Even now, they’d probably be talking about me, wondering together at my stupidity in running off with humans. Would they miss me? Or would they just be glad to be rid of a nuisance and a liability?

‘Calm down, little cat,’ Shirley soothed me. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

‘Here we are,’ Jean said suddenly, stopping outside a house. There was a little car parked in front of it and she unlocked its doors. ‘You sit in the back with him, Shirley. He really ought to be in a basket of some sort, but it’s only a short drive. Look, I’ve got a little blanket there on the back seat that I use for my grandson. Let’s wrap him up in that so he can’t try to escape if he panics.’

‘No!’ I meowed, starting to wriggle frantically now as Shirley climbed awkwardly into the back of the car with me and proceeded, with Jean’s help, to wrap me up so that all my paws were completely immobilised. ‘Let me go!’

‘There,’ Jean panted. ‘Now just hold his head down so he can’t bite you. He’s getting upset, poor little thing.’

‘Of course I’m upset! You’ve taken me prisoner! I don’t want to go in the car with you! Where are you taking me?’

All my resolve to trust Jean and Shirley and to remember Oliver’s words of wisdom had flown out of the window. And as the doors were slammed shut, and Jean started the car running along, I’m ashamed to say I cowered on Shirley’s lap, growling quietly and letting out the occasional little mew of fear as if I was the kind of cat who’d never been used to humans at all.

‘It’s all right, little kitty,’ Shirley kept saying. ‘It’s all right.’

But it wasn’t. It was all wrong. I shouldn’t have trusted these humans. Why had they tied me up? What were they going to do to me? I should have listened to Big, after all, and stayed with him and the boys, where I was safe and being looked after. At the thought of Big, I mewed even more loudly. He’d been such a good friend! I’d remember him for my whole nine lives! I’d forget all about going back to Little Broomford, if only I could magic myself back with him and the boys right this minute!

Oh yes, you might very well look shocked, my friends. I can hardly believe it myself now. How appalling, how shameful that I was thinking like this, forgetting already where my real loyalties lay, forgetting how much I’d yearned for a chance to be back with my human family, to be cuddled by Caroline again and fed lovely cat food by Laura. But this is what fear does to you. It turns you from a sensible, reasonable cat – from a hero cat, in fact, one who has survived extreme danger, who has risked lives and limbs to try to protect his vulnerable and much-loved human kitten – into a snivelling wretch of a scaredy-cat.

I admit it, I was behaving like a scaredy-cat and I’m ashamed now to think about it. After everything I’d been through, you see, it seemed like just as happiness and reunion with my humans had been within my sight, I’d ended up making the wrong choice, a fatal mistake. And now I was so frightened and alone, I felt like giving up. I just lay there and cried. I cried for Big and the other boys. I cried for Julian and Laura and Caroline and even baby Jessica. I cried for you, Oliver, and you, my sisters and friends back in Little Broomford. But mostly, I cried for myself.

Thank goodness, though, it wasn’t very long before the car stopped again.

‘Here we are,’ Shirley said, still clutching me in my tightly wrapped bundle as Jean helped her out of the car. ‘Now, don’t start panicking, little kitty. Mr Caswell is a very kind man.’