Christmas at the Cat Cafe

I paused in the doorway to watch as they ate greedily from the dishes on the kitchen floor. With their heads lowered, the four tabby sisters looked so similar that they were almost indistinguishable, although Maisie’s petite frame marked her out from the others. Eddie was at the far end of the line, noticeably taller and bulkier than his sisters, his black-and-white colouring a sleeker, glossier version of his father’s.

Debbie stood at the worktop, waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Morning, Molls, I was wondering where you’d got to.’ She smiled as I edged in alongside Purdy.

I had just taken my first mouthful when there was a scuffling sound across the hall, and Linda squeezed out of the living room, holding the door close to her body to prevent Beau from escaping. He yapped and scrabbled in protest as she pulled the door shut behind her.

‘Cuppa?’ Debbie asked.

‘Oh, yes, please,’ Linda answered, sidling into the kitchen to lean against the fridge. In her dressing gown, with mussed-up hair and eyes puffy with sleep, she was hardly recognizable as the immaculately presented woman I had met the day before.

At that moment Sophie raced noisily downstairs from her bedroom and steadied herself on the kitchen doorframe to pull on her trainers.

‘You having breakfast, Soph?’ Debbie asked.

Sophie glanced at her watch, considering whether she had time, and perhaps also whether she could face the contortions required to extract a bowl of cereal; the kitchen was compact at the best of times, let alone when it contained two adults and six cats. ‘Er, actually, don’t worry, Mum, I’ll get something at the canteen,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got to get my art portfolio—’

Before Debbie or Linda could stop her, Sophie had crossed the hall and flung open the living-room door. Beau instantly darted out into the hallway, his feathery eyebrows twitching, his pink tongue hanging out. He looked as if he could hardly believe his luck at finding so many cats directly in his eye-line.

Experience had taught me that, when it came to dogs, attack was the best form of defence. As Beau hurtled across the hall, I braced myself for a fight: my hackles rose, my ears flattened and I growled in warning.

But before he reached me, Linda had lunged out of the kitchen and swooped down to lift Beau off the ground. Thwarted and humiliated, Beau tried to break free, but Linda kept a tight hold on him, cradling him in her arms as if he were an angry baby who needed soothing. Realizing that the dog would not settle with several cats in such tantalizingly close proximity, she dropped him back into the living room and closed the door on him.

‘Sorry, I’d forgotten he was in there,’ Sophie said sheepishly, before grabbing her things and thundering downstairs and out through the café.

Debbie sighed and stirred two mugs of tea. ‘He’s a feisty little thing, isn’t he?’ she observed, over the sound of Beau’s determined scraping at the living-room door.

‘It’s the breed,’ Linda concurred. ‘He’s a Lhasa Apso – they’re very territorial. They were used to guard Buddhist monasteries in Tibet.’

Debbie raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, right,’ she replied in a flat voice. ‘Well, he’s not in Tibet now, he’s in the Cotswolds. In a cat café.’ She handed Linda a steaming mug of tea. ‘I mean . . . the clue’s in the title, really.’ She took a sip and fixed her sister with a look over the rim of her cup.

‘I know, Debbie – sorry,’ Linda replied. ‘I think he’s just a bit traumatized by the whole experience. I mean, all the arguing and shouting at home, it was so awful . . .’ Her cheeks flushed with colour and I could see that tears were imminent. I watched as Debbie put her mug back on the worktop and touched her sister’s arm.

‘Sorry, Lind, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Linda’s head dropped and she covered her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown, her shoulders starting to shake.

‘Don’t worry, Linda,’ Debbie reassured her. ‘I’m sure the cats will adjust to the situation. They’ll get used to Beau soon enough.’

She leant in to hug Linda, and I caught Linda’s eye over her shoulder. I held her gaze while the two women embraced, doing my best to convey that if anyone was going to have to adjust, it would not be me.

5

In spite of my determination to make as few concessions as possible to their presence, it was impossible to ignore Linda and Beau. With three adult humans, half a dozen cats and one dog sharing the flat’s limited space, there simply was not enough room for us all.

The living room bore the brunt of the impact. The opened sofa-bed took up so much of the floor area that to get from one side of the room to the other, Linda either had to edge sideways around the foot of the bed or clamber across the mattress. The alcove next to the sofa functioned as her makeshift wardrobe; she had propped her huge suitcase open in there, alongside Beau’s upended carrier, and piles of clothes, jewellery and cosmetics spilled out of it onto the floor.