Christmas at the Cat Cafe

Linda, who was tying her hair back at the mirror beside the counter, registered the look of concern on her sister’s face. ‘What’s up, Debs?’ she asked casually.

‘I haven’t seen Jasper for a couple of days. He’s not been in for breakfast, and he’s not in the alley, either,’ Debbie replied, frowning.

Linda’s eyes slid back to her reflection in the mirror. ‘To lose one cat may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness,’ she observed, smiling wryly until Debbie’s steely look sent her scurrying to refill the napkin-holders.

‘Oh, hello, it’s Debbie Walsh from Molly’s. I’m afraid we’ve lost another cat,’ Debbie told the vet, blushing, on the telephone later that morning. ‘Could you let me know if you hear anything?’

However, there was no poster campaign for Jasper, as there had been for Eddie, and Debbie avoided mentioning his disappearance to the café’s customers. I suspected that Linda’s comment might have touched a nerve, and Debbie was embarrassed by the fact that the Cotswolds’ only cat café had now mislaid two of its charges.

Throughout the day Debbie threw worried looks in my direction while I sat at the window, staring anxiously down the parade. ‘Don’t worry, Molls – Jasper’s just gone wandering again, that’s all,’ she reassured me. I rubbed my cheek against her hand, wishing I could explain to her what was really going on.

I veered between telling myself that Jasper would find Eddie and bring him home, and feeling certain that I would never see either of them again. Even sleep brought no respite: I was troubled by unsettling dreams, from which I would wake with a sudden jolt of panic and an overwhelming sense that I should be doing more – that I should have been the one to go after Eddie. The powerlessness of my position, stuck at the café waiting, was agonizing. Every time the phone rang, my stomach lurched, as I hoped – and at the same time dreaded – that it was a call about Eddie or Jasper.

Although the kittens understood why their father had gone, the loss of Jasper in addition to Eddie had a de-stabilizing effect on our fractured family. I became more withdrawn and taciturn than ever, spending hour after hour gazing listlessly through the window. We were now an all-female colony, and in the vacuum created by Eddie and Jasper’s absence, the kittens became more quarrelsome, as if they were jostling for position in the new hierarchy.

Purdy had always assumed certain privileges, as the most confident and outgoing of the litter; but, without their father around, Abby and Bella now became more extrovert and began to challenge Purdy’s dominance. I kept out of their squabbles, thinking the best thing I could do was allow them to work out their sibling rivalries for themselves, but barely a day went by when I didn’t hear a sudden hiss and spit as a minor disagreement boiled over into conflict. Their disputes usually ended with Purdy, realizing she was outnumbered, striding huffily out through the cat flap and marching off down the cobbles. She would often hop onto Jo’s white van outside the hardware shop and look around insouciantly, before settling down on the van’s roof for a proprietorial wash.

One morning, Linda took delivery of a large cardboard box at the door while she and Debbie were preparing to open the café.

‘What’s in there, Lind?’ Debbie asked, watching Linda run a knife along the seam of brown tape.

‘Ming’s Mugs,’ answered Linda brightly, enjoying Debbie’s look of blank incomprehension. She ripped open the cardboard box and pulled out a white enamel mug, emblazoned with a photo of Ming. The disembodied image of her face against the stark white background of the mug emphasized Ming’s pointed chin and enormous brown ears, and her slightly crossed eyes were a piercing, artificial shade of blue. Underneath the photos, in a bright-pink font, ran the hashtag #mingsmug.

Behind the till, Debbie’s mouth fell open in dismay. ‘And what are you planning to do with those?’ she asked coolly, walking around the side of the counter for a closer look.

‘Sell them, of course! It’s called merchandising, Debs,’ explained Linda pompously. ‘I ordered sixty.’

She hoisted the cardboard box off the floor and teetered with it towards the fireplace, ignoring Debbie’s expression of incredulity.

‘We can display them next to the Specials board, see?’ Linda had deposited the box on an armchair and was already arranging the mugs in a row on the mantelpiece. ‘All the customers love Ming, and I reckon people will pay three ninety-nine—’

‘Linda, stop!’ Debbie shrieked suddenly.

The kittens and I fell still to look at her – it was not often that we heard Debbie raise her voice. Linda’s hand hovered over the pyramid of mugs that she had begun to assemble at the fireplace.

‘What’s the matter, Debs?’ asked Linda innocently, keeping her back to the room. ‘Don’t you like them?’