Cleo

Waiting on the zigzag that afternoon with Cleo in my arms, I listened for children’s voices. Rob and Jason should have taken about twenty minutes to walk home if they’d followed my map. They were now seven minutes late.

My head filled with what-ifs. If Jason had persuaded Rob to take a longer, more dangerous route, if he’d forgotten Rob was going to walk home with him and gone off with a bunch of cool boys…A river rock sat in my chest. Then boyish laughter echoed up the valley. Some of those whoops, the like of which I’d never imagined hearing again, were unmistakably from our son. His first day back at school must have been more successful than I’d dared hope.

I watched as two heads rounded the corner of the leafy path—not two blonds but one fair-headed, one dark.

“How was it?” I called to Rob.

“Fine,” he said. The sincerity in his voice sounded genuine.

Jason’s face lit up when he saw Cleo.

“Let’s teach her to hunt!” he said, sliding his schoolbag off his back.

“Isn’t she a bit young?” I asked, nursing the black bundle I’d become so protective of since bringing her back to life. “She’s hardly left her mother.”

“No way!” said Jason, dumping his bag in our hallway as if it was already his second home. “Have you got a piece of old paper and some wool?”

Why hadn’t I thought of it before? We’d been so engrossed in our misery I’d forgotten an essential piece of kitten development. Rob, Cleo and I watched as Jason scrunched a rectangle of newsprint and with a string of red wool tied it into a bow.

“Here, girl,” Jason whispered, laying the newsprint bow like bait on the floor and twitching his end of the wool. “It’s a mouse! Catch it!”

Cleo looked puzzled. Maybe she really was an Egyptian princess trapped in a feline body and unable to lower herself to playing with scraps of paper.

“C’mon!” he said, trailing the lure across the floor towards the rubber plant. “It’s running away!”

Cleo’s ears flicked forwards as she watched the thing skip across the carpet. A paw shot out, almost involuntary in its speed. Paw and paper collided briefly. Jason pulled the string. The kitten tuned into some ancient programming. Crouching on her hind legs, she shimmied her nether regions and tried to hypnotize her target.

Why cats sway like that before they pounce is a mystery. The closest to the cat shimmy I’ve seen in humans is when professional tennis players propel themselves from side to side as they wait to bash back a one-hundred-miles-per-hour serve. Maybe the shimmy, for cats and tennis players, is a subconscious way for them to prepare muscles on either side of the body for sudden action.

The boys laughed as Cleo pounced on the paper bow and juggled it between her front and back paws.

“Here, you try,” said Jason, handing the string to Rob. Generosity was second nature to that child. “Hold it higher so she has to jump.”

Cleo hid behind the rubber plant and waited like an assassin. When the paper bow flew past above her head she grabbed it in midair, between her teeth and front paws. Sailing towards the carpet with her prey locked in a death grip, she looked up at us for the admiration she deserved before crashing in a bundle of legs, fur and paper.

The hapless bow was shredded in minutes.

Jason was even more impressed when Cleo demonstrated her prowess at sock-er. He became a daily visitor to our house after that, while I was gradually introduced to the glittering world of Ginny Desilva. The first time I ventured through the leafy shield up the white gravel path to her place, I felt like a naughty girl escaping from a correctional institution. A hedge of gardenias emitted sensual perfume. A fountain trickled and splashed. With every step I could sense Steve’s disapproval. The racy Desilvas weren’t our kind of people.

“Come in, darling!” cried Ginny, flinging her front door open. “You’re just in time for bubbles.”

Nobody on our side of the zigzag called anyone darling. Certainly not people they hardly knew. Ginny, with her false eyelashes and cheekbones to die for, was the first person I’d ever met who could make drinking champagne at four in the afternoon seem the most natural thing in the world. I was amazed at her capacity to never wear the same outfit twice. I was in awe of her white leather sofa and the stainless-steel sculpture that towered like an electric pylon over a corner of her living room. She couldn’t remember the name of the artist, or at least she said she couldn’t. With Ginny, it was hard to know if she was genuinely vague or just pretending to be in order to put you at ease.

After an hour or two at Ginny’s, the world seemed a softer place. When streetlights sparked to life and windows of the office blocks glowed yellow in the city below, I knew it was time to leave. The gravel path undulated under my feet as I wandered home to cook dinner and deal with a hungry cat.