Timba Comes Home (16 page)

I walked over the forbidden keyboard and kissed Leroy on the nose.

It happened very quickly.

One minute I was a contented cat, and the next I was faced with a life-changing challenge.

‘You’re the best cat in the world, Timba.’ Angie pressed her cheek against my fur, and I looked up at her, blinking my eyes slowly and purring. ‘I hope we never lose
you.’

Odd that she said those words, as if she sensed I was on the brink of a momentous decision. I took my job as a support cat very seriously. Most cats only had one human to look after. I had two.
Angie, who was still hurting from Graham dumping her, still missing Poppy, and trying too hard to be an earth-angel to Leroy. And Leroy, who needed me even more.

On that drowsy afternoon in late summer, my life should have been blessed. I should have been full of gratitude for a home where I was loved and pampered. I was the best cat in the street and,
when I sat up on the garden wall, everyone who passed by admired me. ‘Aren’t you beautiful!’ and ‘What a magnificent cat,’ and ‘You’re so fluffy, and so
friendly. I wish you were my cat.’ I soaked it all up, like fan mail. It was like an insurance too. I knew that if I followed any one of those adoring fans down the road, they would adopt
me.

But something was missing from my life: Vati. I tried to get used to it, the way Angie was coping without Graham. The way she still laughed and smiled and got on with it. I was managing OK,
until the momentous decision arrived like an unstoppable rain cloud darkening the sunlight.

I was sitting against the wall, close to the big stone in the place where I’d sensed a precious line of communication. My direct chat line to Vati. So far our long-distance chats had been
misty but joyful. Vati had appeared with his tail up, looking sleek and mystic. He told me he was OK with Graham and Lisa. He told me Lisa had a baby girl, Heidi, and Heidi was crawling all over
the house like a cat.

The Spirit Lion had taught me how to sense the energy line with my pads, so I did that now, and visualised Vati’s winsome little face with the white dot on the nose. His eyes flashed up
before me, black and terrified. My paws began to burn with pain. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ I asked, but Vati seemed totally unable to communicate. I tried and tried and got
no response. Darkness inked its way along the golden pathway, right into my heart.

I sat there, stunned.

Something terrible had happened to Vati.

I ran to Angie. She was leaning on the garden wall, watching the road. ‘Leroy should be back soon, from his first day at big school,’ she told me, and scooped me into her arms.
Normally I would have purred and made a fuss of her, but now I felt my heart was breaking.

I had to go.

I had to find Vati.

Sadly and silently, I licked Angie’s dear face which was warm from the sun. It was my last chance to love her. I should say goodbye nicely, I thought. I should purr. But I couldn’t.
I felt like a cat torn in two.

The best I could manage was a long stare into her sensitive eyes, and immediately Angie saw that something was wrong. ‘What’s the matter, Timba?’

I couldn’t bear to say goodbye. I slid out of her arms and jumped down to the pavement.

‘Timba? Are you OK? Timba . . .’

I half turned, flicked my tail, and gave Angie a silent meow. Then I trotted purposefully down the road, my tail down, my heart heavy. I didn’t look back, even when I heard the school bus,
and the sound of Leroy dragging his school bag along the ground. He’d had a bad day. And I was a support cat. What was I doing?

The only glad thought in my mind was that I’d eaten all of my lunch, every last crumb of the delicious, easy food Angie made for me. I was healthy and strong, my coat luxurious and well
brushed. It would keep me warm through the lonely nights of my journey south . . . back through the dark forest, and over the shining river, to the green hills where I’d been born.

Angie thought I would come back, like I always did. She’d trusted me, and let me be free, and it had been the best life a cat could have. She’d patiently helped Leroy, taught him how
to love me the way a cat should be loved, and he was getting it right. I had grown to love Leroy. Now he’d think I’d abandoned him.

For a long time I heard Angie and Leroy calling me, but I trotted on automatically, as if my mind and body were totally separate. On and on through the streets, not even pausing to put my tail
up and let somebody stroke me, not worrying about traffic or dogs, or which way to go. I knew. My instinct was crystal clear, and I let it guide me south. I kept going, until the voices and
memories faded, and a sense of detachment hung over me like the shadow of night.

Crossing the road was VERY scary. I spent a lot of time crouched under parked cars, watching for a clear space. Judging the speed of cars was a skill I hadn’t developed
and, after a couple of near misses, my confidence was shaken. The endless, confusing streets and the exhaust fumes gave me a headache. In the deepening yellow light of late afternoon, I took refuge
in a garden. The gate was open, so I crept in and hid under an evergreen covered in scarlet berries. I scent-marked its stout trunk and leaned against it, feeling the calm energy of the plant world
stabilising my agitated heartbeat. It was good to have a wall between me and the traffic.

I listened, hoping to detect the last calls from Angie and Leroy, but now I was too far away, lost in the roar of a town I had never bothered to explore. I’d been a home cat, my territory
modestly limited to the surrounding gardens. The listening seeded an ache in my heart, a yearning to hear the voices one last time: ‘Timba. TIM . . . BA.’ Who would call me Timba
now?

No one would know who I was. I’d chosen to leave my home; now it became clear I was leaving behind my identity. I was any old cat now. Nameless and shameless. If I was going to live
without love, then I’d have to be tough. The hunter instinct surfaced alongside the hunger now growling around my belly. I surveyed the strange garden and the imperious blackbirds hopping
about on the lawn. My tail twitched. Catching one would be easy. But less convenient than the tasty supper Leroy would have been giving me right now.

But, hey, this house had a cat flap! I was powerful and bossy. I could deal with any cat who might be in there. Go for it, I thought. Stealthily I prowled up the path, low to the ground, and
glided through the cat flap. Inside was an array of dishes on the floor, and one had a substantial dollop of fishy-smelling cat food. Nobody was there so I scoffed it down.

‘You cheeky cat! OUT!’ came the voice, and a woman who looked like a toad came at me with a squeegee mop. No one had ever treated me like this! I half put my tail up and tried to cat
smile at her, but my friendliness seemed to enrage her even more. ‘That’s my cat’s food!’ she shrieked. ‘OUT . . . go on . . . OUT!’

I’d never been afraid of a human, and I wasn’t now. A few minutes of tail up and rubbing lovingly round her legs would soon melt her cold heart. But it didn’t work out.

With a scrabble of paws, a beefy little dog charged into the kitchen, almost airborne in its rush to get to me.

I looked at it disdainfully, and wished I knew how to laugh. The entire dog was vibrating with its hysterical barking, even its ridiculously short legs and flippy little ears.

You don’t turn your back on dogs. Your back end is vulnerable, especially the tail. My mum Jessica had perfected the art of reversing through a cat flap, but I hadn’t tried it, and
hadn’t needed to until now.

I arched my back and made a savage snarly face. Predictably, the dog ran out of steam and stopped a few feet away from me, its white body trembling, its eyes uncertain. Majestically I
crab-walked towards the cat flap, my tail lashing. I whipped round and dived out through it, and felt a horrible tearing sensation as the dog ripped a tuft of hair from my tail. What a cheek!

I fled down the garden and straight across the road into the path of an oncoming white van. There was a screech of tyres, and a volley of swearing. I changed my mind in mid-air, my whiskers
brushing the hot rubber wheel as I turned and dashed back. Thoroughly frightened, I crept, black-eyed, under the same evergreen and stayed there. The tip of my tail was sore and bleeding, and it
looked awful. Tails are sensitive and important, and that feisty little dog had ruined mine. I attended to it immediately, licking and cleaning and rearranging the fur that was left.

My nerves were shattered and I remembered what Angie had said when Leroy had squeezed me. ‘His little bones are like matchsticks.’ An unexpected flood of respect for my body came to
me now. I needed to rest. Yet something pushed me onward. I wouldn’t stop until I found the edge of the noisy town.

Many streets later I finally reached the quiet. Stubble fields stretched away from me, the edges cushioned with tussocks of wild flowers and grasses. My tired paws sank into the softness and
found it still warm from the sun. So welcome, now that the twilight had a taste of cold, as if winter might arrive in the night.

I made myself a round nest under an ash tree. Vati had taught me about different trees and their effect on cats. Ash trees were stabilising and healing. This one splayed its leaves over me like
a guardian of the plant world. I slept under it for hours, and when I awoke, my fur felt damp.

Against the night sky the fields and hedges were the colour of blackberries. Above me the stars seemed to be entangled in the ash tree’s branches.

At midnight at home I would usually walk around on Leroy’s bed, loving him while he slept. Or I’d go downstairs and find Angie still awake at the table, her head bent over a pile of
children’s school books, a red pen in her hand. Or she’d be in the kitchen baking midnight cakes. We’d have a cuddle and, if the night was clear, she’d carry me outside to
look at the stars. Those same stars I was looking at now.

The thought made me unbearably homesick. What had I done? How had my love for Vati taken precedence over everything I treasured? I vowed that, when I found him, I would bring him home, home
where he belonged with me and Angie and Leroy.

I climbed into the ash tree, glad that my eyes were so good at night. Up there everything was crystal sharp, the leaves black, the stubble fields a shimmering silver; the distant rim of the sky
glowed orange, and lights twinkled from the town I had left. I turned my face to the south, and on that horizon loomed the forest, my next destination. A beam of excitement cut through the heavy
mist of homesickness. The forest was one part of my journey which appealed to the wild cat still curled up in my soul.

The Spirit Lion turned up at dawn. In my nest of dry grass, I was listening to the chatter of gathering swallows, flocks of them swooping and diving over the fields, moving
south without appearing to do so.

The Lion came slinking across the networks of gossamer that bedecked the stubble and festooned the brambles around the ash tree. He came from the east, silent, almost invisible, but real. He
took a long time to arrive, as if demonstrating his manifestation skills.

I waited, feeling better just knowing he was there for me: he was choosing to find me. Was he going to send me back home to Angie? Would he tell me what was wrong with Vati?

Slow and thoughtful, he enfolded me in those giant paws, the mane tumbling like a waterfall, the eyes guarding a secret more global than the concerns of a fluffy black cat.

He began with wordless communication, loving me, encouraging me to relax and purr. The purring reassured me, and for once I was purring for ME. Purring was not only for humans: it was for me to
calm myself, to heal my hurts. To send a message across the Earth.

The Spirit Lion looked satisfied when I understood this startling truth. It came close to what Vati had tried to teach me about the energy lines.

‘Planet Earth is full of messages,’ the Spirit Lion said. ‘You must learn a different way of listening, Timba, a listening that is more like touching. Stretch out on the earth
and listen with the whole of your being. Do this often on your journey, for if you don’t you will become lost.’

‘Vati needs me urgently,’ I said. ‘I can’t go fast enough to reach him. It’s a long way.’

The Spirit Lion was silent, his eyes absorbing my words. Then he said, ‘Winter is coming, Timba. You must go quickly. Don’t run with your feet, think with them, and be smart. Your
times of stillness must be used for attunement and meditation.’

‘Meditation?’ I asked, curious. Angie had used that word passionately and often, but it had drifted over me in my preoccupation with food and play.

‘Meditation,’ the Lion repeated, ‘is like daydreaming, Timba. When the body is still, the mind can travel through space and time. Gaze back across the centuries and reclaim the
wisdom and intelligence of the cat. Much of it has been used to heal and support humans, but you can use it on your journey to manipulate humans into giving you the right kind of help.’

‘Vati can do that kind of stuff,’ I said.

‘Vati is a highly evolved, supersensitive being,’ said the Spirit Lion. ‘That’s why you are perfect together . . . twin souls. Between you, you have all the
gifts.’

‘We’re brothers,’ I said proudly. ‘The sons of Solomon.’

‘Yes . . . but for now, Timba, you must do the work of two cats. Vati cannot work right now. Your strength and pragmatism, and Vati’s sensitivity. You are right, he needs you
urgently . . . urgently.’ The Spirit Lion became ominously quiet. His presence turned misty, and the light around him flickered alarmingly.

‘Don’t go,’ I said. Our conversation wasn’t finished, and he was drifting precariously. ‘You haven’t told me what’s wrong with Vati.’

The Spirit Lion darkened. The colours of night filtered down through his curly mane. A frown gathered like a thunderstorm on his brow.

‘Don’t go,’ I repeated, suddenly gripped by a fear beyond anything I had ever experienced. This wasn’t fear of getting hurt or lost. This was cosmic. Cosmic fear of some
undiscovered mistake that was building into a global catastrophe.