Timba Comes Home (21 page)

I glowed with joy. To be praised at such a time was brilliant.

‘Both you cats can teach and inspire,’ added the Spirit Lion, and he showed me Leroy who was far away in South Wales, awake and at the window watching that same yellow moon on the
snow. ‘Humans cannot teach Leroy. He has encrypted knowledge and courage to follow his dreams. He needs love in abundance, for he has chosen a lonely path. Every day of his life he faces
bullying and hostility from those who seek to disempower him, yet he keeps a cheerful heart.’

‘So what can we teach him?’ I asked.

‘Unconditional love. Always and for ever. And from the source, all good intentions flow. Power and courage and understanding. Unconditional love is the beginning of healing and the gateway
to true knowledge.’

The Spirit Lion gave a huge sigh. ‘Remind him . . . and Angie . . . to have fun, for humour is the bridge over troubled waters.’

I felt him vanishing into the crystal silence of the snow. ‘Stay together,’ he whispered, and left us, curled close in Vati’s corner of the sofa.

At first light, Lisa tiptoed downstairs and threw me a look of pure hatred. She came towards me, her hands engulfed in a pair of yellow rubber gloves. Then she changed her
mind, and went into the kitchen. She slammed the fridge closed, took a roll of sticky tape from a drawer and taped the cat flap shut! She opened the door to the garden and cold air came in like
smoke.

With her hands spread wide she approached me again. She was tense, and breathing fast, her eyes watching me. I got it. Lisa was going to grab me with those horrible yellow gloves, and chuck me
out in the snow.

Vati sensed it too. He looked at Lisa and did the extended-meow. It was an appeal, straight from the heart. ‘Don’t take my brother away,’ but Lisa kept coming. I dug myself in,
pressed against the back of the sofa.

She grabbed me, but I hung on, hooking my claws into the upholstery. She pulled and pulled, but I resisted. She was panting now. ‘Come on . . . come on. You are going OUT,’ she
muttered, and I did something I’d never done before. I growled at her like a dog, and glared into her frustrated eyes. Vati joined in, growling and making a terrible fish face.

‘You stubborn old bugger,’ she ranted, and let me go. She was shaking all over. She went back into the kitchen, tore the tape off the cat flap and flung the yellow rubber gloves into
a cupboard.

Vati and I looked at each other triumphantly. Round one . . . to Timba and Vati!

‘Why do people keep calling me old?’ I asked Vati. ‘I’m a young cat.’

‘It’s your fur,’ he said tactfully. ‘It needs a good sort-out.’

‘Angie would know what to do,’ I said, and we both looked serious. It occurred to me that Vati looked better and was responding to me now. I remembered what the Spirit Lion had said
about fun. ‘We’re getting too serious,’ I said, and looked around for the catnip mouse. Lisa had gone upstairs, so I got down and found it tucked away in a little basket under the
window. Pleased, I took it over to Vati and put it under his nose. Light flashed through his eyes, just for a second, and I waited for him to play with it. Instead, he pushed it away and bunched
his paws under himself again, setting his face back into frozen mode.

So I opted for a mad half-hour on my own . . . in this house I knew so well. Maybe Vati would join in, I thought, flinging the catnip mouse into the air. I took it over to Graham’s shoes
and stuffed it into the toe. Then I had fun getting it out and chased it around. I even got bold and took it to the top of the stairs and dropped it through the banisters. I pretended not to notice
Vati’s eyes on me, with that fleeting light of interest flickering through them. He wanted to play. Give me a few days and I’ll have him playing, I thought.

I got wilder and wilder, tearing up and down the stairs and over the back of the sofa, skidding along the kitchen floor and crumpling the rug that was in there. I found one of Heidi’s
teddy bears and gave it a beating. I got right on top of it and kicked it with my back legs. Then I grabbed it by one ear, skidded along the kitchen worktop with it, and dropped it in the
washing-up bowl. I hadn’t had so much fun for weeks.

But the sound of a door being opened upstairs sent me bounding back onto the sofa. I dug myself in, next to Vati. My eyes were wild and my fur itching like mad. I scratched furiously, scattering
fluff all over the sofa.

It was Graham. Phew!

I wanted to tell him exactly how Lisa made me feel, how it had hurt to be called a smelly old cat at the end of a long, long journey, so I did an amplified extended-meow. He listened, and sat
down beside us, smelling of shower gel and bundled in his cuddly blue towelling robe. ‘Don’t worry, Timba,’ he said, ‘I’ve been chucked out of bed to ring Angie . . .
catch her before she goes to work.’

I stared into Graham’s eyes and studied the strange mixture of kindliness and guilt. It was rare for me to do two amplified extended-meows . . . one was usually enough . . . but I wanted
him to know how much Vati was suffering, so I did another one, and put my paw on Vati’s bony little head.

‘Oh dear . . . I know, I know, Timba,’ Graham said. ‘Vati is not a happy cat. I’ll have to tell Angie. She’ll go ballistic.’

He invited me onto his lap to listen to the phone call, but I was determined to stay close to Vati. We both listened to the sound of Angie’s phone ringing.

‘Hello, this is Angie.’

When I heard that beautiful, warm, expectant voice again, I was overwhelmed with joy. Vati was listening too, and his eyes shimmered green as he looked at me. Is this really happening? he was
thinking. We sat up, side by side, gazing attentively into the phone. I half expected a plate of Whiskas rabbit to come whizzing down the line. And a brush. That’s what Angie would have for
me: a brush to heal my fur, and an angel cuddle to heal my soul.

‘Graham!’ she said brightly. ‘Why so early?’

‘I tried to get you last night,’ he said.

‘Parents’ evening,’ said Angie. ‘It went on for ever. So come on . . . spill. Graham, it’s not like you to ring at this time. Has somebody died?’

‘No,’ said Graham, and his eyes sparkled with pleasure at what he was going to tell her. ‘Guess who turned up here?’

‘Who?’

‘Timba.’

‘TIMBA! Surely not?’

‘Yes, it’s Timba. He’s OK, here on the sofa right next to me.’

There was a brief silence. Then we heard the scream of joy that made Graham smile. Even Vati narrowed his eyes and gave a ghost of a cat smile. I could see how much Vati wanted Angie. He needed
her healing love, desperately.

‘But, Graham,’ Angie said, ‘Timba went missing last autumn . . . it’s February now. Are you sure it’s him?’

‘One hundred per cent,’ said Graham, and he stroked the top of my head. ‘Purr for Angie.’ He held the phone close to my face. I did yet another amplified extended-meow,
and was rewarded with a second scream of joy.

‘That sounds like Timba. It IS him. Oh my God! Oh wow . . . I can’t stop crying. Oh Timba . . . you found your way down there . . . two hundred miles . . . oh you darling, darling,
clever cat. I can’t stop crying. Oh THANK YOU, UNIVERSE!’

Graham beamed from ear to ear. ‘A long time since I’ve heard THAT,’ he said.

‘Is he really OK?’ Angie asked. ‘All his legs and tail . . . no injuries?’

‘No. He’s in full working order,’ said Graham. ‘His fur is a mess, and he was hungry . . . but he hasn’t forgotten how to open the fridge.’

‘I LOVE it!’ Angie said. I wondered what she would say if she knew that Lisa had called me a smelly old cat. ‘Hang on a minute, Graham . . . I’ve got to wake
Leroy.’ We listened and heard Angie’s swift footsteps, and the squeak of Leroy’s bedroom door. She didn’t yell at him, but whispered, ‘Wake up, Leroy. Fantastic news.
You’ve got to wake up.’

There was a subterranean grunt of protest.

‘Graham’s got Timba. And he’s OK.’

‘Aw! Is that true, Angie? No kidding?’

‘No kidding. Timba is BACK.’

We heard them bang their hands together and shout, ‘YES!’

‘Gimme the phone,’ Leroy said, and then I heard another sound I’d longed for on my lonely journey. A scratchy voice saying, ‘Hello, Timba.’ I did purr-meows then, a
whole stream of them. ‘Where you been, Timba? I missed you. I cried lots,’ Leroy said.

‘He’s kissing the phone,’ Graham said, laughing at me.

I imagined Leroy’s bright face. The ache in my heart had gone, and I felt the love from both my humans. I felt like the luckiest cat on the Planet.

‘He’s purring now.’ Graham was still beaming from ear to ear, and he let me purr into the phone. I knew it had to be loud. That purr had to go rippling across the miles, over
the shining river, through the dark forest, to reach my loved ones.

‘Can you come and fetch him, Angie? Or shall I bring him up there?’

‘Of course I’ll come and fetch him. Wild horses wouldn’t stop me,’ Angie said. ‘Thank goodness it’s a Saturday. What’s the snow like at your
end?’

‘It’s thawing,’ Graham said, looking at the window. I followed his gaze and saw the morning sun shining on melting crusts of crystal, diamond bright, sliding down the
glass.

Graham didn’t stop smiling until he saw Lisa, her spine straight like an icicle, her face stiff with hatred. We all looked at her, and the energy changed. I moved myself between her and
Vati, and hooked my claws into her sofa. Smelly old cat, was I? Then a smelly old cat I’d be, proud and magnificent, and fierce.

No one, not even Angie, was going to separate me from Vati. So what would I do when she came to fetch me?

Graham tried to take me to the vet before Angie arrived. I didn’t want to go, especially after what Vati had told me. Lisa might have me de-clawed too! So once again, I
dug myself into the sofa, and as fast as Graham tried to unhook my claws, I clamped them in again.

‘You really are being very difficult, Timba,’ he said, exasperated. But when I looked at him and wailed plaintively, he got the message. ‘I know, you don’t want to leave
Vati, do you? Well, he could come with us.’ Vati threw Graham a withering look and went straight under the sofa. Graham sat down and put his head in his hands. ‘My life is full of
difficult cats . . . and difficult women,’ he complained, eyeing Lisa who was supervising from the doorway, with Heidi bright-eyed in her arms.

‘Well, I am not . . . repeat am not . . . getting lunch for HER,’ Lisa said, and I knew she meant Angie. Odd that Angie also referred to Lisa as HER. ‘And I want a new sofa.
Tomorrow.’

Graham persuaded the vet to come to us. It was Rick, and I remembered him. He was a radiant being of light. Even Vati came out to inspect him, and once he saw that Graham had put the cat cage
away, he crept back into his corner of the sofa. Rick sat down on the sofa with his long legs stretched out. I arranged myself over his heart, and he didn’t seem to mind my tatty fur.
‘You are a loving old boy,’ he said.

‘He’s only a young cat,’ Graham said. ‘And he’s just been on a journey . . . two hundred miles . . . to find his brother. That’s why his fur is such a
mess.’

‘It will have to be cut, and allowed to grow back,’ said Rick, stroking me with his long translucent fingers. ‘But I won’t do that. I’ll leave you a leaflet about
long-furred cats, and I suggest Angie does that for him when she gets him home. We need to go one step at a time with Timba. He’s had a huge trauma.’

Rick was a genius of a vet. A secret healer. He managed to love me and give me two injections which were over before I knew it. He put some drops on me to make the fleas go away, and put stuff
in my ears to stop the ear mites, all the time loving me and talking to me.

When he had finished, he didn’t just dump me, but let me stay stretched out on his body so he could feel my purr and my gratitude. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Vati was sitting up
and looking intently at Rick.

‘So, what’s wrong with this little cat?’ he asked. ‘Vati, is it?’

Graham looked guilty. ‘My wife had him de-clawed,’ he explained. ‘He’s a sensitive cat and he was a real personality. . . but it changed him. He’s never been the
same since. He doesn’t play, he hardly eats . . . as you can see.’

Vati held out his paw to Rick, his green eyes shimmering with pain. The two men looked moved. Silently Vati put his paw down and held out the other one. Rick took it gently and closed his hand
around it. ‘Poor Vati,’ he murmured, and his hand shone with celestial light. It changed colour, from blazing white to soothing emerald green, bathing Vati’s hurt paw in healing
love.

We all sat respectfully still, for this was magic. Magic so rare and sensitive that it needed total peace in order to work. In those moments I heard the drip-drip of melting snow from the
garden, the tick-tick of Graham’s mother’s clock, and my purring sending its ripples through the silence.

Rick closed his eyes, and seemed to be listening to something. The words came through, glimmering and slow, but strong, each one touching the pain that was knotted into the little cat’s
heart. Vati was alert and listening, soaking up the healing as if it were sunshine on his fur.

‘We can’t give you back your claws, Vati,’ Rick said, ‘but you can learn to walk again, and play again. You mustn’t try to climb trees, but you can leap and run,
and play with Timba.’

The light in Rick’s hands changed to a powerful resonant blue, and he moved them gently to touch the little cat’s head. ‘Let go, Vati,’ he said, ‘let go of all the
anger. Send it into the light and let it vanish for ever.’ Vati gave a deep sigh and I saw the darkness leave his aura. ‘It can no longer harm you,’ Rick said. ‘You are
free.’

Sometimes I understood that certain things happen for a reason. It was meant to be. Rick was meant to be there, to heal Vati. And when Graham had tried to lift me from the sofa, I’d been
given lion strength to resist. So Rick had come to the house, on his day off, he said, and given us his time.

I noticed Lisa, one arm holding Heidi and the other carefully wheeling a suitcase through the hall. I heard the click of car doors, and the businesslike whirr of her car as she left the house.
For ever, said a voice in my mind. It’s for ever.