Timba Comes Home (3 page)

Perhaps if I’d stayed awake, there might have been a way of escaping, but I was so tired, and the last thing I heard was Angie’s voice saying, ‘Baby kittens need to sleep a
lot, Leroy. You mustn’t try to wake him up.

‘Now you must promise me you will look after Timba and be kind to him. He needs small regular meals, and a litter tray, and a quiet home where he feels safe . . . Are you listening,
Leroy?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘And he’s got to go to the vet and have his injections against cat flu. I’ll give you the name of this website about caring for kittens. It’s—’

‘We don’t have a computer,’ said Janine.

‘Right. OK.’ Angie looked thoughtful. She carried me over to the book corner. ‘There should be a book here about cat care.’

‘That’s no good. He can’t read,’ said Janine, and Leroy hung his head and looked ashamed.

‘But you can,’ said Angie, pulling out a slim book with a cat on the front. ‘And Leroy can read now, with a bit of help.’

‘I don’t have time for that,’ Janine said and she pushed the book back across the table. ‘I’m not stupid, you know. I know how to look after a cat. It’s not
rocket science, is it?’

In my dream Vati was calling and calling for me. He told me an incredible story. The dog, Harriet, hadn’t hurt him or my tabby-and-white sister but carried them into a cottage where a kind
old lady had looked after them and given them kitty milk on a saucer. Then he and my sister had gone to sleep WITH THE DOG! Today they’d both been delivered to a cat sanctuary, and a lady
with a painted face had chosen my sister and taken her away. Vati was all alone, like me, and in the dream we established a telepathic link to keep us in touch. We’d always been close and
needed each other, but now we were separated our need had become an intense ache in both our souls.

When I finally woke up it was late afternoon, and I was in a cardboard box with Leroy’s woolly hat and a battered teddy bear who looked and smelled musty. I wailed in
fright, and Leroy’s bright face peeped in at me. ‘Hello, Timba.’ I meowed back, and he airlifted me out of the box and put me down in front of two dishes. One had milk, and the
other had something white with orangey crumbs. The milk tasted weird and sour but I lapped and lapped until my tummy felt warm and heavy. Then I tried the other stuff. ‘A bit of my fish
finger,’ Leroy said. ‘I mashed it up for you. Do you like it, Timba?’

Leroy sat on the floor with me and talked non-stop while I sidled round the dish, trying to work out a way of eating this tough, unfamiliar food. It tasted OK, but the crumbs were gritty and the
fish too chewy for my immature teeth. I dragged most of it off the dish and made what Janine called ‘a dreadful mess’.

‘You can’t force him to eat, Leroy,’ she said, but he kept picking up flakes of fish and trying to put them in my mouth.

Next, Leroy wanted me to play, and he waved all sorts of bits and pieces right in front of my face when I was TRYING to wash. Jessica had always washed me first. I was her favourite, and her
bristly tongue dealt efficiently with my long fur. Doing it myself was hard. I needed space and quiet so I crept under a table, but Leroy followed me, crawling as if he was a cat. The floor felt
sticky and wisps of fluff clung to the chair legs, and there was nothing to look at. I longed to be sitting in a sunny window, or in a garden where things were happening. This was a gaunt and
gloomy place.

‘Leave the poor kitten alone!’ Janine shrieked. ‘And get up off the floor. Who’s going to do your washing?’

Leroy took no notice of her. He seemed obsessed with watching what I was doing. Janine reached under the table, her eyes furious. She got hold of his arm and dragged him out, banging his head on
the table edge. His roar of pain and rage frightened me, and I ran for the nearest crack, a space behind a cupboard, and squeezed in there. My washing effort was now impossible.

I peeped out, horrified at the sight of two humans fighting. Leroy was howling, his mouth open wide, his eyes and nose running, and he was kicking viciously at Janine’s shins, and
clutching his head.

‘I hate you. You made me bang my head. You done it on purpose. You’re a horrible mother and I HATE YOU.’

‘Don’t you kick me! GET to your room. NOW!’

‘I hurt my head.’

‘I don’t care. You’ve been winding me up all day. Get out of my sight. Go on. Go!’ Janine pushed Leroy through a door and slammed it shut. She leaned against it,
breathing hard, while Leroy kicked and thundered on the other side. ‘Bloody kid,’ she muttered, her lips white with fury. She slumped into a chair and sat with her hands over her
ears.

Leroy pushed his way back through the door, picked up a chair and lifted it high above his head.

‘Don’t you DARE,’ warned Janine, but Leroy flung the chair violently across the room, knocking Janine’s coffee cup off the table, cracking it into jagged pieces. The
coffee poured over her magazines and splashed onto the carpet. ‘Right . . . that’s it!’ she yelled. ‘Bloody well break up what’s left of this place, you evil little
bastard.’ Jumping to her feet, she seized the broken chair and tore the leg off it with a cracking, splintering sound. Brandishing it, she flew at Leroy. ‘I’ll kill you!’
She lunged at him, but Leroy dodged out of the way. He grinned at the sight of his mum losing her cool, and that made Janine worse. ‘I’ll get rid of you,’ she growled.
‘I’ll get the socials to put you in care.’

Leroy suddenly looked devastated, and frightened. ‘No, Mum, please. I’ll be good. I’m sorry for winding you up . . . I won’t do it no more. I’ll go to bed.’
And he went upstairs.

‘Don’t give me that bullshit.’ Janine collapsed into an armchair and turned on the TV. It flickered blue, then went blank. The lights went out with a snap. ‘Oh no! The
meter’s run out. And I’ve no money,’ Janine wailed. ‘I’ll have to sit here in the dark.’

She opened the curtains and the orange light from the street made a dim glow. I didn’t mind the dark; in fact I found it soothing after the noise and the fighting.

What about me? I thought. I am only a kitten.

Thinking about the loneliness and longing for my brother didn’t change anything. So I remembered something Solomon had told me. ‘Use your tail,’ he’d said. ‘Humans
can’t resist tails. Your tail is like a smile when it’s up. At the worst times, when humans really get to you, don’t hide, don’t sulk . . . walk out there with your tail
up.’

My tail wasn’t very long yet, but I decided to have a go. When Janine had quietened down, I meowed, put my tail up and walked out there.

She melted!

‘Oh Timba, you’re so cute,’ she crooned. ‘Poor little scrap . . . we weren’t shouting at you, sweetheart.’

She picked me up and let me nestle into her shoulder. I rubbed my soft fur against her bare neck, and we sat together in a calming silence. The ultimate surprise was that it made me feel better
too.

‘It works every time,’ Solomon had said.

Encouraged by my unexpected success, I listened to this angry woman’s heartbeat. It sounded like tired footsteps.

A young kitten doesn’t usually experience sadness, but it wasn’t new to me. Already, in my short life, I’d had a bucketful. Yet it hadn’t touched my spirit. I could play
and cheer myself up, any time, and I was glad to be a cat and not a human. So I decided to try and comfort Janine with my love, the way I’d comforted Vati. Janine was huge of course compared
to a kitten, so I focused on her neck and shoulder, giving her little licks and purrs.

‘You’re a poppet . . .’ As she stroked me she began to talk, the words tumbling out of her as if they couldn’t wait to escape. ‘It’s no fun, being a single
parent,’ she confided, ‘and Leroy’s a nightmare . . . an absolute nightmare . . . always has been. I am at my wits’ ends with him, and I know I shouldn’t hit him, but
I can’t help it. I get so desperate.’

I listened, not understanding most of it, only sensing some bond I had with her, some undiscovered reason why I was there. Why me? And then it washed over me like the cold night air. I heard the
word ‘dump’, and saw the light from the window shining through the slow-moving tears on Janine’s cheeks. ‘I’m so scared,’ she said, ‘of those social
workers. They’re gonna take my Leroy away . . . I know they are . . . that is, if I don’t dump him in care first.’

I got the picture. Dumping. Abandoning. How well I understood that!

‘Sometimes I just want to end it all,’ Janine continued. ‘Take a load of pills, or pack my bag and get the hell out.’

Was that why I had been sent? To be Leroy McArthur’s cat?

Leroy’s tantrums happened several times a day, and usually involved a dispute with his mother. I became an expert at finding places to hide in the cluttered house. It made the time I had
spent in the hedge with Vati and my sister seem happy, a time of sunshine and discovery. Here in this house, there wasn’t a world. I had no contact with living creatures, no chance to observe
their ways and learn. I was a kitten in prison.

Leroy couldn’t leave me alone. He’d pick me up and put me in some bizarre place so that he could watch the effect it had on me. Once it was high up on a top shelf where I felt unsafe
so wanted to get down. He stood there laughing while my meows got more and more frantic. Another time he picked me up when I was asleep and put me into a deep stone urn. I woke up cold, and looked
at the circle of light above me. Not yet strong enough to jump out, I panicked, screaming, and scrabbling on the slippery surface.

Instead of rescuing me, Leroy looked into the urn and shouted, ‘Boo.’ Then he tapped the urn with a spoon and the sharp ringing noise really upset me and hurt my sensitive ears. When
Janine heard me wailing, it led to yet another row between them.

‘Either you stop tormenting Timba, or he goes back. Angie said she’d give him a home if things didn’t work out.’

‘I’m not tormenting Timba,’ Leroy argued. ‘I’m just entertaining him.’

‘No, you’re teasing him. Can’t you see the difference?’

Leroy shrugged. He picked me up before Janine did, and held me against his bony little chest. ‘He’s my kitten, aren’t you, Timba?’

‘Well he won’t love you if you treat him like that.’

‘He does love me.’ Leroy clenched his hand until I squealed.

Janine shouted at him furiously. ‘Stop squeezing him. He’s not a toy, Leroy. You’ll hurt him. Stop it, you stupid boy.’

‘I ain’t stupid.’ Leroy glared and pouted.

I felt the pain rush through his young body, and it was a new experience for me. Whatever Leroy did to me, his pain was worse than mine, and it was attacking his heart.

I climbed up to Leroy’s shoulder, and saw the pulse beating hard in his neck. I rubbed my head against it, and purred into his ear. He peeped round at me and smiled. For the first time I
felt it was possible to love this desolate boy who seemed to be disliked by everyone, especially his mother.

Later that morning I escaped into the garden. It had long grass, piles of boxes and broken bikes. Out in the sunshine I felt alive again, smelling and listening, my whiskers twitching, my eyes
following every movement. The sky felt like a blue umbrella, a friendly sheltering dome above me, and the breeze ruffled my fur. I tried to sense my brother and figure out where he was, but a
different animal smell came to me from a tunnel. Intrigued, I ventured inside, following the curve of it, hoping it might be a way out of the garden, a chance for me to run away from Leroy and
search for Angie.

But deep down in the grass tunnel was a creature bigger than me with a pink snout of a nose and two beetle-black eyes. A rat! I turned into a ball of wire bristles and hissed at him. He lunged
at me in a blaze of whiskers and a gleam of white fangs. I fled in terror, hearing his enraged squeak as he chased me. He would kill me. Where could I go?

I shot out of the tunnel and made for the doorstep. Leroy was sitting there laughing at me. ‘What’s the matter, Timba?’ I dived inside his jacket, settling under his arm, where
the slow beating of his heart calmed me down, made me feel safe again. When I peeped out there was no sign of the rat, and I was glad to let Leroy carry me indoors. Humans do have their uses, I
thought, despite their bizarre behaviour.

Leroy’s bed was a chaotic heap of clothes, pillows and smelly old teddy bears. Without undressing or washing, he kicked off his shoes and got in, keeping me there on his
shoulder as he dragged a duvet over himself. To my surprise, he went to sleep instantly, and then, in the stillness and the silence, I saw his angel.

She wasn’t hovering in the air. She was all around Leroy like a shining blanket, her beautiful face close to his head. I meowed, hoping she would notice me, and she did. We gazed into each
other’s eyes and for me it was like drinking when you are thirsty. The radiance of an angel’s eyes is limitless and sustaining. I was thrilled when she spoke to me.

‘It was me who told you to purr, Timba,’ she said, while I soaked up every life-giving word. ‘You are a fabulous kitten, a messenger of love and fun.’

‘So why have I ended up with Leroy? It feels wrong,’ I said.

‘It isn’t wrong, Timba. You’ve done everything right and we are proud of you. Leroy is having a difficult childhood, like you, and he needs your love. You are a tiny kitten, I
know, but your love is not tiny. Your love is huge and powerful. Your love is like an angel. Always remember that.’

As if I would forget! Her words were music to me.

‘You will mature into a strong and magnificent cat, Timba. You and Leroy have a special bond. There will be happy times. You can have one right now, while Leroy is sleeping!’

She closed her beautiful eyes and her light lingered around the sleeping boy. I got up and stretched my small body. It felt flexible and re-energised. In the dim orange glow from the street
lights outside the window, I surveyed Leroy’s bedroom and felt excited. So many interesting things to play with. If only Vati was there with me.

Playing on my own made me use my imagination. I patted a silver bottle top and pretended it was a mouse. Even though I had never actually seen a mouse, my instinct told me how fast a mouse moved
and how it dived into holes. There were plenty of ‘holes’ around. Carrier bags, shoes and piles of clothes cluttered the floor, creating pockets of darkness. I practised chasing the
bottle top into one, then stalking it like a grown-up cat. I found a toggle hanging from a coat and had a go at leaping and twisting to catch it, not always landing the right way up, and
frightening myself a little, especially with the noise I was generating. Loudest was a paper carrier bag. It crackled like thunder when I was jumping around inside it, and the sound excited me. My
tail bushed out and everything became too vivid, as if no barriers existed between imagination and reality. Tense with excitement, I stood looking up at Leroy’s football which seemed to be
shivering all by itself. I patted it, and it moved. Was it alive? I pretended it was that dog’s face, and launched myself at it, digging my claws in and kicking. It rolled over on top of me,
scaring me so much that I ran faster than ever before and skidded into the slot under Leroy’s bed.