she wasn’t. A few meows brought no result so I ran downstairs and jumped onto the lounge windowsill, and there, to my amazement, was Ellen. My fur stood on end, my tail bushed out like a bottlebrush. What I saw was so strange.
Ellen was inside a silver door, about the size of the puss flap. She had shrunk to the size of a blackbird. I stared and stared, not daring to move in case it happened to me. It was definitely Ellen. She had blonde hair and she was smiling, her eyes were full of light. Then I noticed something that made my fur even stiffer. Only her head was there in that silver door, the rest of her was missing. Spooked, I looked carefully behind the silver door and nothing was there. I tried to touch noses with her but a glassy screen was across the door. I sat down, feeling I mustn’t take my eyes off her, and waited for her to come out.
I heard the puss flap slam and Jessica came in with a dead starling in her mouth. She dumped half of it in the kitchen and half of it under the sofa before seeing me up there staring at Ellen in the silver door.
‘What are you all blown up about?’ she asked. ‘You look like a hedgehog.’
‘Something terrible has happened to Ellen.’
Very few cats ever master the art of laughing. I certainly couldn’t. But Jessica knew exactly how to curl up her mouth, spark her eyes and roll on the floor as if she were laughing.
‘That’s a picture,’ she explained. ‘It’s not really Ellen. It’s a flat image on a piece of something.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Humans have lots of them.’ Jessica sounded bored and scathing. ‘Haven’t you ever noticed them? Look at that flat barn owl on the wall. And there are flat rabbits on the wall in John’s room. And there’s a flat horse at the top of the stairs. I don’t bother looking at them any more.’
I did look at the flat barn owl and felt quite spooked by it, and angry with Jessica for laughing at me. I pounced on her from the windowsill and we wrestled, squealing on the floor. Then she chased me up the curtains. At that moment, in walked Ellen – the real Ellen, not the flat version. I was pleased to see her but she was not pleased to see me at the top of the curtains. That was our ill-timed mistake. The skin around her eyes looked red and her aura was dark. I wanted to love her but she shooed me into the garden along with Jessica, and a few minutes later half of the dead starling came sailing out too.
I hated Jessica for getting me into trouble. Hate was something I should not be feeling. It was bad. It upset my stomach and clouded my vision so that I couldn’t tune in to my angel. Mist surrounded me. Earth mist. Hate mist. How to get out of it, I didn’t know.
In this environment I could soon have lost touch with my mission and become a boring old cat who just ate, slept and survived. I walked into the road and considered leaving. The problem with leaving is that you are likely to regret it and go back, which is even more difficult. And embarrassing, I thought, when the car returned and Joe got out, shamefaced, and padded slowly up the path, a bunch of roses in his hand.
Jessica hated the postman. She acted like a guard dog, lying in wait for him under the bushes by the front door, and pouncing on his shoelaces whenever he came near. On wet days she sat on the stairs glaring at the letterbox, and as soon as the postman pushed letters through onto the mat, she shredded them with ferocious claws. If Ellen didn’t get to them first, Jessica would then use the pile of torn paper as a litter tray. Her rage was infectious. Ellen and Joe, and even little John, screamed at her, and Jessica would disappear under the sofa at speed.
She’d got a private collection of toys under there, a dead mouse, a blue and yellow Lego man, a shoelace and a Dairylea cheese portion pilfered from the kitchen table.
One morning Jessica furiously attacked a crackly brown envelope that Joe obviously wanted.
‘You DEMON cat!’ he roared, purple in the face as he dangled the shredded letter in his hand. As usual, he turned on Ellen. ‘You would have to choose a manic moggy like her wouldn’t you? Well I tell you now, that cat is going down the RSPCA.’
‘No Joe,’ pleaded Ellen. ‘We promised to look after her, and anyway she can be a sweet little cat sometimes.’
‘Sweet little cat! She’s rubbish. And we can’t afford to feed one cat, leave alone two.’
They were chilling words. I gazed at Joe from where I was sitting quietly on the windowsill enjoying the morning sun. Keeping calm wasn’t easy, but I was managing, even when I heard the dreaded RSPCA word. Later I padded across to the sofa and coaxed Jessica out. Her eyes were huge and black, but she emerged and sat beside me in our favourite chair.
‘I love you,’ I said. ‘And Ellen does too. But why must you tear up letters like that?’
Jessica said something surprising.
‘I only tear up the brown ones. They’re bills, and they make Joe bad tempered. Actually he tears them up himself, I’ve seen him doing it. And he hides them from Ellen.’
Jessica fascinated me. One morning I sat and watched her in the garden. She spent half her time airborne, doing reckless leaps from the garage roof to the cherry tree, then clambering up through the branches. Next she sat on the high wall and batted at swallows. The tiny birds dive bombed her, almost clipping her with a blade-like wing as they twisted out of her reach.
‘Do you wish you were a bird?’ I asked her.
‘No.’ She waited until I’d climbed through a prickly bush to the top of the wall to be with her. ‘Tiresome teenage kitten,’ she growled, lashing her tail at me. She took off down to the lawn, leaving me marooned up there, meowing. She slipped through the cat flap and I figured she would be in the kitchen eating from my dish. Moments later she emerged with a big brick of cheese in her mouth.
‘YOU PIGGING CAT!’ Joe burst into the garden and saw Jessica’s tail disappearing under the shed. ‘Why do I bother giving you a home? I worked my hands to the bone to pay for that cheese and you go and nick it. Thieving moggy. You’re nothing but trouble.’
He seized a broom and banged on the shed with it. But Jessica didn’t come out. I saw Sue-next-door peering through her curtains, and I wondered where Ellen was. I felt scared on top of the wall, with Joe’s voice booming all over the garden. I wanted Ellen to come and coax me down.
Horrified, I watched Joe lie down and ram the broom handle under the shed. Jessica would be killed. The shed was creaking and rocking as Joe attacked it. I looked up at Sue-next-door, who was standing firmly at the window with her arms folded, and I sent her a silent meow. She responded by rolling her eyes.
Jessica popped out from the other side of the shed, still with the cheese in her mouth, and streaked across the lawn. I saw a flash of white paws and pink pads as she cleared the fence into Sue-next-door’s garden. Joe hurled the broom after her with such force that it snapped a row of tomato plants which Ellen had been growing against the sunny
