9 Lives
9 Stories for Cat Lovers
By
A. Kale
© A. Kale. 2011
“I love cats because I love my home, and after a while they become its visible soul.”
Jean Cocteau
For cat lovers around the world.
A Word from Dr. Rex Chartreaux (I)
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Professor Rex Chartreux. I am a storyteller. Telling stories is my passion, my reason for living. I live to read and read to live. My second passion in life is cats.
Cats are beautiful, elegant creatures. Self-sufficient, loyal, and have great hygiene. They are also intelligent, cunning, and have a superb survival instinct. At times, that makes them allies. At times, that makes them dangerous enemies.
Throughout the ages, cats, all kinds, have played a part in many an adventure. In these adventures, cats sometimes played the role of the hero, sometimes the role of the villain.
Over the past few years I have written down some of these adventures and turned them into tales; some are scary, some are sad, some are funny, and some are just plain-old exciting.
So, allow me to share some of them with you.
Let’s begin with this one.
Looking for Tabby
Sarah didn’t know where else to look for her. And it was a her, not an it, like her silly brother, Adam, called her cat, Tabby.
Tabby was Sarah’s best friend. Her father had gotten her for her when she was four, almost three years ago. The first time Sarah had seen her, it was love at first sight. The straight, fluffy light brown hair, the pink fingers (or were they toes?) of her paws, the small pink nose, the beautiful, wide green eyes, and the thick, furry tail. Tabby was a dream.
Sarah always loved to sleep with Tabby by her side. Tabby would purr and make funny, bird-like noises till Sarah slept. One night, Sarah had woken up in the middle of the night to see Tabby lying beside her on the bed, moving her legs in place, moaning. She was having a nightmare. Sarah had patted her on her tummy, and Tabby had fallen back to sleep. A few nights later, when it was Sarah’s turn to have a nightmare, a horrible one about Sarah holding a bar of chocolate that just wouldn’t stop melting till it ruined all her clothes and made all her friends laugh at her, Sarah had felt a small, warm piece of sandpaper licking her hand, and she had woken up to find Tabby licking her, trying to wake her up and save her from the nightmare. That night Sarah had felt that her love for Tabby had doubled, even tripled, if such a thing were possible.
Now, Sarah was looking for Tabby, the sun shining down on her, making her hot and angry. She liked the sunshine, but sometimes there was too much of it and she had to put on that stupid cap that her father had given her and keep drinking water, or else she would become sick and stay in bed for days. And she hated that even more than she hated the sunshine when it was too strong.
Sarah put on her cap, a pink one with a smiling white bear printed on it. Sarah liked the smiling white bear, but she was too embarrassed to tell her friends that, ever since that annoying Joanna had laughed at her and told her that cute and cuddly things were for babies, and Sarah wasn’t a baby. She was almost seven, for heaven’s sake!
“Tabby! Tabby, where are you, girl? Come on out,” Sarah shouted at the top of her lungs. She was in Old Man’s Moses field, a few yards away from her house. Tabby sometimes liked to come and play here, chase mice, and just lie on her back, cooling her fat tummy.
But Tabby had never stayed out for so long. Sarah had been looking for her since the previous night. She was afraid and sad and confused. Where was she? Where had she gone? Was she alright?
Sarah’s eyes began to tear up. She couldn’t imagine life without Tabby. And although she knew that animals died – her neighbors’ cat, Roger, had died of some disease last year – she didn’t like to think about such things. She would think about it when it happened.
Then the tears overflowed and fell on her cheeks. They felt warm, but nice. They cooled her cheeks and made her feel a little bit better. Like she was filled with hot air and had let some of it out.
“Tabby, where are you, girl?” Sarah continued to look for her cat, wagging a piece of raw salmon that she held in her right hand. In her left was a small bottle of water for when she became thirsty. That reminded her, she was thirsty now. It was awfully hot out there. She raised the bottle to her lips and took a sip.
Meow.
Sarah stopped drinking.
“Tabby! Where are you?”
Meow.
Sarah tried to know where the sound was coming from, but a strong wind was blowing and it carried the sound this way and that. Sarah couldn’t tell where the meowing was coming from.
“Damn. Tabby, I am coming.”
Sarah starting looking around her, but she didn’t know where the sound was coming from.
Meow.
This time she got it. It was coming from her right. She looked in that direction and saw the huge tree. She had seen it before and her parents had always warned her not to climb it. They said that many kids had gotten hurt by doing just that.
Sarah had broken the pinky finger of her right hand two years ago and it had hurt real bad. She didn’t want to go through that again, so she had listened to her parents’ warnings and never climbed it.
Sarah walked toward it, looking at the branches, trying to see if Tabby was there, perched on one of them. But she couldn’t see her.
Meow.
This time the sound seemed to come from behind her. Then…
Meow – Meow.
It was more than one cat!
“Tabby?” Sarah wasn’t sure if it really was Tabby. Come to think of it, all cats sounded alike. Damn! She thought.
She turned around and caught a glimpse of a cat running away, around the corner. It looked gray, but she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t had a good enough look to be sure. She decided to follow it.
Sarah ran and turned the corner, which led her away from Old Man Moses’ farm and into the abandoned orchard. She didn’t like that place at all. It had lots of mice and all the trees were dead. The ground was covered with dead leaves and there were mice everywhere. Sarah didn’t like mice. She didn’t hate them or anything, but she didn’t like them, either. When she came across them she just left them alone and hoped they would return the favor.
She stood beside a tall tree and remembered her grandfather telling her that apples used to grow on these trees, that it was once a beautiful place, but that people stopped taking care of the trees and they had grown weak and stopped growing beautiful red apples. Then they died. They looked very sad to Sarah, now. Thinking about them and the apples that used to grow on them reminded her that she was hungry. She had forgotten to pack any food with her before she left. She took another drink of water, hoping it would hold her off till she went back home for lunch. But she wouldn’t go him till she found Tabby. But yesterday she had gone home and she hadn’t found Tabby. Then she remembered how angry she was at her mom and dad for trying to calm her down and telling her that it was alright and that Tabby would come back in the morning. She hadn’t. Sometimes she felt so angry at her parents. Sometimes she felt that they kept things from her, told her things that were missing some parts, like a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing. And nothing made Sarah more angry than when she discovered, after working on a jigsaw puzzle for hours, that the final four or five pieces were missing!
Meow.
Sarah looked down and saw Tabby. She fell down on her hands and knees and hugged Tabby close to her chest. She started to cry happy tears and kept saying, “Tabby, Tabby! Where have you been? Oh, I love
you so much.”
Tabby started to lick her face, then she made that strange and wonderful sound that reminded Sarah of the cooing of pigeons. Tabby wanted to tell her something.
“What is it, Tabby?”
Tabby started to wriggle in Sarah’s hands. Sarah gently put her down on the ground. Tabby looked up at Sarah with her wide green eyes and started to walk away, toward one of the trees.
Sarah followed.
Tabby climbed up the tree and sat on a branch.
“I can’t climb that tree, Tabby, you know that.”
Tabby started wagging her tail, then started licking her paws. She was happy.
Then two more cats appeared from behind the tree and climbed up and sat beside Tabby. One was small and brown, with a white dot above its nose which made it look funny. The other one was light gray, chubby, and its right ear was smaller than the left. It looked at Sarah with wide eyes that made it look amazed. Sarah couldn’t help but smile at the three cats as they sat next to each other.
Then Sarah’s stomach started to growl again and she remembered that she was hungry. Then she remembered the piece of salmon that she held in her right hand.
“I brought you something, Tabby. Your favorite,” Sarah said, then started wagging the piece of salmon, trying to seduce Tabby with it.
Tabby jumped off the branch, came to Sarah and started to do that funny move with her head that she always did when she was hungry. Sarah put the piece of salmon on the ground and watched Tabby as she started to eat. Then the other two cats jumped off the branch and stood a few feet away from Tabby, watching her eat.
Up close, Sarah could see that they weren’t as clean as Tabby, and that the gray one had a couple of bald spots on its back. It made Sarah sad. She felt sorry for them and bent down to pat their heads and tell them it was alright. But they backed away, afraid.
Sarah tore off a piece of salmon and threw it their way. The brown cat jumped on the piece of salmon and started eating it quickly. Then, slowly, the gray one started to approach and Sarah tore off another piece and threw it its way. The gray cat walked toward it, keeping its eyes on Sarah all the time, then started to eat, looking up at Sarah between bites, to make sure that Sarah wasn’t up to anything funny. It made Sarah laugh, how nervous the cat was.
After the three cats finished eating, Sarah carried Tabby and, after waving goodbye to the other cats, walked home.
That night in bed, as she gently brushed Tabby’s hair with a small white brush, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about the two stray cats she had seen at the orchard, about how dirty they had looked, how hungry they had been. She looked Tabby in the eye and said, “What do you think, Tabby? They are poor little creatures, aren’t they?” Tabby looked back at her, her eyes widening, waiting for Sarah to tell her what to do next. Sarah continued to brush Tabby’s hair as Tabby closed her eyes in pleasure. Sarah knew that it was the thing Tabby loved the most.
“Why did you go and run off like that? You know better than to go and do something like that.”
Sarah stopped brushing Tabby’s hair and bent down and kissed the top of her head.
She looked down at Tabby and suddenly understood.
“You wanted me to see them, didn’t you? You knew they were hungry, didn’t you?”
Tabby nervously hid her head under the pillow.
Sarah laughed.
The next day, Sarah, Tabby walking beside her, went to the orchard. It seemed less scary to her that day.
“Come on, Tabby, go find your friends.”
Tabby walked to one of the trees, then started sharpening her nails on its bark. A moment later the two cats appeared.
Something tugged at Sarah’s heart as she saw them. They looked so cute, so helpless.
“Look what I brought you, guys.”
Sarah opened the bag she had brought with her and showed them the Tupperware container filled with their food: pieces of chicken, two cans of tuna fish and some boiled vegetables, all mashed together.
She placed three paper plates on the ground and, with a plastic spoon, began to fill each one with a generous serving of the food her mother had helped her put together that morning.
When the three plates were full, she said, “Bon Appetite!”
Tabby was the first to start eating. Then the other two cats followed, the gray one looking at Sarah carefully.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”
The cat seemed to understand and went to a plate and started to eat quickly. It was so hungry.
Sarah noticed that the brown cat was male and the gray one female. She decided to call the brown one Harry and the gray one Lisa.
“Mr. Harry and Miss Lisa, I think we’re going to be friends.”
Then, as if to make it official, Sarah dipped the spoon into the Tupperware container and lifted it to her mouth. She licked the food off of the spoon and said, “Yummy.”