The aroma of fresh food drifted towards me and my mouth began to water. Scanning the alley to make sure I was alone, I ran over to the bin and jumped onto the lid. I ripped the bag open and was delighted to see copious amounts of smoked-salmon and chicken mayonnaise drop onto the path below. Purring with pleasure, I jumped down and feasted quickly on the sandwich fillings, alert for the tomcat’s return. As soon as I had finished, I ran back over to the cardboard boxes, curious to know whether the tomcat would reappear for his evening meal.
Sure enough, a little later I heard rustling in the conifers, and saw his silhouette slink silently in front of my hiding place. This time he seemed genuinely oblivious to my presence as he ate. Observing him through a gap between two cardboard boxes, I was struck by how at ease he looked in the alley. I was convinced now that he was the alley’s resident cat, but I was surprised that, rather than feeling afraid of him, I found his presence reassuring.
I was woken during the night by ear-splitting yowling, the unmistakeable preamble to a cat-fight. For a horrible moment I wondered if my hiding place had been discovered by the ginger cat and I was under attack. I remained silent and motionless, relying on my ears to discern what was happening. There were two cats in the alley, mere inches from my shelter, growling and hissing in a noisy stand-off. My heart raced. One of them was surely the black-and-white tom, but who was his adversary?
I remained petrified inside my box, feeling at once terrified and guilty that I was not doing anything to help. There was a momentary silence followed by a scuffle. The yowling stopped and I could hear bodies writhing on the path, the eerie quiet punctuated by yelps of protest. Eventually I heard a hiss as a cat ran out of the alley, and then there was silence once more. My curiosity to know who had won was more than I could bear, and I peeked out into the alley. The tomcat was sitting at the entrance, his inky profile silhouetted against the glow of the street light beyond. There was no sign of his opponent, and he was calmly smoothing his fur with his tongue. I crawled back into my cardboard shelter, more certain than ever that the alley was his territory.
The following morning he was sitting on top of the dustbin when I emerged from my box, sleepy but hungry.
‘Oh, hello,’ I said nervously, determined to appear more coherent than I had on our first meeting.
‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you. And are you . . . okay?’ I added, thinking of the fight I had heard during the night.
‘Never been better,’ he answered, a smile in his eyes.
There was no evidence on his body that he had been fighting and he seemed in remarkably good spirits after his ordeal. I felt slightly in awe that he had managed to come unscathed out of such a nasty-sounding battle, and I even wondered whether I had dreamt the whole thing. He stood up and stretched, before jumping down onto the path.
‘There’s some left,’ he said, gesturing with his head towards the rubbish bags protruding from under the lid. ‘Won’t be any new stuff till this evening, so make the most of it.’ As he strode purposefully past me on his way to the churchyard, I noticed how the muscles around his shoulders rippled under his fur.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I replied meekly.
I waited until he had vanished into the conifers, before jumping onto the bin. Through the gap in the lid I could see a small amount of leftover sandwich fillings inside a ripped bag. A perfect portion-size for a cat, in fact. For a moment I wondered if the tomcat had purposely saved some for me, rather than eaten it all himself, but I quickly dismissed the thought from my mind. He was an alley-cat, after all. Why would he do such a thing?
13
The alley was rarely used by passers-by, due to it being blocked at one end by the churchyard conifers. I liked its peaceful, enclosed atmosphere; it felt safe, far removed from the dangers of the busy town beyond. I made a shelter underneath the spiral steps of a fire escape at the back of a shop, to which I returned every night, curling up to sleep on a flattened piece of cardboard behind a stack of rusty paint tins.
It didn’t take me long to adjust to the rhythm of life in the alley. I soon learnt that six o’clock was the café’s closing time, and that the day’s food waste would be put out shortly afterwards. The church bells’ sonorous clanging became my cue to return, in hungry anticipation of an evening meal of leftover sandwich fillings. I rarely saw the tomcat during the day – he roamed much further afield than I did – but sometimes our paths crossed as we both trotted hungrily towards the dustbin in the evening. He was always courteous, chivalrously allowing me to eat before he did, but I nevertheless remained slightly in awe of him. I sensed his territorial vigilance and, having overheard the fight on my first night, knew that he was capable of defending himself fiercely. I did not want to do anything that might make him regret his tolerance towards me.
A couple of weeks after my arrival I noticed that the colourful lights had disappeared from the shop-front windows along the parade. The cobbled street seemed in a permanent half-light under low-slung winter cloud and had a melancholy feeling, stripped of the cheerful presence of Christmas decorations. The street seemed emptier of people too, as if the town’s residents had gone into hibernation after the exuberance of the festive period.
One morning I woke to discover the first snowfall of winter had transformed the alley overnight and the path had disappeared under a thick blanket of white. I had loved to watch snow falling when I was a house-cat. I would sit on Margery’s patio and peer up as the fluffy flakes floated down, resting tantalizingly on my nose and whiskers before melting into my fur. I had found snow fascinating back then, safe in the knowledge that I was never more than a few feet from the comfort of Margery’s gas fire.
In the alley, however, the snow posed serious difficulties for me. It coated the iron steps of the fire escape where, thawed by the warmth of the building behind, icy droplets dripped onto me as I tried to sleep. As if to compensate for the bitter environment, my fur grew denser than I had ever known it before, a thick pelt designed to hold in as much warmth as possible. But, even with the extra insulation, I felt permanently chilled. There was nowhere I could go to escape the cold, and my only option was to retreat to my shelter and tend to my footpads, which were chapped and cracked from the icy ground. I passed many hours curled in a tight ball trying to keep warm, praying for sleep to bring me a few hours’ respite.
If I craned my neck, I could see the café door through a gap between the paint tins. I studied the woman from the café closely whenever she emerged from inside. She was younger than Margery – I guessed in her late forties – with kind blue eyes that often had a doleful look. Sometimes she would stand at the foot of the metal stairs, inches away from my bed, chatting with the woman who ran the hardware shop which adjoined the café.
Silent and unobserved, I listened to their conversations. I learnt that her name was Debbie, that she had recently moved to Stourton with her daughter, Sophie, and that they lived in the flat above the café. Weak from the winter cold, I found comfort in the softness of her voice, closing my eyes and allowing my mind to wander as she talked. I daydreamed about life inside the flat above the café, imagining a cosy room with an open fire where I could lie, my belly exposed to the flames, before retreating to a cool sofa when the heat became too much. I pictured Debbie curled up on the sofa next to me, stroking me gently while she read a book, both of us enjoying the bliss of each other’s company.