In the past I wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing myself on Debbie’s mercy, hoping that she would take pity on me and offer me a home. But I knew how much was at stake: if Debbie knew there were stray cats in the alley, she might go to more effort to secure the dustbin and our food supply could be cut off. The tomcat always avoided being seen by Debbie and I deferred to his experience, subduing my natural inclination towards sociability and staying hidden from sight.
In the end, Debbie discovered my existence by accident. The snow had finally begun to thaw and the icy water dripped relentlessly onto my bed from above, driving me out of the fire escape and into the alley. It was late morning, a time when I knew Debbie would be busy at the front of the café. The winter sun was low, but there was the faintest hint of warmth in its pale rays, so I sat down next to the dustbin, savouring the feeling of fresh air in my whiskers. I began to wash, tilting my body backwards to lift my hind leg behind my ear. Just at that moment the café door opened. I turned to see Debbie step out of the doorway, clutching a bag of rubbish. She looked straight at me and I froze, hoping that if I stayed completely still she might not notice me.
‘Oh, hello, puss.’ She sounded surprised, but I detected a smile in her voice. I stood up to move away from the bin, not wanting her to think I was scavenging, but was startled to feel her hand on my back, stroking my spine down to the base of my tail. I reflexively lifted my back in response to her touch, realizing with a pang how long it had been since I had last been stroked, and how much I had missed it. I twisted my head to look at her and she held her fingers out to me and, as I sniffed her skin, she tickled me under the chin. The automatic way in which she had responded to me seemed to confirm my deepest hope, that this was a woman who knew how to love a cat.
‘You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?’ she said, smiling, and I chirruped in agreement. I was hoping to engage her in a longer exchange, but a voice from inside the café shouted, ‘Mum, where are you? I can’t find my homework!’ Debbie sighed, tossed the bag of rubbish into the bin and then was gone, pulling the café door shut behind her. I stared at the door for several minutes afterwards, hoping she might come out again, but to no avail. Eventually I resumed my wash, my head suddenly flooded with bittersweet memories of how it felt to bask in the affection of a loving owner.
Encouraged by Debbie’s friendliness, I became braver about making my presence known in the alley. Rather than hiding out of sight when she was around, I took to waiting by the bin at the café’s closing time, in full view of the door. When I heard the key rattling in the lock I would trot over and rub my head against the doorframe in expectation. ‘Good evening, puss. How are you today?’ Debbie would say, her blue eyes twinkling as she carried the bags over my head to the bin. I would stick close to her ankles, purring, my tail erect.
A few days later, when Debbie unlocked door one evening, she was holding a dish in her hand. I could smell smoked salmon and tuna mayonnaise and I instinctively reared up onto my hind legs to get closer to the bowl. She placed it on the doorstep in front of me, scratching the base of my tail playfully. ‘There you go, puss. Now leave the bags alone, okay?’ she laughed, as I greedily tucked into the bowl’s contents.
She went back inside and I carried on eating, savouring the way the leftovers tasted so much better from a bowl than from the tarmac. Sensing that I was being watched, I glanced over my shoulder, spotting the dark shape of the black-and-white tom in the shadow of the dustbin. I swallowed my mouthful and licked my lips, before padding towards him. ‘I’m done. There’s plenty left, if you’d like it,’ I said with a look of encouragement. The tomcat’s eyes flashed uncertainly towards the café door. ‘She’s friendly, you know,’ I reassured him. ‘You should get to know her. She’s a nice lady.’
The tomcat inclined his head. ‘I’m not really a “nice lady” kind of cat,’ he replied. ‘Never have been.’
His comment perplexed me. I tried to imagine not being a ‘nice lady’ kind of cat. To me, that was like saying I was not a ‘tuna mayonnaise’ kind of cat. Granted, I had learnt that I could survive without nice ladies or tuna mayonnaise, but that was not to say I would ever choose to. The tomcat paced gingerly towards the bowl, where he ate quickly, glancing at the café door nervously in between mouthfuls.
It was obvious that being so close to the café made him anxious, but I felt a glow of satisfaction that, by eating the food she had put out, he had acknowledged that my friendship with Debbie could benefit us both. The tomcat seemed so self-assured in every other respect, but when it came to dealing with people I realized he was distinctly nervous. This was the one area in which I was the more experienced, the more worldly, of the two of us. In befriending Debbie, I had done something he had been too frightened to do himself and, for the first time since I had arrived in the alley, I felt like his equal.
Later that night, I was settling down under the fire escape when I heard claws clicking along the path. My chin was resting on my paws, but my ears were alert, monitoring the progress of the footsteps as they approached. I held my breath as the clicking came to a halt outside my shelter. A long shadow appeared on the wall behind me. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said, sighing with relief as the familiar silhouette of the tomcat appeared beside the paint tins.
14
Before I had set off for Stourton, Nancy had given me some advice about how to attract a new owner. She said that people like to pursue a cat, to earn her affections, rather than feel the cat is pursuing them. ‘Don’t seem desperate,’ she had urged. ‘It puts people off.’ I had been sceptical at the time: the notion of acting aloofly with a potential owner struck me as illogical. ‘Well, look, it worked for me, six times over!’ she had replied, and I couldn’t argue with her success rate. Fearful of what was at stake if I came on too strong with Debbie, I knew that Nancy would tell me to bide my time. So that was what I did, waiting for Debbie to realize that she wanted me to be part of her life.
While I perfected my friendly-but-not-needy demeanour, I continued to gather intelligence about Debbie from my shelter under the fire escape. I learnt from eavesdropping on her conversations that she and Sophie had moved to Stourton from Oxford a few months previously, following Debbie’s divorce from Sophie’s dad. Sophie was in the middle of preparing for her GCSEs, and had found the move difficult. A look of sadness always appeared on Debbie’s face when Jo from the hardware shop asked after Sophie. Her brow would knit with anxiety as she explained that Sophie was ‘still finding her feet’ or ‘struggling to settle in’.
Sophie appeared in the alleyway every day after school, a tatty rucksack slung over her shoulder and white headphones attached to her ears. Sometimes she would stand on the path, intently tapping at her mobile phone before entering the café and slamming the door shut behind her. Her arrival in the upstairs flat would usually be heralded by a blast of loud music from one of the attic windows.
From time to time I heard Debbie and Sophie arguing in the evenings. Their words were muffled by the thick stone walls of the flat, but my ears pricked up as I recognized the unmistakeable tone of conflict. Sophie’s voice would always be the first I heard, sharp and accusatory, followed by placatory-sounding noises from Debbie. Gradually their voices would rise in pitch and volume until they were both shouting. The rows always ended the same way, with Sophie storming out into the alley, plugging in her headphones and stalking off.