4: TABITHA

One summer evening, Salem and Roxanne took a walk through the public gardens lining the banks of a river running through Catsville. The gardens were very pleasant, filled with beds of brightly coloured flowers separated by neatly trimmed lawns, and very popular with young and old cats alike. Sometimes bands played music on a raised bandstand, and little kiosks sold sardine snacks and ice cream.

On this particular evening it was quite late, and most of the other cats had gone home to bed. But Salem and Roxanne felt like a breath of evening air, so they strolled along, with their whiskertips almost touching, talking about things that interest young cats, like new catfood flavours, and how to keep tails fluffy in damp weather.

They had only been walking for a few minutes when they both heard a dreadful splash, as though something quite large had fallen into the river.

They both rushed to the river bank, and saw something like a small grey doormat starting to float away downstream. The doormat seemed almost alive, because from time to time it jerked spasmodically. Salem watched it for a moment, and then without a word, dived into the river and began to swim after it as fast as he could. Roxanne followed on the bank, and in a couple of minutes saw him catch up with it and begin steering it out of the current and towards her. In another minute he had pushed it onto a little sandy beach at the edge of the river, and she saw that it was a very wet young grey girl cat.

The grey girl cat lay on the sand and began to cry. ‘I wanted to drown myself, because I'm so unhappy,’ she wept. ‘I've run away, because they were all so cruel to me, and I just don't want to live any more.’

Salem and Roxanne looked down at her and wondered what they should do. Then Roxanne, who was always very practical, took charge.

‘Don't be unhappy, we've rescued you,’ she said, and licked her nose. ‘We don't want you to drown, we want you to dry yourself, and come and have some warm milk, and tell us all about why you're so unhappy.’

The grey girl cat looked at her a little doubtfully. But she stopped crying, and after a minute began to shake herself a little half-heartedly, and Salem and Roxanne helped wash her until she looked a little more respectable, and then they set off for Roxanne's home.

She told them on the way that her name was Tabitha, and that she had run away from the cat special hospital, where they put cats who thought they were really dogs, or birds, and suffered from other problems in their heads.

Roxanne eyed her uncertainly. ‘Do you have a problem?’, she miaowed softly. She was not sure how her mother would react to a problem cat.

Tabitha shook her head sadly. ‘My dad ran away, and my mum died, and I had nobody to look after me,’ she replied. ‘I was a sad cat, not a sick cat.’ A couple of small tears trickled down her whiskers. ‘I was just lonely.’

They arrived at Roxanne's home, and she led the way to the kitchen door at the back, because Tabitha was still a bit damp, and she did not want her leaving a trail of paw-marks on her father's best carpets. Mrs. Minou Chatty, Roxanne's mother, was busy baking catcake when they pushed open the kitchen door, and the kitchen smelled delicious. But Mrs. Chatty nearly dropped her caketin when she saw Roxanne leading in a very damp and miserable looking young cat.

‘Heavens above,’ she said, making sure she had a firm grip on the tin. ‘Who's this?’

‘She's a sad girl cat called Tabitha. Salem rescued her from drowning, Roxanne explained, looking at Salem very proudly. We thought she could do with a saucer of warm milk, and a sardine.’

Roxanne smiled at her mother very sweetly, because Roxanne's mother always told everyone that a saucer of warm milk and a sardine was the very best cure for cat sadness.

Roxanne's mother laughed, and washed some flour from her paws. ‘Quite right too,’ she replied. ‘I'll go and make up a nice tray.’ She looked at Tabitha with the experienced eye of a mother cat who has dried many kittens' tears. ‘Dry her a bit more, and then tuck her up comfortably in the spare catbasket, and see if you can cheer her up a bit.’

Tabitha settled into the spare catbasket nicely, but it was rather harder to make her talk. She kept on breaking into the saddest possible little miaows, and repeating over and over again that she had run away from the cat hospital because the doctor and nurse cats had been cruel to her.

But little by little, with the help of a saucer of warm milk and a sardine, Salem and Roxanne discovered that she had been locked up in a tiny hospital room all on her own, with no other cats to talk to or play with.

‘Why did they lock you up?’, asked Roxanne, who liked to get to the root of problems.

‘I was the only kitten there,’ sobbed Tabitha. ‘All the others were grown-up mad cats, so they said I had to be on my own. I was ever so lonely, and cried and cried and cried, so they gave me pills to shut me up, because they said I was keeping the mad cats awake.’

Salem looked at her hard. ‘But you weren't mad, were you?’

‘No.’ Tabitha began to sob again. ‘But I began to wonder.’ She lay quiet as she finished, and looked quite exhausted.

Roxanne began to wash her ears in a comforting sort of way, and she closed her eyes, and was soon fast asleep.

Salem and Roxanne were both shocked. They heard a sound behind them, and looked round to see Roxanne's mother standing behind them. Mrs. Chatty was looking very thoughtful.

‘What shall we do?’ asked Roxanne, who had a tear in the corner of her eye. She brushed it away quickly, for she had a feeling that she might well start sobbing herself.

‘I think you should take her back to the hospital,’ her mother said gently. ‘She's only told you her side of the story. She may really be ill, and need treatment. Sometimes it can be very hard to tell.’

‘But they were so cruel to her.’

Her mother began to clean her whiskers, first on the left side, then on the right. It was something she always did when she felt very bothered. Then she smiled.

‘Well, they do say every story has two sides to it,’ she said. ‘Tell your father when he comes home. He's gone to an important meeting with the mayor and the city council. He'll be able to look into it.’

Roxanne's father was a very important Catsville cat, both because he owned the biggest catfood business in the town, and because he was very kind-hearted and generous. He knew all the other important cats, and lots and lots of cats who were not very important at all, like cats who swept the streets, and cats who watered the flowerbeds in the public gardens.

He listened to Roxanne very carefully when he arrived home, nodding his head several times as she told him all about Tabitha. Then he half closed his eyes, which was his way of showing that he was thinking very hard.

‘I think your mother is right,’ he said. ‘Tabitha should go back to the hospital, just in case she really is ill. But we will keep an eye on her as well.’

Next day Mrs. Chatty fed Tabitha a good breakfast of tuna in one dish, with a side serving of cat crunchies in another. Then she began talking to her, nose to nose, which is what mother cats do with kittens when they want to be taken very seriously.

‘We think you should go back,’ she said.

Tabitha flattened her ears right back on her head, and looked terrified. ‘They'll be much, much worse to me, now that I've run away,’ she miaowed.

‘No, they won't, because we'll come and see you,’ Mrs. Chatty said gently. ‘Don't tell any of the nurses, but we'll just pop in to make sure you are all right.’

‘And my father will make a big, big fuss if they lock you up again,’ added Roxanne, who knew that her father could always solve problems.

Then Roxanne and her mother walked Tabitha back to the special hospital. They would have liked to go inside as well, but a big security guard cat on the gate barred their way.

‘You have to have an appointment to come in here,’ he said sternly.

So Roxanne and her mother had to watch Tabitha walk in on her own.

Tabitha turned at the hospital door and waved. But it was a rather sad little wave, and Roxanne wondered for a moment whether her parents had really given her the right advice.

Roxanne and her parents then waited for a couple of days, and on the third day set out for the special hospital again, with Salem and his parents keeping them company.

However a new security guard on the gate proved just as unfriendly as the first one. ‘You have to have an appointment,’ he told Roxanne's father. He was a big tabby cat, and he lowered his whiskers as he spoke, which was rather a rude thing to do.

‘How do I get one?’ asked Roxanne's father, who was not very pleased to be treated so curtly.

‘You have to be the patient's doctor, or related to the patient,’ the guard miaowed.

‘We're her friends,’ Roxanne's father replied. He was now beginning to get rather impatient.

‘Then you'll have to ask her doctor,’ snapped the security guard, now looking fierce. ‘And don't ask me who he is, because it's not my job to know.’

Roxanne's father began to get to get very annoyed. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked the guard. ‘My name is Jamal Chatty, and you should be treating me with respect.’

The guard sniffed, and looked Roxanne's father up and down. ‘You look pretty much like any other cat to me.’

Roxanne's father was furious, and Mrs. Chatty had to put her paw on his to stop him doing something rash. He tugged a mobile telephone from his fur, and punched the number of the Catsville town hall.

‘I want to speak to the mayor,’ he said in a very fierce miaow.

Roxanne and her mother, and Salem and his parents, did not say a word, for they had never seen such cold fury in a cat before, and to tell the truth, they were a little frightened.

Roxanne's father spoke into his phone for a few minutes, and then snapped it shut with a fierce snap. A few minutes later the waiting cats saw a cat doctor in a white coat come scurrying out of the special hospital building and hurry towards the gate. He stopped to speak briefly to the security guard, and then hurried on towards them.

‘I'm sorry, I think there's been a misunderstanding,’ he miaowed in a slimy voice.

‘We've come to see Tabitha,’ Mr. Chatty snapped.

‘Oh, dear, that would be difficult. She's having treatment.’ The cat doctor wriggled as he spoke. He had a sly look about him, the look of a cat not very good at telling the truth.

‘What kind of treatment?’

‘Oh, very technical treatment.’

‘We'll come in and wait.’

The cat doctor made a face. He seemed about to come up with another excuse, but Roxanne's father waved his mobile telephone, and he twitched. ‘You'd better come in.’

Five minutes later Roxanne and Salem and their parents, were all sitting in the doctor's office.

Two nurses brought Tabitha. She had red eyes, and she looked as if she had been crying all night.

‘She's a very sad case,’ the doctor began. ‘She howls all the time.’

‘But she's unhappy,’ interrupted Roxanne, who had decided that she did not like the doctor one little bit.

‘She's a problem,’ the doctor went on. ‘She was brought here because she sat in the street and cried all day. We haven't been able to do a thing with her.’

‘But she just needs somebody to love her,’ said Roxanne's mother, who now felt quite tearful herself.

‘We're here to treat cats, not to love them,’ replied the doctor. ‘She's sick, and she must be cured, and that's the way it has to be.’

‘No, it isn't,’ said Roxanne's father quietly. ‘We're going to take her away from here, and take her home, and look after her ourselves.’ He put his hand inside his fur, and pulled out a small piece of paper. ‘The mayor has given me permission to care for her.’

The doctor took the paper, looked at it, and shrugged, with a look which said - 'well, if that's what you want to do, then go right ahead and do it, but don't blame me'.

Five minutes later Tabitha was walking out of the special hospital gate. Mind you, she was not very well-behaved as she left, because she stuck out her tongue at the security guard - and so did Roxanne. Roxanne's mother was sorely tempted to do the same, but she felt that being a grown-up cat, she should not be so kittenish.

And Tabitha's sadness? Well, of course she did not howl any more after she went to live with Roxanne and her parents. In fact she soon became quite a lively young cat, though from time Roxanne found her sitting very quietly in a dark corner. But a saucer of warm milk and a sardine always cheered her up - and she never, ever cried again in the street.