It must have been about a month ago, as I remember coming home from work to an uncharacteristically hushed Alice and David with one eyebrow arched in thought.
Mum! You wont really be cross, will you? Alice asked, worry flickering in her eyes.
Oh, goodness, have you sold Oscar for a million? I replied with a careless chuckle. Oscar was our sleek, hairless Peterbald a cat with pedigree papers so resplendent theyd make any family tree in Yorkshire blush. We sometimes joked that even Davids forebears, who claim distant ties to Henry VIII himself, couldnt compete. Lets be honest, you could, with some effort, flog Oscar for a fortune, or at least close to it.
No, course not! Alice said, her earnestness almost glowing. In fact, quite the opposite!
Whats the opposite have you bought another cat for a million pounds? I asked, feigning incredulity.
Alice smiled with the sort of excitement that meant she was about to share some Great Good News.
No, Mum! Not a single penny! It was all completely free!
At this point, David broke into such laughter that I demanded a proper explanation. Truthfully, I already sensed what had occurred, but I needed to gauge the true scale of the impending calamity.
And what a scale it was. It turned out Alices classmate, Emily, had found a tiny kitten in a ditch on the outskirts of Cambridge. She tried to take the wretch home, but her familywith an already irritable terriersent both Emily and her discovery packing. The next day, Emily brought the squirming, wild-eyed thing to school, desperate for anyone to take it.
You see, Mum, Alice explained to me, no one wanted her at all. She looked so hopeless, and I just felt so sorry for her
At that moment, I could have thrown in the towel myselffrom pity, not just for the kitten, but for myself, remembering all too acutely my own previous misadventures. Years ago, didnt David once rescue a blind, weeks-old tabby from the car park? We bottle-fed that one for three weeks before it slipped away quietly one night, as kittens so often do. It was after that heartbreaking episode that Oscar came to us. Still, that little void in my heart never really healed.
The old wound throbbed anew as I imagined repeating the whole ordealall too predictable in its inevitably sorrowful end. Besides, I surely hadnt planned for another mouth (and a feline one at that) to feed just now.
Well then, show me this precious prize you acquired for absolutely nothing.
They presented me with a battered cardboard box. Inside lay a mound of torn towels. Resting atop was well, the only word for it would be a proper English hobgoblin. It was smaller than Alices palm, its coat a grubby grey, and so slight that to lift it felt like lifting a wisp of air. The poor thing was nothing more than a bedraggled skeleton draped with a little fur and the haunted eyes of a creature on its last legs. No surprise at all, truly, that nobody else would touch it.
The conversation that followed was the obligatory you are responsible for what you have tamed spiel, though it seemed rather pointless. It was clear to everyone, with or without the pep talk, that this little bundle was staying. Who else would have her anyway? If Im honest, in the moment I did wish we couldve managed without.
Our home, already alive with an infant and Oscar, didnt exactly need another addition, so the newcomer was put into quarantinean unused guest room, a roomy box, a soft towel for bedding, a hot water bottle, a litter tray, and a couple of plush toys. Every four hours, someone would stop in to feed her. As luck would have it, our odd household routine was perfect for these shifts: David and I always up late, Alice up early, and Rosie, the baby, waking throughout the night. There was always someone available to sneak a bottle of formula into the kittens tiny mouth. (Rosies a bit too young for that just yet, but at least someone awake with her could manage.)
Between feeds, Alice hovered anxiously, worried the kitten might be lonely.
I soon realised, however, that the kitten wasnt overly troubledone night I caught her, warm and purring beneath my favourite knitted blanket on the settee. Beside her stood her box, her temporary hotel. How she managed to escape the box and climb the tall settee remains a mystery. Like a miniature Houdini, she wriggled free yet offered no clue how shed done it.
The next day at the vet, the man peered in through the carrier, fetched the little waif with two fingers, and exclaimed, What a beauty!
The kitten fixed him with her trademark goblin stare and mewed with a rather pitiful squeak.
Clever lass, he said, giving her a fond look.
What interested me most, of course, was how on earth I was supposed to wash her, she weighed barely a hundred grams and seemed as fragile as a snowflake in drizzle. It looked as though a harsh word would snap her leg. The vet had a much more straightforward manner. He mixed up some sudsy liquid, washed her at the sink in the way my Gran taught me to wash tights as a girl, then rolled her in a towel and nearly wrung her dry. Surprisingly, not a peep of protest from our kitteneither she quite liked it, or her ordeal had numbed her to everything.
(Do not ask what sort of subconscious resides in a head not much bigger than a walnut. I suspect theres not much mind at all.)
The vet, still marvelling, conducted a whole battery of examinations, pronouncing her all right, really, though she was terribly underfed, anaemic, and desperately feeble.
Youve saved her, you know, he told Alice. Had she stayed in that ditch, the fleas wouldve finished her off in no time, alive.
It was Emily who found her, Alice answered honestly. I just brought her home from school.
What year are you in? the vet asked.
Year Six, Alice answered.
Well then, you really did rescue her.
From his tone, year six in the local primary school was hardly a safer haven for a dying kitten than a muddy ditch.
Once clean, our hobgoblin fluffed up a touch, and while she didnt exactly grow lovely, she began to resemble a cat at least. For the next ten days or so, she did little but sleep and eat. She suffered all sorts of tummy upsetssending me to the edge of despairI couldnt bear the thought she might slip away too. I checked her constantly: was she breathing, had she eaten a morsel, and, crucially, what did that lead to later? The vet ended up recognising my voice on the phone. When we brought her back for dodgy output one day, he patted her now chubbier belly and announced with a laugh, No need to worry now. Youre stuck with this one for years to come.
Its funny, isnt it? Only a fortnight earlier, if someone had asked whether Id want to take on this scrappy, wild-looking thing, Id have said Goodness, nothough really Id have been bemused by the very question. Yet, after nursing her and fretting over her, the news that we were stuck with this cat for many years turned out to be one of the happiest Id heard all month.
If only you could have seen our miracle of the monthmuch like the vultures sang in The Jungle Book: a pile of bones that walked on its own.
At first, we were convinced the kitten was a girl, but just before the vet appointment I looked closer and realisedno, it was a boy. Alice and I spent the ride debating names. The night before, wed shown her an old cartoon about a sprite named Dusty, and since then Alice was traipsing through the house repeating, Dusty! Dusty! It sounded like the very spirit of forlornness. So, the kitten was to be Dusty.
Alas, the vet then declared the kitten was female after all. Yet the name had already stuck, and so Dusty-the-boy became Dusty-the-girl. Or Dust, or Dusty-bun, orif Alice was feeling grandLady Dustina. Little Rosie, for her part, calls her simply, Wheeeee!
As I recall now, our one-hundred grams of kitten is now a sturdy half a kilo and no end cheekier. She remains far from a beauty, but curiously enough, every evening theres a queue of family eager to cradle her. Theres something about that woolly, snuffling menace on your lap that gentles the heartI cant really explain why.
By the by, the vet mentioned she was a calico. I was ready to disagreeafter all, she looked grey on grey, only more greybut then he pointed out her white undercoat, the deep grey, and, third, that streak of beige running boldly down her nose, mask-like, from brow to chin. Three colours! Almost the Union Jack, if you squint from a distance.
Why, only today I happened across a full-grown, wild calico cat near our road, stalking through the hedgerows with an air of business. She bolted as soon as she saw me but kept glancing back at our front door. She too was three-coloured. I told her, Dustys just fine, thank you, and carried on my way.
