‘I’m Sylvie, and this is Connie. Lovely to meet you.’ The woman paused for a moment, then she said, ‘I’m sure I’ve got some chocolate inside, why don’t you come in for a moment?’ The children didn’t need to be asked twice, but Polly swiped George out of Toby’s arms and put him next to me on the doorstep.
‘Oh, who are these two?’ Sylvie asked.
‘Our cats,’ Polly and Claire said in unison. They both laughed. ‘You guys wait here,’ they said as they followed the children inside and the door was closed on us.
‘Oh well, Dad, I guess when they come out we’ll hear all about it.’
‘Yes.’ But I was impatient. I wanted to know about the new family, and the cat. And was there a man? Because we’d only seen Sylvie and the teenager. So many questions.
We waited patiently by the front gate and it wasn’t long before Polly and Claire and the children emerged. They were laughing and Sylvie was smiling.
‘Oh how sweet, your cats waited for you.’
‘They enjoy trick or treating,’ Polly said.
‘It’s funny, so different for us. My Hana is a house cat, she’s never been outside – but that was normal in Japan.’
‘Hana is such a pretty cat,’ Claire said, and I agreed from what I had seen.
‘She’s a Mikeneko, which is Japanese of course. Cat with a coat of three colours. The English name would be a tortoiseshell.’
‘But Hannah is an English name?’ Polly asked.
‘It’s actually H-a-n-a, it’s Japanese for flower.’
‘That’s lovely, a sweet name for a sweet cat,’ Claire said.
Bingo, I already had more information at my paw tips than I thought I would. A house cat, and what was Japan? A coat of three colours. Oh, this was most interesting.
‘Right, well we’ll see you soon. I’ll text and we’ll have that dinner,’ Polly said as she gave a wave. I was delighted, it seemed the women were already the best of friends. But how we were going to befriend a house cat?
Later, when the children were upstairs having managed to sneak a number of their sweets up there, despite being told not to, and Polly and Claire were sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine, I learnt more about Sylvie.
They both seemed to like her so far. She was English, but she and her daughter had moved back from Japan which was a place quite far away, by the sound of it. They had lived there with her husband, who had left her for another woman and they were now getting divorced and she was very upset about it. Already things were beginning to make sense. Claire had been divorced when I first moved in with her, before she met Jonathan of course, so they had that in common. Anyway, it was difficult because not only had Sylvie split up with her husband but she’d also had to move away from the country that had been her home for many years. Her daughter, Connie, who turned out to be the same age as Aleksy – fourteen – was also upset about leaving her school, her friends and her dad. I guess that explained the late-night wine drinking in the kitchen and crying. Claire had done that a lot too.
As I listened to them talk about how they would make Sylvie feel really welcome and how they would also introduce Connie to Aleksy who would be at the same school in the same year, I began to feel excited. New friends. Now I just had to figure out how to get their cat, Hana, to come out so we could meet her. Either that or we’d have to find a way to go in. It was just a minor hiccup; after all, I’m a pretty resourceful cat, if I do say so myself.
I heard a clatter of footsteps on the stairs and Toby burst in with Henry at his heels.
‘George has been sick on my bed!’ he cried.
‘He ate lots of our chocolate, by accident,’ Henry explained.
‘Great, right, well I better go up and clear up. And you guys, I already told you no more sweets,’ Claire shouted.
‘I feel a bit sick too, Mummy,’ Toby said. We all did what I call a parenting eye roll, and rushed upstairs to sort it out. I would be having stern words with my kitten later.
‘So, I missed the trick or treating,’ Jonathan said, not exactly sounding disappointed.
‘Yes, funny how you had to work late tonight,’ Claire bit back.
‘I did, honestly. Anyway, the kids had a good time?’
‘Yes, I took photos.’ Claire handed him her phone. ‘But there was one house which was a bit of a nightmare, at the end of the street, overgrown, peeling paint. There was a light on but when we rang the bell, an old man glared at us then drew the curtains. Who would do that to a bunch of kids?’
‘Oh, I know. That’s the guy who Vic and Heather Goodwin were moaning to me about. Apparently they have been trying to talk to him about tidying the place up, even offered to do the garden for him, but he told them to go away. Although I’m not sure he was that polite. They said he’s a bit of an ogre and they think he might be dangerous. All bulging eyes and shifty behaviour, according to them.’
‘Great, so I took our kids to a nutter’s house?’
‘Oh I wouldn’t worry, you know how the Goodwins exaggerate. He’s probably just a grumpy old man who doesn’t like people. I understand, after all I’ll probably be one one day.’
He was right, he definitely would.
After breakfast, as the children all went to school, George and I headed out to see the other neighbourhood cats. Sometimes I felt as if I was far too busy, so many people – and cats – to see that it was hard to fit it all in. I was hoping to see Tiger as well, as I made my way to near the end of the road, where we often convened on a patch of grass we called our recreation space. It was quite isolated from the main road, and there were hedges to play in – George still loved a bit of hide and seek – and even a couple of trees. Best of all, our friends knew to go there.
I had made many cat friends since being on Edgar Road. We had new ones coming in, and had lost one or two of our members, but the core group remained the same: Elvis, who was pretty much an old man now, Rocky and Nellie, but there was no sign of Tiger.
‘Alright, Alfie, George,’ Rocky said.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Nothing much, you?’
‘We’ve got a new cat next door,’ I said, too excited to keep the news to myself. ‘But she doesn’t go out, or she didn’t in her old home, so we haven’t been able to meet her yet.’
‘Claire and Polly said they lived in another country,’ George said. ‘What’s that then?’
Nellie, Rocky, Elvis and I all looked at each other. We were cats, after all, and not experts in geography.
‘It’s very far away,’ Elvis said, finally as if he knew. ‘We live in London, and other people live in other places which are countries.’ None of us, including him, knew if that was true.
‘Like Devon?’ George asked.
‘Exactly,’ I said quickly. After all, it didn’t really matter, did it?
‘So Japan, which is where they come from, is another country,’ George said. ‘And there, cats don’t go out, apparently,’ he added. I was surprised and pleased that he’d paid so much attention. He went off to hide under a hedge.
‘You can pretend to look for him today, Nellie,’ I said. She was like an aunt to George