‘I’m sorry to hear of your loss’ the customers say and I fucking hate
it. People aren’t ‘lost’ like a set of
car keys, they’re ‘dead’ and the sooner we all stop hiding behind euphemisms
and say how things really are, the better we’ll be able to understand each
other.
‘Passed away’ is
another one. Mrs Dawlish was the
offender this time. ‘So, your Uncle’s
passed away?’ she said, although I gathered it was a rhetorical question as she
had been at the funeral. I contented
myself with a curt nod. If she wanted
more than that, she was going to have to be a lot more original.
I had been forced to
put up with this shit for most of my childhood, when adults, mainly women, would
ruffle my hair and exclaim ‘you poor mite, you’ve had a difficult time haven’t
you?’ which is rather an understatement considering that both my parents died
in a car crash when I was five, and it was only the fact that Uncle Roger
stepped forward to take me in, that saved me from the inevitable path of
children’s homes, buggery, drink, drugs and crime.
‘Extra-hot
latte?’ I said. This too was a rhetorical question as in all
the years she’d been coming to the cat café, Mrs Dawlish had never had anything
else.
‘I’m going to sit with
Bella today. Cats feel things very
deeply you know, and Bella was especially close to Roger.’ There was an implication here that I was not
feeling things very deeply, but I couldn’t really argue with her as it was
true. I’d been numb for years.
However, cats, as all
cat-owners know, are not really close with anyone. That’s why Roger liked them so much, for
their independence of spirit. He once
explained to me that he thought cats brought out the best in people and that’s
how he came up with the idea of the cat café.
Here he could combine his two loves; the aforementioned felines and cake,
and save people from themselves at the same time. As far as I’m aware, his was the first cat
café in Britain; and although he was very proud of this fact, it’s not like it’s
spawned a franchise the size of costa coffee.
It’s still a rather unique concept, and probably the un-coolest place
for a young boy to grow up.
Girls, as you can
imagine, vanished into thin air once I mentioned what I did as a Saturday
job. ‘You work in a café? With cats?’ they would giggle, their eyes
already sliding over me onto my best friend Johnno, who everyone knew, worked
in a garage at the weekends and could drive by the time he was fifteen.
And the thing is that
now, I can do whatever I like. Roger’s
left me the café, but he was quite clear that he didn’t expect me to carry it
on. ‘Cat cafés are the dream job for an
old poofter like me’ he had said, still grinning even though by this stage, his
skin was horribly jaundiced, ‘but I quite understand that a young man will have
very different ambitions. Sell up as
soon as I’m in the ground, and don’t think twice about it. I won’t turn in my grave, the only thing I
ask is that you make sure the cats go to non-smoking, non-gay-bashing good
homes.’
There were twelve cats
in the cat café. There was no way I was
going to close the café and be left with twelve bloody cats, but how on earth
was I supposed to find homes for them all? Maybe I could have them all euthanized and put
in the coffin with Roger like some Indian raj.
I had ruminated on this to Johnno over a pint one evening. He had laughed, as I knew he would, but he
and I both knew that I wasn’t serious.
So here I was,
stymied. Two months after Roger’s
funeral and still serving up coffee and cakes to the inhabitants of Lickfold
and feeding twelve cats, emptying innumerable litter trays, brushing fur, and
feeling my masculinity draining away with every day that passed. I’d come back to work in the café on a
part-time basis when Roger was first diagnosed, gradually taking on more and
more hours as he became increasingly ill.
Finally, I’d handed in my notice at the insurance brokers and begun working
in the café full time. Now Roger was
dead, I could pick up my old life again, no problem. If it wasn’t for the bloody cats.
One of the trickier aspects
of running a cat café, one which doesn’t feature in many instagram posts, is
the issue of poo. Inevitably, I’ll have
just lifted the lid off the coffee and walnut and be hovering the knife over
it, when I’ll hear one of the cats scratching in a litter tray. Seconds later comes the blast to the nasal
cavities and a sudden loss of appetite.
Roger tried to counter this by placing little fringed curtains over the
tunnels that led to the litter trays, but he didn’t make the tunnels long
enough. Either that or the smell of cat
poo has a scientific property which enables it to penetrate brickwork. So that morning, with only Mrs Dawlish
sipping her latte and the morning rush of office workers still to come, I
excused myself and went out into the back room to empty the litter trays and
pump a shit-load of room fragrance in their vicinity. Because of this, I didn’t see her come in.
‘Are you the new owner
of this property?’ She was standing at
the counter waiting for me when I returned.
She was young, with tawny hair and green eyes and rather severe
clothing, which matched her expression.
Mrs Dawlish was stirring her latte so slowly that I knew she was in full
listening mode.
‘I am’.
‘Roger was his Uncle,
Amber’ Mrs Dawlish interjected, ‘so he doesn’t know much about the business
itself.’
I tried to throw Mrs
Dawlish an ‘are you for real?’ glare, but she had gone back to stirring her
coffee and talking gently to Bella who was draped over her lap.
‘Well that explains it’
said Amber, getting out her phone and flicking through it.
‘Explains what?’
She was looking
intently at her phone. I am that bloody
boring, I thought, that she can’t even give me her full attention when she is
the one initiating the conversation! She
thrust her phone towards me.
‘Do you recognise this
cat?’
‘Yes’ I said, ‘That’s
Tallulah’ I instinctively looked around the café as I said this. Tallulah was one of the more exuberant cats,
usually to be found posing in the window with her leg in the air.
‘Well I suppose I
should be thankful that you do at least recognise her but there’s absolutely no
point in looking for her in here’ Amber said. Her tone was starting to irritate
me.
I looked at the photo
again. Yes, that was Tallulah, but it
was Tallulah in a tree. And Tallulah did
not go out, none of the cats did.
‘How did you get this picture?’
I demanded.
‘Surely the question
should be, where is Tallulah?’ Amber countered.
‘Where is Tallulah’ I
repeated, like some ignoramus.
‘Up the Silver Birch in
my garden and wailing like she’s had her throat cut. God knows how long she’s been up there, I’ve
been running back-to-back sessions this week and haven’t been home that much,
so it could have been as long as three days.
Mrs Dawlish had given
up any pretense of not listening to the conversation. She had gasped in horror at the mention of
Tallulah and the tree and now interjected ‘Amber is a grief councillor’ as if that
had any relevance to anything. I ignored
her.
‘Well I’ll need to come
and get her, won’t I?’
‘Yes’ Amber said, ‘yes
please – she sounds terrified’.
The thought of how
scared Tallulah must be sliced through me with unexpected fierceness. Here was a cat who had never been outside
before, who was trapped in a tree and no doubt experiencing massive sensory
overload. A cat, who had just lost her
owner and not understanding death must think she had been abandoned. And there was me, the person who was supposed
to be looking after her, who Roger had trusted to look after her, who hadn’t
even noticed she was missing. My hands started to shake, and I gripped the
counter hard to try and get control over myself.
I was hoping that
neither Amber nor Mrs Dawlish would notice, but the fact that both their voices
softened, made me think they had now seen me for the fucking wuss that I am.
‘It’s not your fault’
said Mrs Dawlish ‘you’ve had a lot on your plate’.
‘Look’ Amber said,
‘come around when you finish up here won’t you?’ She produced a card from her handbag, which,
as well as her address, confirmed that she was indeed someone who specialized in
loss. The irony of the situation had me
breaking out in an involuntary chuckle, despite the fact that I was still
hanging on to the counter top. Amber had
the good grace, or the experience, to ignore the fact that I seemed to be
turning into a raving lunatic.
‘She’s a lovely girl,
Amber’ said Mrs Dawlish. And for once, I
knew exactly what she meant.
***
I managed to extract Tallulah from the tree with only minor
scratches. I had expected her to put up
more of a fight, but perhaps her moodiness was only skin deep. I hugged her to me briefly before putting her
into the travel basket and snapping the door closed.
‘Do you want to talk
about it?’ Amber asked, over a beer which she had instinctively seemed to know
I wanted.
‘Tallulah?’
She laughed ‘no, your
Uncle’s death. It’s a small place, you
know, there’s not much people don’t know about each other here.’
‘Not really no’ I
replied. ‘Thanks for asking though and
not dodging the subject, but I’ve found that burying things away deeply and
trying not to think about them works pretty well for me.
Amber laughed. ‘Oh God, I really sounded like a councillor
then didn’t I? Sorry, it’s hard to shake off the day job sometimes.’
I held up the cat
basket, ‘likewise’.
And we clinked our beer
bottles at the joke, minor as it was. It
felt good to be sitting out in the sunshine, just talking.
‘What are you going to
do with the café, if you don’t mind me asking?’ Amber said later. The sun was going down and shadows were
flitting playfully across her skin.
‘I’m not sure. I feel a bit lost at the moment’ I said, ‘but
I’m actually OK with that’. And as I
said it I realised I was. There was no hurry
to make a decision. If running a cat
café was not my life’s ambition, I could think of a lot of worse things to be
doing.
Amber nodded, ‘I
haven’t got my councillor hat on tonight. In fact, I locked it in the cupboard under the
stairs when I went to get the beers, so you’re safe. But’, she said, ‘you’re
right not to rush.’ Her eyes flicked up
and met mine for a moment that stretched a fraction longer than was necessary
between friends. ‘There’s a lot to think about and it’s a good idea to, you
know, from time to time… mentally that is, to shake out the sheets.’
And for once, I really, really hoped
this was a euphemism.
Word count: 1949
No comments:
Post a Comment