Solomon's Kitten by Sheila Jeffries Read Free Book Online Page A

focused my eyes and saw the lovely policewoman who had coaxed me into the cat cage and taken me home that day. I was glad, and disappointed too. I’d hoped
it might be TammyLee.
    My eyes were burning and they wouldn’t shut. I tried to sit up, but my legs wouldn’t move. Yet I knew I wasn’t dying. I’d come back into my beautiful cat body, my long
silver tabby fur, my white socks and pink paws, my lovely tail. But none of it would move. I could feel it twitching, but I’d somehow lost control. It was scary. How could I play and live my
life? I didn’t want to be useless and immobile. I felt terribly afraid.
    I wanted peace, and recovery time.
    But it wasn’t peaceful.
    A crowd had gathered, looking at me as I lay on the bench, still gasping for breath and twitching. A row was breaking out. I heard Gretel’s shriek of a voice and she was part of the
row.
    ‘My car,’ she cried. ‘It’s been broken into.’
    ‘Never mind your car,’ a man was shouting at Gretel. ‘Is this your cat? Look at the state it’s in!’
    I felt the old familiar shockwaves coming from Gretel as she saw me there on the bench, and I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t put my tail up and run to reassure her. She was under
attack. People were shouting at her furiously.
    ‘How could you leave a cat shut in a car in this heat?’
    ‘Haven’t you got any more sense?’
    ‘Don’t you CARE about your lovely cat?’
    Gretel was crying and crying. ‘Is she going to die? I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to.’
    No one was being kind to Gretel. The shouting got even louder.
    ‘I’m reporting you to the RSPCA, and you’ll never keep an animal again. You CRUEL woman.’
    ‘But is she dying?’ Gretel kept asking. ‘I’ll take her to the vet’s.’
    ‘You won’t. It’s too late for that. If we hadn’t been here, she’d be dead right now. Poor, poor cat. She’s suffered so much.’ Now the other person was
crying, and I lay there, shuddering in the middle of it.
    ‘I’ll see that you pay for this. That cat will be taken away from you. You’ve no business keeping an animal.’
    ‘It’s disgusting.’
    ‘But I do love her. She’s called . . .’
    Gretel didn’t get the chance to say Fuzzball, and I was grateful for that. The lovely policewoman with the blonde ponytail intervened.
    ‘Please calm down,’ she kept saying firmly. ‘The cat needs some quiet. Please!’
    I felt Gretel slump down on the bench beside me, and she touched my wet fur gently. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,’ she wept, and I wanted to tell her it was OK, I’d
forgiven her, but I couldn’t even lift my head to look at her. I knew I’d never see her again, and I wanted to say thank you to her for giving me a home and a fluffy cat bed, and all
that food. The toys and the quiet evenings on her lap by the fire. I wished those people would stop attacking her.
    ‘Here’s the animal ambulance. Move back please,’ said the lovely policewoman, and I heard people shuffling back as a vehicle drove up. After that it went quiet and I heard the
soft pattering of the plane-tree leaves above me.
    The voices became murmurs and I was picked up and carried, my tail and legs floppy, into a silent and beautifully cool van with a blissfully soft bed inside. A kind man with a bright light
around him sat beside me and kept trying to put my head inside a weird-looking cup of clear plastic.
    ‘Come on, sweetheart. Come on, breathe. It’s oxygen. Come on, try it. It’s good stuff.’
    He didn’t hurt me, but held my head firmly, and I picked up on his thoughts. He wanted me to breathe a special kind of air that was inside the cup. I tried it, and it was cool and sweet. I
couldn’t get enough of it. This clear, pure, mysterious air he called oxygen was filling my body with the fizz of new life.
    I was alive, but I still couldn’t move. I took a last look at Gretel’s tear-stained face looking in at me as they closed the doors. I felt the van driving away,