Solomon’s Tale

‘She’s frightened.’

‘Of Joe?’

‘Yes – but she is also frightened of being homeless and starving. Because she is a mum, she’s very vulnerable, she has to protect and feed her child and provide a home for him. The man is not wise. He’s getting into debt.’

When the angel explained to me what debts were, the anxiety started. I could lose my home. I was still only a kitten. Who would feed me? Would I be able to stay here and become Jessica’s lover?

Then the angel used the word ‘repossession’, and explained what that meant. Bailiffs could take Ellen’s lovely home away, and evict the family into the street.

I climbed down from the post feeling old and responsible, a big burden for a kitten. I didn’t want to talk to the angel any longer. Being spiritual seemed increasingly irrelevant in this earth life. Survival was paramount. It went something like this: get Kitekat. Keep warm and dry. Keep fur clean. Don’t go on other cats’ territories. Be assertive with dogs. Stay out of Jessica’s basket. Get humans to open doors for us. Resist climbing the curtains. Forgive humans when they step on you. Resist thieving cheese off the table even if Jessica does it. And so on. It didn’t seem to leave much time for loving Ellen.

But love was all I had to offer.

So I swanned into the kitchen with my fur radiating love, and enjoyed eye contact with Ellen. She scooped me up at once, hugging me against her heart. Alarmed to hear the heartbeat unusually loud and fast, I leaned my cheek against her chest and purred endlessly. As I turned my head, I saw Joe standing on the other side of the room, arms folded, his eyes glittering with menace.

‘Anyway Solomon LOVES me,’ Ellen said defiantly to Joe. His aura was dense with anger and prickly like a teasel. I could feel its destructive power in Ellen’s pretty kitchen. John was sitting on his plastic tractor in the doorway, looking anxiously at his parents.

I tried to stay calm while Ellen clutched me too tightly as Joe shouted at her. He sounded like a dog barking in a concrete kennel. The pain in my ears was terrible, but I concentrated on purring, knowing I was protected by angelic light. The shouting filled the kitchen and spread through the house like smoke, going under doors, into corners and up the stairs. It permeated everything; the apples in the fruit bowl, the cosy cushions, the clocks, the bright sunny bedrooms. Then it exploded into the street in a shower of glass.

‘No Joe. Stop it. JOE!’ Ellen screamed, and put me down. I ran under a chair, terrified by the crack and crunch of Joe kicking the front door with his boot. His ginger hair and red face made him look like a man on fire, and his eyes were bleak slits of pain. Saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth.

‘Shut up! Shut up screaming you silly cow or I’ll give you something to really scream about.’ Joe turned on Ellen, muscles quivering, breathing fast, his skin sweating.

‘We can’t afford a new door, Joe. Don’t do this, PLEASE!’

‘And why can’t we afford a new door?’ Joe raged. ‘Because you insisted on giving up your job, didn’t you? Selfish cow!’

‘I wanted to look after John whilst he’s little,’ said Ellen, glaring right back at Joe. ‘You promised me you were going to get a job, didn’t you?’

Joe hunched his shoulders and clenched his teeth. He towered over Ellen, shuffling closer and closer.

‘Shut up,’ he hissed, ‘or I’ll smash that smug face of yours and then I’ll get some peace from your endless nagging, woman.’

Ellen went quiet. She went limp against the wall, and slid to the floor, her hands over her ears. Joe stamped his foot, and grinned when she jumped. It startled me too, so much that I wailed in fright. I thought Joe was going to kill my lovely Ellen.

I had to do something.

So I walked out from under the chair and sat between them, facing Joe. I yowled and looked right into Joe’s eyes, a hard cat stare, a power stare that I didn’t know I had until that moment. I could feel my angel filling my aura with a burning light.

‘Don’t get nasty,’ she said. ‘Just sit there.’

Joe turned and left, slamming the door so hard that the whole house vibrated and the remaining shards of glass crashed into the hall.

‘I’ll kill the pair of you,’ he bellowed as he headed out.

Ellen picked me up and wept into my fur.

‘What are we going to do, Solomon? What are we going to DO?’

I just kept my head down and carried on purring into Ellen’s heart. She seemed frozen. Nothing I did made any difference. Perhaps that first row was the most difficult, at least it was for me anyway. And through it all Jessica was out in the garden, shamelessly chasing butterflies. For once I envied her ability to detach herself from family upsets. I made a mental note that detachment was a skill to be acquired in another lifetime. Right now I felt hopelessly inadequate, especially when Ellen put me down and picked up John, who was crying.

‘What did Daddy do?’ he was wailing.

‘He kicked the door in.’

‘It’s broken!’ John wailed even louder. ‘And the foxes will get in.’

‘We can mend it darling. Calm down. Daddy’s gone out now.’

‘Has Daddy gone away forever?’

‘No.’

‘He said he was.’

‘He won’t. He’ll be back. You’ll see,’ soothed Ellen, but her eyes were sad and frightened.

‘Jessica’s got a butterfly!’ shrieked John. He wriggled out of Ellen’s arms and both of them rushed into the garden. I didn’t understand why Ellen felt she had to rescue a butterfly when her own wings were broken.

Exhausted by the rowing, I crawled onto my favourite cushion to doze through the morning. Blessed sleep took me quickly into the spirit world.

‘How are you doing, Solomon?’

The sight of my angel’s beaming face stopped me moaning too much. The feelings of inadequacy and the pain in my ears melted into a stream of bright stars that healed my confusion. It was hard, my angel agreed, but warned me it would get worse, and in between the bad times I must concentrate on eating, playing and building myself into a strong cat.

Refreshed and brave again, I awoke at noon to the silence of an empty house. I yawned and stretched, and walked into every room with my tail up, expecting to find Ellen. Even Jessica was nowhere to be seen. A plate of cat food was in its usual place in the kitchen so I ate most of it, thinking it had an odd metallic flavour. Rabbit, it said on the tin. Tin-flavoured rabbit. Well, it was different.

I considered braving the cat flap, but it was too heavy for a kitten like me, only three months old, and it had a way of snapping shut on my tail. I decided to go upstairs to look for Ellen.

The hall was full of broken glass, and the door had been mended with a piece of cardboard and parcel tape. John’s room was empty, and so was the bathroom, but Ellen’s bedroom door was shut. I sat outside it staring, trying to use my psi sense to find out if she was inside, but apparently she wasn’t. A few meows brought no result so I ran downstairs and jumped onto the lounge windowsill, and there, to my amazement, was Ellen. My fur stood on end, my tail bushed out like a bottlebrush. What I saw was so strange.

Ellen was inside a silver door, about the size of the puss flap. She had shrunk to the size of a blackbird. I stared and stared, not daring to move in case it happened to me. It was definitely Ellen. She had blonde hair and she was smiling, her eyes were full of light. Then I noticed something that made my fur even stiffer. Only her head was there in that silver door, the rest of her was missing. Spooked, I looked carefully behind the silver door and nothing was there. I tried to touch noses with her but a glassy screen was across the door. I sat down, feeling I mustn’t take my eyes off her, and waited for her to come out.

I heard the puss flap slam and Jessica came in with a dead starling in her mouth. She dumped half of it in the kitchen and half of it under the sofa before seeing me up there staring at Ellen in the silver door.

‘What are you all blown up about?’ she asked. ‘You look like a hedgehog.’

‘Something terrible has happened to Ellen.’

Very few cats ever master the art of laughing. I certainly couldn’t. But Jessica knew exactly how to curl up her mouth, spark her eyes and roll on the floor as if she were laughing.

‘That’s a picture,’ she explained. ‘It’s not really Ellen. It’s a flat image on a piece of something.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Humans have lots of them.’ Jessica sounded bored and scathing. ‘Haven’t you ever noticed them? Look at that flat barn owl on the wall. And there are flat rabbits on the wall in John’s room. And there’s a flat horse at the top of the stairs. I don’t bother looking at them any more.’

I did look at the flat barn owl and felt quite spooked by it, and angry with Jessica for laughing at me. I pounced on her from the windowsill and we wrestled, squealing on the floor. Then she chased me up the curtains. At that moment, in walked Ellen – the real Ellen, not the flat version. I was pleased to see her but she was not pleased to see me at the top of the curtains. That was our ill-timed mistake. The skin around her eyes looked red and her aura was dark. I wanted to love her but she shooed me into the garden along with Jessica, and a few minutes later half of the dead starling came sailing out too.