It might not be too bad here for a few days, he thought, as he finished the first piece and went about clearing out the rest of the bowl, finishing up with a refreshing drink of milk, just like when he was a little boy.
I seriously hope they don’t have a dog, he thought, as he began to explore the kitchen, a quick process due to the size. To the left of the food bowl was a comfortable-looking cat basket, complete with blanket and small furry pillow. Excellent, he thought, as he looked forward to a few nights’ safe and comfortable sleep. Around the corner from the washing machine and sandwiched between it and the fridge was the door to the garden, a cheap plastic door, glazed at the top with pseudo Georgian inserts, partly falling away at the sides.
The bottom of the door intrigued Ed the most. A plastic cat flap about seven inches square led out into the garden. This would be vital for him to get out when the time came for the next transience. He butted his head against the flap and out into the small alleyway which led down into the main garden, leaving the flap swinging back and forth in his absence. The garden was small, probably about twenty-five feet long and as wide as the semi-detached two-storey house. At the back there was a small patio door which led out to the garden from another small room.
I would’ve knocked that through into the living room, thought Ed, as he made his way into the overgrown mess of the garden, reflecting that his new guardians were obviously not the green-fingered sort. He danced into the un-mown grass, keen to test his jumping and climbing skills. It was such a welcome contrast to being a tortoise. His whiskers were ever aware, jetting out like flexible laser beams of hair from his snout. It was an extreme sensation.
Eagerly, with his agile, feline legs, he jumped up and down out of the grass on the spot, over and over again, up and down like a jack-in-the-box.
“Dad, come and look at this, Smunky has gone mad in the garden. He’s just jumping up and down like a lunatic,” shouted Ali from behind the thin glass conservatory door.
“Whatever,” replied Frank, uninterested in the whole situation.
Great, so I’m called Smunky! Why, why Smunky? What the hell does it mean?
Ed stopped his acrobatics and used his legs to jump up onto the fence. However, being new to the cat kingdom he had no idea of his own strength and completely misjudged it, clearing the fence to land in the bush next door.
“Dad, Dad, you’ll never believe what he’s done now.”
“Shut up for Chrissake, I’m trying to get some rest,” barked Frank, as Ali went back into the living room to see his computer giving him the dreaded ‘frozen blue screen’ treatment once more.
Meanwhile, Ed had landed upside down in a prickly thorny bush and was wriggling and twisting his body to get free. With a yank and a jerk, he suddenly spun out and fell three or so feet to the ground, uprighting himself in flight and landing on a soft mown lawn, legs splayed out.
Mmm, that’s a cool design, thought the cat, as he shook himself down and began casually strolling across the garden.
“You scummy little bastard, what have you done to my bush?” suddenly rang out from Ed’s left. He glanced round with surprise to see a red-faced and very angry old man proceeding towards him, clutching with angst to his Zimmer frame as he made very slow progress. He looked as though years of poverty had worn away at his body, whilst years of misery had slowly eroded his character. Tatty grey tweed trousers, baggy and torn, hung from his thin hips, a brown leather belt ambitiously trying to retain enough tension to avoid embarrassment. This was crowned with a grubby white shirt adorned with thin blue stripes and a purple synthetic tank top with numerous small holes and tears.
His gnarled and twisted hands clung to the top of the metal walking frame, knobbed and twisted as the protuberant joints seemed to be visibly growing like a complex of inconvenient ginger root. He struggled on, fuelled by anger and resentment, his wispy, overgrown, thin grey hair blowing randomly in the breeze.
“You really think you’re going to catch a cat, you Muppet? Save it, or you’ll have a heart attack,” announced Ed, omitting a strange array of cat noises in the direction of the man as he grappled with the frame, lifting it one side then the other, trying to get to the cat. His vile rage showed in his frothing, bulging, red face and was evidence of a lifetime’s frustration. The long grey tufts on either side of his mainly bald head flicked impotently from side to side as he shuffled further.
“You fool, what d’you think you’re doing?” meowed Ed, as he calmly skipped onto a small wall and then up onto a cheaply constructed and tatty wooden garden shed. He looked down from the roof, at the door hanging on one hinge from a badly rotting door frame. The man came to rest just in front and grabbed his walking stick from the side of the silvery metal frame, lifting it skywards, shaking it in Ed’s direction, banging on the bottom part of the gable roof.