There were three small biscuits left from his breakfast which he crunched up thinking that it was about time his man came back and filled it up again.

“Perhaps I’ll go outside and wait for him to come home,” he thought. “He really likes me waiting for him and if I rub myself around his legs and purr loudly he just might give me a sardine. I know he has some in that big cold white cupboard where lots of nice things to eat are kept.”

He trotted off to his own special cat door in the big door that the man used. He pushed up the flap and went outside, only to come back in again much faster than he went out.  The wind was blowing and the rain was very wet.  He hated the rain. The wind was not too bad as it made you excited and you could chase and pounce on anything that was blown around.

Kevin went to the window and looked out. The flowers were tossing about in the wind and rain and the birds were being blown about on the bag of nuts that hung from the tree. 

“I’m glad I don’t have to go out in that to get my dinner,” he thought.

Then he saw Tattybum crouched in the corner of the garden.  Tattybum was a cat that Kevin saw sometimes when he was outside walking around his garden. He did not have much to do with her because she always seemed to have lots of kittens that needed looking after. And she didn’t have a proper home or a man of her own like he did. 

Today he thought Tattybum looked particularly sad and was cold and wet with her fur all lumpy and sticking together. Even her eyes looked sore.  It was strange because sometimes she looked very fat and sometimes she looked very thin.  This was one of her thin days.

That evening his man came home and took a small wire cage from the back of the car and put it in the place where Tattybum had been sitting earlier in the day. It had stopped raining.  Kevin was very glad to see his man as now he would get something more to eat.  His man went to the big cold white cupboard and took out some sardines. 

“Yummie!” thought Kevin as they were put into a saucer. But his man took the saucer with the sardines, went out in the garden and put it in the wire cage.

“If he thinks I’m going out there to eat them I shall howl and howl until he brings them in again!” thought Kevin.

“You never know who might eat them.” This really was not good news.

Then his man filled up Kevin’s bowl with some of his special cat biscuits and put a sardine on top. 

“Purr, purr” went Kevin, just to say “Thank you.”

“ Now Kevin,” said  the man “ You can’t go out tonight because I want Tattybum to go in the trap (he called it a trap not a cage) and eat the sardine I have given her. 

Tomorrow morning a nice lady will come from ‘Les amis des chats’ to take Tattybum in the trap to the vet for a little while.  The vet will make Tattybum better and she will not have any more kittens to take care of and can just look after herself without any more worries.”

“Do you remember that you went to the vet to be sterilised?” he went on. Kevin didn’t understand the word ‘sterilised’ but remembered feeling much better since he had whatever this ‘sterilised’ thing was.   So Tattybum would feel better too.

And that is what happened. 

Kevin’s man now puts out a little bit of food for Tattybum every day, and sometimes Kevin plays with her chasing the leaves in the garden, because now she looks clean and never gets fat or too thin again.

If Tattybum could speak English she would say “Thank you all at ‘Les amis des chats’ and all the people who help make all the cats in Tarn et Garonne have a better, happier life.”

But Tattybum is a French cat, so Kevin couldn’t understand a word she meowed.

© Pam Revell 2011