A Kitten Called Cat

Chapter Twenty - Dinner for Two

At last Terri and I were left on our own and we both let out loud sighs. Then we giggled at each other as we collapsed into dining chairs. Cruella wouldn't have approved! Elroy appeared and he quickly made some room for us amongst the carnage of the table and, a few seconds later, two of his perfect-looking place settings had magically appeared. You could tell he'd done this sort of thing before.

Plates of the salad appeared in front of us. It had roast watermelon and goat's cheese in it which sounds like a pretty freaky combination but was really delicious. Then he stepped across to the sideboard and looked at the open bottles. "Red wine?" he asked, "or white?"

I looked at Terri and shrugged. I'd enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine with Master but I didn't know much about it - apart from the fact that, if I drank too much, I started falling over and taking my clothes off.

"One of each," Terri suggested. "We can share. That way we can try them both and still follow the rules."

It was a plan.

When he was done, Elroy disappeared upstairs to help with the coffee so we had to help ourselves from the dumb waiter. That wasn't too much hassle, particularly as he'd turned on a binger on the thing that let us know when there was even more food for us to stuff into ourselves!

Fish followed the salad - a piece of delicately poached trout. For the first time, as the plate was set in front of me, I got to see how pretty it was. There was just the fish and a few small vegetables and a squiggle of sauce but it was simply beautifully presented.

This was followed by a small plate with some quail's eggs which were served with a funny squidge of carrot baby-food. It sounds a bit funny but it tasted delicious.

Then the sorbet appeared. When I'd been doing my 'dumb waiter' job, I thought the idea of a pudding in the middle of the meal was a bit funny but, when I tasted it, I found it was quite sharp and nothing like as sweet as I'd expected - not really a pudding at all.

And, at last we came to the main course: some little pieces of melt in your mouth tender lamb with some tiny, weeny baby onions and, this time, cauliflower baby food. I'm sure the chef had a good reason for this baby food thing he had going on but, to be honest, I could have done perfectly well without it. There was also some weird licorice flavoured gravy on the plate but I left that well alone.

And as we ate, Terri and I talked.

I told her all about how I managed to find myself living as a kitten for an international drug smuggler and she was such a sympathetic listener that I even found myself telling her about the horrible, scary, finger choppy bits which I'd assumed that I'd never even hint at to another human being.

And as the tears began to well in my eyes at that dreadful memory, she reached out and put her hand on mine and it all felt just a little bit better.

And, when I'd finished giving her my life story, she told me hers.

Theresa Fontana grew up in upstate New York. She had a younger sister and a baby brother. Her father was a businessman. Nobody ever said what the business was and she knew she wasn't supposed to ask about it. He was also a heavy drinker and, from time to time, when drunk, he'd hit her mum. Her mother had a full time job in a supermarket and another full time job trying to hold the family together in spite of her father.

For the first fourteen years and three weeks of her life, things had gone pretty smoothly. Then, one night, she was woken by her mother yelling at her father. She listened in shamelessly, of course... it would have been tricky not to because her mum was yelling so loud!

Apparently his business involved selling illegal drugs. He'd had some dealings with Mr Andretti and, because of some stupidly risky trades, and some bad luck when he was drunk, he'd ended up owing him much more than he could ever repay. There were going to be horrible consequences for him and the rest of them were going to be thrown out of their home.