That summer was hot and still. At night, the covers would be discarded one by one until, as sunlight filtered through the thin curtain at 4.30, only a sheet remained. I’d discovered Parkrun and spent early mornings in the company of other runners, distracted from efforts to improve my PB only by the statuesque heron or an egret high stepping through the river’s fringe as delicately as a duchess skirting a puddle.
Belle Isle Park was on a short cut from my rented flat to town. A profusion of wildflowers dominated by scarlet poppies turned the open grassland into a flickering Monet. This was the territory of a ginger cat at one end, a tabby at the other. A large boulder, holding a plaque recording the date the park was opened by the local MP, marked the division of the cats’ territories. Never did I see either animal stray past that boundary.
It was the ginger one which caught my attention. Some days it would run up to me, eager for a stroke. At other times, I would be studiously ignored, its mind focussed on surveying its manor or preoccupied with feline philosophy.
When my granddaughter visited, I tried to distract her from picking the flowers with the ginger cat, who by then I had christened Bella after the park. But she was more interested in the dogs, which, not allowed in this park, were abundant elsewhere on our walk. Later my son Jake, who had a cat of his own, visited. Proud of my new friendship, I introduced him to Bella. Unprovoked, the cat bit him.
I continued to salute the cat when I traversed the park. Another walker, on their way to coffee at the Quay or to meet a friend, stopped, reached out a hand and stroked it.
‘Everyone knows Rufus,’ he said, casually, looking up at me.
‘Oh, is that his name?’ I didn’t admit I had privately bequeathed him a female handle.
‘His owner comes here to fetch him every evening. Lives near St Leonard’s church.’
He gave Rufus, as I must now call him, a final tickle under the chin.
The best thing about my new home was the garage. I’d never owned one before and without a car to accommodate, the space was a magnificent bonus. I would open my front door, stroll across the apron between the garage blocks and stand in the maw of the garage relishing the emptiness.
One day, when I returned to the flat, Rufus was inside, staring at me challengingly from the top of the stairs.
He became a frequent visitor after that, but not a regular one. Days when I longed for his company he was nowhere to be seen, not waiting by the door, not in the park. At other times, he would lurk outside the front door, demanding to come in just as I was going out, like Eliot’s Rumtumtugger.
Rufus’s visits have a routine. As I open the front door, he slips between my legs, races up the stairs and peers down at me from the landing. When I go up, he follows me into the kitchen, waiting for a saucer of milk from which he will take few disdainful slurps. To begin with, he would stay for only a few minutes, signalling the need to return to his duty policing the park with a peremptory miaow. The day he leapt on to the sofa, fell asleep after washing and stayed all afternoon was special. In his company, I feel the need to do nothing – just being with him is enough.
As dusk falls, gazing out of my window across the river path, I often see Rufus cradled sleepily in the arms of a short, bald man taking him home for dinner.
