The Cat Who Knew Who Was Waiting

Part One. Three Words

Willow was the Reading Cat of the twins' class, and she had never read a single word.

She didn't need to. She was a Bengal, which is a kind of cat with spots like a small leopard, and she knew everything that mattered. She knew which radiator was warmest. She knew which children dropped crumbs. She knew that the beanbag in the reading corner was hers, even when somebody was sitting on it.

She also knew three human words.

The first was "Willow". That one was hers. The second was "dinner", which was the best word in any language. The third was "no". She heard that one a lot, and she had decided long ago that it was not about her.

Every other word the humans said was just noise. Nice noise, mostly. Like rain.

From down where Willow lived, the school was mostly shoes. Mister Harris, the head teacher, was a pair of brown shoes that fussed. They squeaked when he worried, which was all the time. Missus Tibbs, the class teacher, was soft grey shoes that never hurried. Ollie was a pair of trainers with crumbs falling around them, like snow.

And the twins, Alex and Felix, were two pairs of the same shoes. The grown-ups mixed them up all the time. Willow never did. Alex was the one who always wanted her on his lap. Felix was the one who always had a toy on a string.

Willow had one more thing that was hers alone. In the bottom of the great front doors, there was a small swinging flap, just her size. Mister Janus, who looked after the doors and keys, had made it for her, as a thank-you. Willow could go in and out whenever she liked, and she never had to ask anybody.

There was one rule about Willow that everybody in the class knew. When she was walking about, or wanted something, she talked. And talked. And talked. But when she was comfortable somewhere, she went quiet.

On that Monday morning, Willow was not comfortable at all.

Part Two. Somebody on the Step

It was the coldest morning of the year. There was frost on the field, and frost on the wall, and frost on the end of Kenji's nose.

At eight o'clock, before the bell, there were three knocks on the great front doors.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Mister Harris's brown shoes squeaked across the hall. He opened the door. He looked left. He looked right.

"Nobody there," he said. "Must be the wind."

But somebody walked in anyway. She had four legs and a long, calm face. She was white all over, except for her ears, which were red, as if she'd been out in the cold too long. Round her neck, on a piece of string, hung a little cross, woven out of rushes. On top of it burned a tiny flame, no bigger than a fingernail. It didn't burn the rushes at all.

It was a cow.

The cow walked past Mister Harris, into the school, as if she'd been invited.

And Willow, sitting by the radiator, looked out through the open door, and saw who was on the step.

A lady was sitting there, in the frost. She had a long green cloak, and hair the colour of flames in a fireplace. Her hands were held out in front of her, as if she was warming them on something. She was making up a little rhyme, very softly, to nobody.

"The frost is on the field, and the well is in the ground, and the door is shut again, so I'll sit and look around."

Mister Harris looked straight at her. He didn't see her. He shut the door.

Nobody else could see her. Only Willow.

The lady had smiled at Willow, just before the door closed. And she had said something. Willow didn't know what. But the way she said it was like a warm patch of sun on a windowsill.

What she had said was: "I'll wait until I'm asked in, little one. It's only good manners."

But Willow didn't know that. She only knew the three words. And none of them was that.

Part Three. A Cow in the Corridor

By the time the bell rang, everybody in the school knew about the cow.

She ate the autumn display in the corridor. She ate the paper leaves first, and then the paper conkers, and then a small paper hedgehog that Dot had made. Dot is in Reception, and she is not scared of anything. She marched up to the cow and told her off, very sternly. The cow listened politely, and ate the hedgehog's other half.

Mister Harris's shoes squeaked up and down the corridor. They squeaked in a very worried way.

"A cow," he said. "In my school. On a Monday. And the new teacher hasn't even arrived!"

"What new teacher?" said Maya.

"A lady with a long name," said Mister Harris. "She was meant to be here at eight. Poetry and something. I've got her name on my list and everything."

Willow knew where the new teacher was. The new teacher was on the step.

But nobody asked Willow.

Then the cow saw the stairs. She looked at them with interest. She put one front hoof on the bottom step, then the other, and then she climbed up, slowly and calmly, all the way to the top.

"Oh no," said Kenji. "Cows can go upstairs. But they can't come down again. My uncle has a farm. They just won't."

At the top of the stairs, the cow went into the library, and lay down on the big rug in the reading corner, and began to chew.

"Well," said Mister Harris faintly. "At least she likes books."

Part Four. Alex's Way

Willow had a problem. Somebody kind was sitting out in the cold, and nobody knew she was there.

So Willow did what she always did when she needed something. She told everybody about it.

She walked up to the twins and meowed. She walked round them in a circle and meowed again. She walked to the door, and back, and meowed eleven more times, and some of the meows were quite loud.

"Willow wants something," said Felix.

"Willow always wants something," said Alex.

Then Alex had his idea. Alex's idea was always the same idea. He sat down cross-legged on the reading-corner carpet, and patted his knees.

"Come on, Willow," he said. "Come and sit on me."

Willow heard "Willow" in the middle of it. That part was right. But the rest was wrong.

Alex patted his knees again. Then he lay down flat on the carpet, so that Willow could use him as a pillow, which was his very favourite thing in the world. He lay there with his arms out, looking hopeful.

Willow walked straight over him. Her paws went on his tummy, and then on his chest, and then on his face. She stepped off the top of his head, still talking, and went back to the door.

She meowed, a long one, from the door.

"She stood on my nose," said Alex, sitting up. "She's never stood on my nose before."

"So it's not sitting on you," said Felix.

"It's always sitting on me," said Alex sadly.

But it wasn't. Not today.

Part Five. Felix's Way

Felix had a different idea. Felix's idea was always the feather on a string.

He got it out of the toy box. It was a long stick with a string on the end, and on the end of the string was a bright blue feather. Felix waggled it across the carpet.

Willow tried not to look.

She really did try. She had something important to tell them. But it is a fact about cats that when a feather goes past, a cat has to chase it. It is not a choice. It is just what happens. And Willow was a Bengal, and Bengals are the worst of all.

So she chased it. She chased it under the table. Alex grabbed the other end of the stick, and the twins ran it round the room together, and Willow chased it round the book box and over the beanbag and twice round Missus Tibbs's soft grey shoes.

Then, right in the middle of a jump, Willow remembered.

She stopped. She landed. She sat down at the classroom door, with her back to the feather, and she meowed, as firmly as she knew how.

"She wants to go out!" said Felix.

The twins ran along the corridor to the great front doors, with Willow trotting ahead. Felix heaved one open. The cold came in like a bucket of water.

There was the lady, on the step, with her hands held out to nothing. She smiled at Willow. She was still making up her rhyme.

Willow sat on the doormat, and looked at the lady, and did not go out.

"Go on, then," said Felix.

Willow did not go on, then.

"She's doing the door thing," said Alex. "Where she can't decide."

Felix waited. Alex waited. Willow sat. After a while, Felix's teeth started to chatter, and he shut the door.

"So it's not going out," said Felix.

Willow looked at the shut door, and her tail went flick, flick, flick.

Part Six. Maya's Notebook

At break time, Maya got out her notebook. She had written COW at the top of a page, and drawn a circle round it.

She sat at the table by the window, with her pencils in a pot. And Willow, who was tired from all that talking, decided to lie down.

The best place to lie down, Willow decided, was the notebook.

The pencil pot was in the way. So Willow pushed it, very gently, with one paw, until it fell off the table and all the pencils rolled across the floor. Then she lay down on the page, right on the word COW, and closed her eyes.

"Willow!" said Maya. "No!"

Willow knew that word. She ignored it, which was what she always did.

"Fine," said Maya, picking up her pencils. "I'll think out loud instead."

Missus Tibbs had come to see the cow earlier. She had looked at the little cross round the cow's neck, and gone very quiet. "My nana used to make those," she had said. "Every year, at the start of February. You weave it out of rushes, and hang it over the door."

"It's a Brigid's cross," said Maya now. "That's what it's called. Missus Tibbs said. And there's a story about Brigid and a white cow. I read it in a book once, only I can't remember all of it."

Everyone waited.

"There was a baby," said Maya slowly. "And the baby wouldn't eat anything. Or was it the cow who wouldn't eat anything?" She frowned. "And the cow had red ears. Or white ears and a red... no. Red ears. And somebody had a cloak. And there was a fire that never went out. Or a well. Maybe both."

"That's a lot of things," said Ollie.

"I know," said Maya crossly. "It's a muddly story. Or I'm muddly. One of those." She chewed her pencil. "But if the cow is here, then Brigid can't be far away. So where is she?"

She pulled the notebook out from under Willow and started to write the word door.

But Willow had been lying on that exact corner, and the page was creased, and the pencil went through the paper. And the bell rang. And Maya never finished the word.

Part Seven. Colder

By lunchtime, it was colder inside the school than outside.

There was frost on the inside of the windows, in feathery shapes like ferns. When the children breathed out, little clouds came out of their mouths. Ollie's soup went thick, and then thicker, and then it stopped being soup and started being a sort of soup-shaped brick. He turned the bowl upside down. The soup stayed where it was.

"I'm not even hungry any more," he said, which had never happened before. "I don't want any dinner at all."

Willow's ears went straight up. That was one of her words. She trotted over to see where the dinner was.

There wasn't any dinner. There was only Ollie, and a soup brick. Willow gave him a long look, and walked away.

Down in the boiler room, Missus Mahuika, who knows more about fire than anybody, was kneeling in front of the boiler. She had tried everything. She had even breathed on it, which usually makes boilers very nervous.

"It won't light," she said. "It's not broken. It's waiting for something."

Willow knew what it was waiting for. It was waiting for the lady on the step.

There was one other person in the school who could understand every cat in the world. That was Mrs Bast, who looked after Pastoral Care and Pest Control. But Mrs Bast was away that week, on a course about mice.

So it was up to Willow.

And then Kenji, who had gone up to the library to check on the cow, came running down with his eyes very wide. He had noticed the cow's little cross. The flame on top of it had been as big as a fingernail that morning.

Now it was as big as a grain of rice.

Part Eight. A Present

When it gets very cold, mice come indoors. Every cat knows that.

Willow found one by the boiler room, and caught it, and carried it back to the classroom very carefully, the way you carry a present. Then she put it down in the middle of the carpet, right in front of the twins, to show them how it's done.

The mouse looked at the twins. The twins looked at the mouse.

Then the mouse ran.

It ran under the table. Missus Tibbs said, "Oh!" It ran between Mister Harris's brown shoes, which had just come in, and the shoes did a little hop, and then another hop, and then a sort of dance, all on their own. Mister Harris went pink and said, "Goodness me," and then laughed, which surprised everybody, including him.

The mouse ran out of the classroom, and along the corridor, and straight out through Willow's swinging flap in the great front doors.

Willow went after it.

And out on the cold step, the mouse stopped. It climbed up into the air, onto nothing at all, and sat there in the middle of nowhere, a little way above the stone, as if it was sitting on somebody's knee. It fluffed up its fur. It washed its whiskers. It looked very warm.

Willow knew where it was sitting. It was sitting in the lady's lap.

Nobody else saw. Nobody else was looking.

Then Willow pounced, because a mouse is a mouse. And she sat down on the step, right outside the big glass panel in the door, and began to eat it.

Within about five seconds, the whole class had their noses squashed against the inside of the glass.

"She's eating it!" said Kenji.

"She's eating the BUTT!" shouted Ollie. "EWWWWW!"

Everyone screamed and nobody looked away.

Alex and Felix were not bothered at all. They had seen Willow do this lots of times.

"She always eats them," said Alex.

"She always does it where you can see," said Felix. "She's showing off."

Behind Willow, very softly, the lady on the step laughed, and said something kind. It sounded like good hunting. Then she made up a little rhyme about a cat on a cold step, and the bravest hunter in the whole wide world.

Part Nine. Hammock Height

In the afternoon there was PE in the hall, and everybody did it in their coats.

Willow did not do PE. She sat by the wall bars and watched. Then, when nobody was looking, she climbed them.

Most of the time, Willow liked low things. A sofa. A cushion. A mat on the floor. But every now and then, she liked to go up somewhere high and look down at everybody, and think her own thoughts.

So she went up the wall bars, one bar at a time, past the children doing star jumps, past the rope, all the way to the very top, higher than a grown-up's head, higher than two grown-ups standing on each other. She balanced there, on the top bar, by the high window.

From up there, she could see over the wall, and down onto the front step.

The lady was still sitting there. She had stopped making up rhymes. Her cloak was white at the edges with frost. Her hands were still held out, as if there was a fire in front of her. But there wasn't any fire.

Willow watched her for a long time.

She was a cat. She wasn't meant to worry about people. People were meant to worry about her.

But she was worried. She didn't like it one bit.

Part Ten. Too Hard

When Willow came down from the wall bars, she was thirsty. Worrying makes you thirsty.

Willow only drank from a tap. Water from a bowl was just water lying down, doing nothing. Water from a tap was alive.

So she went to the sink in the corner of the classroom, and jumped up beside it, and meowed at the tap.

"I'll do it!" said Alex.

Alex always wanted to do the tap for Willow. The trouble was, Alex could never turn it on gently. Gently was not something Alex's hands knew how to do with taps.

He turned it.

The water came out like a fire hose. It hit the bottom of the sink and bounced straight back up, all over Alex, and all over Felix, who was standing next to him, and all over Willow, who was not expecting it.

Felix was dripping. Alex was dripping. Willow was dripping and extremely offended.

Felix reached past his brother and turned the tap down to a little thin trickle.

Willow, still dripping, took a polite drink, just to be nice. Then she sat back and meowed again, exactly the same meow as before.

"It's not water," said Felix, wringing out his jumper.

"It's not water," agreed Alex, wringing out his.

At ten to three, Willow went back for another drink. She jumped up by the sink. Felix turned the tap for her, very carefully.

Nothing came out. Not even a trickle. Only a little cold click, from deep inside the pipe. The water had frozen.

Willow looked at the tap. Then she looked out of the window at the step. And her tail went very still.

Part Eleven. The Betrayed Look

At home time, it was getting dark. In the dark, Willow always felt like hunting. Outside the windows, little birds were going into the rose bushes to sleep, and Willow could see every one of them.

But she wasn't thinking about birds tonight.

She went to the twins. She meowed. Then she meowed again, louder. Then she set off down the corridor, and kept looking back.

Alex and Felix followed. As soon as they were going the right way, Willow ran. She sprinted past their legs, flat out, towards the great front doors, to show them where to go. She got there first. She turned round, to see them coming.

That's when the cow, up in the library, said, "MOOOOOOO."

It was a very big moo. It came down the stairs like a big wet wind. Everybody in the school stopped what they were doing and ran to the bottom of the stairs, and Alex and Felix ran with them.

Willow sat by the great front doors, all alone.

She looked at the twins' backs. She looked at them as if they had betrayed her, which is what it's called when your best friends run off and leave you, just when you needed them most.

The cow was standing at the top of the stairs. She wanted to come down. She put one hoof forward, looked at the steps, and pulled it back. Her red ears drooped. The flame on her little cross was as small as a pin.

"She can't do it," said Kenji. "I told you. They don't come down stairs."

"Then we'll make it not stairs," said Felix.

The twins ran to the hall and came back dragging the big blue PE mats. Missus Tibbs held the top of each mat steady while Kenji and Ollie and Maya helped, and together they laid them down the staircase, one on top of the next, until the stairs were a long, soft slope, like a slide.

Felix went up to the top with a handful of hay from the nature table. He came down the steps beside the mats, one at a time, holding on to the banister with one hand and holding out the hay with the other, and saying, "Come on. Come on." Alex went up behind the cow, and talked to her very softly, the way you talk to someone who's scared, about how brave she was and how it wasn't far.

The cow put one hoof on the mats. Then another. Then she sort of sat down, and slid the whole way to the bottom, very slowly, with a look of great surprise.

Everyone cheered. The cow ate the hay.

Part Twelve. Her Own Door

Alex and Felix came back down the corridor, puffing.

Willow was still sitting by the front doors. She was still looking betrayed.

Felix stopped. He looked at Willow, and he looked at the doors, and he looked at the little swinging flap in the bottom of them.

"Alex," he said. "Willow's got her own door."

"I know," said Alex. "Mister Janus made it."

"So why does she keep asking us to open the big one?" said Felix. "She doesn't need us. She can go out whenever she wants."

Alex thought about it. He thought about it so hard that his face went red.

"So the big door isn't for her," he said slowly. "It's for somebody else."

They both looked at the great doors. There was nothing to see. Just wood, and the brass handle, and the glass panel, all fogged up with frost.

"But there isn't anybody else," said Felix.

Willow looked at them both. If cats could sigh, she would have sighed then. It would have been the biggest sigh in the history of cats.

Part Thirteen. Quiet

It was time to lock up.

Every night, Alex and Felix locked the great front doors with their golden keys, one each. Mister Harris stood beside them, holding his clipboard. Tonight his brown shoes were very quiet.

"She never came," he said. "The new teacher. I waited all day."

Alex put his key in the lock. Felix put his key in beside it.

And Willow, without a sound, slipped out through her little flap, into the dark and the frost.

It was so cold outside that her paws stung. The step was like ice. Willow did not like it. Willow had never liked being cold, and she never would.

But she walked across the step to the lady, who was sitting very still now, with frost on her eyelashes. And Willow climbed up into her lap.

The lap was warm. Not the cloak, which was frozen stiff. The lap underneath it, which was as warm as a fire. Willow turned round three times and lay down, and tucked her nose under her tail.

And she stopped talking.

Willow didn't see what happened next, because she was busy being warm. But this is what it was.

Inside, on the other side of the glass, Alex had his hand on his key. He was just about to turn it.

He stopped.

"Felix," he said. "Listen."

Felix listened. "I can't hear anything."

"That's it," said Alex. "Willow's gone quiet."

Felix's eyes went wide. "She only goes quiet when she's comfortable."

"But she's outside," said Alex. "In the frost. In the dark."

Felix wiped the frost off the glass panel with his sleeve. They both put their faces up to it.

There was Willow, on the step. Sitting on nothing, a little way off the ground, curled up in the air, purring. Like the mouse. Like somebody's cat on somebody's knee.

And in front of her, in the empty air, two hands were held out, very close together, as if they were cupping something small and precious, to keep it from going out.

Then there were three knocks, from outside.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Part Fourteen. Come In

Alex looked up at Mister Harris. Felix looked up at him too.

Mister Harris looked through the glass, at the cat curled up on nothing, and the two warm hands held out in the dark. His brown shoes did not squeak at all. He nodded.

Alex didn't turn his key to lock the door. He turned it the other way.

Felix didn't turn his key to lock the door either. He turned his the other way too.

Clunk. The great doors swung open.

"Come in," said Alex, into the dark.

"You're welcome," said Felix.

And somebody stood up on the step.

Now they could all see her. A lady in a long green cloak, white with frost at the edges, with hair the colour of flames in a fireplace. She was holding Willow in her arms like a baby. Willow was letting her, which she never did with anybody for more than two seconds.

The lady stepped over the doorstep, into the school.

And all the warmth came in with her.

It came in like a wave. The frost on the windows ran down the glass in little rivers. The soup in Ollie's bowl, still on the table in the dinner hall, went plop and turned back into soup. Down in the boiler room, there was a big, happy WHUMPH, and Missus Mahuika shouted, "THERE you are!"

All over the school, the taps coughed, and spluttered, and started to run.

The white cow came walking down the corridor. The flame on her little cross was bright again, as bright as a candle. She went straight to the lady, and put her long red ear against the green cloak, and closed her eyes.

Mister Harris looked at the lady. He looked at the badge on her cloak, which said Mrs Brigid, Poetry, Wells and Warm Hands. Then he looked at the clipboard in his hands.

"You're the new teacher," he said, in a very small voice.

"I am," said Mrs Brigid.

"But you were meant to be here at eight o'clock!"

"I was," said Mrs Brigid. "I've been on your step all day."

Part Fifteen. Warm Hands

Mister Harris went very pink.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I looked right at you. I didn't see you at all."

"It's nobody's fault," said Mrs Brigid kindly. "Where I come from, on my special night, people open the door, and say you're welcome, and that's how I come in. A guest on the step is very easy to miss. Especially one who's waiting to be asked."

"Willow didn't miss you," said Felix.

"No," said Mrs Brigid, and she smiled down at the cat in her arms. "Willow saw me first, this morning. Willow told everybody, all day long. Willow brought me a mouse. Willow climbed up high, to keep an eye on me. And when it got very cold, Willow came and kept my hands warm."

She sat down on the bottom stair, still holding Willow. The cow lay down beside her, and the children sat round in a ring.

"I muddled your story," said Maya. "About the cow. I'm sorry." She held up her notebook. On the creased page, with a hole through it, were the first two letters of a word: do. "And I nearly had where you were. Willow was lying on it."

"Willow was lying on a lot of things today," said Mrs Brigid. "And you were nearly right about the cow. Only one bit was the wrong way round. There was a baby girl, a long time ago, who couldn't keep any food down. Not a thing. Everyone was worried. And then a white cow with red ears came, and the baby drank her milk, and grew up strong." She stroked the cow's nose. "The baby was me. This is the cow. Or her great-great-great-granddaughter. It's hard to keep count."

"People in Ireland have told stories about you for a very, very long time," said Maya. "Missus Tibbs said."

"They have," said Mrs Brigid. "Some tell them one way and some another. Some people say I'm a goddess, and some say I'm a saint, and some say both. My day is the first of February, when the spring starts, even if it doesn't feel like it. People weave little crosses, and leave them at the door."

Then she looked at Alex and Felix.

"Willow couldn't tell you," she said. "She hasn't got the words. Lots of people haven't. Babies, and cats, and people who are too sad or too shy, or just too small. So when someone can't tell you, don't only listen. Watch where they go. And go with them."

"We did," said Felix. "In the end. We stopped listening to the meow, and watched where she went."

"Out there," said Alex. "Where it was cold. Because somebody needed her."

Then Mrs Brigid held out her arms, and Willow stepped out of them. She walked across the carpet, very slowly, the way a queen walks. And she climbed onto Alex's lap, and turned round three times, and lay down, and put her head on his arm.

Alex didn't move. He hardly breathed. Felix reached over and stroked her, from her ears to the end of her tail. Willow pushed her head up into Felix's hand, hard, which is how a cat says more, please, and don't stop. So Felix didn't.

Willow purred.

She was very, very quiet.

Part Sixteen. The Well by the Gate

Before everyone went home, Mrs Brigid took the little cross from round the cow's neck. She stood on tiptoe, and hung it over the great front doors. The flame on top of it settled down to a soft, steady glow, as small as a ladybird, and as warm as a hug.

"There," she said. "Now nobody waits on this step for long."

Then she walked out to the green door, the one that stood at the side of the playground like a gate. Beside it, there was an old drain cover, with frost all round it. Mrs Brigid knelt down, and put her warm hands flat on the ground, and made up a rhyme.

"Water under the stone, water under the lane, come up into the cold and run in the light again."

And up through the stones came a spring.

It bubbled out of the ground, clear and sparkling, into a little round basin of grey stone that hadn't been there a moment before. It ran over the edge, and back into the ground, and up again, round and round, never stopping.

Willow came out to look at it. She sniffed it. She dipped her nose in. And then she drank, and drank, and drank.

"It's running water," said Felix. "Her favourite kind."

"It turns itself on," said Alex, very pleased. "Nobody has to do the tap."

From that day on, Willow would not drink from anything else. Not a bowl. Not a puddle. Not even the classroom tap. Only the little well by the green door, which always ran, and was never too hard, and never froze, even on the coldest morning of the year.

Part Seventeen. A Silver Drop

It was properly dark by the time the twins locked up.

They did it the proper way, the way Mister Janus had taught them. Alex put his key in the lock, and said, "Goodbye, Monday. You were very cold." He turned it once.

Felix put his key in beside it. "Hello, Tuesday," he said. "Please be warm." And he turned it once more.

Clunk. The doors settled. Above them, the little cross glowed.

Willow sat on the wall, watching the night. She was full of mouse, and full of water, and full of being right. She was very comfortable.

That's when she noticed the moon.

It was too low. Far too low. It was sitting just above the school roof, so close that Willow could see it was not a plain white moon at all, but silver, bright and shining, with a face in it like a lady's face, looking down at the school. And the lady in the moon looked as if she might be about to cry.

A single drop fell out of the sky. It landed on the end of Willow's nose. It was cold, and it was not rain. It was silver, and it glittered there, like a tear.

Willow went very still. She knew what this meant.

Every week, the twins said the same word, and every week, after they said it, somebody new came to the school. Willow had heard it so many times that she had learned it. It was her fourth word.

Alex was holding his golden key. Felix was holding his. They looked up from their keys at the silver moon, and the silver drop on Willow's nose, and they said, at exactly the same time, "Monday."

The End.