Nine Lives

Content notice: allusion to fertility issues.

First life: Dubrovnik, Croatia

‘It’s going to jump!’ Indi gasped.

Alfie stopped her, one hand on her waist, other on her navel. She shivered. ‘Don’t run, you’ll scare it.’

They both looked over to the cat’s landing-place - from one side of the old city walls to the other, a hand-span’s strip which tipped over into a death-drop canvas of terracotta rooftops.

‘It’s got this,’ he said. ‘Cats know what they’re about. That’s their thing.’

The cat paused, tail twitching, assessing the gap. Then it jumped.

It wasn’t a big leap, but that’s what’s terrifying. How easy to overshoot, or overbalance an unsteady landing. Claws scrabbled on stone, back feet clawing at the wall, and then it pushed itself up to standing. It sauntered along, as though strolling down a city centre pavement.

‘A black cat crossing is lucky,’ said Indi. ‘Black cat crossing, followed by fall to its death?’

‘Immediate break up.’

‘No other option.’

‘Can’t ignore that kind of sign.’

‘Glad we’re agreed,’ Indi smiled, pulled him close, hips together, a kiss hot with the friction of present meeting future.

They walked on. On one side, the sun shone off the sea in surging sparkles. On the other, amongst the ancient buildings, they saw a roofless house which had allowed nature to burst from within. Exploded in a previous era, never covered over, they overheard from a passing tour guide.

Alfie shook his head. ‘I can’t believe my parents thought that driving a motorhome to every service station in the UK would be better than even just one holiday overseas.’

‘At least you got some kind of trip,’ said Indi. ‘I just got extra siblings. I’d definitely have exchanged at least one of them for Disney World.’

‘Never mind Disney World,’ said Alfie. ‘One simply hasn’t lived until one has been to Gloucester Services. Eight times.’

Indi chuckled. ‘It is like another life though, isn’t it?’ They watched as the cat leapt from the walls, onto a chimney, then strode along the roof’s ridge. ‘I guess we should thank them, really. Now exploration is our new life, together.’

Second life: Paris, France

Indi squeezed through crush of drinkers, the drunken chatter en franglais, back to the spot where she’d left Alfie cosied up with -

- but they’d gone. Their sofas, taken by a new group, who looked at Indi with territorial eyes.

She checked her phone. Nothing. Like he’d have been capable of typing, anyway.

She had taken too long at the bar. Someone before her had ordered ten sazeracs and that is enough time, it seems, to stray.

She climbed onto a plant pot for height, scanning. No one met her eyes except a poster of Le Chat Noir.

Into the night then, it said. Grasshopper in hand, she emerged into Montmartre’s frostbitten streets.

‘Alfie!’ she called. ‘Rose! JP!’

Freezing rain needled her face, blurring the edges of everything. No glimpse of them in any steamed-up bistro or smoky boîte.

‘Alfie!’

‘Indi!’

Her name came back to her, muffled, slurred. Down an alley: Alfie, squinting and stumbling, Rose beside him.

‘Where’s JP?’ Indi asked.

Alfie blinked, stumbled again. Looking into his eyes, not a trace of sense.

‘He went home,’ Rose purred.

‘I think you should go.’

‘Nothing happened, kitten,’ said Rose.

Indi studied her, deciding. ‘The night’s over,’ she said, at last. ‘Go.’

Rose pulled her fur coat around her, ponytail flicking as she slunk into the drizzle.

Indi turned to Alfie, who was trying to work his mouth into a question, unsuccessfully. He sunk down, bedraggled and bedrugged, poisoned into helplessness by his own hand. When you’re that drunk it’s not that you forget; the red light for record has gone off. State Alfie was in, he didn’t even know what happened five minutes ago. Indi just had to figure out what to do with that.

Third life: Hoi An, Vietnam

It wasn’t a big match, just a summer friendly, so the riverside bar terrace was half-empty, screens flickering light onto the water. Indi had no real interest in football, but she could summon the mild interest to watch, and it was home from home. Alfie watched when he felt strong enough to stomach Man U’s slow-motion collapse.

Earlier they’d taken a boat out on the Hoài River, where tourists send out paper lanterns with their wishes - small, burning prayers adrift in the current.

‘What are wishes, anyway?’ she asked. ‘A gamble? A prayer? A discovery?’

‘You’re making me wish I’d thought about it a bit more,’ he said. ‘What are they for you?’

‘I wish for something I’m not sure I have,’ she said. ‘That way I get closer to finding out if I do.’

Alfie had been sober since Paris. He hadn’t said he’d do it forever, but neither of them knew what the end point was. So the hostel parties were out. A quiet bar by the river - that would do.

The game drifted on. Indi asked idle questions about the players, the histories, just enough to tap into human interest. Five minutes in, a stray cat padded across her knees, turned three times, and curled up. She didn’t dare move: still, in the lemongrass and diesel air.

Paper lanterns glided past on the water, carrying hope downstream.

The cat stayed for nearly the full ninety minutes, rising only at the whistle, as though it, too, had reached a conclusion.

Alfie wished they’d grow old together.

Indi wished to learn to live with never knowing.

Fourth life: Vienna, Austria

‘If you were a Christmas decoration.’

She held up a plastic Rudolf: teeth like piano keys, wide eyes which pushed past festive glee into mania, and an anatomically unnecessary bulge. She waved the crotch in Alfie’s face.

‘Is that a compliment?’ he asked, coquettish.

‘I think we have to get it,’ she said.

‘I’m not buying a whole extra suitcase just to take Rude-dolf home with us.’

She sighed, setting it back on the stall. ‘Sorry, mate.’

From across the square, the oom-pah band started up a rousing version of Hark, the Herald.

‘Tune,’ said Indi. ‘Alfie I’m sorry, but I think this is my taste level.’

‘Is my flat going to be turned into a kid's bedroom?’

She held her arms wide. ‘Full on grotto. If it’s got a ledge, it’s getting tinselled. Foil garlands from wall to wall.’

‘I hereby retract the offer to move in together.’

‘The offer?’ she raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t even want to move in if it’s going to stay a gloom-cave.’

He gave a little sniff.

‘For real, your room does look like a Travelodge though,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘One decoration. Our one trinket.’

‘Inaugural trinket.’

They stopped at a stall selling handmade soft toys. Gorgeously crafted, Indi lifted an arctic seal to her cheek - so soft, and it smelled of mulled wine. Alfie pointed at another.

‘It’s our friend from Dubrovnik,’ he said, picking out a little black cat in a Santa hat. On its paw, stitched in white: My First Christmas.

‘It’s for a baby,’ he said. ‘Still want it?’

Indi shrugged. ‘I guess it could come in useful one day.’

Fifth life: Santorini, Greece

Dinner overlooked the sea, and he’d paid for the window seat at sunset, a rare splurge in a restaurant with carpe-diem prices. Below, the caldera turned gold, then peach, then violet.

‘All right,’ said Alfie. ‘Rules are: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. Bonus points for reference to the natural world, wordplay, and saying something lovely. Minus points for turning it into a slanging match.’

‘So, nothing about your taste in décor? Sorry, I’ve completely misused the word “taste” there.’

‘You steer clear of the décor, I won’t even think of alluding to how you stack the dishwasher.’

He handed her a page from a notepad, filled with pen-and-paper games - hangman, connect the dots, pictionary - then bent over his own. Muttering, writing, crossing out, rewriting. Indi bit her lip and looked out to sea, noting a cat basking in the remnants of evening light. She took a sip from water laced with lemon and overcautiousness (the timing couldn’t possibly be right, but if she followed the rules, maybe it was possible).

‘You first,’ he said.

Indi read:

‘I wish we would stop

Going on holiday with

Your mangy friend: beard.’

‘Hey!’ Alfie protested, stroking his holiday-fluff. ‘That’s below the belt. Minus points for sure.’

She turned over the paper. ‘Okay, here’s the real one.’

‘Cats have nine. We count

ours by nature, cities, art.

Agile, global souls.’

‘I’ll spend all my lives with you,’ he said, taking her hand, leaning in - then at the last second, attacking her with his scraggly chin. ‘Me and the beard. Which I’m keeping forever.’ She squealed, fended him off. He sat back and cleared his throat.

‘One more trip. Savour

Blush and saffron sunsets. Next?

It’s the motorhome.’

‘Oh god,’ she groaned. ‘It’s not, is it?’

He nodded gravely. ‘Gloucester services, here we come.’

Sixth life: Chiang Mai, Thailand

The hostel cats all had leads so long you couldn’t see where they ended, each a different colour, with their name written in English on the side. So far, Alfie and Indi had befriended Papaya, Mangosteen and Banana.

‘How do they not get tangled?’ asked Indi, watching Papaya bat languidly at his green lead. ‘What if they get caught up? Couldn’t they hurt themselves?’

‘That’s why they never mention Custard Apple,’ said Alfie, hand to heart. ‘It’s tanked their Tripadviser reviews.’

‘Never forget,’ said Indi, bowing her head.

They were sat opposite each other at a small table in the hostel’s entrance - part café, part reception, fully alive. The walls were open and framed by hanging ferns dripping condensation. Surrounding this, a narrow Thai soi, sputtering with a constant flow of tuk tuks on pitted tarmac, rainbows of telephone wires, with a background crackling from street vendors.

‘Want to play?’ said Alfie, holding up the notepad, but Indi was already on her phone, thumb flicking down the screen, refreshing her emails for the third time in five minutes. She pursed her lips.

‘We’re meant to be here to take our minds off things -’

‘I can’t help the timing of the results though, can I?’ she huffed.

‘Sorry,’ said Alfie.

He tried to coax Mangosteen with bird noises, but the cat ignored him, padding instead to the edge of his leashed world, the boundary where hostel met city, stopping to nose the air, testing it gently.

Seventh life: Lima, Peru

‘I want everything,’ said Indi, almost leaning fully over the Subway counter. ‘Every bit of the meat.’

Alfie hung back, one hand over his mouth, giggling, and the other one holding up his phone.

‘Lifelong vegetarian Indi’s had one or two pisco sours,’ he narrated for his future audience, ‘and now she thinks she’s St. Frances of Assisi, or Cinderella, or whoever the patron saint of cats is.’

She turned sharply. ‘They’re so hungry,’ she said, earnestly. Then back to the server. ‘Double, please. Double the meat.’

‘Any sauce?’ asked the server.

‘It’s for the cats,’ Indi whispered, by way of an answer.

‘No, thanks,’ said Alfie.

It wasn’t enough that the signs around Miraflores Park clearly stated the cats were cared for by volunteers. Indi saw only hungry eyes. When, in the bar, Indi hatched this plan, she’d imagined a street vendor selling whole rotisserie chickens. Alas, the universe did not deliver such a man, the cats devoured the paltry scraps in seconds, and Indi found herself surrounded. An insistent hoard of wet noses and mewling for salami. She put her hands to her face.

‘There’s so many of them.’

She was overwhelmed by the fur-tide. They deluged her legs, the scent of meat and pity still on the air.

‘Come on.’ Alfie steered her gently through the feline flood towards the small stone amphitheatre, where a group of teenagers huddled around one boy with a guitar. He started playing Wonderwall. She burst into tears.

‘Oh no,’ said Alfie, putting an arm round her, bringing her closer.

She gave him a plaintive look.

‘There’s no corner of the earth where you can escape this bloody song.’

He laughed. She was crying, and laughing.

‘Much as I respect your meat-based scheme,’ he said, ‘I think we should probably just donate to the cat volunteers charity, yeah?’

She sniffed. A kitten had wandered over. She reached out to it, and it licked the meat residue from her fingers. ‘Okay,’ she said, the tears restarting, unbidden. ‘But only if it’s absolutely all our money.’

Eighth life: Berlin, Germany

The vast, multicoloured murals stretched from ground to many storeys, clashing joyfully with the greyness of the winter sky, their breath clouding white into the cold air.

No other tourists had braved this street art tour, so Alfie and Indi had the guide to themselves - a Kreuzberg local whose commentary hinted, ever so slyly, that he was behind one or more of the works. Years ago, Indi would have pressed him, interrogated him to let the cat out of the bag. Now, her curiosity was in deep freeze.

‘You know what is my favourite type of art?’ he said, as they wandered past a towering astronaut, whole open spaces dedicated to graffiti, and a colossal woman cradling a snake.

He crouched near the base of a building, where wall met street. There, above a street-level hole, some old bit of damage, was a stencil of a cat - poised.

‘The ones that make art from accident,’ he said. ‘They do not fill in the crack, they redefine it, you see? This one? Cats above holes.’

He wandered a little further.

‘There is another man who does this,’ he pointed again, this time to the street itself. Indi and Alfie had to peer for a good thirty seconds before they saw a tiny patch of what resembled a painted mosaic, about the size of a coin.

‘Chewing gum. Perhaps it’s not so strange, but it makes the councils more likely to clean it once it’s art.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever. We are still a city between identities.’

‘You like the cat?’ he asked, as they turned back to watch the stencil. The little feline crouched, watchful, over the hole, through which no mouse would ever come.

Ninth life: Birmingham, UK

The flat seemed happy to have shed its ‘new build’ and ‘budget hotel chic’ beginnings. Crystals hung from the balcony doors, casting small rainbows that danced across the kitchen-diner. Ferns, like those from Chiang Mai, spilled from hanging baskets. Even in summer heat, the black cat with the Santa hat sat on a shelf, beside the porcelain cat from Santorini, the paper lantern from Hoi An, and a “thank you for the donation” card from the Grupo Voluntario de Defensa Felina, Lima.

And below them all, one cat that was very much alive - though curled so tightly she could have passed for a breathing cushion.

The name given by the rescue centre had been Midnight. They’d signed the papers, taken her home, and gazed at her, as she regarded them with slowly blinking eyes.

‘It’s not right,’ said Alfie.

‘Definitely not a Midnight,’ Indi agreed.

Finding something better had taken time. Custard Apple had been a front-runner, until even they had to admit it was too bleak. (God rest Custard’s imaginary soul.)

They toyed with place names - Santorini, Vienna, Berlin all stood out. But notwithstanding the fact that Montmartre and Chiang Mai suffered at the hands of a Brummie twang, none could be chosen without leaving the others behind. Each life stood equal to the others.

The baby names were off the table too. A cat is not a baby, nor a substitute for one.

So they settled on something else. A name that meant continuing. Going beyond the common wisdom. Complete in herself, but looking forward.

Alfie put the kettle on, opened the dishwasher for a mug, held his head in his hands.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘You started this morning on an eight, Indi, but now it looks like you’ve let rats stack our dishwasher again. It’s down to four.’

‘Can’t say much for you,’ she said. ‘It’s unreasonable you draw the line at taxidermy in our home. That crow on eBay was a bargain. You’re a three-point-five, if that.’

‘Well,’ he said, and the cat lifted her head, as if even she knew what was coming. ‘Thank god at least someone here is a Ten.’