parents fly back and forth to their nest. As I watched, he stretched his jaw open in an enormous yawn, then started the little clicking cries again.
‘You’re on a hiding to nothing, Frazz,’ I told him. ‘Those birds can fly, and you can’t. You’ve got claws; they’ve got wings. Deal with it.’
Frazzle turned and gave me a hard stare. Clearly he expected his human servant to go out and bring him a bird to play with. Telling him to stop being so ridiculous, I heaved myself out of bed and pulled on a pair of frayed denim shorts and an old T-shirt. My shower could wait – by the time I’d finished cleaning the flat, I certainly wouldn’t be clean myself.
How, I wondered, could Jude have accumulated so much stuff in just a few weeks? There were newspapers everywhere – the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Morning Star, the Daily Mirror – most of them unread because Jude, like everyone else, got the news from Twitter. There was a teetering stack of vinyl LPs that he’d picked up from the side of the road where someone had left them after a clear-out. The same person had been getting rid of a load of old cookery books – Delia Smith, Marguerite Patten and The Microwave Gourmet – and Jude had brought them home because they’d have ended up in landfill otherwise and he thought I might want them. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him I really, really didn’t.
‘We’ve got a hoarder on our hands,’ I told Frazzle. ‘You won’t be able to get to your catnip mice at this rate.’
But I suspected that if I did what I so longed to do and took the whole lot out to the recycling, Jude would be hurt and annoyed. So I put a load of washing on and started the arduous task of sorting everything into more or less orderly piles.
From his spot on the windowsill, Frazzle gave another frantic chatter. I turned to see what was going on, and froze. There, on the ledge less than four inches from his nose, was a small, newly fledged blackbird. Frazz had gone quiet, frozen, clearly unable to believe his good fortune. Helpless, immobile prey didn’t just land under cats’ noses, I could imagine him thinking, Surely this must be some kind of trick?
But he didn’t freeze for long. Before I could cross the room, he’d pounced. The bird gave a frantic flap of its wings and managed, just in time, to take off – only instead of flying to safety, it flew into the flat, closely pursued by my cat.
‘Shit! Frazzle, come here. Leave the bird alone!’
But Frazzle wasn’t listening. He wanted to investigate this gift from the cat gods further. The bird had landed on the carpet and Frazzle was watching it, transfixed, as if he knew that just one more pounce would do the trick. I tried to grab him but, for the first time ever, he growled at me and darted underneath the bed.
It was fair enough, I suppose. In that moment, I wasn’t his loving human, provider of food, fuss, warmth and exciting games involving a sparkly fishing-rod toy. I was a deadly rival, intent on stealing his prey. And that was exactly what I was going to do. But I was too slow. The fledgling ran a few uncertain steps, then found the use of its wings and flapped frantically, managing a brief flight that took it to the top of the bathroom door, where it perched, hunched over in terror.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. Frazzle, you are such a naughty cat. What the hell do I do now?’
I was no ornithologist, but I knew that cats’ teeth and claws could be lethal to this tiny creature. Just because it had managed a short maiden flight didn’t mean it would be able to find its way back out through the window. And besides, Frazzle had emerged from under the bed and was crouched on the floor, waiting for the bird to leave its precarious perch.
I’m here for the long game, he seemed to be saying. One of us is going to give up first and it isn’t going to be me.
I needed to shut the cat away, but I couldn’t, because the only door inside my small flat was the one the bird was using as a temporary refuge. I needed to rescue the bird, but I wasn’t tall enough to reach it.