Chapter 7
‘Morning, Monty!’ Bella injected an extra-special note of cheer into her voice as she approached Monty’s living quarters.
Monty barely flickered an eyelid in her direction.
That was fairly standard though. Whether it was his age, his breed or his normally very grumpy temperament, Monty was largely indifferent to anyone making overtures in his direction.
‘I’ve got you some of that gourmet food you like,’ Bella continued. She reached out a tentative hand to ruffle the top of Monty’s brown and black dappled head, but this morning, he wasn’t having it. With a warning yowl, he ducked away.
‘Oh, come on, mate,’ she encouraged him gently. ‘You know you’ll feel better if you let us give you a little bit of TLC.’
Monty disagreed. With a disdainful look and a weary hiss, he retreated to the back of his enclosure.
Bella sighed. It didn’t seem to matter what she or Mollie did to try to encourage him to be more friendly, Monty largely threw it back at them.
Ever since he’d come into Purrfect Paws, he’d been miserable, despite their best efforts to bring him out of his shell.
Bella couldn’t blame him. Losing his owner had hit the cat hard.
Many people believed that cats were pragmatists when it came to their relationships; Monty, it would seem, was the exception to that rule.
Although Bella wasn’t sure if she could believe Mollie’s assurances that when Jack had been alive, Monty had been affectionate.
The change seemed too great now that poor Monty had been orphaned.
When Bella had checked the diary that morning to see if there were going to be any new boarders in the cattery area of the centre, she’d been pleased to see that an adoption was going ahead that morning, for one of the longer-term inmates of the rescue centre, a lovely older male called Brutus.
Shutting the door to Monty’s living space once more, Bella did her rounds of the other residents.
There were four other cats boarding at the moment while their owners were on holiday.
She made sure that they all had plenty of food and water and clean litter trays, and spent some time with each one, fussing and chatting to them, before heading out to the larger part of the centre where the rescue cats came in and were housed.
This was both the best and worst part of her job at Purrfect Paws.
It broke her heart every time a new cat was brought to them.
Some of them were injured, some of them were malnourished, and all of them, without fail, were confused and disoriented at the disruption to their lives.
Over the time she’d been working there, she’d learned how to bathe and clean often desperately neglected cats, and while she’d sustained a fair few scratches from those who still had the will to fight back, she never got cross with them.
Part of the joy of the job was helping to nurse the poor things back to health, and then seeing them finding a forever home was the icing on the cake.
It had been quiet for a few days, and Mollie and Bella had taken the opportunity to do a summer clean of some of the unoccupied pens.
At the moment, there were only six residents in the rescue shelter, which was a relief.
They hated having to turn rescues away, but when they were full to bursting, and their home-foster volunteers couldn’t help, they had to cast their net wider to help.
Thankfully, they had a good list of contacts in Mollie’s old-school black leather address book, but when things got too busy, it became more and more difficult.
Spring and summer were particularly hectic times, and Mollie’s shelter often ended up housing rescues from other centres.
Bella knew not to take the relative quiet for granted: one phone call, and everything could change.
‘Hey, Brutus,’ she crooned to the largest cat in the centre.
Brutus had come in five months ago, matted, half-starved and missing an eye.
It had taken a while for him to settle, but gradually the large, long-haired black cat had grown to trust his new handlers.
Even though he’d only had his new name since he’d been at the shelter, he was already responding to it, and Bella hoped he’d keep it once he went to pastures new.
With his one remaining bright, clear green eye and his general air of put-upon nobility, it suited him.
On hearing his name, Brutus trotted up to the door of his pen and bumped against Bella’s hand for some fuss.
The loud, rumbling purr that had surprised them all, the first time they’d heard it, soon followed as she stroked the top of his head and down his long back to the feather-duster-like tail that curled happily at the attention.
‘How could anyone ever dump you, old boy?’ Bella murmured.
Brutus had been discovered in a black refuse bag behind a supermarket, next to the recycling bins.
A gaggle of teenagers sharing a bottle of cider one Friday night had heard his cries and released him before he suffocated.
Not too drunk to make a sensible decision, one of them took him home, but it wasn’t practical for the family to adopt him.
Brutus had ended up at Purrfect Paws, after Mollie had taken him to the vet who treated the centre’s residents to have his injured eye sorted out.
Sadly, he’d lost the eye, but that seemed to enhance his somewhat piratical beauty, and he was well on the way to a full recovery.
A young couple from the nearby village of Everscombe who both worked from home had seen him on the website a fortnight ago, had passed their home check and were going to be picking him up today.
Bella hadn’t been working when they’d come to see him, but Mollie had reported that she knew, looking at them when they’d met Brutus for the first time, that he’d landed on his fat, furry feet.
‘You’re going to have such a happy life, Brutus,’ she murmured as she continued to fuss him. ‘And it’s nothing less than you deserve.’ She’d miss him: he’d endeared himself to everyone who worked at Purrfect Paws, but it was always wonderful to see their charges going their new homes.
If only she could say the same for poor Monty.
Even if Jack’s family decided to put him up for adoption, Monty was unlikely to find somewhere new.
There were those who were in the market for mature cats, but Monty was a geriatric.
While Monty had no obvious health issues, the vet had diagnosed a mild heart murmur, and people were afraid, especially when times were tight, to take the risk on a potentially expensive animal.
Bella had the feeling that Monty was likely to end his days at Purrfect Paws.
Much as Mollie treated the cats like she would her own, it was still a cage, even if it was a comfortable one.
Bella sighed, and Brutus, sensing her inattention, gave her a playful nip.
‘Oy, mister,’ she chided gently, ‘none of that when you get to your new gaff.’ All the same, she couldn’t help feeling frustrated.
If she’d got her own act together, got a proper job instead of bumming around from place to place, short-term room lets with friends and casual work being the order of the day, she might have been able to offer the ageing and sad Monty a home to live out his last years.
But thinking like that got no one anywhere.
If she hadn’t been working for Purrfect Paws, she’d never have known Monty existed.
At least she could give him some love, now.
And maybe someone would want to adopt him, if he ever got put up for re-homing.
At the moment, he was a guest, rather than an inmate, as his boarding bills were being paid by Jack’s family.
Bella closed Brutus’s door and continued on her rounds.
She always liked to make sure each of the inmates got their fair share of attention, and there were more to see before the morning jobs were over.
But heading over to see Clover and her four kittens, she still couldn’t stop thinking about poor Monty.