Christmas at the Cat Cafe

With the help of several strong coffees and a couple of paracetamol, the effects of the previous night’s drinking seemed to subside, and Linda was back at work in the café as soon as she had fetched her belongings from her friend’s house. The café was busy and Linda worked the room like a party hostess, asking customers about their plans for Christmas and chatting to them as if they were old friends. Her enthusiasm for Ming’s Fortune Cookies was as ardent as ever, and soon the tables were littered with the telltale red cellophane wrappers and paper mottoes.

‘You know what, Debs,’ she said proudly, as she rooted around inside the Tupperware box of paper slips behind the counter, ‘I’m going to have to print off a new batch of mottoes soon. We’re nearly out.’

In an effort to prove she had abandoned her favouritism towards Ming, however, Linda made an impromptu addition to the Specials board – the ‘Molly & Chandon Champagne Tea’ and persuaded several customers to order it on the basis that, ‘If you can’t treat yourself at Christmas, when can you?’

By closing time, both Linda and Debbie looked worn out. Blue shadows circled Linda’s eyes as she wiped down the tables, and the sound of Debbie’s yawns emanated from the kitchen at regular intervals. With her chores completed, Linda pulled up a stool to the serving counter, climbed wearily onto it and let her eyes settle on Ming, who was absorbed in a leisurely wash on her platform.

‘Do you ever wonder what Ming’s thinking?’ she mused when Debbie came through from the kitchen.

‘Can’t say I’ve had the time to give it too much thought,’ Debbie replied distractedly, searching for something on the shelf beneath the till. ‘Why?’

‘No reason,’ Linda said lightly, stifling a yawn. ‘It’s just that, compared to the other cats, Ming always seems to be . . . in a world of her own. But then I don’t really know much about cats, so it’s probably nothing,’ she added, self-deprecatingly.

Behind the counter, Debbie straightened up and looked over at Ming. ‘Well, she hasn’t fully integrated into the colony yet,’ she said, but there was a note of concern in her voice.

Ming was cleaning her face with her eyes closed, licking the inside of her slender wrist, before using it to groom her whiskers punctiliously. She seemed oblivious, or indifferent, to their scrutiny. After a couple of moments of deliberation, Debbie peeled off her rubber gloves and stepped around the side of the counter. ‘Ming?’ she called tentatively.

Ming continued to wash, unperturbed. Making sure to keep out of Ming’s eye-line, Debbie stepped nearer to the cat tree, held out her hand a few inches from the back of Ming’s head and clicked her fingers. There was no reaction: Ming didn’t startle and her ears didn’t flicker.

‘Oh my God,’ Debbie said, turning to face Linda with a dismayed look. ‘Linda, you’re right. I think Ming might be deaf!’

I felt a dip in my stomach, of shock mixed with incipient guilt. I spooled through my memories, desperately trying to recall an occasion when I had seen Ming react to something – anything – that she had heard. None came to mind. I vividly recalled our first meeting, when she had snubbed my attempt to introduce myself and Eddie in the café. She had looked down at us from the armchair, and I had read imperious disdain into her expression and had taken her silence for rudeness. It had never crossed my mind that there might be another explanation: that she hadn’t answered me because she hadn’t heard me.

The following morning Debbie phoned the vet first thing, and shortly after lunch she hung up her apron and fetched the cat carrier from upstairs. Ming reacted with her usual placidity as Debbie lifted her into the carrier, her deep-blue eyes remaining entirely impassive as she gazed out through the wire door.

I watched them leave with a feeling of apprehension. Seeing Ming in the carrier brought back a strange stab of memory, of the time I had been to visit Margery. I had returned to find Ming on the window cushion, seemingly having made herself at home in my absence. I cringed inwardly as I recalled how the sight of Ming and the other cats looking relaxed in the café had driven me into a jealous rage; I had been so sure – so utterly convinced – that Ming had been talking to Jasper and the kittens while I was away. How ludicrous and mean-spirited my suspicions would prove to have been if it turned out that she was deaf.