Favourite Cat Stories: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, Kaspar and The Butterfly Lion. Michael Morpurgo
he is, so Uncle George will just have to put up with it, won’t he?
Oh yes, I forgot. This afternoon Adie introduced me to his friend Harry, while they were carrying out our kitchen table. He’s from Atlanta too, and he’s black like Adie is. They’re both quite difficult to understand sometimes because they speak English differently from us. Adie does most of the talking. “Harry’s like my brother, Lily, not my brother brother, if you get my meaning, just my friend. Like twins, ain’t we, Harry? Always on the lookout for one another. Harry and me, we growed up together, same street, same town. We was born on the same day too – 25th November. Both of us is eighteen, but I’m the oldest by six hours – that’s what our mamas told us, and they should know I reckon. Ain’t that right Harry?” Harry just smiled at me and nodded. “Harry don’t say much,” Adie said, “but he thinks real deep.” The two of them worked together all day, fetching and carrying. They must be very strong too. They picked up Grandfather’s dresser all by themselves. No huffing, no puffing. They just picked it up as if it was light as a feather.
I keep thinking I hear Tips outside, but every time I look it’s Uncle George’s ginger tomcat mewing round the yard. I just hope Tips gets on with Uncle George’s cat. Tips doesn’t much like other cats. But if I’ve got to be polite to Uncle George, then she’ll have to be polite to Uncle George’s cat, won’t she? This time tomorrow Tips will be here and everything will be just tickety-boo! That word always makes me smile, even when I’m sad. So I’ll write it again: tickety-boo, tickety-boo. The lamp’s just gone out so I suppose I’ll have to finish now.
I still can’t find Tips. I’ve been looking for her all day today – and all yesterday too. I looked in every barn, every shed. Grandfather opened up the house again for me and I went into every room, up into the attic too. I looked in all the cupboards, just in case she’d got herself shut in by mistake. Grandfather even climbed up a ladder to look in the roof valleys. I wandered the fields, tapping her bowl with a spoon, calling and calling, then listening for her. All I could hear were cawing crows and the sound of the wind in the trees and the rumble of a tractor engine in the distance. Once they’d driven the cows and sheep up the lane to Uncle George’s everyone came back to help me. Mrs Blumfeld went off to search the village on her bike, with Barry on the back. They didn’t find Tips, but they did find lots of Yanks. They were all over the place, they said, in lorries and jeeps and some of them in tanks.
Mum still says I’m not to worry. Grandfather says that cats have nine lives, that Tips will turn up as she always does, and it’s true she always has. But I do worry. I can’t think about anything else now except Tips. She’s out there somewhere in the night, cold and wet, hungry and lost, and I’ve only got one more day to find her before they close off the farm. I’m going to get up early tomorrow; Barry says he’ll come with me. We’re going to look and look until we find her, he says. I’m not coming back to Uncle George’s until I do.
Our farm looked strange when I went back today, so empty and silent: a phantom farm, a house full of ghosts.
Be there tomorrow, Tips. Please be there. It’s your last chance.
I never want to live another day like this. I think I knew right from the start we wouldn’t find her. There were too many people out looking – I knew they would only frighten her away, and they did. If it had just been Barry and me and Mum and Grandfather, maybe we’d have found her. Tips knows us.
It wasn’t her fault. Mrs Blumfeld was only trying to be helpful, but she’d gone and told everyone how Tips was lost and she brought practically the whole village along with her. She was there at dawn organising the search. The Yanks came too, dozens of them, Adie and Harry telling them all the places they had to look. They combed the whole farm: every barn, every feed bin, every corner of every field, all along the stream. They went searching down in the bluebell wood, down in the disused quarry, and I went with them, trying to tell them all the time to go more quietly, just to look, not call out. But it was no use. I could hear them all over the farm, banging tins, trying to call her, trying to sweeten Tips in.
All morning long it drizzled and in the afternoon a sea mist came rolling in over the fields and covered the whole farm in thick fog, so you couldn’t see further than a few feet in front of you. There was no point in even looking any more. We listened instead, but there was nothing to hear. Even the crows were silent. I think I’ve been crying off and on all day, as the hours passed and hope faded. Barry kept on and on telling me he was sure we’d find her sooner or later and in the end I got cross and shouted at him, which I shouldn’t have done. He was only trying to cheer me up, trying to be nice. That’s the trouble with him, he’s always trying to be nice. Uncle George just said that a cat’s a cat, that there’re other cats I can have, which didn’t exactly help.
It was nearly dark when one of the Yanks with upside-down stripes on his arm said he was sorry but they had orders to close the place off now, so we had to leave. Adie came up and gave me some chocolate. “Hershey bar,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better. And don’t you worry none, Lily. I ain’t making no promises, but if that old cat’s still living out there, we’re gonna find her, one way or the other. You can be real sure of that. So don’t you worry none, Lily, y’hear.”
They closed the barbed wire behind us then, cutting us off from our home and from Tips. I promised myself as I watched them that I would go back and find her, and I will too. I will. I gave Barry half my Hershey Bar to make up for being so mean to him, and we ate it before we got back to Uncle George’s. Adie was right. It did make me feel better, but I think that was more because I gave half of it to Barry.
I’m coughing a lot and I’m feeling hot and sweaty all over. I have been ever since we got back. Mum says I’ve caught a chill and that I have to stay in bed tomorrow else it’ll get on my chest. I hated today, every horrible minute of it – except for Adie and the Hershey bar. The only hope I’ve got left is that maybe, just maybe, Adie and Harry might still find Tips. I’ve got this feeling they might. I don’t know why. One thing’s for sure though: if they don’t find her then I’m going to crawl in under the wire and find her for myself, no matter what they say. They can put up all the barbed wire they like. They can shoot all the shells they want. Nothing’s going to keep me out. I’m never ever going to give up on Tips. Never.
This is the first time I’ve felt like writing in my diary for days. Mum was right, I did catch a chill that day when we all went out looking for Tips, and it did go to my chest. Mum told me I had a temperature of 104 for nearly a week and the doctor had to be called because I became delirious. That sounds like it means I was just happy – I certainly was not. It meant I was out of my head. And I must have been because I remember very little. I only remember bits of the last few days. I remember Barry coming in after school and telling me what the new school in Kingsbridge was like and giving me get-well cards from Mrs Blumfeld and the class. I remember waking up to see Grandfather and Mum sitting in the chair watching me, or just sitting there sleeping. And from time to time I could hear the murmur of voices downstairs and Uncle George blowing his nose like a foghorn.
I’m much better now, but Mum says I’ve got to stay inside for at least another week. Doctor’s orders, she says, but I think they’re just her orders. She always gets very fierce and strict with me when I’m ill. She’s