Max pricked up his ginger ears as the click click of tiny heels – kitten heels, he smiled inwardly – signalled his potential entrance to the library.
With a swoosh of the door, he took his chance and in he slipped, lightning-quick. He darted behind a shelf, carefully avoiding the CCTV he knew was there. Then he picked his way along the aisles, looking for the correct alphabetical area for the author of ‘Tinker, Tailor’ where he had hidden the secret of the Universe. But as he padded as softly as he could along the nylon carpet, two things happened.
First, he heard the static charge only a split-second before he felt it, shocking his entire little body into the air with a jolt and a flurry of fluffed-up fur. He leapt sideways, supressing the urge to let out a giant miaow. The second thing was that when he landed in an ignominious heap, scrambling to regain his dignity by frantically licking his fur smooth, he noticed a hunched-up human with her head in her hands, making small sobbing noises behind a bookshelf.
He immediately blew his cover without thinking it through.
‘Why does you face have wet on it? Are you crying?’
The human looked over at him in astonishment. ‘I beg your pardon? Did you actually speak?’
‘Yes. Are you sad? Your face is all wet and you are mewing,’ said Max. ‘And can you quieten it down a bit, because I am not supposed to be in here.’
‘Well, now I KNOW I have gone mad,’ said the human. ‘How on EARTH can you be talking to me? You’re a cat!’
‘Well, I am,’ replied Max. ‘Please don’t give me away and I will explain, but tell me, why are you so upset?’
The human, who was a woman sighed. ‘I’m 38. And well…I’m 38.’
Max could not comprehend that this might be an explanation. ‘This means very little to me, he replied. I myself am many centuries old.’ He drew himself up to what for a human might be described as their full height and put on a dignified expression. ‘Why, pray, is 38 so terrible?’
The woman stared at him hard. ‘You might be an hallucination, brought on by my very troubled state of mind, but I will lose nothing by telling you. I’ve already flipped. So, here it is. 38 is possibly over half my life lived and I have done nothing! I might have fewer years left than I have already lived. My husband has left me for someone who is 28 and my children are ungrateful sloths who never come to see me and when they do it’s for food or money. And now it’s my birthday and I am officially old.’ She sobbed again.
‘Do be quiet,’ said Max. ‘I keep getting thrown out. ‘You have children. Therefore you have done at least something.’
‘Big deal!’ said the women in a belligerent tone. ‘What have I got to look forward to though? A woman of 38 with half her life lived and done with, and single without a plan for the future?’
Max smirked in only the way a cat can. ‘Stick with me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you.’
She stared at him again. He observed her properly. She looked young to him. Old people had grey hair he’d noticed, and she did not. Hers was a cool shade of green. Old people wore clothes that sent static charges through his body, but she did not wear these old-person clothes. Old people, in his experience, called him a ‘sweet kitty’ and quite often tripped over him. The librarian in this very library was a case in point. But she also threw him out whenever he got in. He had to be as artful as a ninja to get around her. The day he’d hidden the secret thing, he’d had to hang upside-down, clinging on to a leather-bound copy of Dracula (which had been put in the wrong place, incidentally) for hours before he could leave again unnoticed. She did have one old-lady attribute though: an enormous carpet-bag of the sort he’d only seen in the film, Mary Poppins. He started to form an idea.
‘My name is Maximillian Khartoum the third. I am over ten thousand years old and I belong to a very advanced race of cats. I can travel across the universe traversing time and space. I have been entrusted with the secret of the universe which I have hidden inside a copy of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I have to get it back. I hope it hasn’t gone out on loan to be honest. And I think you might be able to help me.’
The woman shook her head in disbelief. I think I am probably mad. But, Maximillian, my name is Ava.’ She held out a hand and Max shook it with his ginger paw.
‘What is the secret of the Universe?’ she asked Max.
‘’If I told you that right now it would no longer be a secret. All in due course,’ said Max. ‘Now, Let’s find that copy of Tinker, Tailor, shall we?’
Virginia Betts 