The Cats We Meet Along the Way

  THE CATS WE MEET ALONG THE WAY

  is a GUPPY BOOK

  First published in the UK in 2022 by

  Guppy Books,

  Bracken Hill,

  Cotswold Road,

  Oxford OX2 9JG

  Text copyright © Nadia Mikail

  Inside illustrations © Nate Ng

  978 1 913101 602

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  The rights of Nadia Mikail to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permissions of the publishers.

  GUPPY PUBLISHING LTD Reg. No. 11565833

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Ebook by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd

  www.falcon.uk.com

  For Child

  The Cat, Part One

  (the present)

  The cat that followed them home had a bald patch on his left hind leg and one ear missing. It was orange, a distasteful, dirty shade of it, one that reminded Aisha of fish curry gone off.

  “Shoo,” Aisha told it. The cat ignored her.

  “Don’t be mean,” Walter said, reproachfully. He leaned down and flashed his crooked canines at it, bent his dark head to look properly. “Kitty, are you lost?”

  “Mew,” said the cat impatiently, which to Aisha sounded like it meant obviously not, I’m ­following you to my new home.

  When Walter got up and they rounded the corner to her street, the cat followed steadily, like it was inherently familiar with the place.

  “Oh, it probably has fleas,” she protested, making a more vigorous shooing motion.

  “I don’t think it matters,” said Walter. He meant, since we’re all going to die anyway. “I don’t want it to be alone when . . . well. When.”

  Still, Aisha would rather die with her scalp not ­itching, thank you very much. She opened their lime green front door and said, “Hi, Mak.”

  “Hi, sayang,” said her mother, looking up from the lined exercise book she used for recipes. The sun ­struggled through the grimy windowpane, on its last legs. Everything was on its last legs these days, it seemed. “Hi, Walter. Hi, stray cat I don’t want in my kitchen.”

  Aisha looked at Walter and shrugged not-very-­regretfully. “You heard her. Her kitchen, her rules.”

  But Walter looked at her mother, and Aisha knew it was a lost cause already. They exchanged a glance in which Walter communicated to Esah plaintive sentences about not wanting the cat to be alone at the End, his gaze beseeching, and Aisha could see the moment when her mother’s eyes softened. A beat later Esah asked, “So what’s his name?”

  “It’s a he?”

  Esah gestured towards where the cat was ­sitting on the doormat, licking clear evidence of he-dom.

  “Hm,” said Walter. “What’s his name, Sha?”

  “Fleabag,” said Aisha.

  Walter flicked her ear gently, thumb and index finger. “Don’t be so mean.”

  “You know, I think it’ll stick,” Aisha’s mother said. She smiled absently in the direction of Fleabag, who made a huge show of a ragged lick to his nether ­regions, as if to illustrate the point.

  “Fleabag,” Walter said, crouching over him and scritching at his chin. “Don’t worry about her. Think of it as a fond nickname.”

  Aisha was watching her mother, who was still ­looking vaguely at the cat. She wondered what Esah was ­thinking about. June had told her, once, that strays had used to follow her father home as well, close at his heels, ­rubbing their heads against his ankles. Perhaps Esah was ­remembering them in Fleabag’s furry face.

  The Cat, Part Two

  (the present)

  Perhaps the problem was that they might have gotten married if the world was not ending. Aisha could see it sometimes, arrayed in front of her, the progression of their decades: the engage­ment, the house, the dog, the first kid’s wide grin, the second’s chubby fists. Lazy mornings, her favourite bowl of laksa brought to her in bed, packing their lunches for work, Sunday evenings at the neighbourhood park.

  She would have been happy too. They would have been delirious with it, that uncomplicated happiness. Now they were fighting more than ever, eight months before the world ended. Aisha would have named her first child Amin after her beloved uncle, her father’s ­favourite brother. Walter would have loved that name because of all the ­stories she’d told him of Uncle Amin and how he’d taken her to the swings every Friday before he’d died. Aisha would have gone to school and tried to help people who were in pain. Walter would have meandered from career to career, ­indecisive and passionate about every­thing. Aisha would have wanted to travel the world. They would have had a number of cats because Walter wouldn’t have been able to say no to strays who followed them home.

  Walter cooed silly things at Fleabag, now sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, and Aisha loved him, loved him desperately, loved him more than anything.

  “You know,” Esah said, her low voice cutting smoothly into Aisha’s thoughts, “I’ve been thinking about June.” She said it very carefully, like it was just another thing on the grocery list she wanted Aisha to get. Both Aisha and Walter’s heads snapped up. Fleabag, who clearly couldn’t stand the attention not being on him for a second, jumped gracefully onto the floor and padded away.

  Like it was his own house. Aisha supposed ­abstractly that now it was.

  “Oh?” Aisha said, just as careful. She felt rooted to the spot, felt something clawing at her throat, wasn’t sure if it was panic. “Everything okay? Did you hear some news?”

  “No, I didn’t hear anything.” Esah put her blue mixing bowl down, into the sink, and ran the tap. She wasn’t ­looking at it. The bowl still contained all the batter she needed for the cake. “I was just thinking that I want to make things right,” she said. “What with, you know, everything.”

  “Everything,” Aisha repeated uselessly. “So you want to go to her?” Walter’s head turned back and forth, as if he was watching a tennis match.

  “Maybe,” said Esah. The water flowed down into the batter, ugly, and Esah looked at it, unseeing. “What else can I do?” She meant, now that we have no time left.

  Aisha walked over to her mother’s side and put her arms around her very, very gently. She reached forward and turned off the tap. The batter lay there, embarrassed and ruined. Esah let out a loud annoyed sniff and ­muttered about the loss of cake.

  “What else can we do, you mean, Mak,” Aisha said. “I’m with you.” She ignored whatever it was that was ­clawing inside her and nodded firmly, forehead against her ­mother’s warm shoulder, trying to be convincing. “One step at a time. It’ll all be okay.”

  A Story about June

  (three years ago)

  June had been nineteen when she’d decided she’d had enough of the house.

  “What do you mean you’ve had enough of the house?” Aisha had demanded, following her around the room as she picked up things, considered them carefully, and either threw them back down or into her suitcase.

  Her suitcase was fading and huge and still shockingly pink. June had pleaded for it when she was sixteen, for her trip to Europe. Their mother had given in to the trip after a month of June alternating between furiously sulking and sweetly doing every chore in the house. She had made June install a
tracking app on her phone, so she could check that she was at exactly the places she’d said she’d be, at exactly the times she’d said she’d be at them.

  “I just . . .” June considered her sister, her suitcase, her stuffed dinosaur, Lala. “It’s not the house. The house is a metaphor.”

  “We’re not in English class, June!” Aisha had been ­fifteen and distressed. She watched as June picked up a pair of socks and discarded them firmly into the depths of her wardrobe. “What does that mean? A metaphor for what?”

  June stopped short and stared at her, as if it was ­obvious. “For how if I don’t leave now I’ll stay my whole life,” she said.

  “You won’t, you’re supposed to go to university!”

  “University schmuniversity,” June declared, succinctly. She’d finished her last A level that day. As Aisha recalled, it had been Literature, hence the metaphor talk. “I’m not going. I just haven’t told Mak and you since you’d both be on my case and this way I got to enjoy these last few months with you both . . . I’m not dying, Sha. I’ll still be your sister.”

  At this she sat down on her (faded pink) bed and held firmly onto Aisha’s shoulders like she would never let go (she had). “I’m just . . . finding myself.”

  Aisha stared at June, the almost manic glint in her eyes, the (bright pink) highlights in her hair. “You can do that here.”

  “I know I can’t,” June said, stubbornly sure about this like she was stubbornly sure about most things.

  “What will Mak say?” Aisha asked, a last-ditch attempt. She was fifteen and too fifteen to say please don’t leave me. Not yet.

  “Ah,” said June, looking away. “There’s the rub. If she could only understand – but she’d never – but you never know, she might.” She rubbed at her chin, unsure. Then she looked back at Aisha with something like hope. “Maybe if you said something. Maybe that would help?”

  “You want me to say something,” Aisha said slowly, “to make her okay with you leaving?”

  “She listens to you,” June said, which was blatantly untrue in Aisha’s opinion. “You’re the good child. Say something so she isn’t so upset?”

  “There’s nothing I can say that’ll do that,” Aisha said flatly. But June, shrugging away Aisha’s doubt, seemed to take this as confirmation of her help. She spun around a little happier, tossing a hairbrush into her luggage.

  She’d told their mother that night, over dinner. Esah had asked, What about university? Esah had said, You’re too young to know what you want. Esah had shouted, and she rarely shouted, Leave now and you leave for ever. Go, then! Sik kenang budi.

  A silence had fallen that had somehow been worse than the many and prolonged silences they’d had in that little house. June had said nothing. Aisha had felt her eyes on her, her stare burning a hole through her head. The gaze had felt like something pleading, something hot and pained. Aisha had stared at the fried fish and willed herself far away from here. She willed it so hard she imagined she couldn’t feel the stare any more. They’d sat silently at the table until the plates were empty, then June had washed the dishes and gone upstairs.

  An hour later they’d watched the shockingly pink suitcase trundle down their footpath, June’s bright pink highlighted head bent low but steady, leading it away.

  There was a wound in Aisha that had opened up steadily with every visible step her sister took away from her. She had lost people, but those people hadn’t wanted to go. June had chosen to leave. She had chosen to disappear from their lives without a trace, and she had chosen not to come back.

  Walter, Leaving

  (the present)

  “I think I’d better go,” said Walter. “Ma’s expecting me.”

  “Bye, Walter,” Esah said distractedly, flapping her ­fingers at him. “Be safe.”

  Esah loved Walter, in the way that almost everyone who met Walter loved Walter: whole-heartedly and slightly surprised about it, like they hadn’t realised they’d started when they had, but now they wouldn’t want it any other way.

  “Bye, Auntie,” Walter said politely. He waved back and scritched Fleabag’s chin, used the other sink to run the tap and wash his hands, and let Aisha walk him out the door.

  Aisha knew exactly when and how she’d begun to love Walter. There was no suddenness about it, no tide coming in she hadn’t realised. One night Walter had texted her, hey can I call you about this? instead of texting, and they’d talked till dawn. Talked about Antony and Cleopatra and As You Like It, which they were studying in class, but also about his parents, her mak, his dog, her lack of pets, his fondness for trashy reality television, her favourite Tolkien novel. She told him about the time she’d fallen heavily from the monkey bars in kindergarten and gone crying to her big sister. He told her about the time his mother had forgotten about him in the Sunday market and he’d sat there amongst the produce until she came back and gathered him up in her arms. Her secret fear of blood she was studiously trying to get past. His fumbling first date at Kafe Baluddin. She told him she wanted to go out into the world and see every place she could, and she always felt incredibly guilty about that desire. He told her he wanted to be a writer and a mathematician and a marine bio­logist, that the world seemed so full of things he could do but that there always seemed so little time to do them.

  She’d put down the phone and said to herself, “Well, then.”

  And it wasn’t even that she thought he was perfect. It had been two years. She knew that he ate with his mouth open and he was indecisive beyond words. She knew he was determined to wear his holey sneakers until they fell apart in the street one day and he sometimes took his parents for granted. She knew he could be spoiled and snappish and as stubborn as she was, and she loved all of this fiercely and on purpose. From that first call it had always been his voice, warm like her most-loved armchair, warm like new laundry, warm like the Sunday morning kitchen with her mother baking, humming, alive.

  “Tomorrow?” asked Aisha.

  “Tomorrow,” Walter said, bending down to nuzzle softly at her cheek, the sensation light and slightly ticklish. Lifting his head after a moment, he poked affectionately at her neck, her jaw, her stomach, faster and faster until she was giggling and swatting at him.

  “You’re a child,” she informed him. “This is what ­children do.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Walter said in reply, putting his arms around her. He did not treat her like she was ­fragile, because they weren’t. He squeezed until the worry, for a moment, leeched away in a trickle: slowly, but so very thoroughly. It was Walter’s way: certain he could do ­impossible things like leak all her problems away if he set his mind to it. He wasn’t wrong. Walter, Aisha was certain, would have been no match for the world, given time. He would have written and counted and deep-sea dived, and then he would have been hungry for more.

  When he pulled away, Aisha could still feel the lingering sensation on her skin: the nudge of his nose, the brief brush of his lips.

  “I love you,” Walter said, careless with it. He flashed a sweet easy smile at her. “After lunch. Three.”

  “All right,” Aisha said. “Okay.”

  An Explanation

  (four months ago)

  The world found out it was ending on just another Tuesday.

  IN A YEAR, the headlines screamed. Back when there had still been headlines. An asteroid heading straight for collision, Hollywood-perfect for the end of the world. It really was like something out of a movie. Sometimes it still felt like a cruel, extended prank.

  When the news was announced, Aisha had been out with Walter on the beach, everything swathed in golden light, the waves coming in, going out, coming in again. They’d driven out for the weekend, phones left at home. They’d been laughing when people had started ­screaming. Then the beach had emptied like the tide ­rolling back, quick.

  Aisha had thought: tsunami. She’d though
t: bombing, financial collapse, mass shooting. Then they’d gotten into the car and driven home silently, and Esah had met them at the lime green front door and her face had been pale, her hands shaking. Aisha had realised it was all those things at once, and the end of all those things at once.

  Here was how the end of the world was predicted to play out:

  The world wreathed in fire and smoke, everything burning.

  Earthquakes and tsunamis shuddering, cracking, ­shifting what was left.

  Volcanoes erupting, water corrosive, the very air poison, and what was left dark, the sun sheathed in unlight.

  It turned out that governments had known about it for four years, and planned everything from deflecting the path of the asteroid, to frantically focusing their efforts on space, to attempting to build large underground bunkers – but when none of it seemed like it was going to work, they had all addressed their people at the same time.

  These times are dark, the speeches all started, but one thing is to be remembered: the power of humanity to come together and face what is to come is undefeated. Most of the world had watched the broadcast, a video that had popped up while they were scrolling through their timeline or across their screen during their nightly binge-watch. Some people had heard it on the radio, and some on their smartwatches. Some people had woken up to the news.

  Most people immediately started digging bunkers or building shelters. Scientists came on the news to say that even the strongest ones wouldn’t be much use against an asteroid miles-wide, trust them, they’d checked. They teleconferenced in from all over the world: Spend time with your loved ones. Make the most of what’s left. Say your prayers. Their faces had been set and resigned, their opinions reasoned and fact-checked: they were the few who had spent years desperately scrabbling, after all.

  That was when there was still news to watch. Slowly it had all stopped, as people gave up on hope. What passed for news these days was the radio, still scrambling ­messages and music from people trying to reach out to the world and entertain it.