Clara sat on the sofa gazing lovingly at Rick, the person who had made her life so content. It had been a different story for her two years ago. She had lived in fear with a man whose temper tantrums saw her regularly thrown on the bed and locked into the bedroom for hours and hours, until her desperate calls forced him to let her out. She never knew whether he would arrive home drunk, empty handed and angry or happy, with food to share. Eventually she plucked up the courage to run. As he lay passed out on his bed, she squeezed quietly through the door he had left ajar and just kept running and running until she collapsed with exhaustion on a park bench. What happened next remains a blur, but she recalled eventually waking to kind faces and good food in a place where she felt safe.
One day as she wandered into the kitchen of the rescue house, she saw the legs of a large man poking from under the kitchen sink. Wary now of males, she froze when he shuffled out and sat up but when she looked into his smiling face and deep brown eyes, she immediately knew this one was different. The attraction must have been mutual because he kept returning to visit her and now, here she was, living with him. Sometimes when he came home from work, he didn’t smell the best and he occasionally liked a few too many beers while watching his endless games of football on TV, but he was gentle and kind and Clara knew she was very lucky.
As these thoughts of affection went through her mind, she reached across and touched his thigh. He turned and lifted her chin with his finger, saying ‘Hello beautiful girl.’
He lay his hand on the back of her neck and she sighed with pleasure.
But then, one day, something strange happened. As usual, she heard Rick’s key turn in the door and stood up to greet him.
‘Hey, Clara girl, come here. There is someone I would like you to meet.’
Walking in behind him came a lithe blonde with piercing blue eyes. She was wrapped in a lush white coat and she seemed to own the room just by her presence. With Clara’s mousy ginger hair and eyes of an indeterminate colour, she felt this stranger’s look of condescension burning into her head.
‘This is Bonnie, Clara. She will be staying with us for a while. You two will be great mates, I am sure. She can keep you company when I am not here.’
They did not get on at all. Bonnie was fussy, rude and lazy and spent hours preening and admiring herself in the hall mirror. Clara kept away from her as much as possible but she found it hard to hide her dislike when Bonnie began sitting on the other side of Rick on the couch when he came home from work. It all came to a head one night when instead of tickling Clara’s back as he knew she loved, he turned to Bonnie and touched her on the nose gently, saying,
‘Such a pretty little nose you have Bonnie.’
Clara did not know what came over her. She threw herself across Rick’s lap and scratched Bonnie hard on her pretty little nose, drawing blood and eliciting a piercing screech of pain.
‘Clara!’ Rick yelled, pushing her aside. ‘What has come over you? Are you jealous or something? Don’t be ridiculous! Bonnie is only here for a week or so while her owner is away, you stupid cat!’
© Tropical Writers Inc 2024