When I finally get home, it’s after seven. Mum picked up the children from school for me, and then left Bella to babysit. I kick off my heels and go into the sitting room. Tolly is fast asleep on the sofa, the remains of a pizza crust on a plate next to him telling me they have at least eaten. I shake him gently awake, and pull him onto my lap. ‘You should’ve been in bed an hour ago,’ I whisper.
‘You said I could stay up till you got home,’ he mumbles.
I sigh. ‘Yes, I did. OK, you, up we get,’ I add. ‘Did Bella feed Bagpuss?’
He rubs his eyes, too sleepy to answer. I put him down and get the box of kibble from its temporary home in the downstairs loo. I fill the cat’s bowl. I can’t wait till the kitchen is finished and we can stop living like squatters. ‘Have you seen Bagpuss?’ I ask Tolly, when the cat doesn’t appear. Arthritic though he is, he usually materialises out of thin air as soon as he hears the sound of his kibble hitting his dish.
Awake now, Tolly starts crawling around the sitting room, peering under the sofa and behind doors, calling the cat’s name. ‘You’d better check he hasn’t got shut in a bedroom or something,’ I tell him, when Bagpuss still doesn’t appear. ‘He was in the airing cupboard all night the other day—’
I’m interrupted by a blood-curdling scream from upstairs. ‘Muuuum!’
Visions of broken limbs and twisted ankles fill my maternal vision. I race towards the stairs, my heart pounding, just as Bella rushes down them, the cat cradled against her chest.
Fear sharpens my tone. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Bagpuss!’
The poor cat is having trouble breathing. His eyes roll sickeningly back in his head, and he suddenly starts to convulse, his body going rigid in Bella’s arms. I have no idea what’s wrong with him, or how to help him.
‘We need to get him to the vet,’ I say urgently. ‘Into the car, both of you.’
I don’t need to ask them twice. The vet is only a couple of miles away, on the outskirts of Pulborough; they’re open till eight, and if we hurry, we should be there in less than ten minutes. We pile into the car, Bella in the front seat with the cat still in her arms. I only realise I’m still in bare feet when I put my foot down once we’re on the main road.
‘Drive faster, Mum!’ Bella cries, as I tear along the twisty lane as fast as I dare.
‘I’m doing my best,’ I say helplessly. ‘It won’t help Bagpuss if we drive into a tractor coming the other way.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Tolly asks.
‘I don’t know, darling. He’s pretty old. Maybe he’s having some sort of seizure or a stroke.’
‘It’s not a stroke,’ Bella says, her voice clogged with tears. ‘He’s been poisoned. He looks like the rats in the barn after Dad put down that stuff.’
Bagpuss’s breaths are coming in tight little pants, and I realise we don’t have much time. He suddenly starts to vomit, and with surprising calm, Bella grabs an old towel we keep in the back for spills, and mops it up, murmuring soothingly to the cat all the while.
I catch a glimpse of something bright green in the towel as she wipes his mouth, and my heart sinks. He must have eaten deadly nightshade or some other toxic plant or flower. His eyesight isn’t what it was, and if his sense of smell is also fading, then he’s obviously at risk of eating something poisonous by mistake. I should never have let him outside. My poor, darling Bagpuss. It’ll break all our hearts if something happens to him. We’ve had him since Bella was a baby; to lose him now, in such a way, would be devastating.
I screech to a halt outside the vets’ surgery, and Bella rushes straight in with Bagpuss while I unbuckle Tolly and help him out of the car. Tamzin Kennedy has been our vet for years; she’s known Bagpuss since he was a kitten. She looks stricken to see him like this. ‘How long has he been unconscious?’ she asks, gently easing him from Bella’s arms and onto the examination table.
‘I just got home from work fifteen, maybe twenty minutes ago,’ I say. ‘Bella found him like this in the bathroom upstairs a few minutes later.’
‘He threw up this bright green stuff,’ Bella says tearfully. She hands Tamzin the old towel covered in cat vomit, and I’m impressed by her quick thinking at bringing it in. ‘It smells weird. Kind of sweet.’
Tamzin sniffs it. ‘Antifreeze,’ she says grimly. ‘I’d recognise it anywhere.’
‘Antifreeze?’
‘It’s not just used to stop engines freezing,’ Tamzin says, ripping open a sterile packet containing a needle and syringe. ‘It’s also used in hydraulic brake fluids. Cats usually come into contact with it when it leaks from a car’s engine onto the ground. It tastes sweet at first, and by the time the foul aftertaste hits, it’s too late. It doesn’t take much to make them very sick.’
‘Is he going to die?’ Tolly asks, his eyes wide with fear.
‘Not if I can help it, sweetheart. Jamie!’ she cries, calling to the young veterinary assistant in the back of the surgery. ‘I need you to go and get me some vodka from the off-licence down the road. Fast as you can. The more expensive, the better. Grab some money from the petty cash box. Run!’
‘Vodka?’ I exclaim.
‘Trick I learned when I was working in Australia. If we can get pure alcohol into his blood, it’ll metabolise that instead of the antifreeze, and vodka’s the purest form we can get right now.’
‘Won’t it make him sick?’ Bella asks apprehensively.
‘It’ll give him a bit of a hangover, maybe, but that’s all,’ Tamzin says. ‘If his body is metabolising the vodka, it allows the antifreeze time to pass in a less toxic form. Give his kidneys and liver a break.’
I frown in confusion. ‘I don’t understand how he could have come into contact with antifreeze. I always park in the garage, so even if the car was leaking, Bagpuss couldn’t have got to anything on the ground.’
‘It could’ve been in something else you might never think of,’ Tamzin says, gently stroking Bagpuss’s head. ‘A lot of snow globes use it. Something like that could have smashed, and he’d have licked it up – there’s a reason cats have nine lives. They need them.’
‘Or someone did it on purpose,’ Bella interjects.
‘Who’d do that?’ I protest.
Tamzin sighs. ‘You read about it all the time. There are a lot of very sick people around.’
‘It’s that insane farmer,’ Bella says. ‘The one who wants you to sell the paddock. It’s just the kind of thing he’d do.’
Jamie reappears, panting. ‘Purest Russian vodka,’ he says, brandishing the bottle. ‘Will this be enough?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Tamzin says.
We all crowd around anxiously as she dilutes the vodka, and sets up a drip for Bagpuss. His eyes open briefly and he looks at us with sudden lucidity. I see the weariness and pain there, and feel a flash of guilt that we’re putting our own feelings before his own. ‘Is this fair to him?’ I murmur quietly to Tamzin.
‘I’ve given him some pain relief,’ she says. ‘I promise you, I won’t let him suffer.’