Paw Prints in the Moonlight Read Free Page A

this effort, then I’d go home.
    I cautiously inched my way up the rickety ladder. I was now more than ever determined to see this thing through to the end. I am not that keen on heights at the best of times but by now I knew that what I was doing was madly reckless. What if I fell and broke a leg? Would anybody find me? In spite of these acute anxieties, I continued to climb.
    Pushing and shoving my way up against dusty, cobwebbed
timbers, I eased myself between the rotting planks and crawled out on to the floor above. Remnants of straw and hay were strewn all around and the impression I had was that everything was in a state of near collapse. Towards the rear end of the loft there was an opening to the outside, with a patch of windblown snow around it. Possibly this had once been a loading bay. Bird-droppings littered part of the flooring and looking up I could just make out the shapes of last summer’s swallow nests. Shafts of moonlight seeped through the gaps between the sprung timbers of the roof and softly illumined the dark-beamed joists and warped floorboards of the loft stretching out before me. The question was, where had the cat gone?
    As I slowly looked around I heard a wet licking sound which drew me to a corner where, amid the debris of leaves and straw, the silver-grey cat had come to rest. Not wishing to alarm it in any way and mindful of its claws, I cautiously approached and, from a safe distance, peered into the recess. Was this its den? Had it crawled here to die as badly wounded wild animals have been known to do? As I edged slowly closer, a moonbeam slanted through a hole in the roof and momentarily lit up the corner. I realized that I had been witness to the most powerful of all instincts in the animal kingdom. The silver-grey cat was a mother, driven by the maternal instinct to return to succour her two kittens. In front of me, a rough nest had been scraped together for
her family. Not trusting the loose timbers to accommodate my weight while standing, I crawled nearer on hands and knees until I was at last able to inspect the family by the dim moonlight.
    They were a pitiful sight. The kittens, as far as I could see were at most only a couple of weeks old and merely frail bundles of skin and bone covered in ragged fur. They hardly seemed to move at all, despite the she-cat’s insistent licking as she worked feverishly to caress some life into them. They had obviously been left on their own for some considerable time. I stared aghast at what I’d found and it filled me with despair. The she-cat seemed oblivious to her own plight, determined to mother her kittens at all costs. Perhaps it was already too late, but I felt I had to make the effort to seek help for them, especially after making it this far.
    Transporting them was more easily accomplished than I’d expected. I found a remnant of sacking, dusty with chaff and seed husks but dry and warm nonetheless. The she-cat watched me, wide-eyed and strangely gentle, as I carefully lifted her mangled body on to the sacking, followed by the tiny, frail kittens. She must have been in great pain as I moved her but all the fight and fear appeared to have bled out of her and she was content now that she was back with her kittens. There were a few anxious moments when I came to descend the ladder but, apart from a number of painfully bruising jolts, I succeeded in reaching the floor of
the barn without mishap. From there I hurried home by a more direct and, I hoped, easier route than the one by which I’d come.
    The ground outside was frozen hard and I found myself stumbling and skidding with the effort of carrying the cat and her kittens over frozen patches of snow and ice. I was more worried about their safety than my own and a couple of times I lost my balance and thudded down, saving them from dropping at the expense of falling hard. I was beginning to ache in places that I’d forgotten I had.
    At one point I decided to cross a