The Glaring Page 7

  On the plus side, these large gatherings or glarings were not an altogether unwelcome development as far as the cat-nappers were concerned: it made cats easier to find and deal with (by netting and sedating them or – depending on the area, the level of public concern, whether the operatives were bounty hunters or local authority staff – by mass shootings). However, the many prides and the occasional glarings did make going to the shops or just going out a thorough nightmare and people began to resort to all sorts of protective wear against any attacks, should they come. Lionel still favoured a pair of tough gardening gloves, some ski goggles, a second world war leather flying helmet – recently acquired from a local bric-a-brac shop – a boiler suit and some stout walking boots. The outfit was exceedingly uncomfortable in even mild weather and the gloves made any intricate hand movements, the picking up of small items, etc., somewhat difficult of course. Still, the alternative was so much worse to contemplate, and there were increasing worries now, in some parts of the press and society, that the parasite could pass to humans through scratching or biting – though the science was still out on that for the time being.

  Worst affected by the situation. and the necessary and prudential counter-measures people were forced to employ, were babies and young children. The former category was rarely left alone now and had to be both protected and guarded at all times, some cats having shown a particular penchant for attacking them. And the latter found their freedom of movement and association severely restricted to essentially home and school and with no playing outdoors in either case, under any circumstances. People, not surprisingly, wondered just how long this depressing, worrying and decidedly inconvenient situation would be allowed to go on, and MPs and the media were bombarded with requests to simply ‘do something about it, and quick!’

  It would not be an exaggeration to say that peoples’ nerves were soon at breaking point; doubly so, when many took their understandable fear and loathing, and palpitating apprehensions about cats, wrongly, to be symptomatic of toxoplasmosis, and the demand for tests for the parasite rose to such proportions that websites crashed and GPs’ surgeries were virtually besieged with anxious people. The only trouble being, of course, that there was still no vaccine against it for humans let alone cats – though the race was on and millions of pounds were suddenly found by the UK government to facilitate such research.

  An epidemiologist in government service came up with the idea of testing the caught-cats for the parasite, slaughtering the infected ones, but putting the non-infected ones away in top-security, disease-free cat-sanctuaries; one, as a policy of containment; two, in order to guarantee a future for the non-infected cat population (once a vaccine had been found for them as well), and, three, as a means of placating the hundreds of thousands of tearful and angry cat-lovers up and down the country hundreds of whom who kept up a constant vigil outside Downing Street. A crowd whose lamentations for the felid population of Great Britain sounded to Cabinet Ministers deep in crisis meetings like so many hundreds of yowling cats in close proximity. The Prime Minister thought of getting the police to move them on, but – on reflection – she thought it would add a certain urgency to her colleagues’ deliberations if she left the highly vocal cat-lobby to it, which she did in the end.

  As well as mobilising the agents and agencies of the state, the government lent its support to some hastily approved legislation to permit the open purchase of air guns and rifles and paid people a bounty to shoot cats, provided they brought the bodies into local depots designated for that purpose. Gradually, these measures and others – such as fining people for not securing their refuse bins and instant loss of liberty for a year for anyone found harbouring a cat – began to take an effect; the danger lessened as the numbers of cats ‘at large’ diminished and people became more careful in their movements, though sometimes, still too often in fact, people let their guard down and got caught out.

  *

  The sense of being besieged grew with each passing day, a sense compounded by a 24-hour television news service that simply piled on the agony through its constant recycling of the day’s (any day’s) particular outrages. It was the same with the on-line and daily newspapers and the radio.

  Living during the Black Death must have been a bit like this, Lionel surmised one evening after a particularly difficult foray to the shops. There was a veritable plague of diseased cats out there; cats that were always threatening to get into your property somehow, always lurking, just waiting for the opportunity to pounce on the least prepared, the most vulnerable, the frail and those living alone. But which cats were disease free, and which weren’t? And did it matter, since the disease-free ones had become feral and ran with the rest? Dogs, it soon transpired, were hopeless against them, even the fiercest, since the cats were faster and more furious, especially in numbers – they could overwhelm any dog in seconds, like marcher ants, by simply swarming all over it and slashing and biting it to bits. Big dogs died of exsanguination, little ones were simply eaten alive.

  And, though the data, the official statistics, would not be available until much later, impressionistically the suicide rate spiked dramatically; almost everyone knew of someone who had perished in this way. In general, the mental health of the population was in a parlous state as well, with more and more people seeking medical help for depression and anxiety and worse. But given that both these indices – suicide and mental illness – had been identified by some scientists as indisputably linked to t. gondii infections in humans, well the one thing fed off the other with more and more people convincing themselves that they, or their nearest and dearest, or their boss, colleague or neighbour, was clearly infected. Social relations, familial relations, harmonious relations of any sort were becoming very difficult to sustain.

  In the country at large it was the rural areas and farmers who had it worse. Isolated for the most part, with few resources with which to fend off the hordes of scavenging cats, with large acreages to protect and scattered livestock out in the fields or crops to bring in, theirs’ was a particularly hard and dangerous lot. And the Army had to be called in to aid and assist them and eradicate, as far as possible, the problem cats; cats that were quite capable of targeting calves and sheep and piglets and, especially, free range chickens and ducks. The majority of seasonal turkeys had already been slaughtered and frozen before the crisis really struck home, but people hoping for freshly slaughtered turkeys, ducks and capons for Christmas found the prices rocketed faster than a pheasant flushed from the covers, and they and other game birds were almost wiped out in any case!

  Peoples’ lives had become so circumscribed, so set about with official restrictions and self-imposed restraints; so fearful of every fleeting shadow, every scratching and any sudden sound or cry. The overwhelming majority of the UK population had no previous experience to go by, no precedent, and were generally unused to such privations over such a protracted period of time. It was, without a shadow of doubt, a most harrowing time.

  In an e-mail to Bob, Lionel – trying to make light of matters – composed a brief parody of Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin… only instead of rats read cats, he told his friend.

  They fought the dogs and killed the rats,

  And bit the babies in the cradles,

  And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

  And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,

  Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

  Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,

  And even spoiled the women’s chats,

  By drowning their speaking

  With yowling and wailing

  In fifty different sharps and flats.

  The tone of the e-mail evidently jarred somewhat with its recipient. Bob’s reply was typically lugubrious…

  ‘Yes, Lionel, but do remember the moral of the tale! The (local) state wouldn’t pay the piper’s agreed price for relieving the town of all its rats, and then what happened? They forfeited all their children! Let’s h
ope that when we, our government, solves this crisis we don’t sow the seeds of another and even greater one – through parsimony, ill-judgement or both.’

  **

  (xiii)

  Lionel, pepper-spray at the ready, trudged home from his local supermarket one night ever-watchful, ever on the look-out for cats, as one was obliged to do of course these days; taking great care of what he trod in, and mindful of the dangers of a bite or even a scratch if one of those creatures ever got too close.

  He was wearing his usual outdoor kit of these latter days: his ski goggles, leather flying-helmet, gloves and a boiler suit, plus heavy walking boots, but - even so - he seriously doubted their efficacy in an all-out attack. The goggles whilst protecting his eyes also restricted his all-round vision somewhat so, instinctively, he bent his head and shoulders and, hunched up somewhat, he moved forward scanning the way ahead of him to left and right.

  Honestly, Middle Eastern preoccupations and complicated trade negotiations notwithstanding, the British government still needed to get a firmer grip on the problem. This business of the cat population’s aggressive and very odd behaviour was now a major health and safety crisis (not to say an economic and psychological one too, in all its implications). Somehow, and for reasons as yet little understood, the parasite had clearly mutated, it was seeking new hosts, possibly, and certainly more hosts within the feline population, and it was self-evidently more aggressive in character. And one effect in certain human subjects exposed to t. gondii – an effect that had been well-observed scientifically and fully documented – was altered mental states, and sometimes seriously unbalanced minds in many respects. So why not in cats as well? In short, mused Lionel, the nation’s cats are barking mad. And, in spite of his general mood and wariness, he smiled to himself at the awful mixed metaphor.

  He left the supermarket car-park, the illuminated car-park, behind him and began to cross some waste ground beyond it and well before his house; some ‘temporary’ waste ground that had lain like this for years (overgrown and a bit of a dump) due to a protracted dispute between a property developer and the local council. A couple of energy-saving street lamps along a nearby service road leading to nowhere cast a feeble glow over his progress. Lionel stumbled a couple of times on the uneven and much-littered ground and cursed himself for not taking the longer, but assuredly safer, way home. Suddenly, he froze.

  Ahead of him in the almost pitch dark, away from the poor street lights, he saw the unmistakeable twin lights of a cat’s eyes, and then two more beneath those as a second feline evidently turned its head toward him. He could faintly make out their forms and, in an instant, he knew that he had just disturbed two cats in coitus! The eyes of the uppermost cat exuded pure malice towards him – cats are secretive, furtive even in their copulating and they do not, as a rule, like to be observed. Lionel averted his gaze and tried to walk away side-ways, except he tripped over something and stumbled - a rare oath (one that Ailish would have been appalled by) escaping his lips.

  “Shit!”

  He risked a furtive look backwards only to see two pairs of eyes still glaring at him venomously, obviously waiting for him to disappear before they could continue their congress. Regaining his composure somewhat, Lionel straightened up and moved on his heart pounding in his chest. He couldn’t shake off the image from his mind’s eye of what had just transpired nor the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that there’d been something almost human-like in that encounter, almost as if he’d disturbed two humans in flagrante delicti. He was unaccountably shocked and embarrassed, when all he’d witnessed was two cats, two animals, behaving as animals do. He shook his head to try and dispel such ridiculous ruminations. He trudged on, but - inexplicably - with a sense of mounting dread. And then he became aware of them!

  One by one – as if someone was switching on a series of lights – he saw cats’ eyes multiplying all around him!

  *

  He was marooned in a sea of motionless cats’ eyes, with soundless cats beneath the glaring eyes; a whole army of cats now surrounded him and just stared or glared at him; massing in silent but obvious malevolence, as if waiting upon a call; gathered there as if as summoned by something or somebody and by powers beyond his human ken.

  As he tentatively made to go forward, very slowly, the eyes - and the barely discernible shapes to which they belonged - silently and unaccountably gave way and let him through. But for how much longer, he wondered?

  Lionel was sweating profusely now; his heart beating at a ridiculous rate, his throat dry and his body shaking with fear. He’d never seen so many cats operating in such numbers before – wherever he looked, all he saw was a sea of eyes. Equally, he’d never seen them behave like this before; it was totally out of character for them. He’d read about it, heard talk of it on the radio and telly, but he’d never seen a ‘glaring’ in actuality before now. And he knew, instinctively, that this lot just wanted to leap upon him en masse and tear and bite him to bits. Only something or somebody was holding them back, seemingly.

  Any second now though, Lionel knew he would be attacked. And the thought that he was going to die – more especially, how he was going to die – brought hot bile up into his throat.

  Mercifully, a car’s headlights suddenly appeared straight ahead of him, flashing up and down as the vehicle left the road and bumped over the irregular ground. It stopped behind a big clump of scrubby bushes, the exterior lights went out leaving a couple – a man and a woman – slightly illuminated by the car’s interior light. How had they not seen the sea of cats before them? Presumably, as their passionate behaviour now began to confirm, they had something else on their mind. Or could the cats have collectively closed their eyes at that point, perhaps? That chilling possibility had sprung, unlooked for, straight into Lionel’s mind.

  Tentatively, Lionel approached the car, as the cats before him continued their collective impersonation of the parting of the Red Sea, only for some of them to rub against Lionel’s boiler-suit trousers as they did so, which only added to his feelings of vulnerability and alarm. He tapped the side window of the car.

  The young woman screamed and an angry-faced middle-aged man shot around to glare and shout obscenities at him. The window came down just a little.

  “Piss off, you pervert… I know your sort!”

  And the man made to get out of the car, particularly as he’d seen that Lionel was alone, and probably older than him, certainly less robust.

  “Cats!” was all that Lionel could manage at first.

  “What did he say?” the girl enquired nervously.

  “Look around you.” Lionel was almost shouting now, fear and panic painfully evident in his voice.

  “You… me… we’re surrounded by cats!”

  Several of the aforementioned creatures suddenly appeared on the bonnet of the car. The young woman screamed again and then made a sound in her throat signifying her disgust for the things.

  “Please let me in,” begged Lionel. “And then drive away from here… fast.”

  “What, through and over those cats?” the driver queried.

  “God, yes… Let me in!”

  Lionel was frantic now as the cats around him pressed him further, milling around his legs and rubbing themselves against him, making a hideous low, almost a growling noise in their throats. He pulled at the door catch, but it was locked.

  “I shan’t tell you again… bugger off! As if I’d open my car to a total stranger on a dark night and in a place like this… You probably brought those bloody cats with you… a male version of the ‘cat-lady syndrome’. You’re probably a madman whose been infected by the parasite that’s supposed to live in that lot.”

  Lionel could see that there was no way he was going to get through to this man or the terrified woman the other side of him. They wouldn’t help him now and they certainly wouldn’t help him if the cats began their attack. He shuffled away, disconsolately. The road, he estimated, was about twenty paces away from him and some d
im street lighting another twenty or so paces beyond that. If he broke into a run he might… no, he wouldn’t, he knew it would be futile even to try. He just kept moving forward ever so slowly.

  With stinging sweat in his eyes (he dare not remove his goggles), the poor lighting and the scratched lenses of his eye-protective-gear, it was a miracle that he did not fall over. The weakness of his legs – they were shaking with fear – did not help his mobility either, but gradually he made his way through the felid throng. When he forced himself to look again, the eyes of the cats, however, did not appear to be on him anymore; they had something newer and more interesting to focus upon, seemingly.

  Lionel gained the road and, soon, the roadside lighting. He was free of any feline company at last, but even so he did not look back. He increased the length of his stride and the tempo of his pace and very soon he was running – for all he was worth. Running away from the most terrifying experience of his life and the collective hatred of a whole species directed against him.

  Above the sound of his boots running on the tarmac, Lionel was suddenly aware of some terrible screams filling the night air. Despite his fear for himself, he stopped. Dear God, it was like an animal or animals being torn apart by predators. Only they weren’t animal screams, they were human: a human chorus of pain and terror – one very high pitched, underscored by another slightly lower. He knew what they were. He threw up.

  Wiping the vomit away from his mouth with the back of his glove, Lionel ran for his life. He redoubled his speed and ran until his lungs were near to bursting and he had an incredibly painful ‘stitch’ in his stomach. But still he ran on.