After dozing off again, I find one of the frogs back with me in the hotel room. I have to let him lie in a small container of cold water for a while, to let him recuperate.
Read moreI put him in a long rectangular Tupperware, and put a lid on it so he cannot escape, but every time I put down the container, he starts hitting the lid with his head, almost knocks it off.
So then I fill the bathtub in the room, it is filled quite high, and I let the Tupperware float in it so that this time, if he escapes, he will only escape into more water.
The bathtub is only filled with water from the tap and is not the boiled, sterilizer water I used for him but I’m sure it will be OK for the time that he needs to get better.
Then I leave the room.
And it is only when I get back that I see the horror.
Artie is floating under the water of the bathtub his small body rotating slowly under the surface, the frog paddling around him, the Tupperware up-ended.
Artie must be dead, I think, as I pull him out. A bit of claw catches my hand and comes away from his paw, lodges with a piece of fur at the soft base of my thumb.
I lie Artie’s limp body, belly down, across the lip of the bathtub. I stroke his back, and press hard, up from his hind legs with both thumbs, push his fur up towards his throat until the water ejects from his mouth into the bathtub. And I repeat it again and again until the water spurts out, until after the third or fourth time he splutters into life, and rolls out of my grip onto the floor.
“Oh Artie,” I cry as he walk away.
He no longer has his buff coat but looks more tabby and smaller than he was before; when he was chasing the frogs.
I leave him to return downstairs where they have the constructors out on the patio. They are mending the tiles, resurfacing them with white squares in a diamond shape, white to match the balcony wall which surrounds the patio. And I want to see how the construction is going.
When I get there I’m surprised to see Artie once more. This time he is lying on his back, his body splayed across the balcony wall. A small but deep gash is visible across the white fur of his belly, bleeding,
“Artie,” I cry out once more as I rush towards the wall.
Next to him sits a contractor and, at the far side of the patio, two more. They wear grey hard hats and are eating sandwiches, it’s their lunch break. And they stare back nonchalantly at my commotion.
Then a second cat bounds out from the French doors of the hotel, across the patio and up onto the wall to my dead cat. Only it’s Artie who ran out of the hotel and the dead cat is not Artie after all, although he shares the same tabby markings and size.
Artie sniffs at the dead cat briefly before leaping towards the two contractors at the end of the patio. He ducks between them as they slouch and chew their sandwiches.
“Catch him!” I yell before he disappears under their legs.
Photo by Eu_eugen via Pixabay