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Of course it did – look at all the trouble she’d got into the last time she was there. Maybe they should stop letting Gobi out on adventures altogether, I thought. That might solve the problem.
And I wouldn’t feel so left behind.
‘She’s not going to get lost again this time, Dion,’ Mum said, soothingly. ‘Besides, if we’re all there together, we can look after each other.’
‘I suppose.’ Dad still didn’t look convinced. I brushed up against his legs to remind him of my existence. It worked. ‘What about Lara?’ he asked, sitting up straight so I could jump up into his lap. ‘We’d have to be away for weeks, to do the whole tour. I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of leaving her for so long.’
Good. Neither did I.
‘Then we’ll take her with us!’ Mum sounded strangely excited at the idea. Maybe she thought she’d been missing out on some adventures, too.
Personally, I was considerably wary of the whole idea. I mean, I’d never been anywhere before, and now they wanted to start off with China? I might not have travelled, but Dad had a map on the wall with pins showing all the places he and Mum and Gobi had travelled to. He’d pointed China out to me one day.
It was a long way across the map from my house.
‘For the whole tour? Three weeks travelling around China, doing interviews, appearing at bookshops and so on …’ Dad shook his head. ‘I’m not sure how she’d cope with all that travel and fuss. She’s more of a homebody, our Lara.’
‘Hmm, I suppose she hasn’t really been anywhere before, has she?’ Mum agreed.
Even though I’d just had the exact same thought, my ears flattened to hear Mum say it, and my tail started to wave warningly from side to side. I would cope magnificently, of course, with whatever it was they were talking about doing. Really, Dad should know better than to suggest I couldn’t do something! Just because I never had didn’t mean I couldn’t. It only meant that it had been below my notice before now.
Before Gobi, at least. Because things were very different, now.
Suddenly, all the things I’d been before Gobi – an indoor cat, a pampered princess, a fluffy homebody – they didn’t sound like good things any more.
‘She’s just not an adventurous sort of pet,’ Dad said, pressing the point home. ‘Not like Gobi.’
It was those last three words that made my mind up. If Gobi could do it, so could I. And I’d do it better and cleverer, and with more panache too.
I’d be the most adventurous pet anyone had ever had, if that’s what Mum and Dad wanted me to be.
I focussed in on their conversation. It always takes more effort to understand humans talking than other animals. But sometimes you have to put the work in to stay on top of what’s going on.
Dad was talking about a tour – like the ones he and Gobi had been on before, around Britain, and overseas too. Gobi had travelled almost everywhere with Dad, while I’d stayed home in Edinburgh. I’d stared out of my window and waited for them to come back, when Dad would stick another pin in their map. Somewhere else they had been and I hadn’t.
But this time, I had the chance to go, too. To find out what an adventure was really like.
I wasn’t going to pass that up.
Dad petted my head, and noticed my flattened ears. ‘I’m not sure Lara likes the idea, anyway.’
Honestly, humans! Do they understand nothing?
I meowed loudly and jumped up onto the table. Maybe Mum would understand more.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, stroking my fluffy fur. ‘She’s always the first one into the suitcases whenever we go anywhere. Maybe she’s been longing to take a trip with us all this time.’
I purred in agreement. Okay, my desire for travel was only a few minutes old, and I only usually climbed in the suitcases because they were filled with warm and soft things for snuggling on, but still … It was closer than Dad’s interpretation, anyway.
‘Okay, say we do this, how would it work?’ Dad stood up, crossing to the kettle to make himself a drink. I followed, just in case he opened the fridge and there was anything interesting in there for me.
‘Well, we could all take the ferry to France together, so Lara and Gobi don’t have to travel in the hold of the plane leaving the UK,’ said Mum, obviously thinking things through as she made up her plan on the spot. ‘The overnight one, maybe, for a change? To break up the journey a bit. Then we can fly from France to China with the animals with us. We’d need to book pet-friendly accommodation everywhere anyway, for Gobi, so adding Lara into the mix won’t make much difference for the hotels. And we can all explore the country together. It’ll be fun!’
It did sound sort of fun, I supposed. Apart from the ‘with Gobi’ bit. I’d seen pictures of planes, and I knew they had windows. And Dad and Gobi sometimes videocalled from hotels when they were travelling, and they didn’t look all that much different from the bedrooms at home.
But most of all, it was an adventure. Maybe I’d finally find out what all the fuss was about, and why people wanted to have them in the first place.
‘What about when Gobi and I are doing interviews, or book signings and events and stuff?’ Dad asked. Because of course, it was still all about Gobi. Everything was.
‘Lara and I will come, too! Come on, Dion! You and Gobi have been everywhere together – the States, Canada …’
‘Holland, Italy, France and Switzerland,’ he added, in case we’d forgotten quite how many places they’d been together. Like we didn’t have the map to remind us.
‘Exactly. Maybe it’s Lara’s turn for an adventure.’ Mum didn’t say ‘and mine too’, but I got the feeling she was thinking it. ‘Besides, it would be so nice to spend the summer all together as a family.’
That was true. Even if I wasn’t completely thrilled that our family was made up of four of us now instead of three, I really didn’t like the idea of the other three going off and having fun together and leaving me behind all summer.
‘It would be nice,’ Dad admitted. Reaching down, he picked me up and held me against his shoulder. ‘What do you think, Lara? Would you like to come on an adventure with us?’
Most importantly, if I could show Mum and Dad that I was just as good at adventures as Gobi was – better even – maybe they’d remember that I was their favourite pet and quite clearly the superior animal in our household.
Even if I wasn’t entirely sure what having an adventure entailed, yet. If Gobi could do it, how hard could it really be, anyway?
So, I meowed my agreement. Loudly. It was my turn to travel with Dad for a change.
Mum laughed, looking pleased, and Dad smiled too. For one precious moment, it was just the three of us again – and it was perfect.
Of course, Gobi picked that moment to wander into the kitchen, looking sleepy. She’d obviously just woken up from her afternoon nap, and arrived just in time to butt in on my important moment with Mum and Dad. As usual.
Dad put me down and went to make a fuss of Gobi instead. I slunk back to my ball of fluff again.
‘Guess what, girl?’ Dad said, sounding excited for the first time in the conversation. ‘We’re all going on an adventure. Together!’
Gobi barked her approval of the plan. I just hoped that they had prawns in China. And that I didn’t have to share them with Gobi.
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The planning for our trip took a lot more work than I’d expected. Before, I hadn’t really paid much attention to what went into getting Gobi and Dad ready to go away. This time, though, I watched every detail, usually from inside a suitcase, where I couldn’t possibly get forgotten. After a lifetime of happily staying inside, I was suddenly terrified of being left behind and missing out on the adventure.
With every day that passed, the excitement and anticipation grew in my belly – closely matched by the worry and the fear. Dad was wrong, obviously, about me not being able to cope with adventure. But that didn’t change the fact that I’d never actually had one before, only heard about theirs.
In my experience, new things could be either very good (like the new, bigger prawns Mum had found for me) or very bad (like Gobi’s dog biscuits, which tasted good, but always ended up with me being sick, every single time. I kept trying though, just in case).
I really hoped that adventures were more like prawns. But that didn’t stop the nervousness from growing, especially as I learned more about the tour, where we were going, and what would be happening while we were away.
‘I’ve got the itinerary through from the publishers,’ Dad said one day, waving a few sheets of paper stapled together at us.
‘Let’s hear it then,’ said Mum, as she put my prawns in my bowl.
I was torn: prawns or listening to the details of our adventure? In the end, I tried to do both. The prawns were delicious, as always; the itinerary less lovely.
In summary, the plan for our three weeks in China seemed to be: take Gobi to lots of lovely places, where there would be lots of people wanting to see her and make a fuss of her, wherever we went. And nobody to pay any attention at all to me, or my big adventure.
And that was the big problem: this was supposed to be my chance to show Mum and Dad that I was more than just an indoor cat, that I could be adventurous, too. But it still seemed very much like Gobi’s adventure, even though I was along for the ride. How was I going to prove that I was the superior pet if everything was still about Gobi?
I sat at my window and ignored the world outside for once, thinking hard instead. There had to be a way to have my own adventure, surely? One that was all about me.
I just didn’t know enough about adventures yet to figure out how.
By the time the day finally came to leave Edinburgh for Portsmouth and the ferry (via London, for some important, last-minute publisher meeting for Dad and Gobi), I’d started to go off the whole idea, really. I sulked in my carrier in the car, dozing off as we drove.
And when I saw the ferry, lit up brightly against the darkening night sky, I was certain this was a very bad idea indeed.
‘It’s huge!’ I stared at the giant ship up ahead of us. It was bigger than our house, by far. I’d never even seen anything so big. Travelling by car was one thing – I quite enjoyed a car trip – I wasn’t convinced I was going to enjoy this journey.
Gobi barked her agreement. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’
‘Brilliant’ wasn’t quite the word I’d been looking for.
‘How long are we going to be on it?’ I asked, still eyeing the ferry suspiciously.
‘All night!’ Gobi said it like that was a good thing.
Was the ferry the adventure? Because really, if we had that whole giant ship to explore, what more adventure could we possibly need? Maybe we should just turn around and go home – after all, Ragdoll cats were indoor cats. Not ferry cats or aeroplane cats or even China cats. I missed my window. And my prawns.
But just then, Dad put me in my carrier to take me aboard, and going home was no longer an option.
Adventures also seemed to involve a lot of people frowning at paperwork. Before we were even allowed on the ferry, a man had to glare at some paper, then run the same magic device thing over me that they sometimes used at the vet’s.
‘That’s to make sure we’re who we say we are,’ Gobi told me, from where she was being checked at the next table.
I hunkered down back inside my carrier and glowered. I wasn’t enjoying being in Gobi’s world. At home, I knew everything and she didn’t. Where the warmest spots to curl up were. Where Mum hid the dog treats. The best blankets for snuggling on. The ideal time to interrupt Dad’s programmes when he was watching TV. How not to get trapped underneath the house playing hide and seek.
When Gobi had arrived home with Dad, I’d had to teach her everything about our home, our lives, our family. Here, things seemed to be the other way around.
It wasn’t natural.
Once we were on the ferry itself, I started to feel more at home. Mum and Dad had booked us something called a ‘pet-friendly cabin’. (I didn’t want to know what made the other cabins unfriendly towards pets.) It had two narrow beds, a window, and a door that opened onto a small bathroom. As soon as Dad let me out of my carrier, I hopped up onto the little table under the window to look out.
I’d hoped it would feel familiar, like all the other windows I’d stared out of over the years. Instead, I looked out over an expanse of endless water, and shuddered.
It looked hundreds of times worse than bathtime.
Behind me, Mum laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Lara. You’re safe in here, the water can’t reach you.’
But I wasn’t about to take her word for it, so I jumped back down onto the bed and made myself at home.
Dad was standing in the open doorway, moving a bag from the hall into our cabin, when another lady appeared outside, with another pet carrier. She smiled at Dad as she passed, then she stopped, stared inside our cabin, and her grin grew even larger.
‘Look, Cleo! Another Ragdoll, just like you! And staying right next door to us. How lovely to meet fellow discerning pet lovers! It can be so lonely travelling alone.’ She lifted her carrier so her cat – Cleo, I presumed – could see me. We surveyed each other with steady gazes. I couldn’t get a really good look at her, behind the bars of her carrier door, but if she was a Ragdoll like me, I was sure she must be gorgeous.
When I tuned back into the human conversation again, Mum was saying, ‘Would you like a drink? Dion was just going to pop to the cafe for a hot chocolate for me,’ to Cleo’s human and, before I knew it, Cleo was out of her carrier and onto the bed with me.
‘Ooh, that sounds be lovely! I’m Jennifer, by the way.’ Cleo’s human bustled into the already cramped cabin, and took a seat on the end of my bed.
I meowed a welcome to Cleo. ‘I’m Lara. And the dog is Gobi,’ I added, jerking my head towards my sister pet.
‘Cleo,’ the other Ragdoll said, not even acknowledging Gobi.
I liked her already.
‘I’ll just go find the cafe then,’ Dad said, looking bemused. It was just as well he left – he’s a tall guy, and the cabin really wasn’t all that big for all six of us.
‘So, are you off to France on holiday?’ Mum asked, settling onto the other bed. Gobi was already asleep beside her. It was very late, I supposed, but I’d slept so much in the car down, I wasn’t tired at all. (I don’t know what it is about car journeys, but they always send me to sleep. I was hoping the ferry might do the same, but already there were so many strange noises and smells, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to settle.)
‘No, just passing through,’ Jennifer said. ‘We’re flying out of Paris tomorrow.’
‘Us too!’ said Mum. ‘We wanted to have the animals with us on the plane.’ And we wanted to be there with them. I still remembered Gobi’s tales of travelling in the hold of a plane in China. I shuddered just thinking about them.
Jennifer nodded. ‘Exactly! I really don’t like to fly without Cleo. And until Britain lets animals travel with passengers instead of in the hold, I will only fly out of Paris.’
At the other end of the bed, Cleo rolled her eyes, and settled her head down on her paws. I padded closer – other cats were usually far more interesting to talk to than humans.
‘You don’t look very excited to be going on this trip.’ I took a spot close enough to Cleo to talk, but not so close as to crowd her, and began nonchalantly licking my leg.
‘You wouldn’t be either, if you were travelling with her.’ Cleo jerked her head in the direction of Jennifer, sitting behind her.
‘Oh, look!’ Jennifer clapped her hands together and beamed. ‘They’re talking to each other!’
Mum smiled, too. ‘Oh, Lara’s quite the chatterbox. Especially when Dion is trying to watch the sports. He says she always seems to know exactly when something important is about to happen, and then she interrupts.’
Cleo ignored them, so I did too.
‘She seems … enthusiastic,’ I said, eyeing Jennifer carefully.
‘That’s one word for it.’ With a sigh, Cleo heaved herself closer, as if she needed to whisper so Jennifer wouldn’t hear what she was saying. Like humans would ever concentrate long enough to understand us the way we understand them. ‘She gets so excited about things, she forgets what really matters: me.’
‘I know how that feels.’ I glanced across at Gobi on the other bed. She was Mum and Dad’s latest excitement. And maybe they hadn’t forgotten about me completely, but they’d definitely stopped remembering that I was the most important animal in their lives.
‘She always has to be doing something too,’ Cleo went on, obviously pleased to have someone to moan to about her human. ‘She got really into crystals last year. Kept trying to use these pieces of rock to cure me.’
‘What was wrong with you?’
‘Nothing,’ Cleo said, mournfully. ‘Well, except for when she dropped a huge piece of quartz on my tail.’
I winced, and put a paw over my face – that did sound painful.
‘The worst part,’ Cleo went on, ‘is the adventures.’
