SOLOMON’S
Tale
SHEILA JEFFRIES
CONTENTS
I sat down in the middle of the road to think about why I had left home on that summer morning.
I was only a black kitten, eight weeks old, but I had a tough decision to make. Should I stay in my comfortable home and live a boring predictable life, or should I set out on a long journey to find the person I loved best in the whole world? Her name was Ellen, and I had been Ellen’s cat in another lifetime, when she was a child. She’d called me Solomon and I was her best friend. I wanted to find her again.
Suddenly a lorry was coming towards me. The road underneath my paws started to tremble. I could feel it vibrating along my tail and tickling the fluff inside my ears.
It loomed closer. Two glaring eyes, a forehead made of glass, and a name emblazoned across its chin. SCANIA. It had massive wheels and was roaring like fifty lions.
Hypnotised, I stared into its eyes, thinking that if I acted like an assertive tiger, the lorry would stop and let me finish washing my paws.
My angel didn’t usually shout at me, but she did now.
‘Run Solomon. RUN!’
I took off so fast that I left skid marks in the gravel. As I sailed into the hedge, the lorry thundered past in a gale of gritty air. Hissing, it pulled over, stopped, and was finally silent.
A man climbed out and disappeared into a nearby building.Being a very nosy kitten, I crept out to inspect the giant lorry while it was quiet. I sat in the road and looked at it. The sky darkened and icy hailstones came pinging down into my fur. Underneath the lorry was a good place to shelter. The wheels were hot and I sat close to one, watching the hailstones bouncing on the tarmac. I’d been outside for a long time and I needed to sleep.
I crawled into a hole at the front of the lorry. Inside, it was toasty warm. The stink of oil, the heat, and the chorus of hailstones made me drowsy. I curled up on a little shelf close to the engine, wrapped my tail around the tip of my nose, and fell asleep.
Hours later, I was jolted awake by an ear-splitting clatter. Every bone in my body was being banged up and down as the engine hammered into life. Terrified, I scrabbled to get out but saw only a chink of speeding wet road. I climbed higher, onto an oily ledge, my white-tipped paws ruined and stinking. Through a crack in the metal was a view of fields and bridges racing past.