Introduction

Cat Life was a novel about a cat and its nine lives. It was written by Girona Social Meetup members – each member wrote a chapter based in their own country. Now it is time for a sequel!

Sadly Bella, the famous cat model, died at the end of the book as she only had 9 lives (the nine chapters of the book). But still surviving are Henry, Wayne and David and Tim the neutered cat who used to be called Tom. Henry, despite her strange name, is Wayne’s mother and David is Henry’s estranged husband, David returned to the UK but but the rest of the family was in Barcelona. Tim was getting a little old and crotchety and he needed a companion. Money was in plentiful supply, Henry had sold her cat fashion business for a vast sum, but she had no idea what to do next.

One day, a circus came to visit Mataró, a small town up the coast from Barcelona. The whole family, less David of course, went along to see the show. And there they met Bellados!

As they were approaching the entrance, a small cat appeared from under the awnings of the big top. Since they loved cats and they had Tim with them, naturally they befriended the cat. It was small, only just out of kittenhood, but black as the night with piercing eyes. As they were kneeling in the ground, a clown came up behind them and suddenly hooted on a large car horn. They all jumped and the small cat scurried back into the tent.

“Sorry,” the clown said, “I just can’t help myself, I just like to have fun!” He spoke in English but his accent was a little “eastern” maybe Ukrainian or Russian. Or nearer home, maybe Romania because there were many Romanians in this part of Spain.
“Did you like the cat?” he said, “You can have it if you like. It scares us, it is almost human, the way it looks at people.”

Tim’s ears pricked up, this was the first time he had shown any interest in anything since Bella died. He started making moaning noises as if to say, “Pleeeese!”

“We have to go and watch the show, can we come and see you afterwards? How much do you want for the cat?” said Henry.

“Oh, nothing! You can have her for nothing. She has had the op so you won’t be having half a dozen babies after six months.” He took a look at Tom but soon realised that that there was no risk from that direction. Tim gave a sheepish shrug of his shoulder, not easy for a cat.

“And she has been de-wormed, or whatever you call it. So she is ready to go!”
“Does she have a name?”
The clown reply, “We call her Bella.”

Colour drained from the faces of both Henry and Wayne – they were shocked. Maybe Bella had come back from Cat Heaven.

“Well we will have to call her Bellados because we used to have a cat called Bella and we could never use that name again.” Henry smiled because it made her think of “Oodos” the famous Irish Rock band, as it was called sometimes in Spain.

“By the way, what is your name?”
“Korky the Clown….. Ohh, do you mean my real name? I am Vlad, from Ukraine.”
With hearts pounding they walked onwards to the entrance.
“Maybe he can connect me with Marti,” said Wayne.

He had never forgotten the beautiful young girl he met in Ukraine where Henry had a huge fashion show, and then he lost her. Her parents said that she was too young to go abroad but she was 18. He never gave up hope of meeting her again. She would be 20 by now and by some miracle, her parents would have realised that is was time to let her go out into the big bad world. Or maybe she was married, or had a boyfriend. That thought did not bear thinking about for Wayne. She had certainly been attracted to him, maybe Ukrainian guys are generally quite big. Wayne who was 19 by now was large. Not fat, just big! (haha, like a young Jack Reacher!)

So this is where we start!
The circus travels around the world, so we can write about each city that it visits. And following on from our theme of Cat Life, the animals act as though they are human but with the qualities of each animal, in the style of Disney perhaps (but that’s not where the idea flourished). And by this scheme, the circus gets around the rules about using animals which by the early 21 century were very strict. Also of course, they had human acts and the humans seemed quite happy to be accompanied by their human animals who sometimes helped them with their acts.

We can introduce characters from the circus, as well as the animals.

I will write a chapter about Barcelona and then we can go on from there. There is no limit to the number of chapters that we can have. We have to think of a name for the circus.