Wonka's Christmas Story

Wonka’s Christmas Story

  Copyright 2013 Madeleine Masterson

  So there we all were on the night before Christmas, Wonka and me in the living room glued to the latest box set and Baba sneezing in the depths of the house somewhere. Never one to enjoy the glare of electric light we were lit up by a candle or two and on the mantle the jolly Santa flickered and glowed red from the tea light within. It had been a toss up between a gentle heart- warming film with a message for mankind, or the final series of one of the most violent dramas on offer. We were glued to it, violence and all.

  ‘What was that?!’ Wonka dug a claw into my cardy and it stuck there. At any moment I could receive a nasty scratch, imprisoned and too near to the claw to back off. ‘Get away from me!’ shrieked Wonka and thank goodness I managed to throw off the cardy. To anyone watching I may have seemed under attack and fending off a giant bear like creature. Instead I had escaped the nerves of Wonka, and racked up my own. ‘STOP IT NOW’ I warned, ‘you’ll frighten Baba’. Not really. I did wonder if amongst all else, Baba was deaf. We all settled back down to the next violent episode.

  Just then we heard a scraping at the poor back door. Was it Ruggles? This was the stray cat with the yard pass, free to enter and receive nourishment for life. Wonka had warned not to let him in, and so far I had taken heed but in the deep of winter, and on Christmas Eve? Charity was uppermost. We paused the episode, freezing the menacing scene to stare out of the tiny TV. Most people now enjoyed TVs the size of cinema screens that highlighted each ghastly contour and bump. Along with living in the gloom I did not want this reality check. ‘Come on!’ Wonka was even now peering out of the window into the yard. ‘It’s the yard monster!’ he lowered his voice to whisper this, and then concentrated hard as the scraping got louder.

  ‘Didn’t we decide the monster out back, I thought it was a shed monster, was a –‘

  ‘You made it up to calm us down’ and ‘It wants to get in!’ Wonka had now removed to the kitchen and had sidled up close to the bottom of the poor back door. You will remember the promise of a new back door and the anxiety this caused the household? There was no need, and all that wasted anxiety because nothing happened. As I am wont to say, what is happening? Nothing is happening and that’s what’s happening. I have to say it quickly as Wonka finds that phrase very annoying. I badly wanted to say it now, but managed not to. Despite my fear of lights and what they revealed as opposed to a softer much more gentle candlelit world, I did have access to an outside light which had defied all the electricity laws and any other laws we know of. You know the laws that make lights fuse and light bulbs go just when you needed them most. So far, this dusty old fashioned beacon still worked.

  ‘Shall I pop the outside light on?’ I queried, hand trembling near to the switch. What might I see?

  And there it was, a moth eaten gangly lopsided cat for all the world a double of Baba. Was it Baba?

  For once Wonka had hardly a thing to say and I was open mouthed. It did resemble Baba at first glance but I was firm and very sure that he had not left the warmth of the abode, and not on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Have I to let him in, it being Christmas Eve and all?’ I wasn’t frightened but Wonka’s tail had gone enormous. ‘Don’t open the door!’ he warned, ‘it’s a trick!’

  ‘You stay here,’ I advised, ‘and I’ll go and check on Baba.’ But I didn’t have to, as a volley of sneezing followed by his usual choking revealed his whereabouts. It came from the top of the stairs.

  Wonka looked thoughtful and said this reminded him of a Christmas Story famous in the feline world. ‘Does it have a name?’ I enquired, and Wonka came up with ‘A Christmas Caterol.’ Was this a cat’s paw in the direction of Mr Dickens I pondered, with Wonka now cast in the role of Bob Scratchit (and Tiny Tim in the grand tradition of playing more than one part). Hopefully I still had the twin parts of Scrooge and the Jolly Uncle with the credit card in the starring role. The three ghosts. After all it had, was and would be financing our Christmas. The wind had got up and brought rain with it, tapping at the window. And as I looked through the glass in the poor back door to the double of Baba on the other side, Wonka did tell the tale.

  It all began one dark and moonlit night, and it was the night before Christmas. The wind had got up and the noise outside was loud with trees swaying, dustbins blown over and then, then the sound of the rain lashing down. Wonka caught my eye and we both looked down at the floor. The flood in the kitchen that time, thanks to the poor back door was still fresh in our minds. Wonka continued.

  This particular Owner, was a bad Owner. A well respected, educated and neighbourly person, with a beautifully kept home. She had lived in the street for many years and her tiny front garden was admired by all, for the bank of flowers in the summer and for the gorgeous winter blooms. Oh, they would go, such a pretty display! And in the winter months, to brighten up the window did she have flowers inside too. I pictured all of this just as Wonka was saying it. ‘Did she have any companions?’

  Wonka went on. She did have a companion, and it was a cat called Sheba and this is where it all went wrong. It turned out that Sheba, a rather fetching black and white cat, had come to live with Bad Owner through circumstance. It so happened that a kind neighbour along the street had found Sheba wandering the street and taken her in but then could not look after her. Mrs Bad Owner offered to help even though she had never before looked after a cat or any animal.

  Unsure if I wanted to hear the fate of Sheba, I checked out of the poor back door again. The shadowy creature seemed to still be on the doorstep, though it was hard to tell through the steamed up glass. The rain continued to lash down and hit the windows in gusts as the wind swirled round the back yard. And yet the shadow creature was not moving.

  Sheba knew that her new Owner was not kind and tried her best to teach her. With all the love that cats carry within them for humans, did Sheba try to warm this cold unfeeling woman, but to no avail. In fact even worse, the new Owner as she shifted into Bad Owner, became not just unaffectionate and uncaring but cruel. Food was sometimes there and sometimes not, Sheba was pushed outside on nights such as this one, and left out there.