INTRODUCTION
Meet Toby—the village cat with five homes, five dinners, and absolutely no idea what he’s started. 🐾
Enjoy Chapters 1 & 2 of The Cat Who Had Five Dinners by D. D. McGee, a warm, funny and comforting story about an exceptionally well-fed cat and the people whose lives begin to overlap because of him.
Toby isn’t magical. He isn’t trying to bring anyone together. He simply knows which doors open, where the comfortable sleeping spots are and, most importantly, where dinner is served.
But when his carefully arranged routine begins to unravel, strangers start talking, acquaintances become friends, and a little village becomes something more.
Settle in, get comfortable and meet Toby, Kelly, Claire—and the beginnings of a community none of them expected.
Come for the cat. Stay for the people.
CHAPTER ONE
The cat stepped into the road as if he had an appointment on the other side.
Claire braked. The books on her passenger seat slid into the footwell, her shopping bag tipped over, and a lemon rolled beneath the pedals. The cat stopped in the middle of Bell Street and looked at her.
“Move,” she told him through the windscreen.
He considered this. A van approaching from the other direction slowed. Its driver raised both hands in a gesture that might have meant your cat or your problem. Claire put on her hazard lights and got out.
The cat crossed to the pavement at his own pace. He was a broad tabby with a white chin, a small nick in one ear and an expression of permanent mild disappointment. Claire followed him far enough to be sure he was clear of the road. He went through the open door of a bookshop.
Claire looked back at the queue of traffic forming behind her car. She retrieved the lemon from beneath the pedals before driving into the first available space, then carried it into Bell Street Books in her hand. She didn’t know why she had brought it.
Inside, the cat was rubbing against a low shelf of travel guides. A woman in a blue cardigan stood behind the counter, pressing a price sticker onto a hardback.
“Is that your cat?” Claire asked.
The woman glanced down. “Morris? More or less.”
“He nearly got himself run over.”
The woman put the book aside and came around the counter. “Are you all right?”
“I am. My books aren’t. They’re in the footwell.”
“Morris.” The woman crouched and ran a hand over the cat. “You can’t keep doing that.”
Morris leaned into her fingers without giving any indication that he would change his habits. Claire was reassured by the woman’s concern, though she wasn’t sure what she had expected. She had followed a strange cat into a shop with a lemon in her hand.
“I’m Kelly,” the woman said, standing. “Thank you for stopping.”
“Claire. I’m going to my sister’s, just round the corner.” She held up the lemon. “This escaped.”
Kelly smiled. “You’ve rescued two things, then.”
Claire should have gone. Louise was expecting her at eleven to look at a wardrobe that had been advertised as easy to assemble. It had already survived three attempts by two adults and one online video. But Kelly had noticed that her hand was shaking and asked if she’d like tea. Claire said yes before consulting the rest of her Saturday.
Kelly closed the garden door behind them to keep Morris out of the road. The garden was little more than a square of paving behind the shop, with two pots of rosemary, a wooden table and a bench that had been repaired in three different colours. From where she sat, Claire could see a narrow stairway up to the flat.
“Do you live here too?” she asked.
“I do. I’m still getting used to saying it.” Kelly set down two mismatched mugs. “I bought the shop in March.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Some mornings I mean that back.”
Claire laughed. She was a quantity surveyor and had spent the week telling people precisely how much things would cost if they insisted on changing their minds. Kelly had apparently spent it sorting a donation of encyclopaedias that nobody wanted but that the donor had been reluctant to take home.
“I thought second-hand bookshops were supposed to be peaceful,” Claire said.
“They are peaceful for the customers. That’s one of the services I provide.”
They talked about the wardrobe. Kelly suggested turning it on its side before fitting the back panel, which was more useful than the advice Louise had received from her husband, Tom, to start again with a better wardrobe. Kelly had never assembled that particular model; she simply looked at Claire’s photograph and noticed the panel could slide into grooves that were invisible while the thing stood upright.
After fifteen minutes Claire checked her phone. Louise had sent a photograph of the scattered pieces with the message, It has made no progress in your absence. Claire replied, The cat is safe. I stopped at the bookshop for tea. On my way.
“I should go,” Claire said.
“Of course.” Kelly took the mugs inside. Morris had installed himself in a patch of sun by the travel guides. “He’s fine, by the way. You saved him.”
“I think he saved himself and inconvenienced the rest of us.”
Kelly looked at the cat. “That sounds familiar.”
Claire left with her lemon, her books back on the seat and the unexpected feeling that she’d like to return. She didn’t need another book. That wasn’t quite the point.
Louise opened her door before Claire reached it. She was wearing jeans with a pencil tucked behind one ear.
“How does the cat look?” Louise asked.
“Like a cat. How does the wardrobe look?”
“Like a legal dispute.”
Claire went in and put the lemon on the kitchen table. Louise eyed it but didn’t ask. They had been sisters long enough to allow each other an odd object now and then.
They tipped the wardrobe onto its side. The back panel slid into place. Louise stood with her hands on her hips, looking offended by how easily it went.
“Who told you to do that?”
“The woman at the bookshop.”
“Kelly? She’s lovely.”
“You know her?”
“I bought two books there. That’s practically a friendship in this town.”
Claire didn’t argue. An hour earlier she’d believed the cat belonged to Kelly and that Kelly was a stranger. Both things seemed straightforward enough.
That evening, when Kelly pulled the shutters down, Morris was nowhere in sight. She checked the garden and called him once from the back door. He sometimes slept upstairs, sometimes arrived at opening and sometimes disappeared for a day. She had never quite decided whether the shop had acquired a cat or the cat had acquired a shop.
She counted the till, entered the day’s sales and laid aside an invoice she would have to query on Monday. The largest sale had been a railway history to a man who had arrived looking for a map. She was still pleased by it. The shop had done better than it had on the previous three Saturdays, though that was a modest distinction.
Bernard had owned Bell Street Books for thirty-one years. He and his brother had moved to the coast after Bernard sold it. When Kelly had first come to view the property, Bernard had shown her a narrow roof space, the aging boiler, the garden door that needed lifting on its hinges and three customers who walked in halfway through his tour. Two of them had treated Kelly as though she were already in charge. The third had told her not to change the opening hours.
She had bought the building with money she’d saved toward a house. Her parents had asked whether she understood that a shop wasn’t a house with extra books. She did understand. She was less certain that she’d understood the hours, the stock, or the way a quiet afternoon could feel like a verdict on the future.
Upstairs, she made toast and read the first chapter of a crime novel she had set aside for herself. At nine she heard the garden latch. Morris appeared at the kitchen door and waited for her to open it.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
He walked past her to the armchair. He smelled faintly of somebody else’s dinner.
CHAPTER TWO
On Monday, a box of donated cookbooks arrived wet.
The woman delivering them had left them in her car overnight with a window slightly open. Kelly thanked her, laid the books out in the back room and worked out which ones could be saved. Most of them could not. When the woman returned to ask whether Kelly wanted the remaining box, Kelly said she couldn’t take it.
“But they’re good books.”
“I’m sure they were. I haven’t got room to dry any more of them.”
The woman looked past her into the shop, where every shelf was full. Kelly could see the case being assembled in her expression: books everywhere, therefore room for books. Kelly stood by the door until the woman collected the second box and left.
At half past ten the florist across the street brought over a parcel that had been delivered to the wrong address. Kelly thanked her and tried to remember whether her name was Helen or Helena. She had been here for six months and was still making such calculations. The parcel contained a book of photographs Kelly had ordered for a customer who planned to give it to his father. She rang him to say it had arrived.
By lunchtime she’d sold a dictionary, two children’s books and a paperback whose previous owner had underlined the ending. She made herself a cheese sandwich and ate it at the counter, where she could see the door.
Morris came in just before two with a tall man carrying a broken umbrella.
“Found Bert outside the bakery,” the man said. “Thought I’d bring him home before the rain.”
Kelly looked at the cat. “Who?”
“Bert.” The man smiled uncertainly. “I thought he was yours as well.”
“I call him Morris.”
The man put his umbrella beside the door. “I’m Ed. Jo and I live in Chapel Lane. He’s been coming to us since last autumn.”
“I bought this place in March.”
“Then he was visiting us before you got here.” Ed seemed amused by this, though he quickly added, “We haven’t been keeping him. He comes and goes.”
“He comes and goes here too.”
Morris went to his usual place beneath the travel shelf. The conversation about him had apparently exhausted his interest.
Ed explained that his wife had named the cat Bert after an uncle who used to arrive for lunch without notice. The cat occasionally stayed the night. Jo gave him food when he asked for it. Ed suspected he received several lunches elsewhere.
“He was a bit thinner when we first met him,” Ed admitted.
Kelly crouched to look at the cat. She’d assumed his size was ordinary for him. It was harder to hold that view after Ed mentioned it.
“Do you know who owns him?” she asked.
“I thought you did.”
“I thought he came with the shop.”
They both looked at Morris, who had closed his eyes.
Ed wrote his number on the back of a till receipt. Kelly told him she would ask the vet to check for a chip. Neither of them spoke as if they’d caught the cat out in anything serious. He was safe and well cared for. They simply wanted to know whether somebody else was wondering where he went each afternoon.
After Ed left, Kelly took a photograph of Morris and sent it to Bernard.
Was he here when you owned the shop?
The reply came twenty minutes later.
Yes, for a biscuit and a nap. Never knew where he lived. Don’t give him a biscuit if he’s already had one.
That last piece of advice had arrived too late by several months.
At six, Kelly called her mother. Her parents lived forty minutes away and had made a careful effort not to ask her every day how the shop was doing. This meant that when they did ask, Kelly felt obliged to give them proper figures.
“The heating?” her mother asked after hearing about the wet cookbooks.
“Working.”
“And the flat?”
“Also working.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Kelly looked around the kitchen. One curtain was shorter than the other; she had hung a print above the table but hadn’t yet unpacked the rest. “I’m making it mine.”
“You sound tired.”
“I worked today.”
“People can work and not sound tired.”
Kelly told her about Morris and Bert. Her mother wanted to know whether she’d have to give the cat back if somebody owned him. Kelly said that she would, of course, but heard herself sound disappointed. Her mother heard it too and kindly changed the subject.
Before bed Kelly checked the books she’d put out to dry. There were three worth keeping. She turned them over and left the back-room window open a crack. Morris slept upstairs again. This time she didn’t mistake his presence for an answer to where he belonged.