I didn’t really fancy it. I wanted to go as a fairy. Rainbow Fairy. That’s what I’d set my heart on. But Mum wasn’t ever very good at sewing. My fairy skirt was all limp and saggy, and the top bit didn’t fit properly. And when I picked up my fairy wand it immediately collapsed, which made Mum giggle. I didn’t giggle; I burst into tears. I sobbed and raged, ’cos now what was I going to do?
‘I look like I’m wearing a dish rag!’ I blamed Mum for leaving everything till the last minute. ‘Like you always do! Everyone else has had their costumes for weeks.’
Mum immediately stopped giggling and promised that she would make me something else. ‘Something better! Even if I have to sit up all night.’ Which she did. She made me this pirate outfit and I wasn’t in the least bit grateful. I shouted that I didn’t want to be a pirate, I wanted to be a Rainbow Fairy. Poor Mum! She begged me to give her a kiss and say she was forgiven, but I wouldn’t. I went off in a sulk and spent the whole day being jealous of all the people who had proper mums, who made them lovely sparkly fairy dresses which didn’t sag and bag. I was still cross when I got home. Mum tried so hard to make it up to me.
‘Oh, Lollipop, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m such a rotten mum!’
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t! She was the best mum anyone ever had. I wish so much that I’d told her so!
I have to go back upstairs. I need to cuddle Mr Pooter.
‘Where are you off to?’ says Auntie Ellen. ‘You’ve only just come down.’
I tell her that I have to write a book report for Mrs Caton. ‘I want to do it while it’s fresh in my mind.’ Auntie Ellen shakes her head, like, I give up!
‘Go on, then,’ she says. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I gallop back up the stairs. Mr Pooter opens an eye and stretches. I check the room, but I don’t think he’s moved, so that is all right.
‘Good boy,’ I say. ‘Good boy!’
I settle down beside him and start writing in my notebook. I put down the bit about Montmorency and his gang of dogs. I put down the cat bit. I can’t think of anything else. The truth is, I am finding this book quite difficult to get into. Maybe it is because I am worried about Mr Pooter and not in the right mood. Or maybe it’s because this is the first grown-up book that I have tried to read on my own, without Mum. If Mum were reading it to me, and doing all the voices, then I am sure I would find lots to laugh at. But I am not going to give up! I am a real book person and Mrs Caton is eagerly waiting to know how I get on.
On the way in to school this morning Uncle Mark says that he will ring the vet and make an appointment for this evening. Auntie Ellen is with us, as it is one of her days when she works in the shop. She says that she is the one who will be coming with me. My heart goes plummeting. I don’t want Auntie Ellen coming with me! But I haven’t any choice. It’s Thursday, and late-night shopping, and Uncle Mark won’t be home in time.
After lunch I go to the library. I take out my notebook and read Mrs Caton the bits I’ve written down.
‘I think those bits were hilarious,’ I say.
I wasn’t quite sure what the word hilarious meant until I looked it up in the dictionary. It means ‘very funny’, and I didn’t honestly find either of the bits very funny. Just a little bit funny. But Mrs Caton looks pleased.
‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,’ she says. ‘I thought you would.’
I promise her that I will make a note of all the other bits I find funny, so that I can tell her about them. She says that’s a good idea.
‘It’ll be something to look forward to at the start of next term.’
‘I’ll have finished it long before then,’ I say. ‘I’ll probably have read a million others by then!’
Now I’m being boastful again. I don’t mean to be, but it’s probably true. I will have read a million others. There are eight long weeks to go and I can’t think what else there’ll be to do.
I get home to find Auntie Ellen waiting impatiently for me. ‘Go and fetch the cat,’ she says. ‘Put it in its box, we have to be at the vet for 4.15.’
I hate that she calls Mr Pooter ‘the cat’. He’s Mr Pooter! I go upstairs to get him and he purrs amiably. I think he quite likes his box. Holly, for some reason, insists on coming with us. She says she’s never been to the vet’s before and she wants to know what it’s like. I tell her it’s like being at the doctor’s, except all the patients are animals.
We sit in the Reception area, waiting to be called. I hold Mr Pooter on my lap, in his box. He crouches, watchfully. There are other people with cats, some people with dogs, one little girl with a pet rabbit. I try to interest Mr Pooter in the rabbit, but Auntie Ellen tells me sharply not to make a nuisance of myself. All I was doing was just turning his box in the right direction, so he could see! Holly wrinkles her nose and says there’s a smell. Auntie Ellen tells her it’s disinfectant and she goes, ‘Ugh! Yuck! Poo!’ But then a vet puts his head round the door and calls out, ‘Fluffy Marshall?’ and Holly giggles – ‘Fluffy Marshall!’ – and wants to know whether that’s the name of the cat or the name of the owner. Auntie Ellen tells her to be quiet and stop showing off, so then she sits in a sulk, scuffing her feet on the floor.
When it’s our turn the vet calls, ‘Pooter Walters!’ He’s not Pooter Walters, he’s Pooter Winton, but I suppose it’s not really important. What’s important is that the vet is going to make him better.
We all troop into the surgery. The vet asks what the problem seems to be, and I tell him about Mr Pooter being sick and not wanting to eat.
‘And how old is he?’ says the vet.
Proudly I say that he’s sixteen.
‘Quite an old fellow,’ says the vet.
He examines Mr Pooter all over. Mr Pooter is so good! He doesn’t complain once. I stroke him and tell him that everything is going to be all right.
‘Well,’ says the vet, straightening up. ‘In view of his age, I’d say it’s almost certainly a kidney problem, but we’d better do a blood test to make sure.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ says Auntie Ellen.
The vet says if we want a proper diagnosis, it is.
‘What I mean,’ says Auntie Ellen, ‘is it really worth it? At his age?’
I hold my breath. I squeeze Mr Pooter.
‘We can’t treat him if we don’t know what’s wrong,’ says the vet. ‘I agree that he’s old, but he’s not ancient. Cats can easily live to be nineteen or twenty. Even older.’
I am so relieved I let out my breath in a big whoosh. I don’t think Auntie Ellen is too happy, but she lets the vet take a sample of Mr Pooter’s blood. I keep him very close and whisper in his ear and he doesn’t even flinch. He is a very brave cat. The vet says the results will be through in a couple of days and then we can decide on the appropriate treatment. In the meanwhile, he says, we should try him with a special diet.
I put Mr Pooter back in his box and we go out to Reception to collect some cans of special cat diet and pay the bill. I am scared when I see how much the bill comes to. I would have to save up my pocket money for months before I would have enough to pay it. Auntie Ellen is outraged. Angrily she drives us home, saying over and over that it is daylight robbery. I tell her that I will pay it back, that Uncle Mark needn’t give me any more pocket money until—
‘Until kingdom come!’ snaps Auntie Ellen. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘It’s her cat,’ says Holly, ‘so she ought to pay it back.’
I say that I will. ‘I promise!’
‘It’s only fair,’ says Holly.
Auntie Ellen tells us both to be quiet. ‘I’ve had enough for one day.’
As soon as we’re back I go upstairs with Mr Pooter and ring Stevie. It’s only five o’clock, so maybe she won’t be too cross. She’s not cross at all! She wants to hear about Mr Pooter. I tell her what the vet said and she says that the special diet will help, but if Mr Pooter is still being picky I could try buying some prawns and whizzing them up in the food pr
ocessor.
‘Make them into a nice soft mush . . . that should tempt him.’
I am going to go out first thing tomorrow and buy some prawns with what is left of my pocket money. Before I stop getting pocket money. I am not sure whether Uncle Mark is going to go on giving me any or not. When he came in I told him he needn’t. ‘I’m going to pay back every penny!’ Uncle Mark told me not to be silly. He said of course I didn’t need to pay him back. But then Holly chimed in with ‘It’s her cat!’ and Auntie Ellen said again about daylight robbery. So now I don’t really know. That’s why I am going to buy the prawns, quickly, while I still can.
THE THEATER CAT
by Noel Streatfeild
I haven’t spelled the word ‘theatre’ wrongly! Noel Streatfeild was a very popular English author who wrote many wonderful family stories – but she occasionally wrote for the American market too. I’m particularly fond of this sweet picture book The Theater Cat about a delicate little cat called Pinkie who’s paid fifty cents a week to catch the mice in the Ballet Theater (that’s the way Americans spell it). Pinkie is pretty hopeless at his job because he’s afraid of mice, but he adores the ballet – and his knowledge and expertise prove especially useful.
It’s a bizarre little story, but somehow very touching – and especially comforting if you feel a bit of an odd one out.
THE THEATER CAT
Pinkie was a slim, exquisite black cat. His tastes were elegant and he took great pride in his looks and was often to be seen peeping in mirrors, to be sure his face was clean and his whiskers tidy. He was a persnickety eater, leaving on his plate any scrap of food which seemed to him coarse or badly cooked. When offered ice cream he would accept a portion only if it were pink; and that was the reason he was christened Pinkie.
By profession Pinkie was a mouser. He was employed as a mouse catcher by the Ballet Theater. Every Friday night when the artists were paid, there was an envelope for Pinkie with his salary of fifty cents inside; but every Friday Pinkie trembled when he opened his envelope, in case, as well as his salary, there should be a slip of paper saying he was dismissed. For the dreadful truth was, Pinkie was a failure. Everybody in the theater knew it and everybody spoke about it.
The doorkeeper said, ‘That Pinkie ain’t worth a nickel. He’s paid to catch mice, but I have to get ’em. Thinks himself too highfalutin’. If I were boss around here, I wouldn’t keep him another day.’
‘You could not be more right,’ the wardrobe mistress agreed. ‘But what can you expect from a delicate type like that?’
The ice-cream girl thought she understood. ‘Can’t really blame the cat. Pinkie’s the right name for him, seeing he only eats pink ice cream, but that’s no name for a working cat; kinda gives him ideas. Better if he was called George.’
Every week as he fixed the pay envelopes the manager muttered, ‘Have to get rid of Pinkie. What does he think I’m paying him for? He just sits and watches the dancers. Never knows what a mouse looks like.’
It’s a fearful thing to know you are in a career for which you are not fitted, and Pinkie knew just that. The reason he did not make the grade was a shocking one. He was afraid of mice. But he was sticking to his job as long as it would stick to him, for even greater than his fear of mice was his love of the ballet.
Every ballet the company danced Pinkie knew, which was natural for he never missed a rehearsal or a performance. He would stand in the wings, swaying softly with the dancers, or shuddering from the final hairs on the tips of his ears to the end of his delicately tapering tail at a clumsy pirouette or an awkward lift. The dancers knew what a critic Pinkie was and one would say to the other, ‘The ballet even went over with Pinkie, so we must have been good.’
It was at the final dress rehearsal of a new ballet that Pinkie was publicly shamed. It was a lovely ballet; Pinkie’s eyes glistened with ecstasy. ‘Beautiful!’ he purred. ‘Superb!’ ‘What a line!’ Then it happened. The leading ballerina was about to spring across the stage into her cavalier’s arms, when a mouse ran across her feet. She screamed. She fell. She sprained her ankle. The mouse ran. The company ran. Pinkie ran. In fact, Pinkie ran faster and farther from the mouse than anybody else.
When the ballerina had been carried to her dressing room and order restored, the manager, his face black as thunder, came onto the stage. ‘Where’s Pinkie?’
Pinkie, trying to look more like a black shadow than a cat, crawled to his feet. The manager was so angry his voice wobbled. ‘No star! A new ballet opening this evening! If the show flops, who is to blame? You! The theater mouser who ran when he saw a mouse! You’re fired! The cashier will pay you off after the show.’
Pinkie lay at the side of the darkened stage sobbing his heart out. Fired! The news that he was a failure would be known in every theater. The mouser who ran at the sight of a mouse! What a coward! Better be dead than labeled that way. What future was there for a cat with such a reputation? What was he to do? How could he live if he never saw another ballet? How could he see a ballet unless he worked in a ballet theater? He would never earn enough to buy a seat. Never watch another ballet! Never! Never! Never! As this dreadful knowledge sank in, Pinkie cried more and more, until it was as if he were drowning in his tears.
Suddenly he caught his breath. ‘Hic-cup, boo. Hic-cup, boo.’ Somebody else was crying, too. Swallowing back his tears, Pinkie tiptoed across the stage. Lying under a piece of scenery was a girl of twelve, the principal ballerina’s understudy. Words tumbled out of her with her tears.
‘This was my big chance . . . the break I’ve been waiting for . . . but I’ve never had a rehearsal . . . I don’t know the steps well enough . . . I’ll never make good now . . . I can’t dance if I don’t know the steps . . .’
Pinkie’s heart under his shining black shirt front was swollen with pity. The understudy was underrehearsed. Here was her opportunity to become famous, and she would miss it because she had not practiced the steps. Then a thought flew to him, and happiness flowed through him. He began to purr. Who had given this little ballerina her chance? Pinkie the no-good cowardly cat. It was up to him to see she did not fail. Pinkie tapped the dancer with a paw. His paw was so soft and his tap so gentle and the dancer was crying so much that he found it hard to attract her attention, but at last she raised her head and looked at him. The moment her eyes were on him, he sprang into the air and raised himself on the toes of his hind legs. His front paws he held delicately curved above his head. The dancer recognized the pose for her first entrance. She scrambled to her feet, swallowed her tears, and stood behind Pinkie. She raised herself onto her points and lifted her arms. Softly as a little cloud, moving as delicately as a flower petal stirred by a breeze, Pinkie started to dance.
The rehearsal lasted for more than an hour. Finally the curtain rose. The performance of the new ballet started. There was never an evening like it. When the performance was over, the audience shouted and clapped. The company curtsied and bowed. The understudy took curtain calls alone, with the company, and with the conductor, but the audience would not let her go. ‘Speech!’ they called. ‘Speech!’ She took a deep breath, and stepped forward.
‘Thank you for your kindness. But if I have danced well tonight, you shouldn’t clap for me, but for the great master who coached me at the last minute. Are you there, Pinkie?’
Pinkie, blinking in the dazzle of lights, walked onto the stage. The conductor held one of his paws, the understudy the other. The audience rose to its feet.
‘Pinkie! Pinkie! Three cheers for Pinkie! Pinkie the ballet-dancing cat!’
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
by Lewis Carroll
I expect you know the story of the two Alice books, even if you’ve never read them. Alice in Wonderland and the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, are the most famous classics of children’s literature. There have been countless adaptations on stage and screen. Maybe you’ve seen Tim Burton’s 3D version or the Disney cartoon. There’s even an episode of my Dumping Ground
where Jodie becomes Alice and all her friends turn into crazy Lewis Carroll characters.
Both books are the most extraordinary original fantasies – but I remember feeling disconcerted by the stories as a child. I felt I could take only so much delightful nonsense. Reading the Alice books felt a little like being tickled mercilessly. However, I loved the beginnings and endings of both stories – especially the start of Looking-Glass where Alice is playing with her black kitten.
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it – it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn’t have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr – no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great armchair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.
‘Oh, you wicked wicked little thing!’ cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. ‘Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!’ she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage – and then she scrambled back into the armchair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn’t get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help if it might.
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