“Morning, Puss,” said the Boy, far too cheerful for that time of the day. “Soon be on our way.”
Oh, of course! He was so damned bright and breezy because the day would bring us closer to his beloved London.
I treated his salutation with the casual disdain that comes so easily to my species - my new species, I mean.
“You’d best get off this cart,” he advised, “Unless you want to get buried, that is.”
Eh? What? What was he blithering on about?
He lifted me from the cart, gently but firmly and placed me on the floor.
“What the- ?” I protested. I was comfortable there!
“New hay,” he explained. He nodded over to the entrance where spindly Silas was engaged in negotiations with a greasy man in a greasier apron.
Our cart was to be restocked with fresh hay for the horses. Freshly purchased, that is. The stuff we were getting was barely fit for consumption; perhaps my feline appetites were influencing my appraisal. Either way, I was glad I wasn’t a horse.
On the other hand, at least the horses were getting fed. I wound myself repeatedly through the Boy’s legs hoping he’d get the message; with the men in such close proximity I dared not risk speaking.
“Oi,” grumbled Silas from the doorway. “Stop playing with that fleabag and get this hay on the cart.”
I realised he was addressing the Boy and not me. Fleabag! That was rich, coming from that hook-handed beanpole. I had an impulse to go and award him the Order of the Scratched Face but the way that his hook glinted as he pointed it at the Boy gave me paws. I mean ‘pause’... Oh, please yourself.
The Boy set to work and I roamed around looking for breakfast. Men from our group came to fetch the horses and hitch them up to their waggons and carriages and what-have-you. I had the feeling of being decidedly underfoot so I nipped out of the stable and across the courtyard to the inn itself.
Mistake!
I was drawn to the kitchen window by the cocktail of warm and enticing aromas wafting from that aperture. I could not identify the source of those wonderful smells but my nose and stomach took over, driving my legs onwards. In a single bound I was on the windowsill. Keeping my back and tail low, I slunk across a tabletop before dropping to the reed mats on the floor.
A stout woman stood at a stove, stirring a pot. The hem of her stained skirt brushed the floor as she moved. She was humming to herself as she worked, pausing to taste her concoction with a battered ladle. I mean battered in the sense of dented rather than some new atrocity of human cuisine.
The smell was coming from that pot. I could almost see tendrils of it reaching out towards my nose, beckoning me to it. I half-leapt, half-was carried by the smell up onto a tall stool. I stretched my neck towards the pot, taking in huge draughts of that heavenly scent. My eyes narrowed to slits as hunger focussed all my attention on the bubbling, steaming miracle.
“Get out of it!” I felt a swoosh of air as the woman brandished the ladle in my direction. Her blow went wide - deliberately, was my guess. She merely wanted to shoo me away rather than brain me. I looked up at her red and sweat-moistened face and gave her an up close and personal display of my dilated irises. Not quite the full-on puppy dog but it did the trick.
“Aww, you poor little thing,” she mewed. “Here.”
She snatched up a handful of something from a nearby chopping board and opened her palm in front of my nose, which twitched and sniffed. I batted at the morsels of unidentified meat - my guess was poultry, given the severed feet on the board and the feathers on the woman’s clothing. I knocked a piece to the floor. That suited me perfectly. Damned if I was going to put myself at greater risk by eating from a stranger’s hand. I dropped nimbly from the stool to retrieve my prize.
At that same moment, the woman decided she would stoop to pick up the piece herself but also, as if that were not enough, the scarred moggy from the night before chose that point in time to launch himself at me - or rather where I was only a second before. With a spiteful hiss, he struck the seat, toppling the stool with the force of his landing. It clouted the bending woman on the head, sending her crashing to the floor. I got away just in time before she could flatten me, but the precious piece of flesh was buried beneath her corpulence.
With an angry yowl, the cat saw me getting away. He flung himself from the woman’s back - or rather he tried to, for the woman was already scrambling to her feet. The cat found his reflexes taking over. His claws dug into the woman’s smock. She spun this way and that, trying to reach and dislodge him, screaming and squawking like a parrot in a panic.
There was a plop!
The woman, initially relieved to be rid of the clawing monster, turned to find her morning’s work ruined. The cat, scrabbling from his impromptu dousing in the pot, tipped it over, spilling broth or pottage or whatever it was all over the stove. And all over the woman too. She screamed and swore, snatching up a brutal-looking cleaver and brandishing it wildly in every direction. The cat, in a bid to keep out of harm’s way, leapt at the woman and clung to her bosom. The woman backed away and fell over the stool. She landed on her broad backside as the pot, in obedience of the law of gravity, rolled from the stove top and clonked dully against her undeserving skull.
With the woman at rest, the cat was able to survey the scene and unhook his claws from her clothing. He saw me watching from the windowsill and gave me one last hiss of rage.
I showed him a pink triangle of tongue and dropped from his line of sight. That had been an amusing little cabaret but I was still hungry.
Why must everything in life be a struggle?
The courtyard was busy with our caravan preparing for the off. Some of our party were bleary-eyed and moving slowly. Others were almost overbearing in their hearty greetings and deep-lunged appreciation of the morning air. The more pious were saying prayers for the journey ahead, their faces as pale as the moon as they muttered their earnest imprecations.
Each to their own.
I sought the Boy who, as I correctly guessed, was at the rear of the procession. I leapt up to his lap with an involuntary mew of greeting that I found embarrassing. The Boy seemed to appreciate it though.
“There you are, Puss,” he said, redundantly. People say the most inane things to their pets.
Not that I consider myself his pet. Oh, no!
What then am I to this young human?
A friend?
I settled for ‘companion’ as I settled onto his lap. I would try to snooze away my hunger even though I know full well corporeal bodies don’t work like that. I was just dozing off when commotion roused me.
“There’s the brute!” It was the shrill voice of the woman from the kitchen. The bowl of her ladle was levelled at me. Beside her the cyclopean eye of Silas glared, bloodshot like a setting sun.
“Right, you!” he snarled. “Out you get!”
His hook snatched at the Boy’s shirt, pulling him roughly from the cart. I spilled to the ground, landing lightly on my feet.
The Boy spluttered and gasped, demanding explanations and protesting innocence of whatever transgression he might be accused of. He kept his eye on the gleaming metal that was digging through his garments.
“Yon cat!” Silas pulled the Boy towards him so they were face-to-ugly-face. With his human hand he pointed a finger in my direction.
I glanced over my shoulder to see which cat he meant. Oops. He meant me. What had I done?
“Up special early I was,” the woman was wringing her hands in her apron. “Making that broth. Well, you have to pay for it and no argument.”
“You’ll get your money,” Silas spat at her. “Do you accept cat meat?”
“That’ll do nicely,” said the woman. They both leered at me in an altogether unnerving fashion. I maintained a nonchalant air and strolled away, putting a
cartwheel between me and them.
“No!” gasped the Boy. “I’ll pay, I’ll pay!”
“What with?” sneered Silas. “I was given to understand that you’re skint.”
“I - I can work!” the Boy offered. “I’ll work to pay for the broth.”
Silas’s eye rolled to the woman. She seemed ambivalent about this counter offer.
And then I realised what this meant to the Boy and it hurt me as surely as if Silas had dragged his hook through my belly and yanked out its contents.
The Boy - that wonderful boy! - was willing to sacrifice his transportation to London to save my sorry hide. My chest swelled with - with what? - What was this feeling? Pride? Or something else? The humans must have a word for this emotion.
“Well, he can start by cleaning up that bloody mess in the kitchen,” the woman sniffed. “Come on.”
She turned and made her way back indoors.
Silas released the Boy who took off, albeit slowly, after the woman. The hook was raised as if to cuff the back of the Boy’s head but Silas desisted. Instead, he gave his bristly chin a scratch and resumed the preparations for departure.
I remained under the cart until the last possible moment. I felt safe there and I thought it prudent to keep out of the kitchen for safety’s sake and also because I couldn’t face the Boy. I had got in the way of his plans. I had ruined his dream and thwarted his ambition.
With me around, he didn’t need my wicked brother to intervene.
Feeling pretty sorry for myself, I sat and sulked, giving myself a rudimentary wash, until the driver above me clicked his tongue. I slunk from the cart to the shadows of the stables. Perhaps it would be best if we parted company, the Boy and I. I didn’t want to bring him further trouble.
A high-pitched, almost melodious sound caught my attention. At once, my instincts came to the fore. I stalked around the sides of the building and arrived at a cultivated area of grass and flowers. I looked up at the open sky and sniffed the air.
Birds!
Several of them of different shapes and sizes were feeding from a platform on a pole. I approached, keeping my back low, but the grass was too short to afford me proper cover. Some of the birds chirruped in alarm and flapped away to nearby trees.
A pair remained. They continued to peck at the crumbs on their table but they were giving off a decidedly more panicked air now they were aware of my presence.
Hmm...
A conundrum: Why hadn’t these two flown away?
And how was I to get my mitts on them?
Hmm... I decided to remain where I was until a solution presented itself.
***
A very short while later, the Boy and I were on the road again. He wasn’t speaking to me - which, considering he’s human and I’m a stupid cat is not all that unusual. He wasn’t even carrying me. I had to get my legs moving pretty quickly in order to keep up.
“Kid! Kid!” I called after him repeatedly. “I’m sorry, kid!”
He glanced back over his shoulder. He looked really fed up. And I felt a sort of heaviness within me. I think you call it guilt.
I tried to explain that I hadn’t meant to cause trouble. I was only after a bite to eat. How was I to know that the innkeeper’s wife had pet turtledoves? Nobody told me she had pinioned her precious birdies so they couldn’t fly away. I thought they’d be impressed that I could feed myself. I thought they would have liked the gift I took to the kitchen. But no. There’s no figuring with humans. How that woman screamed and wailed and tore at her hair - her own hair! - when I crossed the threshold with the male of the pair dangling lifelessly in my jaws. Then she had set to thwacking the Boy with her ladle until he, with arms raised to protect his head had scurried outdoors. I dropped the bird - rather gently, I thought - at the woman’s feet, believing that would this tribute would appease her but it only seemed to set her off on another tirade of anger and abuse. I darted from the building as though fired from a catapult (hah!) a split second before she could empty a pan of hot water over me.
Charming.
I must have tried to explain a dozen times before the Boy stopped walking and turned to face me.
“Just when I’d done enough work to pay for that broth!” His eyes bore into me. I looked at his shoulder instead. It wouldn’t hurt to let him think he was the top dog for once. “Just when I’d got that woman to like me! She was going to arrange me -us! - a lift to London. Do you know how many merchants pass through that inn?”
I opened my mouth to make a rough estimate but apparently his question did not require an answer.
“And now we’re back to Square One.” The Boy looked deflated. He sat on a milestone at the side of the road.
I gave him a chirrup and trotted towards him, my tail held high. He ignored me so I head butted his leg until he relented and stroked my back.
I don’t know about him but it made me feel a lot better.
“On the bright side,” he said philosophically, “at least I don’t have to finish cleaning that kitchen.”
“There you go,” I put my front paws on his knee and looked up into his face. “Every cloud.”
“Speaking of which...” He looked up at the sky. Clouds the colour of slate were gathering like a gang of hoodlums ready to rumble. Sure enough, cold drops of rain began to fall. Within seconds the road was wet and we were drenched. I say ‘we’ but I was sheltered somewhat within the Boy’s shirt. He looked around for a place to keep the rain off but there was none. He hunkered down by the milestone and did his best to keep me covered.
I wanted to purr or otherwise express my gratitude but the slightest glance at his face warned me I better not say a word.
***
I don’t know if cats feel remorse. If they do, they probably make a better job of hiding it than I was. I tried fawning over the Boy. I tried apologising but he said it wasn’t necessary; I was only doing what was natural, after all.
The frustration! None of this was natural to me! I am a being of thought and light. I’m not used to the confines of a bag of bones or to being driven by impulse and sensory experience.
I couldn’t explain. Anything I might say would be taken as excuses. “I’m new!” I could protest, like a novice employee breaking the photocopier, but that line doesn’t work for long.
I couldn’t explain - the Boy wouldn’t know what a photocopier is, for one thing, and explaining all of that would take too bloody long and open up all sorts of questions about tampering with the course of human history and all that sort of thing. I had to be careful with my anachronisms as it was.
I wanted to be free again. This was not an entirely selfish desire. The Boy would be better off without me; I was sure of it.
What should I do? Just wander off and abandon him without a word of goodbye? Would he mind? Would he waste more time looking for me? Or would he be relieved and glad to be rid of a pest?
Would he even notice?
That was a startling thought. I regarded the Boy as he dozed with his back against the mossy milestone. I could just slink away...
Or perhaps I should tell him. I should tell him I have caused him enough trouble, wish him well, no hard feelings and so on and so forth -
Oh, who am I kidding? I didn’t want to leave this Boy. Who else had treated me with kindness? And besides, where the hell would I go? I didn’t fancy skulking around on my own in the middle of nowhere. I’d be too exposed, too vulnerable, too -
Lonely.
Another startling thought. What a terrible emotion! What humans go through! I’m not sure if cats experience loneliness; I suspect they’re altogether self-sufficient and perhaps they prefer solitude - but I’m not concerned with normal cats. I was having an existential crisis. I didn’t want to be the way I was and I didn’t want to be lonely. I would stay with the Boy.
And try not to cause any more bother.
***
“Sitting here moping isn’t getting us any closer to London!” the Boy announced. He got to his feet and stretched. I rubbed my cheeks against his legs, grateful and relieved to hear the ‘us’. I thought I would explode with happiness when he stooped to pick me up and cradle me in his arms.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Not speaking to me?”
“Who else am I going to speak to?” I said, nuzzling his neck and basking in his forgiveness. I swapped words for purring as he carried me along the road.
We travelled a couple of miles or so in this fashion, chatting amiably. The Boy told me of his childhood; it had been happy until his father had run up debts. The family estate had been sold off piece by piece but Daddy Whittington had not reined in his spending. This brought tension to his marriage and both husband and wife had taken to venting their frustrations on their only son. Young Dick had sought solace in the old tales about the mythical land of plenty known, among other things, as Cockaigne, where no one went without and where everyone lived in harmony. Now having lost everything, the Boy was determined to restore the family fortune and good name. He would make his money and be careful with it. While most would be resigned to toiling beneath the yoke their entire lives, he, Richard Whittington, had nurtured and tended his dream and -
I was worried he was going to burst into song at any second but the moment passed. Thank goodness.
We stopped for a ‘comfort break’. While the Boy went behind a bush to do what was necessary, I sought a spot out of his line of vision on the other side of the road. We might have bonded via the medium of his personal history but I still wasn’t prepared for him to see me in that undignified squatting posture. Once had been enough.
Just our luck: a bulky waggon hove into view, pulled along at a steady rate of clop by a brace of sturdy horses in livery that matched the colours of the waggon’s covers. The Boy dashed from behind his bush, breeches around his ankles, trying to get the driver’s attention. He got it alright. The driver cracked his whip, urging the horse to get past the flasher as quickly as possible. The Boy pulled up his pantaloons and hobbled after the waggon, pleading with the driver to stop.
I AM THE CAT Page 10