I AM THE CAT

by William Stafford

  London! Here we are!

  ***

  And there we were! Back in the thoroughfare the waggon had brought us along under the cover of twilight the night before. Narrow streets branched off from this thoroughfare, twisting and turning in all directions, cast into shadow by the overhanging upper storeys of the close-packed wooden buildings. Hooves and wheels clattered over the uneven paving stones, splashing through the mucky rivulets that drained the city’s filth along the centre of the road. Everywhere: noise, noise, noise! Street-vendors, children, town criers, tradesmen, all filled the pungent air with their raucous London accents. It was quite an assault on the senses after the Boy’s gentle Gloucestershire burr.

  I was happy to let him scoop me up and return me to the cosy safety of the inside of his shirt.

  “What a wonderful place!” the Boy gasped, turning around on the spot, drinking it all in. “If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.”

  I was certain my feline eyesight was better than his; I wasn’t seeing what he was seeing. All I could see was dinginess and dirt. The sky was all but blocked by buildings that looked like inverted tiered cakes. You could - well, I could - hop from upper window to upper window with ease, and move through the city without ever touching street level. A great idea, if the state of the road beneath the Boy’s feet was indicative of the rest of the city. A trampled coagulation of filth clogged the street. Within its pungent bouquet I could detect dung, animal and human, rotting offal and blood, urine and foul-smelling chemicals. To the Boy and me it was overpowering. To the Londoners teeming around us, it was just part of their day. They picked their way through the muck wearing wooden overshoes that kept them from coming into contact with the worst of it. Blue sky would have been wasted on these people. No one was looking up.

  “Not exactly gold this pavement, is it?” I murmured in the Boy’s ear. This place was more Cockney than Cockaigne.

  “Not exactly pavement either,” he conceded but then, as was his wont, he perked up and took a closer look at the nearby shops.

  Their frontages opened onto the street. Craftsmen and artisans plied their trades in full view of passersby. While it was remarkable to see a trinket fashioned on a forge or a pig stuck, shaved and butchered in broad (well, narrow!) daylight, the waste products from these processes were just flung out to add to the effluence in the road.

  It really was disgusting. Humans really can be disgusting. Sort yourselves out, please!

  And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, a cascade of slurry from a second floor window splashed wetly in front of us, coating the Boy’s front with sloppy poo. I was protected from the brunt of it, shielded as I was within his shirt but the look of horror on his face said it all. You get used to a certain amount of muck and earthiness on a farm but this, this was unnatural.

  Our misfortune drew barely a glance from other pedestrians. One or two offered a little smirk. Someone else muttered, “Tourist” as he passed.

  At least our next course of action was decided. We would find our way to the river to bathe.

  The River Thames, that most famous waterway in Britain, was as it is now, a broad, fast-flowing course managing to be blue, grey and brown all at the same time. We both felt our spirits lift when we caught sight of it. Instantly, the air was (comparatively) fresher and there was room to move.

  The Boy selected a stretch of the water’s edge away from the fishermen and scavengers. He placed me down on the silty ground, took off his shirt and washed it.

  “You have some, um, on your hat,” I pointed out casually, giving myself the onceover with the old faithful tongue. A few laps of Thames water cleared the taste from my mouth.

  The Boy washed his hat. And his hair. Then with a grunt of resignation stripped naked and immersed himself.

  I felt sorry for him and for all humans unable to clean themselves with their tongues. How inconvenient it must be!

  The Boy must have read my thoughts upon my face. He splashed an armful of water in my direction. I sprang nimbly aside and poked out my tongue. You have to be quicker than that if you want to catch me -

  Unseen, rough hands suddenly snatched me up.

  “Hey!” the Boy shouted, rushing to the bank.

  Hot and foetid breath washed over me as my captor laughed. I tried to sink my claws into the thick leather gloves that encircled me and I tried to wriggle around so I might stand a chance at scratching his face.

  “Put him down!” The Boy squared up to the cat-napper.

  This only elicited more laughter. I shook as the man did.

  “I reckon he’ll make a cheeky pie for my missus and the kids,” the man chuckled. I hissed at this more sinister turn. The man was surprised. “Coo,” he turned me around to face him, “it’s as though he understands every word I says.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said the Boy, reaching up to pull the gloved hands from me. I scowled at the face of my abductor. A more repellent countenance I had yet to encounter. It was a collection of slabs, like a cairn haphazardly fashioned from cuts of meat. The black remnants of his teeth jutted from his rotting gums like blighted gravestones in a burned-out cemetery. His eyes were thick with yellow rheum, which was both encrusted and runny. Dominating all of this was the nose, a bulbous conglomeration of warts and carbuncles that seemed to have a pulse of its own. There was more hair sprouting from that than the rest of his lumpish head.

  “Give me back my cat!” the Boy was jumping up, almost swinging from the brute’s arm.

  That arm, as thick as the Boy’s bare torso, swatted him away. The Boy landed on his bum in the water. The brute roared. It was obviously the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  “Put your clothes on,” he pulled the Boy to his feet. “Folks don’t want to see your bare arse. They’ll think the moon’s come out.” He laughed again.

  I don’t know about you but I was having difficulty warming to him.

  The Boy pulled on his leggings, shirt and hat. He slipped into his ankle-boots, although with the number of holes in their soles he needn’t have bothered. I felt a pang then, and not just to be released from this creature’s clutches. The Boy - my Boy - deserved better than his current lot in life.

  “Relax,” the behemoth grinned blackly. His attempts to stroke my back induced the opposite effect. “I’m not going to eat either of you.”

  “That, sire, is a relief and a comfort,” said the Boy. He held out his arms and I was transferred from monster to master. I couldn’t help it; I gave a chirrup of joy to be back in his embrace.

  “You’re new in town,” the hulking beast diagnosed. “In need of work, I’m guessing and a place to stay.”

  No excrement, Sherlock! I wanted to sneer. But of course I couldn’t, so I didn’t. Talking cat business aside, neither of them would know who Sherlock was - would be.

  “I’ll be all right,” the Boy jutted his chin, proudly. He backed away from the man-mountain but the river behind us offered no escape route.

  “It’s good, honest work,” the man came closer, like a wall closing in on us. “Hard work though. You’ll be glad of your palliasse come morning.”

  The Boy glanced around in case his pallid ass was showing again but then he realised. “Why would I need a straw pallet in the morning?”

  “Why, to sleep on!” the wall explained. “It’s night work, I’m offering.”

  “Night work...” the Boy mulled this over.

  I gave him a dig of my claws, hoping to transmit my concerns and my wish for us to get away from this hulking mass of stinking flesh as quickly as possible.

  “I think you’ll take to it like a fish to water.” An enormous hand was extended towards us. “My name is Gerald,” he announced. “And you are?”

  “Dick,” said the Boy, shaking Gerald’s massive mitt tentatively.

  “Ther
e’s no need to be like that!” Gerald laughed, delighting in his own wit. Of course, we had never heard any jokes made at the Boy’s expense before.

  “Follow me, Dicky-boy” Gerald was already moving off, his legs like uprooted tree stumps, back towards the street.

  Dicky-boy! I enjoyed the way the Boy flinched at that moniker.

  “Come on, Puss,” the Boy muttered.

  That shut me up.

  ***

  Gerald strode with casual confidence; no treacherous pile of muck was going to wrong foot him. As he walked, he spoke in a loud and steady voice, never once checking we were still in his wake, straining to keep up with his long strides and his words.

  “More than a hundred thousand souls,” he boomed, walking with his chest out and his head held high, “but only sixteen facilities for all those souls and their holes. We don’t go short of work, Dicky-boy. No danger of redundancy in this line of business.”

  “Um...” the Boy began. I knew he was about to ask what the line of business was exactly but Gerald was marching on. He led us across the bridge - perhaps the one spot where the river wasn’t visible due to the cramped and crowded constructions that hogged every available inch of space. Here the muck was so bad the thoroughfare was reduced to a very narrow strip. This didn’t deter Gerald. In fact, people got out of the way, clearing a path through the throng without looking at him directly. They seemed to sense his coming and were reluctant to interact with him in any way.

  Most odd...

  You may think London an unfriendly place these days, a city of strangers, but this massive man was openly being shunned. It didn’t dint his good spirits though, and, hurrying to keep up, the Boy and I were glad of the elbow room. Oh, I know; I don’t have elbows as such. It’s an expression. Give me a break.

  With Gerald’s broad back ahead of us, we couldn’t see where we were heading. The Boy kept his eyes downcast to avoid the worst of the debris and I faced backwards, gazing over his shoulder to see where we had been. After a while I closed my eyes and buried my head. The assault on my senses was too much and yet the denizens of London went about their business heedless of the stench and the clamour, all the while adding to both.

  We reached the other, southern side of the river and an offshoot of the city known as Southwark. Here the air was a little fresher, there being fewer humans and their livestock around to stink it up.

  “Wow!” the Boy exclaimed - it was fast becoming a custom. He was looking back at London across the water. It was like peering into a hive from a safe distance. He pointed at the Tower, that majestic Norman citadel, sitting proudly and squarely to the East.

  “Do you think he’s in?” I whispered.

  “Who?”

  “The King!”

  The Boy gaped and stared at the Tower with renewed awe. “Wow,” he repeated.

  Gerald must have noticed we had ceased to follow him. He came back and saw what the Boy was looking at.

  “Um,” he nodded, dispassionately. “You soon get used to it.”

  He moved off again. We followed.

  Remember when I said, just a short while ago, how the air was a little fresher on this side of the river? Well, forget it. As we neared our destination, the foulest stench I have ever encountered pervaded the air. The Boy almost fell on his backside as it hit him, as though rebounding from a solid wall. But Gerald powered on through the miasma as if it were nothing.

  “Here we are!” he announced, flashing - if that’s the right word - the black stumps of his teeth. We had come to an establishment surrounded by a high wooden fence. This was the heart of the pong for beyond that fence was a huge mound of putrid excrement, most of it of human origin. I mewed involuntarily and tried to bury my head in the Boy’s armpit, which, by comparison, smelled of roses.

  “Welcome to the hub of our enterprise!” Gerald beamed broadly. He stepped nimbly aside to permit a ragged, cowled figure to wheel in a barrow of filth, which he tipped onto the mound.

  “What on Earth-” the Boy began but had to force most of his shirtsleeve over his mouth and nose.

  “Earth is right,” Gerald enthused. “Sort of. This, my boy, is where the magic happens.”

  I listened with mounting horror as he explained what went on at this hellish place. The ordure of business, you might say. Or the business of ordure. People’s ‘business’ was collected from the public privies dotted around the city and brought here, by barrow and cart, to the central redistribution centre. Here, waggons were loaded up and driven, under the cover of night, through the gates and out into the surrounding countryside for safe and efficient disposal.

  “Talk about taking a dump,” I muttered. The Boy laughed.

  “What’s that?” Gerald demanded, a little defensively.

  The Boy repeated my quip as though it was his own. That rankled - but not as much as the stink or the fuss of the discovery of a talking cat.

  Gerald thought about it. “Taking a dump...” It took him a while but eventually he roared out a laugh and slapped the Boy on the shoulder. “I knew you’d take to the job soon as I clapped eyes on you,” he congratulated himself.

  “Job?” said the Boy. I would have asked the same.

  “You need a job,” Gerald stated matter-of-factly. “Here’s a job. It’s steady work, difficult and back-breaking. But vital to the running of the city. Without us, Dicky boy, people would suffocate, buried in their own waste. And the pay! The pay reflects our standing in the community. Sixpence a day!”

  My heart sank. I knew as soon as he mentioned the fee, the Boy’s eyes would light up. I didn’t need to take my face from the hairy heat of his armpit to see it on his face.

  “So, I’d be a - a -” He sought a job title.

  “A gong farmer!” Gerald supplied happily. I was almost dislodged as he shook the Boy’s hand with exuberance and vigour. “Welcome aboard! Come on; let’s get you some gloves and an apron.”

  The big man marched away to a ramshackle shack. I stuck my head out, half-expecting to find gold coins where the Boy’s eyes used to be.

  “Forget the money!” I urged. “And forget that nonsense about his standing in the community. It’s not the community he’s been standing in. Up to his waist. You saw how people couldn’t get away from him fast enough. This is not for us, kiddo. Let’s go before he comes back.”

  For a second, I thought he was going to agree with me. I thought he was going to come to his senses and away we would go, back across the bridge, perhaps to get a closer look at the Tower and to glimpse its royal resident.

  Perhaps it was the stench. Perhaps it had drugged him and dulled his thinking. Well, I think that was part of it; but I had seen before how the prospect of making money had fired something within the Boy.

  Sixpence a day was more than most people could hope to make in a week. The Boy was not going to pass up this chance.

  Gerald was coming back with leather items draped across his arm: huge gloves like his own, a wide, thick apron, a broad-brimmed hat with a cowl attached, and a pair of leg pieces like footless boots...

  “Listen, kiddo,” I urged. “I can’t stay here. I’m going to go and see what I can see, get some food.”

  “Fine!” the Boy turned away. “I know what you really mean is you’re going to look for a better opportunity for me. Well, you won’t find one. Not at sixpence a day.”

  “I’ll see you later,” I said, pawing at his cheek. I wasn’t going to admit he was right.

  “Fine.” The shoulder heaved. I took that as my cue to drop from his arms. At least the path from the bridge to the yard was kept clear. Got to keep those waggons rolling.

  “See you, kid,” I called over my shoulder.

  “See you, Puss,” he whispered. I heard but Gerald, approaching with a rudimentary tune on his lips, did not.

  I to
ok one last look and saw the Boy being dressed like a window dummy by the large but dextrous hands of the big man. The Boy didn’t look at me.

  I crossed the bridge, hopping from window ledge to tabletop to barrel to barrow, as much as I could to keep out of contact with the filthy street. My heart grew heavier as the distance between the Boy and I increased.

  But I was determined to do as he suspected. I would find us a better and less smelly alternative. A place to live and work to do. This was the city of opportunity, wasn’t it?

  How I wished I had brought some of the Boy’s optimism with me!

  ***

  The closer I got to the Tower, the cleaner the streets became. There was even some grass. I rested there for a while but remained awake; it was too open and exposed for a proper catnap.

  The grey stone walls were already three hundred years old at this point and gleamed in the sunlight, peeping over the surrounding walls built, I believe at a more recent date. But I wasn’t there for the tour; I was there for reconnaissance. There must be some role there the Boy could perform.

  I watched as people came and went, in carriages and on foot, scented pomanders and handkerchiefs at their noses. Their clothes and cloaks were of finer quality and brighter colours than the ordinary folk. This would appeal to the Boy - if I could get him an introduction, this could open a lot of doors for him - even if it was just a job opening doors for others.

  A sprightly old man, almost swamped by his fur-trimmed overcoat, was led by younger men in livery, towards the main entrance. His plumed hat and chain of office told me this was the Lord Mayor of London. Behind him trailed several aldermen, in sedate black with bright white lace around the edges rather than fur. They all walked as though they were entitled to be there, disdaining to look at the flagstones, across which fresh matting had been strewn.

  I decided I would nip inside with this snobby lot. After all, a cat may look at a king.