I AM THE CAT

by William Stafford

  “Um - three yards.” Clearly the Boy’s nerves were still in control.

  The woman sucked in her cheeks as though containing an outburst of profanity. “Tedious boy. What is the price?”

  “Oh!” Realisation struck the Boy like the slap in the face the woman was itching to give him. He consulted a tag dangling from the roll of silk. “Er - that’s one crown per yard so that’s er...”

  “Two crowns,” the woman announced, slapping the requisite coinage on the counter.

  Pardon me?

  “No,” the Boy frowned, “I think you’ll find it’s three. Three yards: three crowns. Please.”

  From my shelf, I could see the stately figure of Mortis approaching. He stopped in his tracks when he saw who was at the textiles counter and seemed about to turn on his heels and flee. Perhaps conscience got the better of him; he didn’t run away. He hung back, observing. The option of stepping in or stepping away was still his to choose. It seemed to me he was leaving my Boy to sink or swim.

  “Young man,” the woman twisted her lip into something approximating a smile. “You forget the discount for nobility.”

  “The what?” It was a good question.

  The woman pouted and puffed up with pride. “Fitzwarren accords me a third off because I am his best customer.”

  “Does he?” the Boy was as surprised as I was. This didn’t sound like the Fitzwarren we knew and disliked.

  “You question me!” the woman reddened with indignation.

  It was at this point that Alice materialised. She placed a hand on the Boy’s arm and turned a full beam smile towards the unhappy customer.

  “It’s all right, Dick,” she sang soothingly, “the Baroness is fully entitled.”

  Baroness! That accounted for the over-inflated view of herself. I suppose.

  “I should think so too,” huffed this Baroness, snatching up her purchase and holding it tightly to her. She looked the Boy up and down with great disdain.

  “Good day to you, Alice,” she managed to squeeze the words from her pinched lips - it was like seeing my backside in a mirror. She turned and headed for the doors but the Boy darted from behind the counter, ducked between some shelves and intercepted her. The Baroness reared up like a startled hippopotamus.

  “Out of my way, ruffian!” she declaimed, bringing Mortis and several other members of staff to the scene. The Boy stood his ground. He held out his hand, palm upwards.

  “Another crown, if you please. Madam.”

  “Dick!” cried Alice, running up in dismay. I could hardly bear to watch. He’d done so well and now he was going to blow it.

  “Alice!” the Baroness flashed angry eyes at the Girl, as though the Boy was nothing but an object, an obstacle, in her way. “Remove your...colleague from my path at once!”

  The Girl raised a hand but fell short of placing it on the Boy’s arm. “Dick,” she said softly. “Please let the Baroness leave.”

  The Boy stuck out his chin. “I can’t,” he said. He drew the bolt across the door. The doormen tried not to register their surprise, or indeed their amusement at the scene playing out before them. The new kid was going to be on the block when Old Fitzwarren found out!

  “Dick!” Alice cried, “What are you doing?”

  “Young man,” the Baroness deigned to address the Boy directly, her voice rose by a couple of octaves, “This is outrageous!”

  The Boy looked her squarely in the eye. “Exchange of goods for cash,” he said flatly. “You’re going nowhere until you pay.”

  The Baroness threw down her parcel of silk in disgust. The Girl touched her face - her own face! - in exasperation. “Thank heavens Daddy’s not here to see this,” she muttered.

  But then as though conjured from Hell, there he was! He strode across the shop floor with his face trying on various expressions ranging from bafflement to anger and everything in-between.

  “Oh, no!” the Girl wailed.

  “At last!” the Baroness gave a triumphal bark. “Someone with some sanity. I’ll see you swing for this, you little villain.”

  “Alice!” Fitzwarren prodded his daughter’s shoulder a little too roughly. “What on Earth is going on? Milady Baroness?” He bowed low with a flamboyant gesture, the smarmy sod.

  “I can explain, sir,” the Boy stepped forward. “This lady, sir, came in for three yards of silk, which I duly measured off and cut, and charged her three crowns.”

  Already, Fitzwarren was nodding. He had diagnosed the Boy’s error at once but the Baroness wasn’t ready to credit the shopkeeper with an ounce of brains.

  “The roguish knave has neglected to mention he tried to cheat me out of my lawful discount.” She allowed her lower lip to tremble as though to signify she was just about managing to keep a brave face on. She was bloody good - she should have been on the cart with Brom and Carac. If women were allowed to be actors, that is.

  Fitzwarren was nodding more rapidly now as though he was trying to dislodge his head. “I see wherein the error lies. The lad will be disciplined.”

  “No, sir!” The Boy stepped between the shopkeeper and the woman, causing them both to gasp at his temerity. “The Baroness did indeed point out her entitlement to a discount, which I have taken into consideration. Please feel free to check my reckoning but I believe the sum due is three crowns.”

  “What?” Fitzwarren wiggled a fingertip in his ear. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Three yards at a crown a yard is three crowns, minus one third for discount, gives two yards - I mean, crowns.”

  “For the silk, yes,” the Boy agreed. “But the Baroness’s bill comes to three crowns.”

  “The boy’s a mooncalf,” the Baroness blustered. “Really. I can’t idle the day away arguing elementary mathematics with an idiot. Good day to you, Fitzwarren. Alice.”

  But once again, her way was blocked by the Boy. I have to confess I wondered what it was up to. He was going to get himself sacked for sure. I considered causing a distraction and knocking the jars of buttons off the shelf. But the Boy was about to surprise me, surprise us all.

  “Pay the man!” he insisted.

  “I have!” roared the Baroness.

  “Boy!” warned Fitzwarren.

  “Oh, no!” wailed Alice.

  “Madam,” the Boy stood his ground, “you have paid for the silk, I grant you.” He kept his voice level and his eyes locked on the Baroness’s. “You still owe a further crown for the other goods you have concealed about your person.”

  The Baroness’s jaw dropped like a drawbridge on a broken chain. Fitzwarren and Alice also expressed their shock at the accusation.

  “Namely,” the Boy counted on his fingers,” two napkin rings, a box of toothpicks, a handkerchief embroidered with a picture of the Tower, and a jar of pickled eggs.”

  Alice clapped her hands in excitement until a glare from her father subdued her.

  Oh, clever Boy! Marvellous Boy! I found I was purring on that shelf. I wanted to leap down and into his arms but I forced myself to allow the scene to play out.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Baroness spluttered, her face several shades redder beneath its veneer of white paint. “The shameless effrontery! I have never been so insulted.”

  “The boy is obviously deluded.” Fitzwarren patted the woman’s hand, trying to soothe her. He nodded to the doormen who slid back the bolt and opened both doors wide. Fitzwarren steered the Baroness out of the shop and went with her into the street.

  The Boy turned to Alice. “She did have those things!” he protested. “She swiped them when we went past the shelves to fetch the silk.”

  “She’s probably been doing it for years,” said Alice. “Robbing us blind under our very noses.”

  Fitzwarren returned. His face was a mask.
r />   “Daddy,” Alice went to him and took his hands in hers, “Dick was only doing what was right - what he believed was right.”

  Fitzwarren pulled his hands free and cupped his daughter’s face. “I know!” he laughed, surprising us all. “I don’t think that awful woman will show her face in here again.” His grin was bordering on maniacal.

  “Daddy?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t do to accuse certain people of pilfering. The Baroness de Quince is an influential woman with many connections. I convinced her I would overlook her little indiscretions, for her sake. Now she owes me a great debt, much more than a crown’s worth of junk.”

  “So Dick did right then?” The Girl exchanged looks of wonder with the Boy.

  “He did excellently, my dear.”

  It was the Boy’s turn to grin like a maniac. I’d never seen him so happy. He looked at Alice, who was also grinning. I tried to grin too but hadn’t the facial muscles to pull it off. The Cheshire Cat is a big fat lie, kids.

  I dropped from the shelf and padded across to join the party. Fitzwarren’s face fell as soon as he saw me.

  “Oh,” he said. He arched an eyebrow and stalked away.

  “Your cat probably shouldn’t be on the shop floor,” Alice grimaced. “You know, hair on the clothes, in the food, and so on.”

  “Yes; no,” said the Boy. And with that, he scooped me up and carried me to the staff exit. He put me down on the cobblestones and went back inside with nary a word.

  Well. I like that!

  ***

  Over the next couple of weeks, things settled into a pattern I didn’t care for much. Apart from a few minutes beneath the counter before he woke up, I hardly spent any time with the Boy. His conditions of employment entailed shop work from dawn to dusk, shelf-stacking from dusk until supper, with all meals thrown in and his bed under the counter. There was no actual pay to speak of. He quickly gained confidence in his cloth-cutting and his salesmanship and Fitzwarren couldn’t have been happier.

  The shopkeeper himself was basking in the idea that the Baroness de Quince, vocally supporting his campaign to be the next Lord Mayor, would sway most, if not all, of the other aldermen to vote in his favour.

  The Girl seemed to dally longer each day at the Boy’s counter. I watched from one of my many vantage points. I’d never seen such light in the Boy’s eyes. He certainly didn’t look at me in that way - which is only right, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling the odd pang of jealousy.

  I was in my own pattern too. At night I patrolled the food store, ever vigilant and hardly ever nodding off on the job. It was easy work - if you can call it work. I let my inner cat operate on instinct and switched my mind off. I didn’t want to fret about the Boy. I didn’t want to speculate about my brother’s next move. Sure as eggs he hadn’t finished with us yet.

  I was caught in a routine and, do you know, I rather liked it. I liked having my own territory. I liked the sense of order and things being in their place. I don’t like change, it turns out, and I could tell right away if something in my domain had been moved by so much as half an inch. I had regular meals and warmth and shelter; the cat part of me was content.

  But sometimes, when the cat was asleep in me, my old self would pine for the freedom I used to enjoy; the freedom to ride on currents of air, to be anywhere and anywhen I chose and not bound by this physical plane and all the unpleasant business that comes with it.

  Most of all, I missed the Boy. I missed our chats. It got to a point when I couldn’t remember the last time I spoke. I was beginning to forget the sound of my voice.

  And then, one night, my brother made his move.

  ***

  I’d finished my first tour of the food store. I’d newly sprayed the holes through which errant rodents might enter - if only I could tell someone to block those damned holes once and for all! I was just settling down on a stack of bran tubs to begin the watching and the waiting when my ears twitched. There was a scritch-scritch-scritch sound going on and I couldn’t place it.

  I dropped down from my perch and did another tour, quicker this time. It was the holes. They were gone!

  What I mean is they had been blocked up. From outside! A mesh of twigs and other debris was filling every gap, as though some new and crazy species of bird thought it the ideal place to build its nests.

  Hello, bro!

  The voice in my head made every muscle in my body tense up and tremble.

  “What’s going on?” I said out loud, trying to keep my voice steady.

  You’ll find out soon enough. By which I mean, too late. Ta-tah!

  Panic seized me. I ran around the store. Every hole was blocked. I tried to dig a few twigs away but there were thorns and burrs that pricked the soft pink pads on my paws. I rebounded around that space like a feline pinball.

  It wasn’t the food they were after!

  It had never been the food.

  I was freaking out. I had to get out of there and get to the Boy. Something was going on and not knowing what it was or being able to stop it was driving me crazy.

  After a few frenzied moments, I came to my senses. I kept myself still so my heart rate could slow again.

  Then I walked to the door, the locked and bolted door, and spoke through the keyhole to the dozing night watchman outside.

  “Open this door at once, you oaf! What mean you, locking me in like this?”

  It wasn’t a bad impersonation of Fitzwarren, if I say so myself.

  I heard the poor fellow bluster and stumble to attention, and his grunts of confusion before he realised what he’d done. I could smell the terror emanating from him as he understood he had locked his boss in the food store...

  “Coming right away, s-sire!” he stammered. He dropped his keys and swore. Eventually he composed himself enough to find the right key and get it into the hole. The lock clicked open but the door would not budge.

  “The bolt, you dolt!” I roared. Oh, it must be such fun to be Fitzwarren!

  He slid back the bolt and heaved the heavy door open. With head bowed he stepped over the threshold. “There you go, boss. Sorry, boss.”

  He got no answer. He looked up then looked around. There was of course no Fitzwarren to behold. I left him there, scratching his head with a rusty key and darted across the courtyard to the shop.

  I couldn’t get in! My usual means of ingress was blocked from the inside. My brother had thought of everything.

  Feeling the panic rise within me again, I scanned the wall for options. I sprang to a windowsill and peered into the shop and found a scene of utter chaos.

  Rats! Rats were everywhere! Every surface was covered. The floor was covered by a moving mat of shiny black fur. They dashed items from the shelves. They hung on the fabrics and slid down, their claws shredding the material. What food they didn’t devour, they pooed in. They trampled floury footprints wherever they went.

  And there he was! My brother! He was on a cabinet at the centre of this maelstrom, conducting the proceedings like a mad maestro. Seen among other rats, it was clear he was larger than the average, common or garden, mortal specimen. Somehow his black fur seemed darker than theirs, darker than the night sky. His eyes, catching the moonlight, flashed like meteors, red and yellow, as he thrust his pink claws in all directions, sending a wave of rats here, a deluge of rodents there.

  I couldn’t tell if they were obeying him or he was actually controlling them, operating them, with the power of his mind.

  Not that it mattered; the destruction was wholesale (or should that be ‘retail’?)

  The shop staff, roused from their beds beneath the counters, screamed and scrambled to the tops of those counters, clinging to each other and swatting at the rats with whatever merchandise was handy. The rats, for the most part, seemed to be leaving them alone. They were
converging on one department only - the Boy’s. He was on his counter, brandishing his yardstick like a fencing foil.

  My brother turned his back on this scene and then threw himself from the cabinet to land face up on the sea of fur. The rats carried him along towards the Boy. I was clawing at the windowpane by this point, frantic to get in and help.

  The rats rose up like a tsunami, with my brother surfing the crest. The wave broke against the counter. I saw the Boy cower backwards with his arms raised to protect his face, before the wave overwhelmed him, engulfed him, obliterating him from my view.

  I have never felt more helpless in my entire existence.

  ***

  The orgy of destruction ended as quickly as it had begun. The rats melted away, vanishing through whatever means they had gained entry. Within minutes, there was not a single rat in the place.

  Of my brother there was no sign. And as for the Boy...

  I mewed pitifully as I pressed my paws against the glass.

  Eventually, the sun came up, pale and pathetic, and the day staff arrived to begin their shift. As soon as the door was opened, I darted through the legs of Mortis, toppling the unsuspecting fellow on the doorstep. I bounded towards the Boy’s counter and found him beneath it, hugging his knees and quivering. His clothes were in tatters and his face and hands were scratched all over. He was startled when I bumped my head against his shin, momentarily mistaking me for a rat. He relaxed when he recognised me but he didn’t reach down to pet me.

  “I’m so sorry, kiddo,” I whispered.

  All around, people were taking stock of the damaged stock and shaking their heads. No one knew where to begin. Everything was ruined.

  Mortis went around, making notes and tutting. I suppose he would have to report to Fitzwarren and break the news - but no! A string of expletives roared through the air. Fitzwarren had found out for himself.

  A hullabaloo erupted as everyone tried to recount their view of events all at the same time, mostly to assert their own innocence. Fitzwarren tried to shout them down. It took a blast from Mortis, whistling through his fingers like a shepherd, to bring about a sudden and total silence.