The Catlady

by Dick King-Smith

  “Yes, Hazel. I lost her. I couldn't find her anywhere. But someone else did find her!”

  “Who?”

  The Catlady pointed down at Vicky, who was sitting at her feet, looking extremely smug. “Her Most Gracious Majesty found her,” said the Catlady. “How Hazel got there I do not know, but she was in the cellar. Somehow she'd been shut in there.”

  “Oh,” said Mary.

  “I was getting so worried,” the Catlady said. “I looked everywhere, I listened everywhere, but as I think you know, these days neither my sight nor my hearing is what it used to be. I asked Papa and Mama but they didn't seem to understand. And then something extraordinary happened, Mary. Vicky came up to me and put a paw on my stocking—something she has never done before—and then turned and walked away, stopping and looking back every so often. Clearly, she wanted me to follow her, so I did. She led me to the cellar door, and when I opened it, there was my poor sister sitting on the steps. How glad I was to see her, and so were Papa and Mama and Coco. And how grateful I am to Her Majesty!”

  The Catlady bent down and, very respectfully, stroked Vicky's fat ginger back.

  “Thank you, ma'am, thank you so much,” she said, and Vicky purred loudly.

  Percival and Florence, of course, discussed this latest event in their own language.

  “How in the world did the girl come to be shut in the cellar?” the Colonel asked his wife.

  At that moment, Vicky came into the master bedroom. She was the only cat in the house to be allowed in that room, though normally she spent her days and nights on the Catlady's bed.

  Percival and Florence, who had both been lying on the carpet, sprang up, and Percival stood rigidly to attention like the soldier he had once been.

  He waited for Vicky to speak (it was customary among all the cats not to address the Queen first but to wait to be spoken to).

  “Well, Colonel,” Vicky said, “I trust that your daughter is none the worse for this latest incident?”

  “She came to no harm, Your Majesty,” Percival replied, “but she might have been imprisoned for a long time had it not been for your skill in finding her, ma'am. My wife and I are truly grateful.”

  “It was nothing,” Vicky said. “We happened to be passing the cellar door and we heard the child mewing. ‘Kittens should be seen and not heard,' as the saying goes, but on this occasion it was fortunate that the child cried out.”

  “And that Your Majesty's hearing is so sharp,” said Florence.

  “All our five senses are in perfect working order,” said Vicky imperiously, and she waddled regally out of the room.

  Chapter Six

  Probably on account of the Catlady's strangely respectful treatment of Vicky, Mary Nutt began, despite herself, to think quite a lot about this strange idea of reincarnation.

  In the Catlady's library she first consulted an encyclopedia. “This belief,” she read, “is fundamental to the Hindu and Buddhist concepts of the world.”

  So millions of people believe in it, she thought. They can't all be barmy. Perhaps Miss Muriel isn't either.

  Reincarnation, she read, accounted for the differences in the character of individuals because of what each had once been. So was the fact that Vicky was short and tubby and bossy and that the other cats always let her eat first and seemed to be very respectful toward her—was that all because this ginger cat had once been Queen of England? Rubbish, one part of her said.

  Millions believe in it, said another. Of course it would be a comfort to me to be able to believe that my mother and father are alive again, in some shape or form. If only I could, she thought.

  I wonder what form Miss Muriel believes she will assume when she dies? Which may not be all that long, she thought. She's aged a great deal in the years that I've been here.

  For some time now the Catlady had not come down for breakfast. She ate very little anyway, and Mary, seeing how frail she was becoming, persuaded her to have a tray with a cup of tea and some toast and marmalade brought up to her bedroom.

  One morning Mary knocked as usual and took in the tray.

  “Shall I pour for you both, Miss Muriel?” she asked.

  “Please, Mary dear.”

  So she saw to the Catlady's tea and then, as usual, filled a saucer with milk and put it on the floor for Vicky.

  “How are we today, Miss Muriel?” she asked.

  “A little tired. I'm not getting any younger, I fear.”

  “You stay in bed,” Mary said. “I can bring you some lunch up later.”

  You're really looking very old now, she thought. But not unhappy. Maybe because of this belief of yours that when you die, you'll start again as someone or something else.

  “I've been thinking quite a lot,” she said, “about what you said to me some time ago. About being reborn, in another body.”

  “I shall be,” said the Catlady firmly.

  It still seems odd that she's so sure, Mary thought.

  The Catlady did not get up at all that day, saying that she did not have the energy. It was the same all that week, a week that by chance contained two bereavements for Muriel Ponsonby. The cat that had once been her uncle Walter died, and then her old school friend Margaret Maitland.

  “Both cats were very old, though, weren't they?” Mary said in an effort to console her friend.

  “As I am,” said the Catlady.

  “Anyway,” said Mary,“it's nice for you to think they will both be reborn, isn't it?”

  “As I shall be,” said the Catlady.

  What am I saying? Mary asked herself. I'm barmy too.

  She could not make up her mind whether the Catlady was just tired or whether she was ill. And if so, how ill? Should I call the doctor? she thought.

  What decided her was a request that the Catlady made.

  “Mary dear,” she said. “Would you fetch Percival and Florence and Coco and Hazel? I should like to say goodbye to them.”

  When Mary had done so, she telephoned the doctor. He came and examined the old lady, and then he took Mary aside and said to her, “I'm afraid Miss Ponsonby is very ill. To be honest with you, my dear, I don't hold out much hope.”

  “She's dying, you mean?”Mary asked.

  “I fear so.” Shall I tell him about Miss Muriel's beliefs? she thought. No, he'll think I'm mad as well as her.

  The next morning Mary Nutt woke early and dressed. As she went downstairs from her bedroom in what had been the servants' quarters and made her way to the kitchen, she noticed something odd. There was not a cat to be seen, anywhere.

  She was about to put a kettle on to make tea when one cat walked in through the kitchen door.

  It was Vicky, who stared up at Mary with her customary grumpy look and made a noise that meant, Mary had no doubt, “Follow me.”

  Up the stairs went Vicky, Mary at her heels, and in through the open door of the Catlady's bedroom.

  On the floor, in a rough circle around the bed, were sitting all the other cats of Ponsonby Place: Percival and Florence and their children, Rupert and Madeleine, the newly widowed Aunt Beatrice, Ethel and Edith, and a number of others.

  All sat quite still, gazing up at the bed, on which the Catlady lay stretched and still. On her face was a gentle smile.

  Mary picked up a hand. It was icy cold. “Oh, Miss Muriel,” she whispered. “Who or what are you now?”

  Chapter Seven

  The vicar was afraid that the funeral of the late Miss Muriel Ponsonby might be very poorly attended. Her mother and father were long dead, he knew (though he did not know that they, and other relatives, still lived, in different shape, in Ponsonby Place). The only mourner he expected to see was Mary Nutt.

  What a pity, he thought, that the daughter of Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby and Lady Ponsonby, of Ponsonby Place, one of the finest old houses in Dummerset, should go to her grave almost unmourned.

  In fact, on the day when the Catlady was buried, the vicar's church was jam-packed.

  All the vil
lagers of Dumpton Muddicorum and all the tradesmen and a number of other people in the neighborhood who owned cats that had once belonged to Muriel, all of these turned up to pay their respects. All the Catlady's oddities were forgotten and only her kindness and cheerfulness remembered.

  “She was a funny one,” they said, “but there was something ever so nice about her. Always so polite too.”

  “Yes, and she was a kind lady, taking in Mary Nutt like she did.”

  Nor were humans the only mourners. At the back of the church, behind the rearmost pews, sat a silent line of cats.

  When it was all over, Mary had her tea in the kitchen while on the floor the various cats had theirs (Vicky first, of course). What's to become of me? she thought. I can't stay here now that Miss Muriel's dead. The house will be sold, I suppose.

  “I don't know,” she said to the cats.“I just don't know.”

  But a week later, she did.

  She was summoned to the offices of the Catlady's solicitor in a nearby town, to be told some astonishing news.

  “This, Miss Nutt,” said the solicitor, “is a copy of the will of Miss Muriel Ponsonby. As you know, she had no remaining family, no one for whose benefit Ponsonby Place might be sold. She therefore decided that she would leave the house to the RSPC.”

  “RSPC?” asked Mary.

  “The Royal Society for the Protection of Cats. So that the charity might use Ponsonby Place as its national headquarters. More, the will states that because of your loyal service to her and her deep affection for you, you should continue to live there, rent-free, for as long as you wish. I am delighted to tell you that Miss Ponsonby has left you a substantial sum of money, to cover your day-today expenses and to enable you to employ such help as a housekeeper and a gardener. You are a very fortunate young lady.”

  Fortunate indeed, thought Mary afterward. But oh, how I shall miss her! And so will the cats.

  Six months later the RSPC had not yet moved into Ponsonby Place, but Mary, with help, was keeping things in apple-pie order. The only change she made was to remove Vicky from the Catlady's bedroom and Percival and Florence from the master bedroom, and to shut both bedroom doors.

  “You'll just have to find other rooms to sleep in,” she said to them all, and fat ginger Vicky gave her a look that said plainly,“We are not amused.”

  Six months to the day from the death of the Catlady, Mary saw a strange cat come walking up the drive toward the house, in a very confident way, as though it knew just what it was about.

  It was a gray cat, about six months old, Mary guessed, with a sharp face and green eyes and rather pointed ears. A female, she was sure, by the look of it.

  It walked straight up to her and began to rub itself against her legs, purring very loudly indeed. Then it walked straight in through the front door. Mary followed.

  The stranger set off up the stairs and along the landing, to the now closed door of the bedroom of the late Muriel Ponsonby. Standing on its hind legs, it reached up with a forepaw as though trying to turn the door handle.

  Mystified, Mary opened the door for it, and it ran into the room and leaped upon the bed. It lay there, ears pricked, its green eyes staring into hers with a look that told Mary Nutt exactly what had happened, something that, up to this moment, she had never quite been able to believe possible.

  This strange, green-eyed gray cat, this lady cat, was … the Catlady!

  “Oh, Miss Muriel!” Mary breathed. “You're back!”

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DICK KING-SMITH was born and raised in Gloucestershire, England. He served in the Grenadier Guards during World War II, then returned home to Gloucestershire to realize his lifelong ambition of farming. After twenty years as a farmer, he turned to teaching and then to writing the children's books that have earned him many fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Inspiration for his writing comes from his farm and his animals.

  Among his well-loved novels are Babe: The Gallant Pig, Harry's Mad, Martin's Mice (each an American Library Association Notable Book),Ace: The Very Important Pig (a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year),Three Terrible Trins, The Stray, A Mouse Called Wolf, Titus Rules!,The Golden Goose, and his memoir,Chewing the Cud. Additional honors and awards he has received include a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award (for Babe: The Gallant Pig) and the California Young Reader Medal (for Harry's Mad). In 1992 he was named Children's Author of the Year at the British Book Awards. In 1995 Babe: The Gallant Pig became a critically acclaimed major motion picture.

  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Text copyright © 2004 by Fox Busters Ltd.

  Illustrations copyright © 2004 by John Eastwood

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-51700-5

  September 2007

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