by A. N. Wilson
The pet shop man had a very red shiny face and in him the human smell was even stronger than in the Wentworths. It was unpleasant when he pressed this shiny red face against the bars of the basket and said, ‘Oh yes, they look very nice young chaps. I shall have no difficulty in selling those. And the money we agreed was satisfactory?’
Mrs Wentworth was evidently happy with the financial arrangements.
‘It really will be hard to say goodbye,’ she said.
‘You needn’t worry, Madam. They will be quite safe and happy.’
What foolish and untrue words these were!
With his rather lumpy fingers the pet shop man picked us out of the basket one by one by the scruff of the neck.
‘This is the kindest way of handling a young cat,’ he said, doubtless in response to a pained expression on Mrs Wentworth’s face. ‘I’ll put them in the window, and, believe me, Madam, they’ll be sold in no time.’
After these words had been spoken I suppose that Mrs Wentworth slipped away taking that basket-cage with her. And at eight or nine weeks old my new life had begun.
I am a wary and suspicious character now but it was not so then. I was young and innocent. I looked at the world with large innocent green eyes and expected it all to be as comfortable and as kind as the household of the Wentworths. At first, the experience of being in the pet shop was so new and interesting that I quite forgot to be sad. The window in which my brother and I had been placed was like a sort of cage. Through the glass at one end of it we could look out at the street, and through the cage at the other we could look back into the shop. The shop smelt of seeds and hay but blending with this there was a delicious and appetizing aroma which my brother and I soon learnt to identify as mice. The mice were in a different window, at right angles to our own, but by looking across the shop we could see them. There were about ten of them being fattened up in a cage with little bowls of dried food. They were white mice with red eyes. I now consider white mice to taste insipid and much prefer the flavour of a house mouse. (Though, for true flavour, you cannot beat a brown field mouse, eaten very rapidly, soon after it has been killed.) At that stage neither my brother nor I had even thought of eating a mouse. We merely luxuriated in the smell and felt our mouths watering, as we watched the foolish little creatures in their cage scuttling about on a treadmill. There were also some gerbils and some hamsters which in my opinion are hardly worth the bother of catching. The proportion of fur to meat is decidedly unappetizing and you have to choose between taking ridiculously dainty mouthfuls and spitting out the fur in between or gulping them whole and then vomiting up the fur.
In a tank near the mouse cage there were some coloured fish, scudding about among the rocks and artificial plants with which these over-estimated delicacies are usually served in a human household. (Again, for taste, give me the great outdoors. The nicest fish I have ever eaten have been goldfish the size of kittens, scooped out of an ornamental pond in a garden.)
In spite of this range of tasty delicacies within our view, my brother and I were merely given some rather nasty little biscuits by the shop man. Once Mrs Wentworth had gone his tone became distinctly more surly.
‘You take your eyes off my fish or I’ll skin yer,’ he said to us rudely.
‘Skin you!’ echoed a loud screeching voice. ‘Skin you.’ It was a green parrot, which was kept in a cage, unhygienically near the bins of bran and rabbit food.
‘Shut your face,’ said the man. ‘The same goes for you.’
‘Skin you,’ shouted back the intrepid parrot.
‘Hello, sonny,’ said the shop man in quite a different voice, an oily ingratiating voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
A boy had come into the shop.
‘Got any lizards?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said the man. ‘We’re right out of lizards at the moment. Hoping to get some more in next week, but just at the moment there’s a shortage.’
‘Only, I wanted a green one,’ said the boy.
‘Like I say,’ said the man, ‘we’re hoping to get some in next week. Now, mice. We’ve got some lovely mice.’
‘I don’t want a mouse,’ said the boy. ‘I want a green lizard.’
‘Ever had a lizard before, have you?’ asked the man.
‘Not exactly,’ said the boy cautiously.
‘Only they’re not that easy to handle,’ said the man. ‘A lizard’s not like a mouse. Easy, mice is. And friendly. You wouldn’t call a lizard friendly.’
‘Can I look at the mice?’ asked the boy.
‘You go ahead, sonny, and look at the mice.’
The boy went and stared at the cage where the mice, so tantalizingly, were scampering about, and running around on their treadmill.
‘My sister’s scared of mice,’ he said contemptuously.
‘Is she now?’
‘I think it’s silly to be scared of mice.’
‘Very silly,’ said the man. ‘They make ever such friendly little pets, and looking after them’s no trouble. The cages are cheap too. Got a lot of new cages in, as a matter of fact.’
‘Do you really think it would be easy to look after a mouse?’
‘Cinch,’ said the man. ‘Easy as pie, mice is. Not like lizards, which are really more of a handful than you’d think. They gets diseases, and that.’
‘Don’t mice get diseases?’
‘Mice? Nar! Still, if you want an expensive, difficult lizard, rather than a nice, cheap, easy little mouse, I wouldn’t stand in your way. But, you know what I’d do?’
‘Skin you!’ shouted the parrot.
‘No,’ said the boy. ‘What would you do?’
‘I’d buy a mouse,’ said the man.
‘She really squeals at the mention of mice,’ said the boy excitedly, reverting to his sister. ‘How much are they?’
‘Normally they’re a pound,’ said the man, ‘but for a first time buyer like yourself, I’d go down to fifty pence.’
‘I’ve saved up ten pounds,’ said the boy. ‘I thought I’d buy a lizard and a tank and rocks and everything.’
‘Well, I’m glad you mentioned the money, in that case,’ said the man. ‘’Cause a lizard tank and all the equipment would set you back a tenner for a start, before you even bought yer lizard. Whereas, I can let you have this nice little cage here for a fiver.’
‘Could you really?’ said the boy.
‘Five pounds for a nice cage,’ said the man.
‘Then I’d have five pounds left,’ said the boy. ‘I’ve been saving up for a year. I’d saved seven pounds, and then my granny gave me three pounds for my birthday. We thought lizards were cheaper than that.’
‘Not with the equipment,’ said the man.
‘I think I’d better buy a mouse cage,’ said the boy, who was staring at the white mice in fascination.
‘I think you’re very wise,’ said the man. ‘You just wait a minute and I’ll —’
‘Skin you!’ said the parrot again.
— ‘get one down from the shelf.’
In the end he sold the boy the cage, two mice (‘They’ll get edgy on their own.’), a treadmill, a little mirror, a feeding bowl and a bag of food. He gave the boy one pound change out of his ten pounds.
‘There we are, Polly,’ laughed the man when the boy had left the shop. ‘Another satisfied customer. I’ve had those mice on my hands for months. They’ve been looking peaky. Wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t pop off in a month or two.’
My brother and I sat in the window all morning looking sometimes out at the street and sometimes back into the shop. Customers came in and out. On the whole they were less gullible than the little boy and came in to buy specific objects: five pound bags of rabbit food, dog leashes, worming powder, flea collars, bird seed or fish food.
Passers-by on the pavement outside the shop peered in at us. If we jumped up and pressed our paws against the glass, begging them not to stare, they stared at us all the more. Our presence there constituted quite
a little side-show. In the afternoon some children came in and asked how much we were. The shop man said we were five pounds each. They asked if they could stroke us and were told only if they were serious. Evidently they weren’t serious at all for they soon let us be.
By evening we were both feeling rather hungry. We had been spoilt, I suppose, by the Wentworths. I had grown used to thinking that minced liver and scrambled egg and fresh milk were foods to be expected automatically. But all we had that day was a bowl of biscuits and a dish of water. When darkness had fallen the man told the parrot that he was going to lock up the shop and we, with the other animals, were left alone in our prison.
‘We’ve been in here long enough,’ said my brother. ‘I wonder where mother is. When do you think they will be taking us back to mother?’
‘I don’t know,’ said I. ‘But I suspect that...’
But when I looked at my brother’s questioning face, I could not voice my suspicions. He had obviously not been thinking as I had been. For him, this tedious business of being locked up in a pet shop window was just some kind of boring game. Sooner or later, we would be released and life would return to normal. We did not realize (I myself could not realize it fully) that there would never again be a ‘normal’ to which life might return; and that for ever afterwards we would be pressing on, with the world our enemy, into new and strange adventures.
Let me describe my brother to you. When I look at you, little black-and-white Grandkitten, I am quite reminded of him. From the beginning he was a handsome cat with a good thick coat of black fur. His face and chest, however, were white and so were his paws, white about halfway up the legs, as though he were wearing boots of human kind. Hence the ‘name’ which they ignominiously imposed upon him. You call me simply by the name of grandfather but you know as well as any cat that we do not have names, any more than the Gods themselves have names. The habit of naming is a human one. Men think that when they have named something, they have subdued it. Even our great Mother-of-Night and all her handmaidens and concubines and sisters, whom we know as nameless guardians and friends as we pace the rooftops by night, these divinities the human race call stars. But with us it is not so. We do not, as they do, wish to possess all that we conquer, nor to subdue all that we admire. We are content to allow things to be themselves, from the highest Gods to the smallest mice, and without imposing upon them our own naming. That is why we are without names. My brother will always be my brother but for me he is the brother without name and until the point in the story where it seems right to use the foolish name which human beings bestowed upon him, I will not sully my lips by using it.
But, as I began, let me finish and let me describe my brother. He was black and white. His markings were as I described and his eyes were of the very brightest green. We were both large kittens for our age; but I think that my brother was even larger than I. We did not much resemble each other. My face, gazing back at me from mirrors and windows and puddles of water and ponds, has always worn a scowl. His face was peaceful and innocent. My tail has always been a thick matted affair – hence the ‘name’ by which ‘they’ call me now. But his tail was straight and sleek and purely black, only curling when he moved or felt excitement or fear.
From now on, after we had left my mother’s care, my brother and I were not just brothers. We were friends. Neither of us knew what the future held and neither of us, quite, understood what a shop was. I know that it had not occurred to us that we might be separated. I merely feared that we had been brought here for some incomprehensible human purpose and that we would never return home. That was why, when he asked me if we would soon be returning to our mother, I did not have the heart to tell him my fears.
‘The food here’s pretty boring,’ said my brother. ‘The bloke forgot to bring our meat.’
‘Do you really think he forgot?’
‘Surely, brother. Did you not hear him promise Mrs Wentworth that he would look after us, and that we would be safe and happy?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said with a sad heart. ‘I had forgotten that. Silly of me.’
‘This cage is small, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could do with a nice run about.’
‘So could I.’
‘Do you think we could get through that clear stuff if we pushed hard enough with our paws?’
‘The clear stuff which we both see and don’t see and which divides us from outside?’ I asked. ‘No, you can’t get through that. We tried this afternoon. Don’t you remember?’
‘I’m going to have one more try,’ said my brother. And he went to the window and jumped against it with his paws. The action attracted the attention of some people passing by on the pavement outside. A young human male with its mate stood there gawping at us. They had both covered their skin with that tight rough blue cloth which they name denim and the poor scraps of fur which they have at the top of their heads had, in the male’s case, been cut short. In the female’s it had been allowed to grow over her shoulders. I noticed that the female claws in a human being can be much longer and redder than the male’s. She was reaching into their portable food-trough which is made of the same newspaper-substance which they use during the day for hiding their faces and bringing out strips of potato dripping with fat.
‘Inny sweet?’ she said, nuzzling against the male’s shoulder.
‘Norruz sweetuz yew,’ he said.
‘I say, I say!’ called my dear innocent brother. ‘You couldn’t possibly... I mean, if there is a way out? We’re new here, you see.’
‘Evsa toiny inny?’ said the female.
‘That’s just it,’ said the male, with a portion of potato still in his mouth. ‘Tiny now, but what’s he going to grow into – see what I mean?’
‘Is he mewing? I think he’s mewing.’
‘No.’
‘Please, please,’ said my brother. ‘If you do happen to know the way out...’
‘It’s no use,’ I said, ‘they can’t understand you.’
‘You know granny’s looking for a cat,’ said the female. ‘Ever since Sammy died she’s been, you know, thinking about it.’
‘What? Your nana is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t need to buy her a cat from a shop, do you? You can get a cat free. Put up a card in your local post office.’
‘He’s evsa sweet, though, inny?’ said the female.
And then we saw the back part of the female pressed against the glass while he kissed her. I suppose the mating habits of other species are always hard to understand; none more so than that of the human beings. After a bit of wiggling about they climbed into one of those mobile red things – bus is the word – and disappeared into the night. Soon after that, I suppose, I fell asleep. When I woke a few hours later all that had happened in the previous day had been obliterated by sleep. I thought I was home again, in the bottom drawer of a wardrobe with my mother. I reached out for her and clutched for her, with my eyes still shut, quite certain that I would soon feel her paw around me and that I would be gathered to her breast. But as I reached out I felt only an emptiness in the darkness; and then the small, sleepy figure of my brother. ‘Mummy!’ I called. And then the smell of the pet shop reminded me where I was.
‘Silly boy,’ shouted the parrot.
‘What was that?’ said my brother.
In their cage the mice were twittering, doubtless complaining about the way the parrot woke them up all night.
‘I’m lonely,’ I said.
My brother tried to comfort me by licking his paw and wiping my face with it, the way that mother used to do. But it was no substitute. The gesture, which both reminded me of mother and brought home to me the hopelessness of our situation, was merely a source of pain.
‘Gosh, I miss her,’ he said, clutching me tightly.
‘So do I,’ said I. And there we lay, on the hard floor of the shop window, until morning light began to appear.
chapter four
Th
e futile routine of the pet shop resumed when we had been awake for some hours. The man, who had sleeked the fur on top of his head with even more grease than the previous day’s supply, arrived just at the moment when I thought I might actually be dying of starvation. It was agony to watch him waddling round the shop, first checking that all his merchandise were alive; then cleaning the cages, with many an oath and curse – as though, for his convenience, the animal kingdom might learn to digest its food without any waste product coming out at the other end.
‘Look at all this you done,’ he said crossly to the mice. ‘Who’da thought it?’ Subserviently, the eight remaining mice squeaked their apologies. The smell of them, droppings and all, wafted across to our cage; and to my hungry nostrils it was very beautiful. I could have eaten all eight for my breakfast that morning. I could have eaten the parrot too, and it would have done my heart good before eating it to sink my teeth into its squeaking throat and stop its silly clamour, ‘Silly boy, silly boy.’
‘You watch who you’re talking to,’ said the pet shop man.
When he came over to our cage he said, ‘Bloomin’ ’ek. You’re nearly as bad. I hate the smell of cat. Sooner I’m rid of you two the better. It were a mistake buying you. A pound I paid for you two – fifty pence each! You’ll have eaten fifty pence worth o’ biscuits if you stay here much longer.’ And he gave us another saucerful of unappetizing biscuits and a little tin saucer of water.
As it happened several people came into the shop asking about us but he either tried to be too greedy (at that stage we cost five pounds each) or his manner put them off. A couple more of the mice got sold and a plastic bag of water containing two of the most doleful goldfish I ever saw in my life. But we weren’t sold. When he gave us our afternoon biscuits the man said, ‘I don’t know. If it goes on like this I shall have to drown you, I will really.’ Neither my brother nor I knew whether he was joking.
When I look back on our time in the shop window, I admire the confident way in which my brother and I assumed that we would always be together. In the previous week our litter of four had been broken up and we had been separated from our mother. But I never really imagined that this final, cruel separation could have taken place. It was he who first thought of it, after we had finished our lunch.