Stray

by A. N. Wilson

  ‘Everything except pay for the holiday,’ said Jim.

  Their querulous voices echoed down the path. That was the last time we ever heard them. I do not miss them much. You, who have a kinder view of the human race than I do, will think that I have given an unfair picture of June and Jim, but I do not think so.

  They left us behind, locked up in their house. There was no window, no cat-flap in the back door, and the litter-tray which we might have used as a lavatory was in the kitchen. The only trouble was that they had shut the kitchen door, so there was no way of getting to it. We were therefore ‘at large’ in the house, and it was inevitable, after what felt like countless hours, that we should have used the sitting-room as a lavatory. I wish I could pretend that it gave me no satisfaction to have ‘used’ the two-seater settee in front of their coloured picture box. My brother, more discreetly, ‘went’ upstairs – in the bath to be precise.

  The hours when we were locked up in that house felt very long. They were very long. We were shut up, in fact, with nothing to eat, and nowhere appropriate to go to the lavatory for the whole of that day, and, almost, for the whole of the next. Tracy and her boyfriend were meant to have come in and fed us ‘at regular intervals’, but there was no sign of them until the following evening. We heard the front door being opened, and Bob, Tracy’s boy, saying, ‘Cor what a stink!’

  ‘Oh don’t,’ she said, ‘I think I’ll be sick.’

  They came into the house holding their noses. Then Tracy, whom I had thought of as a friend called out, ‘Bootsie! Fluffie! Come on, then!’

  I ran to her purring and nuzzled against the fishnet stockings which she wore on her legs.

  ‘Oh Fluffie, what have you done?’ she said.

  ‘You can smell what he’s done,’ said Bob.

  ‘They couldn’t help it. We really should have come in yesterday, Bob. Come on, Fluffie, we’ll find you something to eat. Oh, I say! Bob! Look what mum and dad have gone and done! They’ve left the kitchen door shut. No wonder Fluffie was taken short!’

  ‘It stinks, this place,’ said Bob. He had sat down, I was very happy to notice, on the settee, and was wondering where the stench came from.

  Tracy called my brother and me to the kitchen. We were so hungry that we had almost reached starvation level: or so it felt. If you go for a certain length of time without eating, the hunger grows more and more intense, but you reach a point where you no longer want to eat. The smell of the tin she was opening was nauseating to me. Nevertheless we ate up what she put on our plates in greedy haste.

  ‘Such nice weather too,’ she shouted back into the sitting-room, evidently continuing some conversation she had been having earlier with Bob.

  ‘You mean, we could be down in Bournemouth now, if it wasn’t for these cats,’ said Bob.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Couldn’t you get the neighbours to feed them?’

  ‘You know what mum’s like about Mrs Watkin – wouldn’t have her in the house.’

  ‘Oh —’ Bob shouted out a very rude, but as it happened a very apposite word. He had just moved slightly on the settee and discovered what he was sitting in. ‘I’ll kill those — cats,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill them.’

  ‘Bob! They couldn’t help it,’ said Tracy. ‘Mum had locked them out of the kitchen.’ Just at that point, I felt the meat reacting badly with my empty stomach, and I started to heave and cough and retch.

  ‘That’s all we need,’ said Bob. ‘Darling Fluffie being sick.’

  They sponged and rubbed and mopped, but even so, what with the hall carpet, and the settee, and (now) Bob’s trousers, there were quite a lot of dirty areas in the house, and the pong was pretty appalling. I did not really blame them for being angry. But nor did I begin to guess how angry Bob was.

  When they had gone, leaving the kitchen door open this time, and a bowl of biscuits and a dish of milk, my brother came out of hiding from June’s bedroom, and said, ‘What was all that about their going to Bournemouth?’

  ‘It sounds as though they would like to go away too, but they can’t,’ I said. ‘Because of us.’

  ‘What was Bob shouting about? He sounded as though he’d sat in something.’

  When I told my brother, he was very amused and laughed loud and long. He shared my low opinion of Bob. We had quite a nice little evening together, pottering round the house. If only we had been allowed out! I could see so many tempting birds hopping about on the lawn outside, but we could do nothing except press our noses against the glass of the window pane and stare at them.

  Then, later that evening, we heard the front door open once more.

  ‘Very attentive,’ said my brother sarcastically. ‘They obviously don’t want to risk having to mop up after us again.’

  ‘That’s not Tracy,’ I said.

  ‘Who is it then?’

  ‘It’s Bob... and another man.’

  Bob and the other man were talking much more loudly than usual. They were laughing and hiccoughing, and not walking very straight. There was a tendency to bump into things.

  ‘Let’s get it over with,’ said Bob. ‘Tracy would hate me if she knew I was doing this.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ said the other young man, with a cruel laugh. ‘I’ve done it with several cats. You even get a taste for it after a while. Hello, my beauty!’

  He crouched down and was addressing me. I felt all my fur stand up on end. This was an enemy. I did not know what he wanted to do to us, but I knew it wasn’t nice.

  ‘Have you got a bag we can put them in?’ he asked Bob. ‘Preferably something that shuts. They put up a hell of a struggle sometimes.’

  ‘I still don’t know what I’ll say to Tracy,’ said Bob.

  ‘Look, mate, do you want to come to Bournemouth, or don’t you? A whole week in my caravan, you and the chick.’

  ‘Yeah, of course I want to come to Bournemouth.’

  ‘Well then. And you don’t want to come back to the house and find all the mess left by these little darlings, do you? Hello, diddums!’

  My brother, too, had arched his back, and fluffed out his tail.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t know what I’ll say to Tracy.’

  ‘I’ve told you. You let the cats out of the back door. You called and called, and they never come back.’

  I will give Bob the credit for being drunk, and not liking what he was doing. But the other young man was enjoying every second of it. He had gone into the kitchen, and found a couple of old shopping bags. Once we knew what he was up to, we gave him a run for his money.

  My brother ran up to one of the bedrooms and hid in a favourite place of his on top of the wardrobe, while the two men, very drunk and very angry, chased me. They thought they had got me in the room June called the lounge, but Bob’s friend stumbled against the potted plant on a stand and it, and he, fell to the ground. When he got up, he shouted, ‘I’ll kill you!’

  He had gloves on, and by the time he came clumping up the stairs after me, he had a bag in his hand, which fastened at the top with a zip. I was determined not to let him put me into it, but I stupidly ran into the bathroom, where there was nowhere to hide. I cowered under the wash basin, and heard his footsteps approaching.

  ‘It went in here,’ he said.

  ‘Is that Fluffie?’ asked Bob.

  ‘The moggy one. It’s wild this one, should have been killed long ago.’

  ‘I’ll look for Bootsie,’ said Bob gloomily.

  The bathroom door opened, and Bob’s horrible friend came in. I looked at him: hobnail boots, jeans, a blue jacket, leather motorcycling gloves on his hands. There was no part of him except the face which I could attack. As he crouched down with the open bag, however, his face was quite close to mine, and I sprang at him with open claws. I managed to take a bit out of his cheek, but it only made him angrier. He biffed me with his fist, and I was stunned by the blow. He did not knock me out, but the pain immobilized me and in that second he scooped me up and put me in the
bag. I struggled and wriggled, but he was too strong for me, pressing my paws and my head down into the confines of the hateful bag.

  ‘We’ll have to leave Bootsie,’ Bob was calling from the bedroom. ‘He’s on top of the wardrobe and he won’t come down.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said Horrible. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  I heard them banging, and moving chairs around and cursing. Evidently, my brother escaped them at first, but they had shut the bedroom door and, however much of a fight he put up, it was hopeless against the two of them. All I was aware of in the darkness of the bag, was of being humped downstairs as if I were rubbish.

  By now Bob was saying, ‘I don’t like this,’ and Horrible was laughing. It was so dark and airless in my bag that I did not know exactly when we got outside. But eventually I was aware of being hurled into what must have been the back of an engine of murder, a car. I could dimly feel, through my bag, the sides of another bag, and I could hear my brother’s muffled cries of protest.

  ‘You drive, and I’ll deal with them,’ said Horrible. ‘I don’t want you making a mess of this.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Ring road, of course, how often do I have to tell you?’

  The car roared off. I did not listen particularly to the chat which passed between the two friends. For much of the time they were silent. We could hear only the car engine, and the music on the box of voices. We stopped, and started, and stopped and moved off again. I felt sick, as I always do in cars. But this time it was not just the movement of the car. I felt sick with fury that these oafs could treat us in this way; sick with the knowledge that we could do nothing to stop them and that, whatever was going to happen, we could never have our revenge upon them; sick with the whole meaningless pain of existence.

  The journey wasn’t a long one. Eventually, I could hear Horrible wriggling about beside me, and saying ‘Right, my beauty.’ The car had slowed down a bit, and I think I heard my brother yelping with despair. Then, all of a sudden, the top of the bag was unzipped, and Horrible said, ‘Now your turn. It’s a proper little savage, this one is.’

  He got me by the scruff of the neck. I saw that the car window was wide open, and because we were still moving along at some speed, a strong wind was blowing in my face.

  ‘Out you go!’ he shouted, and with a violent gesture, flung me out.

  By an extraordinary stroke of luck, I landed on a grass verge, but with a great bump against my side. The shock of the thing made it hard to take in what had happened, and for a while, I lay there, with an acute pain in one of my back legs, crying with anger on the grass, as the cars and lorries roared past. After what could have been a few minutes or could have been some hours – it was quite impossible to guess the time – I thought of my brother. Where was he? Was he all right? I think in that first stupid moment, I assumed that because I was all right (or more or less all right) then he was probably alive and, if a bit battered, fit for the next stage of the adventure. I stood up. The pain in my back leg was excruciating, but I managed somehow to drag myself along. I do not know where I thought I was going, but it was good to be able to move, however painful it was. And then, in the darkness, I saw it. At first I thought it might have been some other animal, but the shape of his head could be made out on the road, perfectly still. I am sure that the Great Stillness – the mystery which he and I had watched coming upon Granny Harris – had already come upon him then, but at that moment, a bus thundered over his body and there could be no doubt that he was done for.

  I would like to be able to tell you that I decided then and there, that I would never again trust human beings; that I decided as I watched my poor brother being mangled, like a piece of roadside litter, that I would lead an independent life, and trust only to myself, and to the mysteries which govern our lives. But I was in no mood for grand resolutions. There have been three great griefs in my life. The first was so confusing that I did not take it in at the time, but now I think of it as a great grief: it is when I was separated from my mother. The second grief was also confusing, but I felt all its fullness at the time, it was the fate of my brother on that road. In a blinding moment of horror I knew that I had lost my best friend in all the world, a friend who could never be replaced. And the third grief lay in the future. I did not stay to look back. I hobbled up a verge, through a fence, and over the corner of a field. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. For a moment of despair, I thought I had merely walked round in a circle, for having cut across the corner of the field, I found myself on the verge of another road. This time it seemed quieter. My leg wouldn’t be dragged any further. I lay down, the most dejected, the most impotently angry, the most miserable cat in the world. And because I had no strength left, I lay there, even when a car slowed down and stopped; even when a torch shone in my eyes, and a female human voice said, ‘It’s still alive, you know,’ my claws went out, but the struggle which I put up was merely notional. I was barely conscious when I was lifted up, and put into the back of another car.

  chapter ten

  When I came to, the pain was much less bad, but my leg still hurt. I leaned over to lick it, still with my eyes half shut, and was surprised to find that it had turned to cloth and wood. Then I realized it had been bandaged up. Opening my eyes, I found that I was lying in a blanket, on a floor of red, highly polished tiles. The room was warm and clean. From a window, the clear rays of the sun were pouring in. Just near the basket, there was a saucerful of milk. I got up – it felt strange, standing up on a splint – and hobbled over to have a drink. It felt good. It felt almost as good as that first day when I opened my eyes and realized for the week or so past, I had had this wonderful experience: I had been born! I was alive. Of course, it could not be quite as strange as that, but it was certainly more abundantly joyful. After all, I had come so close to not being alive, so close to the Stillness which now embraced my brother.

  The memory of him, which came back to me as I lapped up the milk, was particularly painful, and spoilt half the pleasure of coming back to life again. And then the whole sad story came back to me – of Tracy and the moronic Bob and his horrible friend; the bags, the car, the open window, the calamity. And now here I was. But where that was, I had no idea, and I had no reason to think that the new human beings – if they were human beings, who had tied this bandaging round me, and given me a blanket and milk – were to be trusted. After all, I was a prisoner here. Was there a way out?

  The tiles were so highly polished, that I almost skidded on them. But, yes, I could walk again! It felt like quite an achievement. It was while I was taking my first tentative steps, that the door opened and a female human being entered, wearing a long sort of black dress, and with a long veil draped over her head. She had a cross round her neck and a little triangle of red at the breast. Never having seen a human being dressed in this way, I was a little bit surprised. Normally you see their legs, but with this one you just saw highly polished black shoes; no legs at all.

  In a calm, friendly voice, which made me almost regret having raised all my hackles and stuck my tail fiercely in the air, the strange person said, ‘So you’re awake!’

  And then she vanished again, and I could hear her voice in a corridor saying excitedly, ‘She’s awake! She’s recovered. Sister, come and see, Mildred’s awake!’

  Mildred?

  She?

  Though still in a very weak condition, my interest quickened. Evidently, I was sharing a room with another cat, a female cat, and my interest in female cats is always strong. What was this Mildred like? I began to picture her in my imagination. Perhaps she was a silly piece of white fluff, with teasing blue eyes, and a seductively simpering little voice. (Howling on a shed roof one night, months ago, I had felt wild about such a cat! Not Princess, but another.) Or perhaps she was beautifully sleek and black and plump, with green eyes? Or perhaps she was a Siamese? But somehow, I could not imagine even a human being deciding to call a Siamese cat Mildred. I looked around
the room and apart from the basket, a table and two upright chairs it was, so far as I could see, quite empty. So where was Mildred? On the table top? With great effort, I saw if I could spring up on to the chair, but there was no bounce in my back legs, and even if there had been, jumping would not have been easy with my bandage and splint. I ended merely by landing on the floor, with an excruciating twinge of pain. However I pulled myself up again and tottered towards the fireplace, from whence I could get a good view of the table top. No Mildred there.

  It was strange. The female personage in the long flowing clothes had most definitely said, ‘Sister, come and see, Mildred’s awake.’

  In a few minutes, the lady returned with her sister, who was dressed, rather surprisingly, in exactly the same manner as the other lady: no legs, just shiny shoes, and a long grey dress: at the neck, the same triangle of red, and the same dangling cross, and a long piece of cloth instead of fur on their heads.

  ‘You see, Sister, she really is awake.’

  ‘Hello, Mildred,’ said the lady’s sister.

  After my visit to the bypass with Bob and Horrible, I shall always be nervous of human beings. But, as you may understand, at that point, I was more than nervous. Even specimens as apparently kind and bland as these two were to be treated with the utmost caution. When one crouched down – and I could not really tell whether it was the first lady, or her sister – and stretched out a clean and well washed hand, I hissed and made to scratch it.

  ‘You see, she’s terrified.’

  ‘But cats are all the same.’

  ‘How can people do it?’

  ‘Well, Mildred, at least you’re alive.’

  I hissed again, to warn them to keep their distance, but it nevertheless fascinated me that, while looking quite firmly in my direction, the lady seemed to be having a discussion with this other, female cat, called Mildred.

  At that point, I really did begin to think I was seeing things, because a third lady came into the room, and she was dressed in exactly the same way as the others! The only difference was that she had glass in frames, balanced on her nose and covering her eyes, the way that some people do.