by A. N. Wilson
‘Sister Caroline Mary, just look at this beautiful creature,’ said one of the ladies. So this was another sister! How many sisters were there in this family?
‘I’ve called her Mildred,’ said the first lady. ‘The vet said that if she came round from this sleep, she’d have a good chance of recovery.’
‘Did the vet really say that, Sister?’ asked Sister Caroline Mary.
‘Why do you ask, Sister?’
‘I mean, did he really say that if she came round from her sleep, she would recover?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t remember the vet’s exact words...’
‘Because I think, Sister, that Mildred is really a Miles.’
And the three women laughed very much.
Really a Miles? This was even more peculiar? It took me some time to realize that they were not just looking at me, they were talking about me. I was ‘Mildred’, now I was ‘Miles’. What is this human craze for naming things? Where does it come from? I find it all very hard to understand, though I know that you, little Grandkitten, have adopted it, and are happy to be known by the name your human friends call you by.
‘I think he’s a tom,’ said the Sister with eye-glasses. ‘He’s big enough. He looks a strong chap. I wonder if he’ll stay.’
In the days that followed, I saw more of this Sister with glasses. She would come into my room and talk to me. At first I put up a show of hissing and spitting at her, and threatening to claw her if she came near me. She said she quite knew how I felt, and that often, she wanted to claw and spit and hiss at human beings, even though she had never been thrown out of a car by one. She said that anyone who sat near Sister Antonia Mary in choir and heard her sing sharp five times a day for a week would want to claw her; and that the least you could do was hiss at Sister Pamela Mary when she burnt the fish cakes and served them up with mashed potatoes and mashed swede, and no vitamins at all – and the cabbage cooked for hours, no fresh salad. The Sister with glasses, whom the others called Sister Caroline Mary, told me that she would love an orange and she wondered what I would most love. A kidney? It is not literally true that this Sister and I spoke the same language. But when she started to talk about kidneys, I stood up and very very cautiously rubbed myself against the part of her dress where legs would be on another human being. And she said, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ I did not let her tickle my head on that occasion. Indeed, when she tried to do so, I hissed once more, but it was not very consistent, since I had rubbed myself against her dress, and even purred a little bit.
Each day, I was getting stronger, and the next day, I wandered out into the neat little garden which the Sisters called the garth. It was really astonishing to see the size of this family. There were about twenty Sisters, and they were all dressed in exactly the same way. Moreover, their mother, or the one they called their mother, looked astonishingly young, not much older than three or four, I would think, in cat years. It was she, the young mother, who looked younger in fact than her daughter Caroline Mary, who said sedately but firmly one day, ‘Sister, do you have to run about the cloister as if you had a train to catch?’
‘I’m sorry, Mother.’
‘How’s that cat you’re so fond of?’
‘It was him I was looking for, Mother. The butcher’s boy has just been, and brought a surprise for him.’
I limped across the garth towards my friend.
‘You know, Sister, it is almost as if that animal understands us.’
‘Almost, Mother?’
Sister Caroline Mary led the way to the kitchen. The legendary Sister Pamela Mary, about whom I had heard so much, was there, unwrapping some chickens and lots of sausages which she had collected from the butcher’s boy at a side gate. The air was heavy with cabbage steam.
‘Sister,’ she said snappishly, ‘having that cat in my kitchen is one thing I will not allow.’
‘If I could simply borrow a knife, Sister? To cut up a couple of kidneys.’
A couple? Oh, this was good news.
‘Have you Mother’s permission for this?’ asked the scandalized Sister Pamela Mary.
‘I have Mother’s full permission and authority. Miles is now part of the community.’
‘It’s absurd to talk like that,’ said Sister Pamela Mary. ‘Besides how can a male cat be part of us? No man is allowed in the enclosure. Why should a male cat?’
‘Most of the Sisters still think Miles is a she-cat called Mildred,’ laughed my friend. ‘And anyway, we allow our Father Warden and other priests into the enclosure.’
‘Miles isn’t a priest,’ said Sister Pamela Mary.
‘But his ancestors were worshipped as Gods, somewhere in Egypt,’ said Sister Caroline Mary. ‘I think that beats being a priest of the Church of England.’
‘Sister, you should be ashamed of yourself,’ said Sister Pamela Mary.
But she did allow Sister Caroline Mary to cut up the kidneys with a knife and bring them in a saucer out into the garth. As we left the kitchen, Sister Pamela Mary called out harshly, ‘You’re getting too fond of that animal, Sister, and it isn’t sensible. They never stay.’
Oh, those kidneys were good, and the warmth of the sun on my back in that quiet little enclosed garden. They were perfectly fresh kidneys, two large ones, rich and moist with blood. When I had eaten them and licked my lips, I felt very good indeed. Sister Caroline Mary was sitting on a sort of stone window ledge in the cloister. Her face wore a look of detached contentment which made me have a curious thought which I have never had before or since about a human being. I thought, ‘Now here sits a very happy cat,’ and it was only after a few moments that I realized the absurdity of my thought. Sister Caroline Mary was very much like a cat. I suppose that was why I found her so companionable. I had still not quite let her pet me or cuddle me. I had only rubbed myself against her dress (she called it a habit) and purred when she scratched my head. But now, with the warmth of the sun on my fur, and a feeling of contentment and well-being spreading through my body, it seemed perfectly natural to go and sit on Sister’s lap, and allow her to stroke my head and back. And I had vowed that I would never trust another human being again; and all it had taken, on this occasion, to crack my resolve, was a splint and a bandage, and a week of kind words, warmth and decent treatment. Perhaps I was not yet ready to be a hero. And, of course, at that stage, my adventures had only just begun.
I was interested by what Sister Pamela Mary had had to say – ‘They never stay.’ Who were these mysterious they? And why did they not stay? Sister Caroline Mary was a talkative person, even though I gathered from what she told me that the Sisters were not supposed to talk much to one another. Why not? It seemed a strange idea. Anyway, they weren’t. And once I was settled on her lap, she told me all over again what a bad cook Sister Pamela Mary was, and how she was really a very annoying person, and what a lucky thing it was that she, Sister Caroline Mary, had not lost her temper with Sister Pamela Mary.
‘And anyway, it isn’t true that they don’t all stay. Hattie stayed with us until she died – she was with us seven years, and such a friend of mine. It’s because we are so near the bypass you see. These wicked people throw cats out of car windows. I’m afraid that you are by no means the first to come to us. We do not keep all of you, otherwise we should have as many cats as we do Sisters (which I should like, but it would not suit all our Sisters). Some of you, we manage to find homes for; and others – yes, others do decide that it is time to move on. And I quite understand that. You’re not like us. You haven’t promised to stay here forever. Why should you? I just hope...’ – her voice sounded as though it were about to crack with sadness – ‘that you don’t decide to move on too soon, old chap. Now there’s the bell for vespers.’
And she lifted me gently to the ground before standing up and walking round the cloister to the darkened room at the end, where, every time the bell rang, at all hours of the day and night, the Sisters assembled. I decided to follow her on this occasion,
hoping that no one had any objection, but not really caring in particular whether they had an objection or not. They all assembled outside in one room, and then filed into this other, darker room, first of all bowing towards the end of the room which had a window in it, and then turning to face each other in straight rows. And then they began to sing in high-pitched peculiar voices. And yet something in their singing made me think of the two Sisters’ quarrel in the kitchen, about how my ancestors had been Gods long ago in Egypt. And in the darkness, and the singing, and the thought of the Gods, and long ago, there was a sort of strangeness which both made the fur stand up on my back, and at the same time made me feel that this room was a comfortable sort of place to be. So I wandered up to the front, still limping quite badly, and thought that I would sit on the step and watch them all bowing and singing.
But as I did so, the singing changed to another noise. Oh, they were still trying to sing. But the noise which was coming out of their mouths was very different. They were all convulsed with the sound they call laughter. Now what was making them laugh, I could not make out. I looked around, and as far as I could see there was nothing funny happening. As best as they gigglingly could, they finished chanting from their books, and then they filed out again. But one of the Sisters came up to me afterwards, and said, ‘Mildred, dear, you had us all in stitches. Can you warn us next time you want to come to chapel?’
Very strange creatures, human beings are.
For a cat of a different breed or temperament, I dare say that life with the Sisters would have been a distinct possibility – life for ever I mean. There seemed to be no marauders there, no engines of murder, nor Horribles. Presumably, like the Sisters, I could have stayed there for ever, and escaped the Great Stillness, the Stillness which had taken Granny Harris and my brother.
And yet, as I got better, I knew that Sister Caroline Mary was right, and that it would not suit me to stay there for ever. I began to miss other cats. And I also began to miss – well, the sense you live with all the time if you are on your own and on the road: freedom, danger, independence, all those things, a sense that each day is going to be different, each day a little bit frightening. Among the Sisters, as far as I could tell, each day was the same. I think it was supposed to be. But it was not my nature to sit peacefully in the sun, to think that I had an adventure if I chased one sparrow, to regard the arrival of the butcher’s boy as the high point of my week, to see no other cats. I started to mind about that very much after a couple of weeks. I began to sense in the air that there were hundreds of other cats in the world, and that, though I would always be alone, I belonged not with human beings, but with my own kind. The summer breezes at evening brought wild thoughts and sometimes, a wonderful scent, which I cannot describe to you, but which made me think of beautiful female cats.
And yet, those Sisters had become my friends, and their place had become something very like a home. My leg was very nearly completely mended now. The splint and bandages had been removed, and I had started to be more adventurous in my exploring. I saw that by climbing over one of the garden walls, I could easily get into a paddock, and beyond that there were other human habitations. On the other side of the Sisters’ house, moreover, by climbing a wooden fence, I could get into a gravel drive, at the end of which was a road, a long straight road, leading to a town with a castle at the top of it. I could not help thinking of Sister Pamela’s words when we went into the kitchen, Sister Caroline Mary and I: ‘You’re getting too fond of that animal, Sister.’ It is true. And I was getting too fond of her. Far too fond. It does not do, if you want to lead a wandering life like mine, to go getting fond of other beings, still less of people. And as I keep telling you, I have had little enough cause to be fond, in general, of people. But I was fond of Sister Caroline Mary. So fond, that I did not want to cause her any more pain. It was obviously best, if I was to go, that I should go soon. Nor could I quite bear to warn her. Surely she would try to dissuade me, to hold me back; and that would do no good. It would only delay the moment of agony, the moment when I had to be on the road again.
I decided to go at night, and not to make any plans, but just to leave, when the impulse took me. Sister Caroline Mary had already told me, in the course of our strange little chats, that the Sisters were not allowed outside the enclosure of the house and garden, so once I was over the wall, I was safe. There would be no heartbreaking farewells. In the early days and weeks of my recovery I had felt so grateful to her. But now I did not feel I was leaving a ‘benefactor’ or a creature of a different species who had condescended to be kind to me. I felt merely that I was leaving a friend; perhaps the last friend I was ever to have in this world; and why I was doing so was a mystery to me. I only knew that I had to. Nothing would hold me back.
It was a beautiful warm summer night. The air was like nectar. The night-scented stock and the tobacco plants in the garth filled the air with sweetness. The sky was a rich dark blue, as it is in the summer night, and our great Mother-of-Night was in her fullness, casting a white light and deep shadows about the garth. Her sisters the stars shone, not with that cold sparkling brightness which they have in winter on clear frosty nights, but with warmth, almost like candles lit at distant windows. And in that scented night air, there came into my nostrils the unmistakable knowledge that somewhere, somewhere quite close if I could only find her, there she was. She, the cat of my dreams, whom I must woo, and find, and love. I stood and listened. In the far distance, I could almost discern – or was it my imagination – her voice calling to me through the warm air, wailing her beautiful song of love.
I waited. A bell rang once more, and the Sisters all trooped into the chapel, and for a while, the sound of my mysterious beloved – if such it was – was drowned by the noise of the Sisters, singing their songs. Perhaps they too, in their way, were songs of love, but not my sort of love. If only there had been some way of explaining, some way of saying to Sister Caroline Mary that I had no intention, in leaving her, of spurning her or rejecting her. I was not treating her as Bob and Horrible had treated me. And yet, and yet. Leaving the place made me feel as if that were just what I was doing. I stayed, thinking about it too long, perhaps, unable to stop myself listening for one last time, to the mysterious distant chanting of those human female voices, singing their songs by night. And then I left. I arose and walked along the top of the wooden fence which led to the drive, and crunched down the gravel. The road was not the best place for me to walk, but it had grass verges and ditches where I could hide if a car came, and in the distant town where the castle was, I knew there would be cats. It was, perhaps, from there that she was to be found. I looked furtively to left and to right, and then, up the straight moonlit road towards the town and castle. ‘Goodbye, dear friend,’ I said, and then at a brisk pace I set off down the road. When I had run a long way – perhaps a hundred yards, I looked back. And then I knew that Sister Caroline Mary had, after all, understood. For she was breaking her rules, just for me. And there she stood, with the moonlight falling on her veil and habit, looking even more cat-like in the rays of our Mother-of-Night. Her hand was raised, but she was not summoning me back. She was waving a farewell and – who knows, perhaps too, a blessing.
chapter eleven
I found Her – the cat whom I had heard and smelt on the night air, not a quarter of a mile down the road. As on almost all these occasions, it was more fun imagining what she was like before I met her than when we actually met. Still, any port in a storm. It served. And I daresay that I would have happier memories of the little thing – she was grey, I seem to remember and she smelt of the paper chimneys her minder smoked – had not the minder, a furious apparition with dyed yellow fluff on her head shaped a bit like a helmet opened her window and thrown a bucket of water over me during my very passable attempts to sing Little Grey a love song of my own composing.
‘And don’t come back! Go and molest someone else’s cat!’ she shrieked. ‘Tootles! Come in at once! I told you...’ – s
he shouted back crossly to some person who was obviously in the room with her – ‘not to let Tootles out tonight.’
‘Madam!’ I called. ‘I would not dream of coming back. And as for molesting your cat, as you call her, I was merely...’
But the witticism was hardly worth another bucket of water, which would have hit me if I had not scuttled off the kitchen roof, down a drain pipe, and out again into the lane. Little Grey’s mews and miaows as I left would have been flattering if they had been just for me. But she herself had got quite wet. And I understand any cat crying if it had to be locked up with such a creature as had appeared at the window.
I was now back in the savage world of human beings, with legs, paper chimneys, buckets of water, and a desire to make cat life as awkward and nasty as they could. It was a salutary moment. Such human beings are the norm, and one cannot remind oneself of it too often. The numbers who even like us are few; and as for those, like Sister Caroline Mary, who can almost talk our language – they are sadly even fewer. Once out in the lane, I toddled along quite happily through a sort of suburb. There was only one nasty moment, and that was when, feeling rather hungry, I thought that I would go round the back of a house and see what had been put in the dustbin. As I approached, there was the most appetizing reek of a decomposing fowl – though three-quarters ruined by cooking, of course. Sister Caroline Mary always said that Sister Pamela Mary spoilt food by cooking it, and I think as a general principle all food is wrecked by cooking, especially meat. Why do they do it? Put a chicken in an oven for an hour and the greater part of its goodness is gone; there’s no blood left in it, and all its flesh turns a revolting white. I notice, Grandkitten, that you have a decadent taste for cooked meat. You should guard against it.