Stray

by A. N. Wilson

  ‘And the poor in this case?’ she asked laughing.

  ‘Very deserving in this case.’

  ‘Happens to be you,’ she said.

  We walked along the crumbling brick top of the wall to the front of the house, and came to the pillar of yellow brick which served as a gate-post – though it was long since there had been a gate on that particular ramshackle residence. I looked up and down the street. It was by no means a bad place for a cat to have fetched up, if the notion of residence was one which stubbornly refused to be discarded. Further up, rows of two-storeyed terraced houses faced one another up and down the street. Down at our end, the houses were high cliffs of yellow brick, four storeys in height, soaring into the sky. There was a tree or two to relieve the monotony – handy when avoiding dogs. And up and down the backs of the houses, there were gardens, which themselves backing onto one another, made a vast area for us cats to explore. Here were more trees for climbing and resort; flower beds for lavatory accommodation; bird tables, where foolish sparrows, tits, thrushes and starlings would swoop – so eager for crumbs and bacon rind that they ignored one’s approach. Here too were an abundance of the softer hearted type of human beings: the kind they call ‘cat lovers’, so not all food had to be stolen. On the contrary, even though I had only been hovering about in that street for about a month, I already had my ‘regulars’ who fed me. At Number Twelve, for example, they really do feed you awfully well. There are a couple of cats there – foreign names, black things, getting overweight – well, they’ve had the Operation, if you know what I mean – blow me, if they haven’t persuaded their human slaves to put out a separate plate for me now and again.

  The only trouble is, they will go in for this Pufftail nonsense. ‘Good evening, Pufftail.’ I eat my dinner and take no notice. But you know all this. I only tell it to you now because, at that midday parting with my darling, the street had a particular sweetness and beauty in my eyes, and I began to feel a yearning which was quite different from my original desire to ‘take to the road’. I began to long for stability, warmth, assurance. I began to long for home. I was homesick, without knowing where on earth ‘home’ was or might be.

  She reached up and stroked my face with her paw. ‘What are you thinking behind those sad eyes?’ she asked.

  Her eyes, two great bright green leaves of light shone back at me.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I said, ‘how nice it would be if...’

  ‘How nice what would be?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t the sort of thing I usually say, but...’

  ‘Go on,’ she laughed at me, and we rubbed noses.

  ‘I was just thinking how nice it would be if we were alone together and yet secure. At home, if you know what I mean. I was thinking how nice it would be – when the kittens are born – if we were both together in some warm spot, so that if I looked up, you were always there, and if you looked up, I was always there.’

  ‘What a nice thing to say.’

  ‘An even nicer thing to wish.’

  ‘Let’s wish it then,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m coming,’ she replied crossly as her young woman cried out, ‘Tammy!’

  ‘There she is, on the wall with Pufftail,’ said another human voice, this time of quite a young girl, a child really. ‘Are they fighting or what?’

  ‘They aren’t fighting!’ laughed Tammy’s minder. ‘They’re always together these days. Tammy, people’ll start talking about you if you don’t come in for your dinner.’

  ‘It’s tuna today,’ murmured my beloved. ‘I’ll try and save you some. The trouble is, Bundle comes and eats it up if I leave any in the dish.’

  ‘I’ll go round and see if they’re opening a tin at Number Twelve,’ I said. ‘See you! This afternoon!’

  But I didn’t. As it happened, they had opened a modest tin at Number Twelve, and when I had eaten some of it I came outside and sat on the wall waiting for my darling to reappear from Number Eighteen. But she never came. I sat about for a bit. Then I paced up and down in the garden outside ‘her’ house. But still there was no sign of her. And by the time darkness fell, I had begun to think very sad thoughts indeed.

  I can hardly bear to recall that these thoughts really passed through my mind, but they did. In those hours, I came to doubt my beloved. Why had she promised to come back to me after dinner and then not reappeared? If she had really loved me, she would have come. And then the absurdity of my position began to strike me. Love! What did I mean by the word? I meant this aching desire to see her, this painful adoration. Had she ever shown signs of feeling such pain, or such worship? Had not her manner to me always been oblique, jokey, a little strange? Probably, I thought bitterly, she had always regarded me as an old fool; an old fool, moreover, who was also rather embarrassing, a bit of a bore. As I have said to you a hundred times, there had been lots of other female cats in my life and I had never felt like this about any of them. What reason was there to suppose that She felt like this about me? Probably at this moment, she was sitting in Number Eighteen with her friends and laughing about me behind my back!

  It was this painful thought which prevented me from barging through the cat-door of that house and going to see her. We had never gone in for meeting in her room. I did not like all the other animals in her house, and some of them were not particuarly fond of me. The one they called Bundle even curled up her nose at me and said that I ‘smelt’. What a human, debased concept! All creatures smell. I happen to think that I smell very nice. I had assumed that my darling thought I smelt nice too. Now, I had my doubts.

  All through the long dark hours of that unhappy night, I paced the gardens and walls and shed roofs of the street, thinking these sad thoughts. And by the time the church clock was striking four, I had convinced myself that I was the greatest fool on earth. Love! What was it but a human word, a human idea? I must have picked it up unconsciously somewhere, perhaps from the Sisters, or perhaps in some of the idiot talk of the other cats in the Commune. Merely because one cat found another one beautiful did not mean that they were ‘in love’. What a ridiculous idea! We had had some fun, my beloved and I. And now she had tired of me, and she had told me so in the only manner that she could: by failing to come and meet me. What a fool I had been to think that cats could ever form a pair, and roam the world together, a sort of feline parody of Jim and June. Cats just weren’t like that! So I told myself. No, I was alone in the world, as all cats were, and once again, I must take to the road. I must leave the little street, with its deceptively kind human beings, and its nice little bowls of food put out in the kitchen of Number Twelve, and its flower bed lavatories and its birdtables. I must seek new worlds, new lands, and wander the earth pursuing the destiny which was prepared for me by our great Mother-of-Night.

  Our great Mother was shining down on me from the cold heavens. She was alone, as I was, and She would lead me. Behind her, the sky was lightening, a pale winter grey. I would, I told myself, set out that instance. Well, perhaps not that instant. I slithered down the wall into the garden of Number Eighteen and looked up at the window of my beloved’s room.

  ‘Goodbye!’ I called.

  There was no answer.

  Now, I would go.

  But I did not go. I found that I was sitting there, and staring. This was silly. I would definitely go.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I called again.

  ‘Calling for Tammy?’ said a winsome cat’s voice through the darkness. I recognized it as the black and white female they call Bundle.

  It was not worth a reply.

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Just exercising my lungs. Waiting for the birds to wake up, and then I shall be off.’

  ‘She won’t come out tonight,’ said Bundle. ‘How can she?’

  ‘Tammy?’ I pretended that the word meant nothing to me. ‘Good Lord, no. Just off, as a matter of fact. As I said, just as soon as I’ve had breakfast.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve had enough of this street. I’m on my way.
’

  Bundle clearly did not believe me.

  ‘She’s found her way into the heiring cupboard,’ said Bundle. ‘None of the people know yet. She told me to come out and tell you. She’s very near her time.’

  ‘Near her time?’

  ‘Never heard of a cat having kittens before?’ asked Bundle. ‘You must have led a sheltered life.’

  And then a great joy came into my heart, and I knew why she had not been able to come out and meet me, and all my doubts and fears vanished.

  ‘You’d better not come in and see her,’ said Bundle. ‘People might see you, and then they’d follow you and disturb the kittens.’

  ‘Have they... they been born, then?’ I asked excitedly.

  ‘None of us know. A girl likes to be on her own at a time like this,’ said Bundle knowingly. ‘But she asked me to tell you, and I have.’

  And she scampered back through the cat-door into the house.

  chapter nineteen

  The whole of the next day and night were, for me, an agony of waiting; but of course, when I say ‘agony’, this was a feeling quite different from the dreadful hopelessness of the previous day. In that black mood, I had doubted whether She loved me; whether She had loved me; and these doubts made the whole of life seem horrible. But now my fears were only for her safety and happiness. I did not doubt her love; merely I worried about her sufferings, and paced about, hardly able to contain my impatience. I longed to see her.

  In my excitement, appetite almost entirely deserted me, but I was for some reason quite thirsty. None of my usual haunts were open when the desire for milk overcame me, so I was forced to play the rather mean trick which was so popular among the communards. I don’t want you imitating this, because it is easy to get your paws cut if you aren’t skilful, but the procedure is as follows. You approach a bottle of milk which has been left on a front door step in the early morning. When I say ‘approach’ it, I do not mean that you creep up on it gingerly. Pounce as if it were your worst enemy, and knock it flying. If you are very lucky the birds will have already pecked off the metal top of the milk bottle; and if you are luckier still, the glass will not break. Then the milk is nicely poured out for you over the front step and all you have to do is lick it up. If, however, the glass is smashed, you have to be very careful not to tread in it; and not to swallow any of it – but I hardly need tell you that.

  This particular morning, I had luck at Number Sixteen. That’s right, the house where you live now. The sparrows had done their useful work opening the bottle, and it was easy to upset it with a flick of the paw. There was soon a delicious white cascade running down the front step, and no broken glass. It was while I was having my breakfast that a human conversation took place over my head between the woman who lives at Number Sixteen, and Sally, my darling’s minder. The woman was speaking from an upstairs window to Sally who was up and dressed on the pavement. It went as follows.

  ‘Look at what Pufftail’s done!’ said the woman.

  ‘Pufftail, you greedy old man,’ said Sally. I believe this impertinence was actually addressed to me! But her next words were to the woman. ‘Tammy had her kittens last night!’

  ‘Really? How exciting!’

  ‘Yes. We think it’s two little girls and two little boys, but it’s too soon to say, and of course, we don’t want to disturb her. At dinner time yesterday, apparently, she just disappeared. I was still at work, but the other girls in the house were ever so worried. They thought to themselves, it isn’t like Tammy to miss her dinner – and they couldn’t find her anywhere. But she was in the airing cupboard having her... you know.’

  ‘How sweet! And is there still a chance we might have one of the kittens?’

  ‘Oh yes. But it’s better to wait a week or two before you come and see them.’

  ‘Oh yes, we wouldn’t dream of disturbing them,’ said the upstairs lady, with her head still poking out of the window. ‘Just look at Pufftail drinking all our milk. Go away, Pufftail.’

  ‘He’s been hanging about Tammy ever such a lot lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t, you know...’

  ‘The father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know that’s a great recommendation,’ remarked the upstairs lady rudely. ‘I hope that if that’s true, the kittens won’t inherit their father’s fleas and his bad manners.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Sally, who, I thought had a good deal more sense in her head than this upstairs person. ‘He’s a lovely old cat – aren’t you Pufftail? Funny the way he just turned up in our road, isn’t it? No one knows where he came from, or who he belongs to or anything.’

  At this ‘belongs’ nonsense I looked up and put on as scornful a gaze as I could manage.

  ‘Oh well, mustn’t stand here talking all morning or I’ll miss the eight o’clock bus,’ said Sally, and she clonked off down the pavement on her high heeled paws. One day someone will explain to me why human beings wear things on their feet – and such uncomfortable-looking things at that.

  I did not stay to watch the upstairs woman become a downstairs woman, mopping up the remains of my breakfast and calling down politely-expressed but unmistakable curses on my head. I had heard all I wanted to hear. The kittens had been born, and my beloved was alive! I ran down the pavement, over the wall of Number Eighteen, and in through their cat-door at the back. Sally was always the first to get up in that household. The rest of them were asleep. But that meant that they were all in their rooms with their doors shut and their eyes closed, making that noise with their noses. Where the heiring-cupboard was I could not guess. I had never before heard of cupboards especially set aside for the birth of heirs. On the whole I approved of the notion. But where was it? I had no idea. While all bedroom doors were shut, it was hard to conduct a proper search of the house, but I did my best. There were no heirs in the kitchen cupboards, just tins, as far as I could see by leaping around the room. Luckily it was not one of those households where everyone is ridiculously fond of shutting doors, and quite a number of the tin-cupboards were open. So was a cupboard under the stairs which contained an electric noise machine – silent, thank the powers, at the moment – and quite a few old newspapers and cardboard boxes. No heirs. After some rudimentary searches on landings and in the well-room, I started to scratch the lino outside one of the bedroom doors and demand that they show me my own offspring. At first this had no effect, but at length, a bleary-eyed young woman in a nightdress appeared at the door and said ‘Pufftail! What are you wanting at this hour of the morning?’ She groaned and looked at her bracelet-affair. ‘It’s only seven-thirty,’ she added.

  They are always talking in numbers, as you must have noticed. I might very well have replied ‘And twenty-six to you, too, Madam.’ But I didn’t. She, less than welcoming, added, ‘Go away you smelly old man,’ and went back to bed.

  But a little while later another of the women emerged from her room, and went into the bathroom to rub her teeth with a brush. You have probably noticed the terrible smell which comes from their mouths after they have done this: a sort of pepperminty gas which really hurts your nose. After she’d scrubbed her teeth, this person could be heard cooing and ah-ing into a cupboard, and I concluded that she had found the heirs. My hackles went up. I felt that she was shoving her nose in where it was not wanted; more, in some primitive way I wanted to protect the little ones, even though I knew this particular woman meant them no harm. But it was she, to give her her due, who allowed me my first glimpse of the little family. For she turned and said, ‘Pufftail, don’t be angry. There are some little babies in the cupboard. Yes, there are. Yes, there are!’ And she did something which normally I never allow a human being to do, she picked me up. In the weakness of the moment, I did not struggle. She did not exactly hold me anyway. Rather, she knelt by the door of the heiring cupboard with me on her lap and together we looked at the heirs.

  My beloved was suckling them: four tiny little creatures – two young gingers, and two with tabb
y and white markings, similar to those of her parents. It was the very picture of contentment. It touched in me something very deep. It is hard to put into words what I felt when I looked at the scene. But it felt as if I were remembering something of my own life before memory itself had begun. I think, for a moment of peculiar and irrecoverable happiness, I was myself a newborn kitten again, in that back bedroom with my own dear mother.

  There is nothing so mysterious as life itself. Where had these little beings come from? Only a few months before, there was no trace of their existence. Next there was a mere swelling inside their mother. And now here they were, each with full and completely independent existences, each with minds and characters of their own, each perfectly formed, each – themselves, when before, there was none of them. And I thought of the conversations which I had had with my beloved about the Great Stillness. I thought – as I still think – that her idea was completely crazy, that all things pass into this Stillness. But as I looked at her and her kittens, I had a further thought. Even if it is true that we all die, the Great Stillness itself cannot conquer this – this miracle of coming-into-life out of nothing! It may be that we think that the Stillness is the end of everything. But there is always this to defy it. I was not consoled in that moment for the killing of my brother, nor for any of the waste which goes on around us all the time. Nothing can console us for these stupid, needless killings. But the strength of the killings seemed weaker as I looked at the heirs, and heard their contented purring while their mother fed them.

  She knew I was there without opening her eyes.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t come back after dinner yesterday,’ she murmured, ‘I just felt myself coming over a bit queer.’