Lulu and the Cat in the Bag

by Hilary McKay

  Mellie had brought a chair to sleep on that unfolded at night into a little bed. The cat watched as Lulu spread the patchwork quilt over it. It yawned when she sat the pirate bear on the windowsill. It blinked while she uncorked the ship in the bottle and peered thoughtfully inside.

  When Nan called “Supper!” Lulu left everything where it was, the blanket on the chair, the bear on the windowsill, the ship in the bottle, and the marigold cat curled on the bed.

  I don’t need to jump out of the window, thought the cat thankfully.

  There was always a lot to do at the end of a day in Lulu’s house. The ancient parrot liked to be scratched and talked to while he watched his favorite cooking show. The guinea pigs needed fresh hay and carrots. The old dog, Sam, had to be given his old dog medicine. The young dog, Rocko, had to be worn out with wild chases up and down the little garden. Last of all the rabbits had to be taken from their runs and put to bed. The boy rabbits in the boy rabbit hutch. The girl rabbits in the girl rabbit hutch.

  Nan and Mellie helped with all these jobs. Nan measured out medicine and Mellie threw balls for Rocko. Nan found the right TV channel for the parrot. Mellie washed the guinea pigs’ carrots. Nan was very strict with the rabbits.

  Lulu did the rabbit catching, the hay cleaning, the poo removing, and the parrot scratching. All the time that everyone was working, Nan talked about how many pets Lulu had compared to the number Nan thought it would be sensible to have.

  “Guinea pigs!” she said to Lulu. “Now, Lulu, that is very interesting. Guinea pigs are not meant to be pets at all…No! In South America, did you know they are eaten as food? That’s what guinea pigs are meant for! Not keeping as pets in a shed!”

  “Nan!” exclaimed Mellie. “Would you really like to eat Socks and Mittens?”

  Nan said of course not. What a suggestion! Terrible! She was only explaining why guinea pigs were such very bad pets. And also she wondered if Lulu had ever thought that it might be a good idea to give both the guinea pigs and the rabbits to the pet farm in town, where Lulu could visit them whenever she liked.

  “And then there would be none of this cleaning out,” explained Nan. “Or sawdust or smells or worrying every night if all the rabbits are where they should be…”

  “You don’t have to worry,” said Lulu. “One little mix-up wouldn’t really matter.”

  “Oh yes it would, Lulu!” said Nan. “Oh yes it would! And another thing! About the dogs…”

  The dogs, who had been listening, now pricked up their ears. They always knew when they were being talked about. They also knew how much they bothered Nan. They always had. Every time one of them ate a letter or licked out a bowl on the table or sat down suddenly just where she was walking or fell asleep in a doorway or rolled muddily on the sofa, she got angry. The fuss she made when they did their mad barking at the visitors was awful. Nan, thought the dogs, fussed about everything. Play-fighting in the kitchen. Eating soap in the bathroom. Bones in the living room. She thought they were bad dogs.

  “The pet farm doesn’t have dogs,” remarked Lulu cheerfully. Nan’s plans to get rid of her animals did not worry her at all. Lulu was used to them. Nan thought of new ones every time she visited.

  “Very sensible of the pet farm,” said Nan. “But listen, Lulu! I have a very kind friend who would be glad to have an old dog like Sam for company.”

  “But would they like Rocko too?” asked Lulu wickedly.

  “It would be unkind to split them up,” agreed Mellie.

  “Rocko, no,” admitted Nan, looking in disgust at Rocko, who was chomping a mouthful of guinea-pig food, swallowing the bits he liked, and letting the rest dribble all green and slimy from the corners of his mouth.

  “I can’t think of anyone who would be glad to have Rocko,” admitted Nan. “Not as he is! But I am sure there are dog training classes that he could go to. I have seen them on television, absolutely dreadful dogs, nearly as bad as him, taught to sit and walk…”

  At the word “walk,” Rocko flung himself with delight at Nan and tried to kiss her with green slime kisses. Lulu grabbed him just in time, while Mellie began her exploding giggles again.

  “Lulu,” ordered Nan, “before you do anything else, please wash that dog’s face!”

  Lulu washed Rocko’s face with goldfish water.

  “You haven’t thought of a way of getting rid of the goldfish yet,” Mellie reminded Nan.

  “The fish are easy,” said Nan. “The pond in the park is full of fish. A few more would do no harm.”

  “And the parrot?”

  “I’m sure he could go to the pet farm with the rabbits,” said Nan. “It would be a nice change for him. All he does is sit on top of that cage all day.”

  “He likes sitting on top of his cage,” pointed out Lulu. “He could sit anywhere else if he wanted. He doesn’t like change. He’s very old.”

  “How old?”

  “More than eighty,” said Lulu.

  “Good gracious heavens!” cried Nan. “Then he should be in a museum! At least let us thank goodness that bag full of cats disappeared. Cats are the worst!”

  “What, worse than Rocko?” asked Mellie, and her giggles, which had never really left her all afternoon, began again.

  “You heard what Charlie said about the cat they have next door! How sorry I am for that boy’s mother!”

  “Lots of people are sorry for Charlie’s mother,” remarked Lulu. “But not because of his cat!”

  “Well, well,” said Nan. “Charlie is in his motor home and the animals are put away for the night! We can forget them for a while. Come along now! It’s been a long, long day. Who’ll fetch my bag from my room?”

  Mellie was the closest to the stairs, and she was halfway up before Lulu could begin to rush after her.

  “Not in your shoes, Lulu!” exclaimed Nan, stopping her as she passed. “And I didn’t see you wash your hands either! Back into the kitchen, please!”

  Lulu kicked off her shoes, scrubbed her hands at the kitchen sink, and waited in agony for Mellie to appear and announce, “You’ll never guess what I just found upstairs!”

  It didn’t happen. Mellie seemed to be gone for a very long time, but she returned with the bag and handed it to Nan without a word about marigold cats. Lulu looked at her anxiously. Had she seen or hadn’t she? Perhaps she had just gone into Nan’s room. Perhaps the cat had changed its mind and jumped out of the window after all. Perhaps…

  “That patchwork blanket looks very nice on my chair,” said Mellie sweetly, ignoring Lulu’s glares.

  “I hope you said thank you for it,” remarked Nan a little vaguely. “Come with me now, Lulu, and see what I am making.”

  Nan did not knit as many grandmothers do. She made things with beads strung on thin silver threads. She got out her beads and wires from her bag and showed Lulu the necklace she was making, a rainbow loop of flowers. “Almost finished,” she said. “Then I will have two. One for you…” Nan yawned a tiny, ladylike yawn “…one for Mellie. Hmmm, hmmm,” said Nan sleepily and closed her eyes.

  Lulu, who had been holding the flowery necklace to admire it, laid it very, very gently on Nan’s knee.

  Nan did not move.

  Silently, Lulu stood up.

  Across the room and just as silently, Mellie did the same.

  Nan gave a very small snore.

  Lulu’s eyes met Mellie’s. Mellie, Lulu could see, was about to explode. Nan snored again, and Lulu shot across the room, grabbed Mellie, and dragged her to the kitchen.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” gasped Mellie, bent over and shaking. “Two snores! Lulu, that cat’s asleep on your bed, did you know?”

  Lulu nodded.

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Feed it,” said Lulu. “Quickly, before Nan wakes up. Oh, Mellie, please don’t snort! Help me instead!”

  She bega
n to load a tray. Tuna fish. Water. Milk. Cheese crackers. Cold ham. Mellie recovered in time to add a leftover omelette. They carried it upstairs and pushed open the bedroom door. The marigold cat looked up worriedly, measuring the distance between itself and the window. “Look!” whispered Lulu and lowered the tray, and the cat looked and began to purr like an engine.

  Just as the marigold cat was the largest cat by far that Lulu and Mellie had ever seen, so the marigold cat’s purring was the loudest they had ever heard. It purred as they stroked it. It purred as it chewed up everything on the tray. It purred even when wrapped in the patchwork quilt. It purred by itself alone in the bedroom when they took away the supper tray and crept back downstairs to wash the empty plates. They could hear it in the kitchen, and they could hear it in the living room, and in her dreams, Nan heard it too.

  “Was I snoring?” she asked, waking up with a jump. “Lulu, I dreamed I heard myself snoring! It can’t be true! I never have! Snoring! Was I? Now, Mellie, tell me the truth!”

  Mellie became speechless with giggles and had to lie on the floor.

  “Lulu?” asked Nan pleadingly.

  “You were snoring a little tiny bit, but hardly anything at all,” Lulu told her truthfully.

  Nan looked as horrified as if Lulu had said, “Your head was falling off a little tiny bit, but hardly anything at all.”

  So Lulu added kindly, “But I don’t think that’s what you heard…”

  Lulu paused. There was no sound from upstairs anymore. No purring. Nothing. And anyway, what could she say? “I think you heard the marigold cat?” Of course not!

  “Perhaps a helicopter flew over,” she suggested to Nan. “Maybe you heard that. Or a motorcycle, revving up. A lawn mower, even…”

  “Helicopters!” wailed poor Nan, who up until the last few minutes had believed she spent all her sleep hours in ladylike silence. “Motorcycles! Lawn mowers! I sounded like that! Tomorrow I will go to the doctor!”

  “For snoring?” asked Mellie, rolling around on the carpet, and she laughed so much that Lulu could not help joining in too.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the laughter and in the middle of Nan’s wailing, came a sound that startled them all into silence.

  Heavy feet. Beanbag feet. Treading hard and loud, creaking the floorboards of the room overhead.

  Sam and Rocko, who had been dozing by the fire, woke and put back their ears and growled. All down the middle of their backs a line of fur stood up like grass.

  “What is that?” whispered Nan.

  Lulu and Mellie knew what it was of course: the marigold cat. What else could it be?

  “A ghost?” asked Lulu hopefully.

  The dogs began to bark.

  Nan was on her feet. She did not believe in ghosts. She believed in burglars. She was not afraid of them, though. She was not afraid of anything (except being heard to snore). Brave as a lion, she rolled her magazine into a weapon, ordered, “Girls—stay here with the dogs! Dogs—guard the girls!” and charged up the stairs.

  Lulu and Mellie charged after her.

  The dogs did not. They dared not. They knew who was the boss. Nan. “Dogs Downstairs” was the absolute rule when Nan was visiting. Not even the smell of the most enormous marigold cat in the world could entice them to break it. They stayed at the foot of the stairs whimpering and yowling while Lulu, Mellie, and Nan hunted through the two bedrooms and the bathroom and the linen closet.

  And found nothing but flowers. Two flowers. A marigold on Lulu’s bed. A blue flower like a star, caught on the windowsill.

  “Love-in-a-mist,” said Nan, closing the window. “Lulu? Mellie?”

  “Mmm?” they said.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Lulu and Mellie nodded.

  “Something bad?”

  “No, no! Very nice.”

  “About these flowers?”

  “Yes, very nice about the flowers,” agreed Lulu, and all at once began yawning and yawning. Mellie caught Lulu’s yawns, just as Lulu had caught Mellie’s giggles, and suddenly they could not stop.

  “Bed,” said Nan. “And sleep. And sweet dreams. No ghosts! What a silly idea!”

  “Yes,” agreed Lulu.

  “Burglars are impossible. With two dogs downstairs…” She glared down the stairs at the dogs, who rolled on their backs to show they understood.

  “…and me upstairs in the room next door. What could be safer?”

  “Nothing,” said Lulu and Mellie, hugging her.

  They went to bed with their windows closed and their bedroom doors open so that Nan could rush to the rescue at the slightest sound. With her magazine.

  “Not that I will need to,” said Nan.

  The house became dark. And quiet (except for the gentle sound of helicopter snoring). Mellie on her chair bed snuffled with giggles in her sleep. The dogs ran in dreams with silent, twitching feet. Only Lulu was awake.

  Very quietly, Lulu crept out of bed and opened her bedroom window again. And soon afterward the beanbag paws began creaking the floorboards, just like before.

  “Lovely, lovely marigold cat,” murmured Lulu, more asleep than awake, and then completely asleep.

  After that neither Lulu nor Nan nor Mellie heard a single sound all night.

  Daisies, catmint, and feathery grasses. Poppies. More marigolds. More love-in-a-mist. Flowers on the landing. Flowers on Nan’s bedside rug. Flowers on the bath mat.

  But most of all on Lulu’s bed, where the marigold cat, tired out with all its hunting and collecting, curled up into a huge, orange, snoring, purring heap of fur.

  And was discovered by Nan in the morning.

  Chapter Three

  The Cat and the Dogs

  “Well!” said Nan indignantly, gazing at her sleeping granddaughters and the sleeping, snoring marigold cat. “Well!”

  And she went and fetched her magazine and rolled it up again.

  She used it to prod, very gently, the marigold cat.

  The marigold cat gave one last snore and opened its eyes and blinked at Nan. It smiled a curly, cat-shaped smile. It seemed to understand that Nan was no danger. Then it stretched and jumped from Lulu’s bed and landed with a thump and a burglarish creak of floorboards beside Nan.

  Lulu woke first.

  Very slowly.

  Pushing her face in her pillow.

  Yawning.

  Remembering.

  Stretching out a hand for the marigold cat.

  “Are you still there?” she asked sleepily. “What were you doing all night, in and out of the window? Are those more flowers? Oh!”

  “Yes, oh!” said Nan sternly.

  “Hello, Nan!”

  “Hello, Lulu.”

  “Look at all the flowers.”

  “I am looking at the flowers,” said Nan. “And at the other thing. This orange, snoring thing! (Didn’t I tell you, Lulu, that I never snored!) This jumped-out-the-bag-and-ran-away thing! Run away again!” Nan told the marigold cat.

  The marigold cat hooked up a stem of love-in-the-mist with its beanbag paw and laid it at Nan’s feet like a present.

  “It likes you,” said Lulu, and Mellie rolled over and said sleepily, “Course it does.”

  The marigold cat stayed for breakfast. Scrambled eggs. Dog biscuits, cereal and milk, all served by Nan.

  “I have never starved anyone yet,” said Nan. “And I am not about to begin now. But, Lulu, you cannot keep that animal! Just listen to those dogs!”

  The dogs had to be shut outside while the marigold cat ate breakfast. They were outraged. The old dog Sam squashed his nose into the crack under the door and bayed. The young dog Rocko leapt up and down outside the kitchen window. Every time he popped up he woofed one very loud, shocked woof. Every time he vanished he growled.

 
The noise was so much that nobody heard the postman knocking outside. So he pushed the door open instead and began to announce, “Your dogs are going crazy out here,” but the last two words were said from flat on the floor, as he was knocked down by Sam and Rocko, charging in to confront the marigold cat. They ran in a straight line. Over the postman. Over chairs. Barging under the table, shaking off the plates. Mellie shouted. Lulu dived to grab their collars. Nan waved her magazine over her head. The marigold cat swelled to an enormous size.

  Biff! went a beanbag paw. Once on Rocko’s nose. Once on Sam’s.

  “WOW!” yowled the dogs, and turned and ran, back the way they had come, knocking down more chairs, more plates, and Mellie as they passed. The postman was trampled again. Nan and the marigold cat remained standing.

  After that the dogs were miserable. They lay on the grass and held their noses and cried. Even when Lulu lured them in with biscuits they were not happy. They crawled past the marigold cat, shivering. The marigold cat sat on the bottom stair and washed her biffing paw thoughtfully when they passed.

  The dogs stopped wanting to go upstairs. They stopped trying to lick plates on the table. They stopped falling asleep in inconvenient places. They got in their baskets without being told. In their baskets they yowled and growled nonstop. Nothing anyone could do would comfort them.

  “Nan’s right,” said Mellie. “The marigold cat can’t stay here. It’s not fair to the poor dogs.”

  Lulu knew that was true. The dogs had no peace, and neither did the marigold cat. It was trying to make a flower collection, but wherever it went with its flowers, there was a fuss.

  In the living room was the parrot. He sat safe out of biffing range on top of his cage and shrieked and flapped at the poor marigold cat.

  It was not peaceful in the kitchen either with the dogs in their baskets, yowling and growling and holding their noses. And where the dogs did not go, Nan went.

  “Not in there please, your majesty!” she said when the marigold cat, looking for a little quiet, curled up in a marigold heap in the linen closet.