Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God

by Paul Gallico

  “She is innocent and good,” MacDhui repeated, “but quite mad—obsessed, I might almost say. Yes, that is the word, I think, obsessed rather than possessed. She believes that she can communicate with animals. It is true that she wields an extraordinary power over them, but this can be explained naturalistically. She professes likewise to speak with angels and hear their wings and voices.”

  Mr. Peddie reflected and then said, “You know, there once was a man by the name of Francis who paused by the roadside in the vicinity of Assisi and preached an entire sermon to the birds, asking them first to still their chatter, which they did, and no one thought it odd, either then or since. Francis considered the beasts of field, stream, and air his brothers and sisters, an opinion since concurred with by a great many men of science, the structural similarities being unavoidable—”

  Mr. MacDhui exploded, much to Peddie’s relief, for this calm, repressed MacDhui was unnatural. “Damn it, Angus, one can never pin you fellows down. You are slipperier than conger eels. You know very well that Lori lives an unnatural life, that, for whatever reason, she has abandoned reality to live in a world of her own creating, that—”

  “Oh yes, Andrew,” Peddie interrupted his friend. “You chaps have a convenient label for everything that doesn’t coincide with your definition of normal—neurasthenia, schizophrenia, psychosis, manic depression—and every one must fit into one or the other categories, including those who do genuinely hear the voice of God. You leave us believers little choice but to register at the nearest asylum.”

  The outburst unsettled MacDhui still further. “Then you are trying to tell me that you consider Lori sane?” he said with a touch of his old truculence, which Peddie welcomed.

  The minister arose and went to the window which looked out upon the neat, whitewashed church and the graveyard behind it, through whose sprouting of graying tombstones the blue of the loch could be glimpsed, and he thought carefully before replying. Then turning to his friend, he said, “If to love and communicate, or attempt to communicate with a supreme being, in any one of a hundred different ways, is mad, then nine tenths of the people inhabiting this globe are insane. Or let me put it this way: the great appeal of Jesus was his compassion. Two thousand years ago He introduced love, pity, and gentleness into a brutal and demented world. Yet that world has been steadily moving away from His kind of sanity ever since. Five hundred years ago Lori would have been considered a saint.”

  “Or a witch,” MacDhui added grimly, “as some call her even today.” The veterinary pursued his point again. “But if she were mad—or even only slightly deranged, a psychotic taking refuge in phantasy and escape from reality? There are some such, you know, for madness is not an invention, but an affliction—”

  Preddie said, “Yes, if she were indeed, then—?”

  “Well,” said MacDhui with a kind of desperation, “if she were—touched, or even as you say, a saint, dedicated and devoted, would it be a sin—”

  He broke off here, for he could not bring himself to confess to Peddie that he was so deeply in love with Lori that he could see no way out of his dilemma. One did not wed a madwoman—

  The stout little minister came away from his window, pointed a round, chubby finger at MacDhui’s breastbone and asked severely, “What have you to do with sin, Andrew MacDhui, and why should you who do not believe be concerned with it? Do you not know that sin is the peculiar privilege of the religious and one of the penalties connected with the life of an agnostic is that he can never enjoy it?”

  MacDhui asked uncertainly, “Are you joking with me Angus?”

  “Never less so! Don’t you see, my friend, that you are involving yourself in an unresolvable paradox? You are asking me whether it would be a sin to love and wish to espouse and have children by a woman you consider out of her mind. Do you not see that if you believed in God, you would not think Lori mad but only good, gentle and kind, a most dear and praiseworthy anachronism in a harsh and insensitive era?”

  MacDhui’s reply was a bellow. “God! God! Always God! Is there no escape from God?”

  Peddie replied ringingly, “There never has been, Andrew!” Then in milder tone he continued, “Do not be surprised that I mention Him. If you visit a psychiatrist you will hear of neuroses and libidos; a doctor will speak to you of glands and organs; a plumber hold forth about plungers and washers. Why should you be exercised when a minister speaks to you of God?”

  MacDhui said heavily and without choler, “You set me an impossible task, Angus.”

  “Do I? I have not that feeling. You and Lori each inhabit the extreme and far outer edges of your separate worlds. If both you and she were to move even slightly in the direction of the other—”

  “I tell you it is impossible. Did you know that she hears—voices?” MacDhui could not bring himself to say “heavenly voices,” but he could not keep his glance from turning momentarily aloft as he finished the query.

  Mr. Peddie looked the picture of innocence behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. “So did the Maid of Domremy!”

  MacDhui glared at him. The minister ignored the look and said, “Had it ever occurred to you that there might be voices to hear?”

  MacDhui arose and wandered over to the chessboard, where he idly lifted a few pieces. “Someone who manipulates us like these at His whim, or in accordance with some undisclosed rules of the game? No, no, Angus. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.” He turned toward the door, but before departing, said with genuine sadness and disappointment, “You have not helped me, Angus.”

  At his desk the little clergyman considered his friend’s accusation, searching his heart. Was there more he could have done or said? Was this the time? To Peddie there was no comfort to which humans could turn in time of travail but that of religion. What else was there in this world, into which he had looked so deeply, but darkness and despair? The dismal clank of the chains carried about by the agnostics had been ringing in his ears for years. A logical and philosophical man, some five thousand years of history and record of God’s manifestation of Himself and His Spirit to man appeared irrefutable. Yet he did not cite this to his friend. Instead he said, “I am sorry, Andrew. In the end you will help yourself. You will not find, you will be found, for that is the way it has always been. That which you will someday experience is not so much a faith or a belief in a myth or a series of myths, as a deep-seated feeling, a conviction that fills every corner of one’s being until there is no longer so much as an atom’s area of room for doubt. And to this conviction you can only help yourself. No one as yet has been able to explain a revelation or foresee the moment thereof.”

  MacDhui said, “I do not understand you.”

  Mr. Peddie sighed and said gently, “Well, then, do not try, Andrew. But let us each to our methods. You were upset before when I said that I would pray for Mary Ruadh, but you would not be were Dr. Strathsay to tell you that he meant to try out the effects of a new antibiotic on her. Yet in both cases conviction as to results have been obtained through experience and successful experiment.”

  MacDhui nodded slightly, but said no more and went out, closing the door softly enough behind him. Long after he had departed, the Reverend Mr. Peddie sat motionless at his desk, a small, silent, thoughtful figure, as he reflected whether he had done right or wrong and how difficult it was to know.

  For, while he was well aware of his Church’s attitude towards proselyting and the desirability of acquiring converts, he had his own concept of respect for his deity and His ability to look after His own affairs. While he kept his opinions to himself, he did not, in this modern world, hold with belaboring and persecuting agnostics into unwilling belief.

  And besides he was well aware, not only of the wellsprings of MacDhui’s atheism, but also of the fact that he had already abandoned it but could not yet bring himself to acknowledge it. He saw in MacDhui that same violent, childish nature exhibited by the Italian peasants of the Romagna, who, when crops failed or storms damaged their harvest, punishe
d their saints by removing them from their niches in the churches and banishing them to the cellar, awaiting a tangible demonstration of better behavior before restoring them.

  Knowing the vet’s background and early problems, he felt sure that at some time as a young man he had prayed, “Oh God, help me! Please let me be a doctor.” Well, God’s will had crossed his will and a MacDhui was not one to take this lying down. However much he might be longing for the comfort that address and communion might bring him, he was too stubborn, willful, aggressive, and bitter to acknowledge it.

  Sitting there, pulling at his lip, his short legs barely touching the ground, the little man felt almost certain that this was the key to MacDhui’s character. It was not so much that Peddie was afraid of losing MacDhui to God as to himself. The big man was in deep trouble. If the child never recovered her power of speech, if she were to die, he must inevitably face and bear the burden of his own guilt and be destroyed, unless help were forthcoming.

  Miserably Peddie reflected upon his own inadequacy. He did not doubt but that God would dispose of the matter as He saw fit. It was his own role in the curious drama that was sorely troubling him.

  2 2

  The three boys were sitting uneasily, straight-backed in a row in the waiting room, where there were several other clients with pets to be attended that morning. MacDhui recognized them the first time he thrust his head in through the door, a gesture which these days carried with it far less truculence than before. There was Wolf Cub Geordie McNabb squirming and fidgeting, lean Jamie Braid, the pipe sergeant’s son, looking both nervous and mournful, and the cool, handsome, quite self-contained Hughie Stirling, the only one of the three who seemed to be enjoying himself.

  There was obviously some sort of conspiracy afoot, for upon the appearance of the animal doctor, little Geordie and tall Jamie at once rolled their eyes nervously in the direction of Hughie Stirling to discover any signs of panic or inclination to fly in their leader. There was none. The handsome boy remained calm and steadfast.

  MacDhui himself was curious as to the nature of this delegation and the reason for it and when he had disposed of the last client he set Willie Bannock some work in the hospital section, opened the door to the waiting room, and called, “All right, lads. You may come in now.”

  They filed in behind Hughie Stirling solemnly and filled with so much import that it was threatening to spill over before MacDhui, seated at his old-fashioned roll-top desk in the corner by the window said, “Right. Now, out with it. What is it I can do for you?”

  The three ranged themselves in step-down row according to sizes like three organ pipes, and spokesman Hughie Stirling asked forthwith, “How is Mary Ruadh, sir? Is she better? And may we go and visit her, sir?”

  MacDhui suddenly felt his heart go out to the three. It was strange how one could come to regard people in an entirely different light within a few moments. He had seen the boys around town, knew vaguely who they were, but they had never pierced below the outer skin of his consciousness. Yet now they stood there suddenly as three friends.

  “Mary Ruadh is very ill,” he replied gravely. “Yes, you may go to pay her a visit. Perhaps it will cheer her up. It is good of you to think of her and to come here first to ask permission.”

  “We didna ken she was sae sick,” Jamie Braid intoned mournfully. “I have na’ laid eyes on her since the day o’ the burial—” He gulped and clamped his lips shut at a fierce nudge from Hughie.

  “Has she got another puss Baldrin?” Geordie asked.

  Gentler with the younger boy, Hughie merely laid a hand upon his shoulder and said, “Hush, Geordie. You’ll soon enough see.” Then to Mr. MacDhui he said, “It is said that she cannot speak any longer—even to—well, to us. Is this true, sir?”

  The veterinary felt the current of sympathy flowing strongly between himself and this boy and wondered whether this was a measure of his desperate longing to be one with and comprehend childhood, now that it was too late. There was something direct about the approach of the young to problems that he had never understood, a cutting of corners and the dismissal of the unessential.

  And yet, withal, he appreciated that the lad was showing a regard for his feelings and sensibilities he would not have credited to one of his age. It seemed somehow the first glimpse he had been permitted of the pity of the young for their more backward elders. A window had been opened onto a world where adults were discussed, plots were laid, plans hatched to get on with them in spite of their queer and often unjust behavior, or schemes thought out to circumvent their baser natures without hurting their feelings if possible, or getting into trouble.

  “Mary Ruadh has lost the power of speech,” he replied, “we hope only temporarily and that it will return. By all means go to see her and tell her what you have been doing, or things that might interest her. If—if by any chance Mary were to reply or speak to you, I wish that one of you would come here and notify me at once. I should be most grateful.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hughie Stirling said, “that we will. I’ve been sailing with Dad and we tipped over. I’ll tell her about that. Perhaps it will make her laugh.”

  Yet they made no move to leave and Mr. MacDhui was now convinced of something he had been suspecting, namely that there was yet another reason for the delegation.

  The vet felt a moment of resentment at such subterfuge and was seized with the impulse to bark angrily at them to come out with it. Nevertheless he restrained himself. There was that in the doleful countenance of Jamie Braid with which one could not be angry. Besides he was sure that at the first sign of his old choler all three, or certainly Jamie and Geordie would take to their heels. Curbing himself, he loaded a pipe in the interim and concentrated upon the handsome head and trim figure of the ringleader.

  “Sir,” Hughie Stirling asked, “may we speak to you about another matter?”

  With careful deliberation, MacDhui got his pipe glowing before replying through clouds of smoke, “Yes, yes.”

  “Sir,” Hughie Stirling began. “We’ve all done something that was wrong. But it was my fault,” he added quickly, with a side glance at his now uncomfortable companions. “I led them on. And besides, I had the money too.”

  “Ah,” said MacDhui. “I thought there was something else had you standing first on one leg and then the other. Been up to mischief, eh? I suppose you’ve damaged something. Well, then, make a clean breast of it—”

  “Oh no, sir, it wasn’t anything like that,” Hughie explained. “It’s something quite different. We—we went to see the gypsies last night.”

  Jamie Braid swallowed his Adam’s apple and said, “It was nae only Hughie’s fault. We were a’ keen to go.”

  “They beat the bear,” Geordie McNabb announced, and unaccountably tears gathered in his eyes and began to roll unchecked down his cheeks.

  “Ah,” commented Mr. MacDhui, to keep the ball moving, “so that’s it.” Though he did not yet understand at all.

  “You see,” Hughie explained, “it was forbidden. We had asked, but none of us were allowed to go. We’ll catch it at home if they ever find out.”

  MacDhui said, “And quite right too. That’s no place for youngsters,” and smoked on.

  “But you see, there was a performance. They give a performance, though it’s not official or the police would interfere. It’s almost like a circus. And they ride up and down bareback and pick up handkerchiefs off the ground and stand up on the backs of their horses and they have some dogs and monkeys that can do tricks, and a bear. Of course I’ve seen plenty of bears in zoos and I’ve been to the real circus in Edinburgh, but Jamie and Geordie had never seen a real live bear.”

  The story was developing, but the purpose behind this confession still defied MacDhui. When he remained silent, Hughie continued, “So then when my great-aunt Stuart came to visit and gave me a half crown, we had the money because you see I already had sixpence, and tickets were a shilling each. And so we went.”

  “It was awfu’
sir,” Jamie Braid said. “I wished sair I hadna gone.”

  “They beat the poor bear,” Geordie wailed, “and its nose was a’ bluggy and it lay down on the ground and cried.” The child commenced to weep in earnest until Hughie produced a pocket handkerchief, said, “Oh, come on, Geordie, be a man. It’s all over now and we’re doing something about it,” wiped the round face and got the nose blown. He turned then to the veterinary.

  “That was it, sir! That’s why we’ve come to you. They were horrid cruel. They beat the bear and the horses and the dogs and monkey too. There were only a few other people there to see the performance and they weren’t from the town. Perhaps that’s what made the gypsies angry. The bear isn’t much of a bear, sir, and when it wouldn’t dance they beat it with a chain.”

  MacDhui removed his pipe from his mouth. “They usually do, you know,” he said.

  Hughie nodded. “I’ve heard. But that wasn’t all, sir. There were other animals in cages in the dark. They were supposed to show them to us for our shilling, but they didn’t, because they were so angry that no more than a dozen people came to see their show. But afterward we sneaked around behind in the dark and snooped. Because we had paid our shilling each, and were entitled to, weren’t we?”

  MacDhui did not reply.

  “We couldn’t quite see what all of them were, but some of them were lying there in the dark just moaning and whimpering. And the smell was awful.”

  “I wouldna doot that yin skelpies practiced some kind of abominations upon the puir beasties,” Jamie Braid said, his long face set in folds of sadness.