The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

by The New Yorker Magazine

  “Hey, don’t do that!” said Father Philbert. “You’ll never make a mouser out of her that way.”

  Father Burner, too, regarded the young missionary with disapproval.

  “Just this one piece,” said the young missionary. The meat was already in my mouth.

  “Well, watch it in the future,” said Father Philbert. It was the word “future” that worried me. Did it mean that he had arranged to cut off my sustenance in the kitchen too? Did it mean that until Father Malt returned I had to choose between mousing and fasting?

  I continued to think along these melancholy lines until the repast, which had never begun for me, ended for them. Then I whisked into the kitchen, where I received the usual bowl of milk. But whether the housekeeper, accustomed as she was to having me eat my main course at table, assumed there had been no change in my life, or was now acting under instructions from these villains, I don’t know. I was too sickened by their meanness to have any appetite. When the pastor’s away, the curates will play, I thought. On the whole I was feeling pretty glum.

  (illustration credit 1.4)

  It was our custom to have the main meal at noon on Sundays. I arrived early, before the others, hungrier than I’d been for as long as I could remember, and still I had little or no expectation of food at this table. I was there for one purpose—to assert myself—and possibly, where the young missionary was concerned, to incite sympathy for myself and contempt for my persecutors. By this time I knew that to be the name for them.

  They entered the dining room, just the two of them.

  “Where’s the kid?” asked Father Burner.

  “He’s not feeling well,” said Father Philbert.

  I was not surprised. They’d arranged between the two of them to have him say the six- and eleven-o’clock Masses, which meant, of course, that he’d fasted in the interval. I had not thought of him as the hardy type, either.

  “I’ll have the housekeeper take him some beef broth,” said Father Burner. Damned white of you, I was thinking, when he suddenly whirled and swept me off my chair. Then he picked it up and placed it against the wall. Then he went to the lower end of the table, removed his plate and silverware, and brought them to Father Malt’s place. Talking and fuming to himself, he sat down in Father Malt’s chair. I did not appear very brave, I fear, cowering under mine.

  Father Philbert, who had been watching with interest, now greeted the new order with a cheer. “Attaboy, Ernest!”

  Father Burner began to justify himself. “More light here,” he said, and added, “Cats kill birds,” and for some reason he was puffing.

  “If they’d just kill mice,” said Father Philbert, “they wouldn’t be so bad.” He had a one-track mind if I ever saw one.

  “Wonder how many that black devil’s caught in his time?” said Father Burner, airing a common prejudice against cats of my shade (though I do have a white collar). He looked over at me. “Ssssss,” he said. But I held my ground.

  “I’ll take a dog any day,” said the platitudinous Father Philbert.

  “Me, too.”

  After a bit, during which time they played hard with the roast, Father Philbert said, “How about taking her for a ride in the country?”

  “Hell,” said Father Burner. “He’d just come back.”

  “Not if we did it right, she wouldn’t.”

  “Look,” said Father Burner. “Some friends of mine dropped a cat off the high bridge in St. Paul. They saw him go under in mid-channel. I’m talking about the Mississippi, understand. Thought they’d never lay eyes on that animal again. That’s what they thought. He was back at the house before they were.” Father Burner paused—he could see that he was not convincing Father Philbert—and then he tried again. “That’s a fact, Father. They might’ve played a quick round of golf before they got back. Cat didn’t even look damp, they said. He’s still there. Case a lot like this. Except now they’re afraid of him.”

  To Father Burner’s displeasure, Father Philbert refused to be awed or even puzzled. He simply inquired: “But did they use a bag? Weights?”

  “Millstones,” snapped Father Burner. “Don’t quibble.”

  Then they fell to discussing the burial customs of gangsters—poured concrete and the rest—and became so engrossed in the matter that they forgot all about me.

  Over against the wall, I was quietly working up the courage to act against them. When I felt sufficiently lionhearted, I leaped up and occupied my chair. Expecting blows and vilification, I encountered only indifference. I saw then how far I’d come down in their estimation. Already the remembrance of things past—the disease of noble politicals in exile—was too strong in me, the hope of restoration unwarrantably faint.

  At the end of the meal, returning to me, Father Philbert remarked, “I think I know a better way.” Rising, he snatched the crucifix off the wall, passed it to a bewildered Father Burner, and, saying “Nice Kitty,” grabbed me behind the ears. “Hold it up to her,” said Father Philbert. Father Burner held the crucifix up to me. “See that?” said Father Philbert to my face. I miaowed. “Take that!” said Father Philbert, cuffing me. He pushed my face into the crucifix again. “See that?” he said again, but I knew what to expect next, and when he cuffed me, I went for his hand with my mouth, pinking him nicely on the wrist. Evidently Father Burner had begun to understand and appreciate the proceedings. Although I was in a good position to observe everything, I could not say as much for myself. “Association,” said Father Burner with mysterious satisfaction, almost with zest. He poked the crucifix at me. “If he’s just smart enough to react properly,” he said. “Oh, she’s plenty smart,” said Father Philbert, sucking his wrist and giving himself, I hoped, hydrophobia. He scuffed off one of his sandals for a paddle. Father Burner, fingering the crucifix nervously, inquired, “Sure it’s all right to go on with this thing?” “It’s the intention that counts in these things,” said Father Philbert. “Our motive is clear enough.” And they went at me again.

  After that first taste of the sandal in the dining room, I foolishly believed I would be safe as long as I stayed away from the table; there was something about my presence there, I thought, that brought out the beast in them—which is to say very nearly all that was in them. But they caught me in the upstairs hall the same evening, one brute thundering down upon me, the other sealing off my only avenue of escape. And this beating was worse than the first—preceded as it was by a short delay that I mistook for a reprieve until Father Burner, who had gone downstairs muttering something about “leaving no margin for error,” returned with the crucifix from the dining room, although we had them hanging all over the house. The young missionary, coming upon them while they were at me, turned away. “I wash my hands of it,” he said. I thought he might have done more.

  Out of mind, bruised of body, sick at heart, for two days and nights I held on, I know not how or why—unless I lived in hope of vengeance. I wanted simple justice, a large order in itself, but I would never have settled for that alone. I wanted nothing less than my revenge.

  I kept to the neighborhood, but avoided the rectory. I believed, of course, that their only strategy was to drive me away. I derived some little satisfaction from making myself scarce, for it was thus I deceived them into thinking their plan to banish me successful. But this was my single comfort during this hard time, and it was as nothing against their crimes.

  I spent the nights in the open fields. I reeled, dizzy with hunger, until I bagged an aged field mouse. It tasted bitter to me, this stale provender, and seemed, as I swallowed it, an ironic concession to the enemy. I vowed I’d starve before I ate another mouse. By way of retribution to myself, I stalked sparrows in the orchard—hating myself for it but persisting all the more when I thought of those bird-lovers, my persecutors, before whom I could stand and say in self-redemption, “You made me what I am now. You thrust the killer’s part upon me.” Fortunately, I did not flush a single sparrow. Since my motive was clear enough, however, I’d had the pleas
ure of sinning against them and their ideals, the pleasure without the feathers and mess.

  On Tuesday, the third day, all caution, I took up my post in the lilac bush beside the garage. Not until Father Malt returned, I knew, would I be safe in daylight. He arrived along about dinnertime, and I must say the very sight of him aroused a sentiment in me akin to human affection. The youngest usher, who must have had the afternoon off to meet him at the station in St. Paul, carried the new bag before him into the rectory. It was for me an act symbolic of the counter-revolution to come. I did not rush out from my hiding place, however. I had suffered too much to play the fool now. Instead I slipped into the kitchen by way of the flap in the screen door, which they had not thought to barricade. I waited under the stove for my moment, like an actor in the wings.

  Presently I heard them tramping into the dining room and seating themselves, and Father Malt’s voice saying, “I had a long talk with the Archbishop.” (I could almost hear Father Burner praying, Did he say anything about me?) And then, “Where’s Fritz?”

  “He hasn’t been around lately,” said Father Burner cunningly. He would not tell the truth and he would not tell a lie.

  “You know, there’s something mighty funny about that cat,” said Father Philbert. “We think she’s possessed.”

  I was astonished, and would have liked a moment to think it over, but by now I was already entering the room.

  “Possessed!” said Father Malt. “Aw, no!”

  “Ah, yes,” said Father Burner, going for the meat right away. “And good riddance.”

  And then I miaowed and they saw me.

  “Quick!” said Father Philbert, who made a nice recovery after involuntarily reaching for me and his sandal at the same time. Father Burner ran to the wall for the crucifix, which had been, until now, a mysterious and possibly blasphemous feature of my beatings—the crucifix held up to me by the one not scourging at the moment, as if it were the will behind my punishment. They had schooled me well, for even now, at the sight of the crucifix, an undeniable fear was rising in me. Father Burner handed it to Father Malt.

  “Now you’ll see,” said Father Philbert.

  “We’ll leave it up to you,” said Father Burner.

  I found now that I could not help myself. What followed was hidden from them—from human eyes. I gave myself over entirely to the fear they’d beaten into me, and in a moment, according to their plan, I was fleeing the crucifix as one truly possessed, out of the dining room and into the kitchen, and from there, blindly, along the house and through the shrubbery, ending in the street, where a powerful gray car ran over me—and where I gave up the old ghost for a new one.

  Simultaneously, reborn, redeemed from my previous fear, identical with my former self, so far as they could see, and still in their midst, I padded up to Father Malt—he still sat gripping the crucifix—and jumped into his lap. I heard the young missionary arriving from an errand in Father Philbert’s brother’s car, late for dinner he thought, but just in time to see the stricken look I saw coming into the eyes of my persecutors. This look alone made up for everything I’d suffered at their hands. Purring now, I was rubbing up against the crucifix, myself effecting my utter revenge.

  “What have we done?” cried Father Philbert. He was basically an emotional dolt and would have voted then for my canonization.

  “I ran over a cat!” said the young missionary excitedly. “I’d swear it was this one. When I looked, there was nothing there!”

  “Better go upstairs and rest,” growled Father Burner. He sat down—it was good to see him in his proper spot at the low end of the table—as if to wait a long time, or so it seemed to me. I found myself wondering if I could possibly bring about his transfer to another parish—one where they had a devil for a pastor and several assistants, where he would be able to start at the bottom again.

  But first things first, I always say, and all in good season, for now Father Malt himself was drawing my chair up to the table, restoring me to my rightful place.

  | 1950 |

  Click here for hi-res image.

  THE CASE OF DIMITY ANN

  Fiction

  * * *

  JAMES THURBER

  When the last guests left, after a party that had begun with early cocktails, proceeded gaily through wine at dinner, and then liqueurs and highballs, the Ridgeways stood in the open doorway of their house and watched the Bennetts’ Buick flash its headlights at the turn of the driveway and disappear down the road.

  “Let’s have a nightcat,” Ridgeway said. “I say ‘cat’ because nobody ever talked about cats the way Bennett talked about cats tonight. All I can think of is nightcat, hubcat, foolscat, freshman cat—I can’t understand a cat man like that,” he finished with a snarl.

  Alice didn’t like the snarl, which boded more Scotch, and she said, “I think I’ll go to bed. It’s after two,” but she could see it wouldn’t work. “I’ll finish the one I have,” she said quickly. “Then I’m going to bed.” She hurriedly led the way back to the living room, as if she wanted to get the nightcap over with.

  “Wives always tell their husbands where they’re going,” Ridgeway said sulkily. “ ‘I’m going to bed.’ ‘I’m going to put my foot down.’ ‘I’m going to tell you something.’ ‘I’m going crazy.’ That puffball must have seventy-five cats.”

  Alice’s highball glass, which was almost full, stood on the table by her chair. Mrs. Bennett had noticed when her hostess stopped drinking, with a kind of obvious quietness, twenty minutes before, and she had begun to remind Mr. Bennett of the hour, but the cat man was deep in a story about Alex, one of his Persians, and had to finish it. It seemed that Alex, who was as smart as a human being, could tell time, liked imported Chianti, and often made a certain music box play by lifting its lid with one paw. “Daintily, I suppose,” Ridgeway had put in evilly, and when Bennett said “I beg your pardon?,” his wife had got to her feet. “Sorry you have to go,” Ridgeway had told him, rising from his chair. “I was just reminded of a cat my first wife had, which I used to tie up.” The women had intervened with a flurry of parting talk, and the Bennetts managed to get away without hearing about what Ridgeway had done to the first Mrs. Ridgeway’s cat.

  “You need some ice,” Ridgeway said, and he got two lumps from the bucket on the bar and dropped them into Alice’s glass. “I’ll never forget Percy, one of my tomcats,” he said mockingly. “He was smarter than a human being. He could whistle between his teeth, often winked, as God is my judge, and once, if my memory serves, killed a meter reader.” He drank what had been left of his own highball and walked to the bar.

  Knowing the significance of his various gaits, as well as the implications of his gestures and inflections late at night, Alice figured that if he had two more drinks, he would be up till dawn. “Not too heavy,” she said. “It’s almost three.”

  He poured a stiff drink, talking with his back turned. “Moriarty, another of my tomcats,” he said, “could use an eyecup, and often closed the lid of the music box, thus putting a stop to ‘Do Ye Ken John Whoozis?’ What happened to that big slob in his infancy that made him cat-foolish the rest of his life?” He dropped into his chair, tugged at a lock of his hair with his left hand, and ran his lower lip over the upper one. This usually meant that he was about to attack her old beaux, particularly one with the aggravating name of Rupert Llewellyn. Rupert had once sent Alice a volume of Emily Dickinson with the inscription: “This, when so much that is lovely has gone.”

  “What was it you did to Lydia’s cat?” she asked hastily.

  He clutched more hair in his left hand and gestured with his glass. “ ‘This, when all that was lovely is gone,’ ” he said in a jeering falsetto.

  Alice twisted in her chair. “You’ve got it wrong,” she said. “You always get it wrong.”

  He struck a match indolently, and slowly lighted a cigarette. “I don’t care how it goes,” he said. “I have no desire to be an authority on Rupert of the Lacy Touch. All
I know is that a guy who writes ‘This comma’ is a lady cat.”

  Alice took a sip of her highball and said, “Well, speaking of cats, let’s get it over with. What did you do to Lydia’s?”

  He took in and exhaled a deep breath, and was about to begin his story when Alice thought she heard something and exclaimed, “What was that?”

  He glared at her. “I never started a story in my life,” he said, “but what you heard something, or saw something, or remembered something. ‘I just remembered something’ has broken up more marriages than anything else.” Alice took a larger swallow of her drink. “And don’t keep saying ‘Get it over with.’ What the hell kind of attention is that, anyway?” he demanded.

  Alice gave him her cool smile and said, “I am all ears.”

  “The cat’s name was Dimity Ann,” he began, “and I used to tie it up in the cord of my dressing gown to see how long it would take to get out. I never hurt the cat. The trouble was that I never told Lydia about it, and if I tied that cat up once, I tied it up a hundred times. I was going to tell Lydia about it,” he went on. “I was going to say, ‘Lydia, I keep tying the cat up all the time, if you want to know,’ but I never did.”

  Alice sat forward in her chair. “Didn’t you do anything about it?” she asked. “I mean didn’t you talk to anybody?”