The Catlady

by Dick King-Smith

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  Chapter One

  On the morning of January 22, 1901, Muriel Ponsonby had, living in her house, sixteen cats (including kittens). By the evening of that day, another litter of kittens had been born, bringing the total to a round twenty.

  This event was, as usual, recorded in a large book titled BIRTHDAY BOOK (CATS ONLY).

  Miss Ponsonby, it should be explained, was an elderly lady living alone in a large country house that had belonged to her parents. Because she had always looked after them, she had never married, and after their deaths she had allowed her liking for cats full rein. To be sure, she gave away some of the many kittens that appeared, but nevertheless Ponsonby Place—for this was the name of the family home—was always swarming with cats.

  Miss Ponsonby kept herself to herself and did not mix much with the local villagers, save to go now and then to the shop to buy provisions for herself and the cats. Most felt she was harmless, a rather sweet old lady, but there were some who said she was a witch. Partly because of this, she was known to one and all as “the Catlady.”

  In fact, she was not a witch but simply a somewhat strange old woman with odd habits.

  For example, she talked constantly throughout the day—to herself, a listener might have thought. But this was no sign of madness. She was, of course, talking to her cats, and they talked back. Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby and his wife had always addressed their daughter by a shortened version of her Christian name, Muriel, and all her cats used this. When spoken to, they would reply,“Mu! Mu! Mu!”

  Many would have found it odd to discover that she took all her meals with her cats. The long refectory table in the great dining room was laid with a bowl for each adult cat and any kittens old enough to jump up on it, and the Catlady would sit at the head with her own bowl before her.

  To be sure, she used a knife and fork and spoon, and afterward wiped her lips with a napkin while the rest cleaned their faces with their paws. But on occasion, so as not to seem standoffish, she would fill a bowl with milk and lap from it.

  At nighttime she was kept very comfortable, especially in the winter, for all those cats who wished—and many did—slept on her bed, providing her with a warm, furry bedspread.

  With her rather sharp features, green eyes, and gray hair tied back to show her somewhat pointed ears, Muriel Ponsonby looked much like a giant cat as she lay stretched beneath the purring throng.

  Few people knew of her eating habits, for she had no servants, and only the doctor, called on a rare occasion when she was confined to bed, had ever seen the cat blanket. But no one at all knew the strangest thing about Miss Ponsonby, which was that she was a firm believer in reincarnation.

  As a simple soldier, her father, who had served in the army in India, thought that the idea of reincarnation was a lot of nonsense, but he had talked about it to his daughter when she was a child. As she grew older, Muriel came to believe, as Hindus do, that when a person dies, he or she is reborn in another body, and not necessarily a human one. She was sure that some of her feline companions had once been people she knew. Thus among her cats there was a Percival (her late father, she was certain, just the same whiskers), a Florence (her late mother), a Rupert and a Madeleine (cousins), a Walter and a Beatrice (uncle and aunt), as well as some newly departed friends. Ethel Simmons, Margaret Maitland, and Edith Wilson (two tabbies and a black), all old school friends of hers, had reappeared in feline form.

  It was to these nine cats that Muriel Ponsonby chiefly spoke, and they replied by making typical cat noises like meowing and purring. All were delighted to be living in comfort in Ponsonby Place, in the care of a human whom they had, in their previous lives, known and loved.

  Percival and Florence were, of course, particularly pleased at how well their only daughter had turned out.

  “How fortunate we are, my dear,” the Colonel said to his wife,“to be looked after by Muriel in our old age.”

  “Old age?” said Florence. “I think you tend to forget, Percival, that we have been reincarnated into new bodies and that ours are now comparatively young.”

  “You are right, of course, Florence dear,” Percival replied. “Why, we have our new lives ahead of us.”

  “And possibly other lives,” said Florence.

  “What do you mean?”

  Florence rubbed her face against her husband's luxuriant whiskers. “We might have babies,” she said.

  Of course, not all the kittens born in Ponsonby Place were reincarnations of human beings. Most were simply ordinary kittens born to ordinary cats and were given names like Tibbles or Fluff. The Catlady could tell the difference merely by looking into their eyes once they were opened, and until this happened she did not attempt to name them.

  So it was not for ten days that she examined the four kittens born on January 22, 1901, the very day upon which Queen Victoria had died. Three of the kittens were tabbies, the fourth a ginger.

  The Catlady picked up the tabbies first, looking to see what sex each was and then peering into its newly opened eyes.

  “You're a tom,” she said three times, and, again three times,“Sorry, dear, you're only a cat.”

  But when she came to the fourth kitten, a small and dumpy one, expecting it to be another tom—for ginger kittens usually were—she found it to be a queen, as female cats are called. Then she looked into its eyes and caught her breath.

  “Not just a queen,” said the Catlady in a hoarse whisper,“but the Queen!”

  Reverently, she placed the ginger kitten back in its nest.“Oh, Your Majesty!” she said. “Reborn on the day you died! To think that you have come to grace my house!” And awkwardly, for she was not as young as she had been, she dropped a curtsy.

  “Your humble servant, ma'am,” said the Catlady, and retired from the room, backward.

  Chapter Two

  Hastily, the Catlady made her way from the room in the East Wing where this latest litter of kittens had been born to the principal bedroom of Ponsonby Place. It was a spacious chamber where her parents had slept in their lifetime—their previous lifetime, that is—and that they, in their reborn shapes, still naturally occupied. Once the Colonel had been a fiery old soldier and his wife a bit of a battle-ax, and now no other cat ever dared cross this threshold.

  The Catlady found them lying side by side in the middle of the great four-poster bed. Percival had been reincarnated as a white kitten that had grown into a very large and fat cat. His sweeping whiskers aped the military mustache of the human Percival. Florence was a tortoiseshell with just the same small, dark eyes that had once glinted behind Lady Ponsonby's pincenez.

  “Papa! Mama!” cried the Catlady excitedly (she could never bring herself to address them by their first names). At the sound of her voice, they yawned an
d stretched themselves upon the fine silken bedspread with its pattern of damask roses, which was now much torn by sharp claws and dirtied by muddy feet.

  “What do you think!” went on the Catlady.“Our dear departed Queen is come to stay! Edward VII may now be King of England, but here at Ponsonby Place Victoria still reigns!”

  “Mu,” said Percival in a bored voice, and Florence echoed,“Mu.”And they climbed off the four-poster and made their way down the curving staircase toward the dining room, for it was time for tea.

  How I wish Mama and Papa were still able to speak the Queen's English—the King's English, I should say, mused the Catlady as, in the huge stone-flagged kitchen, she set about the task of filling a large number of bowls with a mixture of fish heads and boiled rabbit and ox liver. For that matter, I wish that those others that have been reborn could speak too. How nice it would be to talk over old times with Uncle Walter and Aunt Beatrice or chat about school days with Ethel or one of the other girls.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud, impatient meowing from the waiting cats.

  The Catlady sighed. “Coming, dears!” she called.

  She sat at the head of the table, nibbling a biscuit. Later, when all had been cleared away and washed up, she would make herself a nice cup of tea, but at that moment she realized for the first time that she was not only lonely for human conversation but that she was tired.

  The older I get, she thought, the more cats and so the more work I have, and it'll be worse soon. Both Cousin Madeleine and Edith Wilson are pregnant.

  By the time she got to bed that night (after paying her respects to the infant Queen Victoria), the Catlady had come to a decision. “There's only one thing for it, dears,” she said to the patchwork quilt of different-colored cats that covered her. “I shall have to get help.”

  The next day she composed an advertisement to be placed in the local newspaper, the Dummerset Chronicle. It was very short. It said:

  For some days the Catlady waited, rather nervously, for replies. She had been a recluse for so many years now that she was not looking forward to the ordeal of interviewing a whole string of strange people.

  She need not have worried. As soon as the locals of Dumpton Muddicorum read the “Situations Vacant” in the Dummerset Chronicle, they said to each other, “Look at this, then! It's the old Catlady, advertising for home help. What a job, eh? Great rambling place, crawling with cats, and stinking of them too, no doubt. And as for her, well, if she ain't a witch she's as mad as a hatter! Anyone who applies for that needs their heads seen to.”

  And no one did.

  Muriel Ponsonby did not renew the advertisement. Perhaps it's just as well, she thought. I probably wouldn't have got on with the person. I'll just have to manage somehow.

  Nonetheless, when shopping in the village, she did ask the shopkeepers if they knew of anyone suitable, but none of them did.

  “Not at the moment, madam,” said the butcher, tipping his straw hat to her, “but I'll be sure to let you know if I hear of anyone.” And the others replied in the same vein. They winked at other customers when she had left their shops, and the customers smiled and shook their heads, watching her pedal rather shakily away on her tall black bicycle with the big wicker basket on the handlebars.

  Poor old dear, they thought. She needs some help, no doubt about that, but she'll be lucky to get anyone. Shame, really, she's a nice old thing.

  As for the village children, they sniggered behind their hands. “It's that old Catlady!” they whispered. And when she had gone by, they curled their fingers like claws and hissed and catcalled, pretending to scratch one another.

  The weeks went by, and Cousin Madeleine and Edith Wilson both gave birth, one to four and one to six kittens. These were just ordinary kittens (for no one among the Catlady's family or friends had died), but with a total now of thirty animals in her house, she found herself wishing very much that someone— anyone—had answered that advertisement.

  By now the little tubby ginger female that was, its owner knew beyond doubt, the reincarnation of the late great Queen was weaned. The Catlady found that, try as she would to treat all her animals alike, this one had already become special. She took to carrying her about and had at long last decided what to call her.

  After the first shock of finding who was within the little furry body, she had very gradually given up treating this kitten with such exaggerated respect. She stopped curtsying to it and backing out of the room. From first addressing it as “Your Majesty,” she had then progressed to “Victoria” and later, so familiar did she now feel with this royal personage, to “Vicky.”

  The other cats, incidentally, on learning from the ginger kitten who she had been in her previous incarnation, treated her with much respect—Percival especially so, as in his former shape, his bravery in India had earned him the Victoria Cross.

  One winter's day, when the snow lay deep around Ponsonby Place, there was a knocking on the great front door, and the Catlady went to see who it could be, Vicky perched upon her shoulder.

  Muriel opened the door, expecting the postman, for no one else usually came all the way up the long drive to the house. But it wasn't the postman. Standing on the steps outside was a young girl, poorly clad and shivering with cold.

  Though on the whole the Catlady preferred cats to people, she was of a kindly nature, and now she did not hesitate.“Come in! Come in!” she cried. “You'll catch your death, whoever you are. Come, follow me, I have a good fire in the drawing room.” As the girl followed her across the vast, echoing hall, a host of cats watched curiously from doorway and stairway.

  “Here, sit by the fire and warm yourself,” said the Catlady, “and I will go and make you a hot drink.”

  When she had done so and the girl had drunk and some color had come back into her pinched face, the Catlady said,“Now tell me, what can I do for you?”

  As she said this, it occurred to her that perhaps the girl had come in answer to that old advertisement in the Dummerset Chronicle. I rather hope not, the Catlady said to herself. This is not the sort of person I had in mind. Not only is she badly dressed but her clothes are dirty, with bits of straw sticking to them.

  The Catlady's face must have shown her distaste, for the girl stood up and said, “I won't trouble you any longer, madam. I'll be on my way now, and thank you for your kindness.”

  She spoke with a Dummerset accent. A local girl, thought the Catlady. “Wait a moment,” she said. “You knocked on my door, so you must tell me what you wanted.”

  “I saw your lights,” said the girl, “and what with the snow … and I was fair wore out … and I hadn't eaten for quite a while …I just couldn't go any further.”

  “And you're not going any further now,” said the Catlady decidedly.“Sit down again. I'll fetch you some food.”

  Chapter Three

  Muriel Ponsonby was not particularly interested in food. As long as her cats were well fed, she herself was content with very simple fare, and she seldom kept much in the house.

  Now, however, she was not long in providing some good hot soup and some bread and cheese for the young stranger, and not until the girl had finished eating did she press her further.

  “Now tell me your name.”

  “If you please, madam,” said the girl,“my name is Mary Nutt.”

  “But tell me, Mary,” said the Catlady, “where are your parents?” Mary's not very old, she thought. Fourteen, perhaps?

  “Dead,” Mary replied.

  “Both?”

  “Yes, madam. Mother died a month ago, and my father, he was killed in South Africa, fighting the Boers. He was a soldier, my dad was, a soldier of the Queen.”

  At this last word, Vicky jumped up onto the girl's lap, and Mary stroked her and added,“And the Queen's dead too now.”

  Yes and no, said the Catlady to herself.

  To Mary she said, “I am very sorry for you. My father is … that is to say, was … a soldier.”

  An
d now he's a white cat, she thought.

  “Thank you, madam,” said Mary Nutt. “The fact is that since Mother died, I've had nowhere to live. These last weeks I've just just been wandering about the countryside, sleeping in haystacks, as you can see, with no food to speak of, for I've no money. That was the first good meal I've had for many a day, and I thank you for your kindness.”

  This telling of her troubles and the sight of Vicky snuggled down on the girl's lap would probably have been enough to make up the Catlady's mind anyway. But then something happened that absolutely decided her.

  In through the drawing room door marched the white cat Percival, straight up to the girl, and he began to rub himself against her legs, purring like mad.

  Mary Nutt put out a hand to stroke him. “Isn't he handsome!” she said.

  “You like cats, do you?” asked the Colonel's daughter.

  “Oh yes!” replied the daughter of a trooper.

  The Catlady looked at her, stroking with one hand Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby and with the other cuddling Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Empress of India, and any doubts vanished.“I hope,” she said,“that you will stay here with me, Mary, and help me to look after my family.”

  On that snowy day when Mary Nutt first set foot in Ponsonby Place, the house was as it had been for many years now. That is to say, the floors were dirty, the ceilings cobwebby, the furniture dusty, the chair covers grubby, and the windows smeary.

  The place was a paradise for cockroaches and wood lice and earwigs and beetles and even, in the damper parts, for snails (though mice had the sense to keep well away).

  On top of everything else, the whole house stank of cat.

  By springtime the change in Ponsonby Place was miraculous. The floors and the ceilings and the furniture were clean, the covers washed, the insects gone. If the Colonel and his lady could have been reincarnated in human rather than feline form, the house would have looked to them just as it had been in their day. To be sure, there was still a smell of cat, but, thanks to opening as many (clean) windows as possible when the weather allowed, it was much less strong now.