Stray

by A. N. Wilson

  It was the usual ironical style in which we spoke to one another.

  ‘Probably something you ate,’ I said.

  ‘Probably,’ she smiled.

  ‘Anyway, you seem to have made some nice friends in there,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, they’ll do,’ she said. ‘When they learn to wash. Ouch! They can bite.’ And she sat up for a moment, and picked one away from her breast, lifted it up in her mouth and licked it all over. ‘What a shock you are going to have, little sir, when you open your eyes,’ said She to her kitten. ‘The world does look a very funny place, I can tell you that much.’

  For a minute or two she lay back again. This time her eyes were open, and she looked straight at me.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve missed you too,’ said I.

  ‘Come and see me,’ she said. ‘Often. I can’t get out at the moment, as you can see, I’m rather tied up. Ouch! All right then, if you insist, have some more milk,’ and she nudged the hungry little chap towards her nipple.

  In the next few weeks, I saw her as often as I could; but that was not nearly often enough. Probably for the best of reasons, human beings at Number Eighteen kept the bathroom door shut for most of the time, and discouraged visitors, whether human or feline. I could not tell whether they realized my case was different, and that I was not just ‘any old visitor’. So much of the time was spent making abortive visits to the house, and then pacing out again into the garden, having failed to see either her or the heirs.

  From occasional snatches of gossip from Bundle, or between the Upstairs Woman and Sally I gathered that the kittens were growing into strong, vigorous little beings.

  But there then followed a period when I neither saw them nor their mother. I suppose that by then the young ones were starting to scamper about, and it was not safe to leave the door of their room open. So Sally kept them shut up while she went off to work.

  I thought a lot about them at that time, and wondered what sort of life they were all going to have. How little I had known at their age of what the future held in store!

  Meanwhile, life in its humdrum way went on. I lurked about the street, getting on with things, until the time came for my beloved to be separated from her children. I knew that this would be painful for her (I remembered the miaowing of my own poor mother when she was separated from her kittens!). But the whole future together lay ahead; and that was really all that mattered to me. I did not imagine a future with the kittens. No cat that I know of lives in the human way, with parents and children and grandchildren, all growing up in the same house. And to judge by how little the human beings seem to enjoy that arrangement, this is probably just as well for us. No. The kittens must grow up and lead their own lives, and I could only hope that they would escape danger and cruelty.

  I had begun to think again of the time just after I escaped from the laboratory, and of that field, so full of mice and voles and other creatures. It had been, in so many ways, pleasanter than the town; and by now the corn would be growing again in the fields. We would set off in that direction when the time came. By day we would sleep together in the large old oak tree; when night came, what hunting there would be!

  I felt impatient for our new life to begin; and yet, because I was so certain that it would begin quite soon, I was able to wait. Being without her reminded me of how intensely boring life could be. What was there to do, except eat, and sniff about the place, and doze, and then eat something else? Once upon a time, I had found these activities ends in themselves. But no more. Now life only seemed to be interesting if I could share it with her. And she would come.

  Since I do not go in for the human habit of counting the days, I cannot tell you how long it was before she came. Sometimes I waited for her at the back door of Number Eighteen, or at our special place on the roof of the old garden shed. And sometimes I paced up and down the street at the front of her house, jumping in and out of the front gardens, and looking about for any small creatures who might lurk there. At other times, looking carefully both ways to avoid the engines of murder, I crossed the street and sat on the low wall and looked across at the door of Number Eighteen. And this was what I was doing when she took me by surprise.

  It was a misty, cold night, the sort of night when the very air makes your fur moist, and breath from your mouth and nostrils appears like smoke. And there I sat on the wall opposite, looking across at her house, and not thinking about anything in particular. Suddenly, from the shadows at the side of the house, she appeared. She did not see me at first. She was looking about in an agitated manner, and stealthily, as though she was not meant to be there. She looked tired and thin, and even a little haggard. The experience of nursing the kittens was evidently exhausting her. But when she jumped up on the crumbly brick pillar by the front of her house, I saw her in all her beauty by the light of the street lamp, and she seemed lovelier than ever. Perhaps now that she had had the kittens, her beauty was less formally perfect than when I first saw her. But she was, nevertheless, more beautiful. I cannot explain it to you. There was a new dignity about her. And the white of her fur, against its tabby markings, was so very white; and her eyes were so large and intelligently green. And then those eyes, which had been looking up and down the street with such a worried expression, gazed across and caught my own, and a smile of complete radiance came over her features.

  ‘I thought you’d gone off without me!’ she called across the street.

  ‘I thought you’d forgotten I existed!’ I called back, in our old mocking tone.

  ‘Oh, I’ve missed you!’ she called.

  ‘I’ve missed you!’ said I.

  And even as I said it, she was jumping down and bounding across the road. What happened next occurred in an instant, and yet I saw each separate part of the tragedy quite clearly as if it was being played out with excruciating slowness. I saw the headlights of the engine of murder, which seemed to come from nowhere out of the fog. I heard its murderous noise. I saw Her, with a look of heedless silly joy on her face as she ran towards me. I saw the engine of murder swerve, and heard the squeal of its brakes as it stopped. But the squeal of its brakes was deafened by another, more terrible squeal, and then there followed a yet more terrible silence. A man got out of the engine of murder. I can’t remember what idiot thing he said. Something like, ‘Blimey, I’ve run over a cat!’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said an idiot female voice from inside the engine, and I heard the voice with the real hatred of despair, and thought, How dare you be still alive, you worthless female fool – while She, She – is lying there. The man dragged the lifeless body to the side of the road, looked up and down the street anxiously, and then drove on. While all this happened, I had retreated to the shadows, but now I came out, and looked down on what lay in the gutter. A little blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and since that was the only sign of injury, it was impossible to believe that she was seriously hurt. By the light of the lamp, she looked so very very beautiful, lying there, but her bright green eyes now stared quite vacantly. I leant over her, and rubbed my nose against her face, but there was no response, no movement of any kind, no breath, no life. That terrible enemy which I shall never understand had taken away the creature I most loved in the world; taken her away for ever. I knew what had happened, and yet I did not know. I still allowed myself to think that it must all be some terrible game; that she would soon blink her eyes, and shake herself and laugh and we would scamper off together into the shadows. But now, the front door of Number Eighteen had opened, and there were high, sad human voices. Someone ran across the street and picked up what lay in the gutter. And I watched from the shadows as they carried her back into the house. Then I walked off slowly into the night.

  chapter twenty

  I badly needed a fight, but I bided my time. Slowly and carefully I chose my path through the foggy night until this street and everyone I knew here was far away. The further north you go the houses get bigger; the
steps up to the front doors are gentler; the lawns are wider. But the cats there are the same as they are everywhere; so, I dare say, are the idiot human beings.

  In a wide tree-lined street in this different suburb I got the fight I was looking for. I was following up my usual practice of hugging the very inner edge of the pavement, walking along the edge of a wall built garishly of red and blue bricks. Above the wall was a privet hedge so I could not see much of the house I was passing. But when the wall and the hedge stopped I came to a large open gate and a gravel drive where a couple of engines of murder were standing. And beneath one of these engines I saw a pair of bright malicious eyes. The eyes were looking me up and down. The possessor of the eyes was in a very distinct advantage since I could not see him but he could see me in the orange glare of the street light. I advanced a pace on to the gravel.

  The voice which came from beneath the car was sort of pseudo-posh. Although it was completely feline it had some of the pretentiousness which you would normally associate with our two-footed friends. There was a great deal of almost mewing and umming in his voice.

  ‘Mm, mm, and where do you suppose you’re going?’

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ I asked.

  ‘No mm mm...’ He was smirking at his own wit. ‘No hawkers, and no, mm, trespassers here. Thank you!’

  A maddening titter accompanied this drollery.

  ‘I assume you are talking to someone else, but all the same, I should like you to step out here,’ I said.

  ‘Oh dear! How very mm, mm, immoderate! I fear we cannot provide what you are obviously looking for...’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My dear fellow! Isn’t it mm, mm, obvious? A bath!’

  And he simpered – a parody of human laughter.

  If there is anything I hate in a cat it is gentility.

  ‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I should be most grateful if you would come out from under that contraption.’

  ‘Oh you would, would you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And might a cat ask why?’

  ‘Yes. I want to hit your stupid head.’

  As I had discerned he was a fool and he came out to rise to this challenge.

  ‘I say that’s really no way to speak to another mm, mm, chap,’ he said, as he stalked out from beneath the exhaust pipe. But I did not give him the chance to finish the sentence. It died on his lips as I cuffed him on the side of the head so vehemently that I sent him flying.

  He was a very well made white cat, almost my size. I suppose you think that I ought only to fight cats of my own size, but if I did that I should never fight anyone. Like the coward he was he jumped up quickly recovering from the blow, and ran up the front steps mewing and screaming to be let in.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ I said.

  I leapt up the steps after him and jumped at his throat. He was a good fighter when I forced him to it; and, with claws outstretched, he responded to my violent embrace. Clinging to each other with fury we rolled down the steps and sent three milk bottles to smithereens in the process.

  ‘Hawker, am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Trespasser, am I?’

  ‘Yes, you filthy...’

  ‘Filthy, am I?’

  ‘Yes!’

  For the moment he had the advantage. He shook himself free, punched me twice on the face and then jumped on my back. ‘A filthy trespassing hawker is just what you are. Filth, filth, filth!’ he squealed.

  ‘You don’t speak to me like that.’ By now my fury was total. I was a thing possessed. This was not fighting for territory or food or love. It was fighting purely for its own sake. It was simple, naked aggression. And the fight was good and hard and long. The house was dark behind us. No one seemed anxious to rescue my enemy. No human voice intruded upon the energy of the scene and no bucket of water ended it. I began to taste his blood on my lips and to be aware that I was tearing not only his fur but his very flesh. I was pretty much the worse for wear myself for my adversary gave very nearly as good as he got. But I was too big and strong for him. I could have killed him but I did not want to. As suddenly as the fight began, it ended. We had both had enough and he limped off to a flower bed and climbed a tree. It was a soft-barked cedar: about the easiest tree in the world to climb. I could have followed him but I could not be bothered. I did not even bother to snarl back when he called down from the branches over my head, ‘If you want to know what I think of you, I think you’re mm, mm, a howling cad!’

  I was not listening. In the next garden I had heard something that interested me and my ears had not played me false. It was the voice of a pretty little black piece.

  ‘Oh, you were brave!’

  And when I got closer, ‘Oh! You are wounded. Let me lick you better. Is that better? Is it, old hero?’ And it was.

  She kept me happy for half an hour, and then I limped off again to another garden and further adventures. Because it was so perishing cold there was not much in the way of game, and what there was had been scooped up by the wretched owls. But I managed to find a sort of hutch affair at the bottom of one of the gardens, where the door was loose on its latch; so that night I was rewarded with a rabbit supper.

  I suppose you think I was callous. This was the night when I had lost someone who was – well, as I’ve said – pretty special to me. And I spent it fighting and wenching and hunting. I dare say it was callous. I am simply telling you what I did. Nor, strangely, did I feel anything for a couple of days: feel anything about Her accident, that is to say. There was such absence of feeling that I began to think that I had dreamed the whole extraordinary story of our love. I just was not that sort of cat. I had been living a sort of fantasy. I did not actually care that she was dead at all.

  Besides, I had come to a really posh neighbourhood where the pickings and takings were wonderful. The two-footed family who had been fattening up the rabbit for me had also been keeping a couple of guinea-pigs as an entrée and very succulent they were. There were dustbins and larders a-plenty. And the female population kept one consoled. Thus I lived for three or four days and nights. And then, exhausted, I found myself somewhere to sleep in a broken-down wicker chair at the corner of someone’s shed and slept there among the cobwebs for many an hour. And it was when I woke from that sleep that my haunting sense of loss began. You know the way that when you wake from a really deep sleep you do not know quite where you are and all the memory gets fuddled and strange? I thought that I was waking up in ‘our’ garden shed; and my first thought on waking was that I must jump over the fence and see Her. I had even forgotten about the kittens. In that waking moment I was still stuck in the early days of our love; the happiest time, as I now think, of my whole life. And then, with hideous clarity, as I stood up, I remembered everything. I could not go next door to see Her because I was a mile away from her house and She was no longer there. The accident, and the sight of her beautiful staring features by the kerbstone, all came back to me. The memory of them was a torture. And I knew that life could never really be happy again.

  The desire just to see Her drove me wild. I knew that I couldn’t. I knew that the horrible Stillness had fallen upon her and Sally or the others would have got rid of the body somehow or another. I knew all that. But still, uppermost in my heart was the desire to see Her, to talk to her, to feel her close to me. Very faint in the afternoon sky, our Great Mother could just be seen, a little white disc against the pale grey.

  ‘If I could see her once,’ I prayed. ‘Just once.’ But I knew that it was an absurd desire which could never ever be granted. She was too good for this silly, filthy, two-footed world. But that was the place where I must drag out my pointless existence; pointless and miserable, without her.

  I could not be still once the memory of Her had returned. I was unable to sit or stand for a single moment. I paced the shed. Then I went out and paced the frosty lawn. I climbed a fence and then I jumped down again. I slithered under a hedge and back. It felt as though I
could not stop this idiot, manic activity. I started to eat less and all the chasing and pacing about exhausted me so that I had long unhappy patches of sleep at extraordinary times, like in the middle of the night, when I would normally never dream of sleeping. There was no remedy. And as far as I could see there was no likelihood of the painful memory ever getting better. Oh, I was a fool to think that I had been unhappy before I met Her! True, there had been unhappy moments and long spells of very great pain and fear and distress. But these bad moments had all been isolated ones. When the pain or the fear stopped, existence continued its colourless round. It was just going on in the background. I did not notice every passing minute. Nearly all the time just evaporated as I slouched about eating and biffing and chasing the females. At the time, I could not possibly have guessed that this – time passing without your noticing it – is the greatest possible blessing. For now, in this new phase of life, I found that I noticed every second which passed. And time itself seemed to be torturing me by passing so slowly. And there was nothing worth living for.

  I tried to be cynical. (Here was a turn-up for the books! Trying to be cynical! Normally it was my nature to be so.) I tried to tell myself that I had arrived in a very posh neighbourhood where the pickings were good and you could get your kip undisturbed. Since life was now a pointless extension of conscious misery the least I could do was to make myself comfortable, to eat well, to sleep well and to enjoy what diversions the kitchens and gardens of this posh suburb had to offer. And perhaps if I had not felt so tired and so funny about food this scheme might have worked. It might have worked if I was not so uncommonly agitated, pacing about, as the two-footers say, like a cat on hot bricks. Horrible expression that Jim Harbottle was very fond of using.

  The trouble was I was not in the mood to enjoy anything. And although I tried to make some sort of life for myself in that suburb, it was no use. I knew that I wanted to get back to my old haunts where I had known happiness with Her. I even had this stupid thought that if I got back to the spot where the accident happened, I might find that it had been all some kind of mistake; that she was really alive and waiting for me... I knew this was nonsense, I knew it would never happen and yet to all my other sorrows there was the added sorrow of false hope that it might be true. That was the sort of state I was in.