Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (2 page)

His scrutiny completed, MacDhui now pointed his beard at old, fat Mrs. Laggan and jerked with his head in the direction of his office. She gave a little bleat of fright, picked Rabbie up out of her lap, and arose painfully, holding him in her arms, where he lay on his back, forepaws bent limply, watery eyes revolving. He resembled an overstuffed black and gray porker and he wheezed at every breath like a catarrhal old man snoring.

Mr. Angus Peddie pulled in his feet to let her by and gave her a warm, cherubic smile of encouragement, for he was the very opposite of the figure that a dour Scots churchman is supposed to resemble. He was short, inclined to stoutness, sweet-natured, and extraordinarily vital. He had a round, dimpled face and mischievous eyes and smile, which, however, could instantly express the deepest sympathy, penetrating understanding, and concern.

Peddie’s pug dog, who, as well as suffering from chronic indigestion, staggered under the name of Fin de Siècle, an indication of the kind of humor one might be expected to encounter in the large Peddie family, lay likewise wheezing in the ministers lap. Peddie lifted him into a sitting position so that he could better see Mrs. Laggan and her sick dog go by. He said, “That’s Mrs. Laggan’s Rabbie, Fin. The poor wee thing isn’t feeling well just now.” The rolling eyes of the two dogs met for a moment in melancholy exchange.

Mrs. Laggan followed Mr. MacDhui into the examining room of the surgery and deposited Rabbie on his back upon the long, white-enameled examining table, where he remained, his forepaws still limp and his breath coming in difficult gasps.

The veterinarian lifted the lip of the animal, glanced at its teeth, pulled down its eyelids, and placed one hand for a moment upon its heaving belly. “How old is this dog?” he asked.

Mrs. Laggan, traditionally dressed as became a respectable widow, in rusty black with a Paisley shawl over her shoulders, seemed to shrink inside her clothes. “Fifteen years and a bit,” she replied. “Well, fourteen, since he’s been grown from the wee pup he was the day I got him,” she added, as though by quickly subtracting a year from his age she might lure fate into permitting him to remain a year longer. Fifteen was very old for a dog. With fourteen there was always hope they might live to be fifteen, like Mrs. Campbell’s old sheep dog, which was actually going on sixteen.

The veterinarian nodded, glanced perfunctorily at the dog again, and said, “He ought to be put out of his misery. You can see how bad his asthma is. He can hardly breathe.” He picked the dog up and set him on his feet on the floor, where he promptly collapsed onto his belly with his chin flat on the floor and his eyes turned up adoringly to the person of Mrs. Laggan. “Or walk,” concluded MacDhui.

The widow had many chins. Fear set them all to quivering. “Put him away? Put the puir beastie to death? But whatever should I do then when he’s all I’ve got in this world? We’ve been together for fifteen years now, and me a lonely widow for twenty-five. What would I do without Rabbie?”

“Get another dog,” MacDhui replied. “It shouldn’t be difficult. The village is full of them.”

“Och, how can ye speak so? It would no’ be Rabbie. Can ye not be giving him a wee bit o’ medicine to tide him over until he gets well? He’s been a very healthy dog.”

Animals, reflected Mr. MacDhui, were never a problem; it was the sentimentality of their owners that created all the difficulties. “The dog must die soon,” he said. “He is very old and very ill. Anyone with half an eye can see that his life has become a burden to him and that he is suffering. If I gave him some medicine, you would be back here within a fortnight. It might prolong his life for a month, at the most six months. I am a busy man,” he concluded, but then added more gently, “It would be kinder to make an end to him.”

The quivering of her chins now had spread to her small mouth, as Mrs. Laggan looked fearfully into the day that would be without Rabbie; no one to talk to, no one to whose breathing she would hearken whilest she had her evening cup of tea, or lay in bed at night. She said what came into her head, but not what was bursting her heart. “The coostomers who come to my shop will miss Rabbie sore if he’s no’ there for them to be stepping over.” But she was meaning, “I’m an old woman. I have not many days left myself. I am lonely. The dog has been my companion and my comfort for so long. He and I know one another’s ways so well.”

“Yes, yes, Mrs. Laggan, no doubt. But you must make up your mind, for I have other patients waiting.”

Mrs. Laggan looked uneasily to the big, vital man with the red mustache and beard. “I suppose I should no’ be selfish if puir Rabbie is suffering . . .”

Mr. MacDhui did not reply, but sat waiting.

Life without Rabbie—the once cold nose pressed against her hand, the edge of pink tongue that protruded when he was contemplative, his great sigh of contentment when he was fed full—but above all his presence; Rabbie always within sight, sound, or touch. Old dogs must die; old people must die. She was minded to plead for the bit of medicine, for another month, a week, a day more with Rabbie, but she was rushed and nervous and fearful. And so she said, “Ye would be very gentle with him—”

MacDhui sighed with impatient relief. “He will not feel a thing, I assure you.” He arose. “I think you are doing what is right, Mrs. Laggan.”

“Very well then. Make away with him. What will it be I’ll be owing you?”

The veterinarian had a moment’s pang brought on by the sight of the trembling lips and chins and cursed himself for it. “There will be no charge,” he said curtly.

The widow Laggan regained sudden control of her face and her dignity, though her eyes were wet. “I’ll be paying for your services—”

“Two shillings then—”

She paid out of a small black purse, setting the florin onto his desk with a snap that caused Rabbie to prick up his graying ears for a moment. Without another glance at her oldest and dearest friend, Mrs. Laggan made for the door. She held herself as proudly and erectly as she could, for she would not be a fat old woman dissolving into grief before this hard man. She bore up to pass through and close it behind her.

Thin women in sorrow have both the faces and figures for bleakness and woe, but there is nothing quite as futile and shaking as the aspect of a fat woman in affliction. The small mouth unable to form into the classic lines of tragedy can but purse and quiver. Grief is bowed, but fat keeps the stout woman’s curves constant, except that the flesh suddenly grays and looks as though the juices of life had gone out of it for all its roundness.

When the widow Laggan emerged from the surgery and entered the waiting room once more, all eyes were turned upon her, and the Reverend Peddie recognized the symptoms at once and got up and went to her, crying, “Oh dear— Don’t say that something ill has befallen Rabbie. Is he to remain in hospital?” And then he echoed the prior remarks of the widow. “Why, whatever would the town do without the presence of Rabbie across the sill?”

Safe within the circle of her own people, Mrs. Laggan could let the tears flow freely as she told of the sentence passed upon her friend. “Th’ doctor said ’twould be better if he were to be put away just now. Och, why must those we love always go and we remain behind? Twill no’ be the same any more wi’out Rabbie. I doubt not I’ll be following him soon and ’twill be a’ for the best.” She dabbed at her eyes with a cotton handkerchief and essayed a smile. “Do ye remember how Rabbie wud block the door and all the gentry would raise up their knees to pass ower him?”

It was so small a thing that had happened, yet the waiting-room was stiff with the tragedy of it, and Mr. Peddie felt the horror clamped like a hand about his heart, squeezing that member until it felt in some similar measure the pain that was oppressing the widow Laggan. Mr. Peddie had one of those awful moments, to which he was prone, when he could not decide what it was that God would wish him to do, what God Himself would do, were He to stand there with them all in the presence of the agony of the widow Laggan.

For to Mr. Angus Peddie there was neither gloom nor sourness nor melancholy about either the God or the religion he served. Creation and the world created, along with the Creator, was a perpetual joy to him, and his mission seemed to be to see that his flock appreciated and was properly grateful for all the wonders and beauties of nature, man, and beast as well as the great and marvelous unexplained mysteries of the universe. He did not try to explain God, the Father, or the Son, but worked to help his people love and enjoy Him. A man of unusual tolerance and breadth of vision, he believed that man could deny God for a time, but not forever, since God was so manifest in everything that lived and breathed, in things both animate and inanimate, that He was universal and hence undeniable.

And yet, human being that he was, he felt the panic when his God chose to turn his back upon the likes of the widow Laggan and his own warm heart was riven with pity for her plight.

There stood a weeping fat woman dabbing at her eyes with a small cloth, the tears straggling unevenly over the curves of her cheeks and her triple chins quaking and jouncing. And in a moment she would walk out of there and begin to die.

Peddie felt the strong push of the impulse to rush into the surgery of Mr. MacDhui, crying, “Stop Andrew! Don’t kill the animal. Let it live out its time. Who are you, who hate Him, to play God? But he resisted it. What right had he to interfere? MacDhui knew his business, and veterinarians, just as doctors, frequently had to make decisions and break news that was painful to people, except that to the vet was sometimes given the additional mercy of destruction to save pain and suffering . . .

Mrs. Laggan said once more, speaking as though to herself, “ ’Twill no’ be the same wi’out Rabbie," and went out. Mr. MacDhui’s beard came in through the door again and he stood there a moment regarding them all truculently, as though experiencing some remnant of the scene that had just taken place and the sympathy engendered for the old woman.

He asked, “Who’s next?" and his countenance took on even a greater expression of distaste when the Glasgow builder’s wife with the Yorkshire terrier half arose irresolutely from the hard, waiting-room chair and the dog gave a shrill yelp of terror.

A small voice said, “Please sir, could you spare a moment?"

Someone remarked, “It’s little Geordie McNabb, the draper’s boy."

Geordie was eight. He wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt and the kerchief of the Scout Wolf Cubs. He had a round, solemn face with dark hair and eyes and a curiously Chinesey cast of countenance. In his grubby hands he clasped a box, and in the box palpitatingly reposed his good deed for that day. MacDhui strode over to him overpoweringly, overtoweringly, looming over him like a red Magog, thrusting his bristling beard nearly into the box as he boomed, “Well, lad, what is it you want?"

Geordie stood his ground bravely. Patently, inside the box there was a green frog with heaving sides. The boy explained.

“There’s something wrong with his foot. And he cannot hop. I found him by the side of the lochan. He was trying very hard to hop but he couldn’t at all. Will you make him better please so that he can be hopping again?"

The waves of old bitternesses had a way of rolling up inside Andrew MacDhui at the oddest and wrongest moment, causing him to do and say things that he did not mean to at all. Here he was in his waiting room full of clients, and it suddenly came over him as he stood bent over and looking down into the box,
Doctor to a frog with a broken leg, that’s what you are, my great, fine fellow—

And thereupon the old angers and regrets returned to plague and irritate him. Had there been justice in the world, all of these people in the room, yes, and the child too, would have been there to consult him about ailing hearts or lungs or throats or livers, aches and pains and mysterious cramps, sicknesses and diseases, which he would combat for them and put to rights. And there they were instead, with their pampered, snuffling, mewing, and whining little pets kept for their own flattery’s sake, or because they had been too lazy or selfish to bring a child into the world on whom to lavish their love and affection.

The ailing Yorkie was quite near to him and his nostrils, already flaring with disgust of himself and all humanity, caught a whiff of the perfume with which his mistress had scented him. He therefore replied to Geordie McNabb out of the black cloud of anger enveloping him, “I have no time for such foolishness. Cannot you see that I am busy with a room full of people? Go put the frog back by the pond again and leave it be. Off with you now."

Into the dark, round eyes of Geordie came that expression reserved to children who have been hurt by and disappointed in their grownups. “But it’s
sick,”
he said. “It’s no well. Will he not die?"

MacDhui, not ungently this time, steered the child toward the door and gave him a farewell pat on the behind. “Off you go, boy. Put it back where you found it. Nature will look after it. Now then, if you like, Mrs. Sanderson—"

2

I
f it is family you go by, then you will certainly be impressed with mine, for I am a relative of that Jennie—Jennie Baldrin of Glasgow—about whose life and times and adventures in London, aboard ship and elsewhere, a whole book has been written and published.

We are Edinburgh on one side of my family, several of my forebears not only having been employed at the university in the usual capacity as hunters, but one or two are said to have contributed to scientific knowledge and advance, and Glasgow on the other, the Jennie Baldrin side.

Jennie was my great-aunt and she was most distinguished and Egyptian-looking, with a small, rather narrow head, long muzzle, slanting eyes, and good-sized, rounded, well-upstanding ears, and in this I am said to resemble her closely, though, of course, our coloring is quite different. I mention this with excusable pride, since it shows that we trace our ancestry back to the days when people had the good sense to recognize us as gods.

That false gods are worshiped today—well, more’s the pity, for in Egypt, in the old days when members of our family were venerated in the temples, times were better and people, by and large, seemed happier. That, however, is neither here nor there and does not concern what I have to tell. Yet, if you know that once you were a god, no matter how long ago—well, it is bound to show somewhat in your demeanor.