Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (6 page)

If I could live my own life, that is to say, if I were not “house,” I should move to the water front and spend the days sitting on the jetties in the sun, sniffing the tar in the ropes with which the boats are made fast, and when the fishermen’s skiffs came in, I would strut along the granite flagstones of the quay, with my tail aquivering in the air, and go down to greet them and see what they had brought in from the sea.

Next to lavender, I think the smells I like best are those of the sea, boats and heaps of old oilskins, sweaters, gear and tackle and rubber boots piled up in the boathouse, and the beautiful odor of fish; fish and seaweed, crab and lobster and the green sea scum that fastens to the gray-stone landing steps. And there is a wonderful odor by the sea in the very early morning, too, when the sun has not yet pierced through the mists and everything is soggy with damp and dew and salt.

And so once I was there with the children in the square by the quay where the statue to Rob Roy stands, I was not too ill-pleased, for there were many interesting and exciting things going on, except that when the steamer came in and blew its whistle it frightened me so that I fell off Mary Ruadh’s shoulder and hurt myself.

That wants a bit of explaining, I know, for we always fall on our feet, particularly when we have time to turn over, but this all happened so quickly that I didn’t.

The steamer was all white with a narrow black funnel, and how was I to know that the funnel was going to make a horrible noise? I was quite fascinated watching the ship come puffing up to the edge of the stone jetty, with bells clanging and orders being shouted, and much white froth of water all about it as it went first forward, then backward, then even sideways, and suddenly, without warning, the loudest and most frightful shriek burst from the top of the stack and I fell over backward.

Well, I suppose I could have saved myself, but it would have meant digging in my claws into Mary Ruadh’s neck, for I had been lying across her shoulders. If it had been anyone else, I should not have hesitated to anchor my claws, you may believe me. But it all happened so quickly, the awful noise that seemed to split my ears open, and then there was a bump and I was lying on my side, hurting.

Mary Ruadh picked me up at once and rubbed it, and so did Hughie Stirling, and they made a fuss over me, though Hughie laughed and said, “The old whistle frightened her,” and then to me, “You’ll have to get used to that, Thomasina, if you’re going to be a seagoing cat.” It seems that he and Mary Ruadh were planning a trip around the world in a yacht he was going to have when he grew up and, of course, she had said she wouldn’t go without me.

The rubbing made it feel better; Mary Ruadh cradled me in her arms and held me tight, and the next time it hooted I wasn’t nearly so frightened and almost forgot the pain in the excitement of watching the mail sacks being tossed onto the pier, followed by the luggage of the visitors, which was covered with the most interesting-looking labels, after which the visitors themselves came ashore down a wooden gangway that had been run onto the side of the ship from the quay.

Many of them had children by the hand and that, of course, interested Mary Ruadh and Hughie and Geordie McNabb, who had joined us. Geordie is eight and a Wolf Cub and he goes all over by himself and sees everything. There were a half dozen or so dogs on a leash that came ashore, and a cat basket; overhead the gulls wheeled and screamed; taxicab drivers honked their horns and shouted at the people and all in all, except for my tumble, it was a most satisfactory landing. And Geordie had some interesting news.

He told Hughie and Mary Ruadh, “There’s gypsies and tinkers come to Dunmore Field at the foot of the glen, across the river. Lots and lots of them with wagons and cages and caravans and things. They’re camped beside the woods on Tarbet Road. Mr. MacQuarrie, the constable, went out to have a word with them.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Hughie Stirling,
“that’s
exciting! I wish I had been there. What happened?”

Geordie McNabb drew in a deep breath and his eyes became quite as round as his head because of the importance of answering the question put to him by the laird’s son. I could see that.

He replied, “Constable MacQuarrie said as long as they behaved themselves and didn’t give any trouble they could stay there.”

Hughie nodded his head. “And what did
they
say?”

“Oh, there was a big man there and he had on a big leather belt and it had nails in it. And he put his hands in his belt and laughed at Mr. MacQuarrie.”

Hughie said: “It’s no’ clever to laugh at Mr. MacQuarrie.”

Geordie continued: “Another man, a little one wearing a waistcoat and a hat came up and he pushed the man with the belt away and said that they were grateful and would not give any trouble, but would just try to earn a few honest pennies. Then Mr. MacQuarrie asked what they meant to do with the animals in the cages.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Hughie, even more interested, and by now so was Mary Ruadh, and so was I. “What animals, in what cages?”

Geordie reflected before he replied, “Well, they had a bear and an eagle and a mountain lion and some monkeys and dogs and an elephant and horses, and—”

“Poooh!” remonstrated Hughie, “gypsies never have elephants.”

Geordie looked as though he was sorry he had said it. “Well, maybe they didn’t really have an elephant, but they DID have a bear and an eagle and a mountain lion and monkeys and they said they were going to let people look at them for a shilling.”

“I say,” Hughie burst out with enthusiasm, “if I can wheedle a couple of shillings out of Mummy, we must go—”

Geordie had not yet finished his account. He continued, “Mr. MacQuarrie said he supposed that was all right as long as they did not ill-treat the animals, or give a performance.”

Mary Ruadh asked, “What’s a performance?”

Hughie replied, “Standing on their heads and doing tricks, I suppose. I’ll bet they’re going to when the police aren’t looking.”

Geordie concluded: “The man with the belt started to laugh again, but the other gypsy with the hat and the waistcoat went over and pushed him with his shoulder and Mr. MacQuarrie went away. I tried to look under the cover of one of the wagons to see what the animals were like, but a big boy came and chased me. He had a whip.”

All this Mary Ruadh recounted to her father that night, during the time he gave her her evening bath and he listened to every word she said as though she were as grown-up as he, which I must say, astonished me, for grownups have a way of talking to children—yes, and to us too—that is most patronizing, irritating and humiliating. But Mr. MacDhui just nodded and grumbled and grunted
seriously
, as he listened, all the time soaping the back of her neck and ears with the washrag. “Well, little pink frog,” he said finally, “just see that you keep well away from those gypsies whatever they mean to do, for they were always a filthy thieving folk and you cannot tell me they have reformed their ways in the last generation just because the police are content to condone their presence, eh?”

I think that Mrs. McKenzie was shocked at the idea of Mr. MacDhui giving Mary Ruadh her bath, but much as I dislike the man, I, who have been a mother, can testify that no kitten ever received a more painstaking and thorough washing than did she at the hands of her father when he came home at night, for this was the moment in the day that he seemed to enjoy the most, and therefore was almost pleasant—though of course, not to me, for I was not allowed to come into the bathroom, but sat outside in the hall and looked in.

He sang to Mary Ruadh,—can you imagine?—in his loud and most disgusting voice, the silliest words ever. I remember them. They went:

There dwelt a puddy in a well,

Cuddy alone, cuddy alane,

There dwelt a puddy in a well,

Cuddy alane and I.

There was a puddy in a well,

AN a mousie in a mill;

Kickmalcerie, cowden doon,

Cuddy alane and I.

Now, I ask you, where was the sense in that? But somehow Mary Ruadh seemed to understand, and when her father bellowed, “Kickmalecrie, cowden doon!” she screamed and shouted and splashed with her bath toys until the water shot all the way out into the hallway where I was sitting.

Then Mr. MacDhui picked her out of the tub and gave her a tousle and a rubdown until her whole body was red, when he would say, “How now, little pink puddy! Now this fine blue towel really becomes you. What shall we have for tea? Kickmalecrie Mary Ruadh!”

But me, he never so much as deigned to notice.

After they had their supper in the dining room, with Mary Ruadh sitting on a pile of cushions so that she would be higher, they would go into her room across the hall, where he played with her or sometimes told her some ridiculous kind of story, or she would climb into his lap and laugh and gurgle ridiculously and play with his bristly face and pull his fur and tease him, or sometimes they would even join hands and dance around the room together, and if you think THAT is any way to bring up a child or a kitten, you won’t get me to agree with you.

That night Mary Ruadh became so excited that she would not calm down to say her prayers that Mr. MacDhui always insisted upon. These were kind of a petition and rhyme that she had to say every night before she went to sleep, and sometimes
having
to do it made her very willful and naughty. Well, I know, for one thing, how
I
am when I am
made
to do something.

Then Mr. MacDhui changed quite suddenly from being kind and gay to becoming most stern and ugly. He pushed out his great red beard at his daughter and growled, “That will be all and enough of that, Mary Ruadh. You have had plenty of play. Now say your prayers at once or I shall have to punish you.”

Mary Ruadh asked, “Daddy, WHY do I have to say my prayers?”

If she asked this once, she asked it at least four times in the week. I had to smile inside to myself, for of course I knew it was just to keep putting it off, just as when we are ordered to do something, we suddenly discover that we have a most important bit of washing to do.

His answer would always be the same: “Because your mother would have wished it; that is why. She said her prayers every night.”

Mary Ruadh then asked, “Can I hold Thomasina while I say them?”

I had to turn away to conceal the smile on my face, because I knew the explosion that was coming from Mr. MacDhui.

“No, no, NO. You cannot. Kneel now and say your prayers properly this minute.”

Mary Ruadh asked that same question every night, not, I think, to make her father angry, but rather as a kind of routine in case someday he changed his mind and said yes.

It always succeeded in making him quite furious, and whereas at other times he simply ignored me as though I did not exist, I am sure at that moment he hated me.

He then stood beside her bed while she knelt, folded her hands together in the manner that was prescribed for her, and began her petition.

“God bless Mummy in heaven, and Daddy, and Thomasina—”

I always waited to make sure that my name was mentioned well up in the list that included such odd bods as Mr. Dobbie the grocer, and Willie Bannock, and Mr. Bridie the dustman, of whom she seemed to be fond, and then I went over and rubbed against Mr. MacDhui’s legs, purring and getting hairs on his trousers, because I was well aware that it infuriated him, but he didn’t dare shout, or kick, or swear, or do anything about it, because by that time Mary Ruadh was in the middle of her rhyme, which went:

Gentle Jesus
,
week and mild
,

Look upon this little child;

Pity my simplicity
,

And suffer me to come to thee—AMEN.

and which was a very important one so that he could not stir until it was properly finished, by which time I would be under the bed where he could not reach me.

But he seemed to forget that he was angry when the prayers were finished and she lay upon her pillow with her ginger hair tousled about and he looked down upon her after he had kissed her good night. I used to watch his face, and all the bristle seemed to go out of his beard for once, and his fierce eyes turned soft. It was even more than soft. Soppy! Then he would blow himself up with a deep breath, turn, and stalk out of the room, like somebody in a play.

But I just stayed under the bed and waited my turn.

When he was gone, Mary Ruadh would call, “Mrs. McKenzie! Mrs. McKenzie!” and when she came in she would say, “I want Thomasina!”

I wouldn’t make it difficult for the poor old soul, but by that time would be cruising close to the edge of the cot. Mrs. McKenzie would reach down, pick me up, and put me into Mary Ruadh’s bed. Mr. MacDhui, who had gone off to his study, always heard her doing it, and knew that it happened, but pretended that he didn’t . . .

Well, that was what THAT day in my life, in fact, many days in my life were like—for in most respects one day was very like another—except for the pain I felt at the base of my spine from the bump I had received when I fell off Mary Ruadh by the statue of Rob Roy, as I have told you already, and which was followed by the morning of my assassination.

5

O
n Thursday mornings, Mr. MacDhui left his house before seven for farm calls in the immediate neighborhood so as to return in time for his office hours, which were from eleven to one, leaving him the afternoon, if need be, for more distant visits.

Before departing on this day, he rattled off instructions to Willie Bannock: “I shall be stopping at Birnie Farm to see a case of scour, and Jock Maistock suspects the blackleg amongst his Ayrshires, so see that there is an ampoule or two of vaccine in the bag. I shall be testing John Ogilvie’s herd, and I may stop at the McPherson chicken farm, if there is time, and relieve the mind of the widow. If I am late getting back, tell the folk to bide.”

He did not neglect the morning round through his modest animal hospital, with the indispensable Willie in his train. On this particular day the veterinary seemed more aware than usual of the irony of this routine, which convenience and necessity had dictated should be almost an imitation if not a burlesque of that in the great hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow. There, he knew, each morning the house surgeon, followed by an intern or two, a matron, and a train of nursing sisters paraded through the wards inspecting charts, having a thump or a look at a patient, diagnosing, prescribing, dropping a pleasant or cheery word at each bed, dispensing hope and courage along with medicines, and leaving the ward behind him brighter, happier, and at ease, each human armored more strongly for his or her fight against injury or illness.