Thomasina. Paul Gallico

But what was even worse, he ignored me. Mr High-and-mighty-around-the-house. Nose in the air; whiskers bristling all the time. And the medicine smell of him. Ugh! It was the same one that came out of the hospital when you went past. When he returned home at night and bent down to kiss Mary Ruadh, his huge, bristly red face with the medicine and pipe smell would come right close to mine, since Mary Ruadh would be carrying me, and it made me feel sick.

      Naturally, I annoyed him all I could, calling attention to myself by washing in front of him, taking care to be on his chair when I knew he would be wanting it, lying in doorways where he would be likely to trip over me, rubbing up against his legs and ankles, leaving hairs on his best clothes whenever I could find them and jumping up on his lap when he sat down to read the paper and making smells of my own. He did not dare to be rough with me when Mary Ruadh was in the room and so he would just pretend I was not there and then get up suddenly to go for some tobacco and dump me off his knees.

      Add up all of these things and you might almost say it amounted to sufficient cause for me to move out. Yet I stayed on and was not too unhappy. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, but if the truth be known, I was rather fond of the child.

      I think it could have been because, in some ways, girl children and cats are not un-alike. There is some special mystery about little girls, an attitude of knowing secret things and a contemplative and not wholly complimentary quality about the way they look at you sometimes that is often as baffling and exasperating to their elders as we are.

      If you have ever lived with a girl child, you will know that quiet, infuriating retirement into some private world of their own of which they are capable, as well as that stubborn independence in the face of stupid or unreasonable demands or prohibitions. These same traits seem to annoy you in us as well. For you can no more force a cat or a girl child to do something they do not wish to do than you can compel us to love you. We have this in common, Mary Ruadh and I.

      Thus I did many strange things I should not have believed myself capable of doing. When Mary Ruadh went to school – this adventure of mine took place during the summer holidays – I suffered her to carry me all the way there, and to be pawed or fussed over by the other children until the bell rang and she went inside, when I was free to run home and look after my business.

      But, believe it or not, when it came time for her to come home in the afternoon I would be sitting up on the gate-post with my tail curled round my legs, watching for her. True, it was also a fine vantage point from which to spit on the minister’s pug dog when it went by, but nevertheless, there I was. The neighbours used to say you could always tell what time of day it was by the MacDhui cat getting up on to the gate-post to watch for her wee mistress.

      I, Thomasina, waiting on a gate-post for a somewhat grubby, red-haired and not even specially beautiful child, can you imagine?

      Sometimes I wondered whether there was not another bond between us: we were each to the other something to cling to when the sun goes down and nightfall brings on fear and loneliness.

      Loneliness is comforted by the closeness and touch of fur to fur, skin to skin – or skin to fur. Sometimes when I awoke at night after a bad dream, I would listen to the regular breathing of Mary Ruadh and feel the slight rise and fall of the bed-clothes about her. Then I would no longer be afraid and would go back to sleep again.

      I have mentioned that Mary Ruadh was not an especially beautiful child, which perhaps was not polite, since she thought that I was certainly the most beautiful cat in the world, but I meant especially beautiful in the unusual sense. She was a rather ordinary-looking little girl except for her eyes, which told you of some special quality in her, or about her when you looked into them. Often I was not able to do so for long. Their colour was a bright blue, a most intense blue, but sometimes when she was thinking thoughts I could not understand or even guess, they turned as dark as the loch on a stormy day.

      For the rest, you wouldn’t call her much to look at, with her uptilted nose and freckled face and a long lower lip that usually stuck out, while her eyebrows and lashes were so light you could hardly see them. She wore her ginger-red hair in two braids tied with green or blue ribbon. Her legs were quite long and she liked to stick her stomach out.

      But there was something else pleasant about Mary Ruadh; she smelled good. Mrs McKenzie kept her washed and ironed when she was at home and she always smelled of lavender, for Mrs McKenzie kept lavender bags in with her clothes and underthings.

      It seemed as if Mrs McKenzie was forever washing and ironing and starching and scenting her clothes, because it was the only way she was allowed to show how much she cared for Mary Ruadh. Mrs McKenzie was a thin woman who talked and sang through her nose. She would have mothered Mary Ruadh the way we will frequently look after somebody else’s kitten as though it were our own, but Mr MacDhui was jealous and feared that Mary Ruadh would come to love her too much if she were allowed to cuddle her. Oh, Mr Bristle-and-Smelly was allowed to cuddle her all he wished, but nobody else.

      I loved the odour of lavender. Smells, almost more than noises, seem to bring on the happiness or unhappiness memories. You might not remember what it was about a smell had made you angry at the time, or afraid, but as soon as you come across it again you are angry or fearful. Like the medicine smell of Mr MacDhui.

      But lavender was the happiness smell. It made my claws move in and out and brought the contentment purr to my throat.

      Sometimes after putting Mary Ruadh’s things away after ironing them, Mrs McKenzie would forget to close all the chest of drawers, and leave one open. Then I would quickly nip inside and lie there full length with my nose up against a lavender bag, just smelling, smelling, smelling. That was bliss. That was when I was contented and at peace with the world.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Outside MacDhui’s surgery, Geordie McNabb went wandering away clutching his box in which the injured frog reposed on a bed of grass and young heather. Occasionally he proceeded with an absent-minded hop, skip and jump, until, brought up by recollection of the more sobering aspects of his situation, he slowed down to a mere trot or saunter.

      He was not aware of going in any particular direction, but was only glad to be away once more from the ken of grown-ups who loomed over one tall, bristly and unsympathetic and hustled about with a pat on the bottom, an indignity unworthy to be bestowed upon a Wolf Cub.

      But ever and anon he paused to look into the box and give the frog a tentative poke reaffirming his diagnosis of a broken leg which prevented it from hopping and carrying on a frog’s business. At such times he regarded the little fellow with a combination of interest, affection and deep concern. He was fully aware that he had a problem on his hands connected with the eventual disposition of his charge, since take it home he could not, owing to house laws on the importation of animals, while at the same time to abandon it as recommended by the veterinarian was unthinkable. It was Geordie’s first encounter with the uncooperative attitude of the world towards one who has taken the fatal step of accepting a responsibility.

      His seemingly unguided wanderings had taken him to the edge of the town, that is, to the back of it where the houses ended abruptly and the several farms and meadows began, beyond which lay the dark and mysterious woods covering the hill of Glen Ardrath, where the Red Witch lived, and he realised that he had thought of this fearful alternative as a possible solution but had quickly rejected it as altogether too frightening and dangerous.

      Yet now that he was there by the bridge crossing the river Ardrath, that peaceful stream flowing into Loch Fyne, but which was fed by the tumbling mountain torrents that came frothing down out of the glen, the prospect of paying her a visit seemed awesomely and repellently attractive and exciting. For it was a fact that the townspeople avoided the lair, or vicinity of the Red Witch who was also known as Daft Lori, or sometimes even Mad Lori, and most certainly small boys fed on old wives’ tales and fairy-book pictures of hook-nosed crones riding on brooms avoided the neighbourhood, except when in considerable force.

      But there were two sides to the estimate of