Not That I Brag, page 2
Now, I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but climbing down is infinitely more difficult than climbing up. And of course this descent was made a great deal more difficult by the breeze I told you about and the fact that I really didn't know where they'd go moving that ladder next. I could hear it crashing through the foliage behind me. Very alarming, hearing a ladder crashing through the foliage just behind you. If they'd left me alone, and there hadn't been a breeze, I could have got down quite safely. It would have taken a little time, but I could have managed it, a cat with my sense of balance. But they would rush me. So it wasn't my fault that I lost my footing. I was feeling my way slowly when suddenly there was air under my feet instead of bark. I could feel myself falling and He was roaring and Jenny was screaming and a muddle of leaves and branches was flashing past my vision. Not a nice moment, I can tell you.
I managed to right myself in the air, the way we cats always do, and finished the fall feet downwards, ready to land. Which was some consolation. I made a good landing too, although I do say so myself, a soft landing, claws out, all four feet gripping. Excellent. The only trouble was I'd landed on one of the donkeys and the poor foolish creature was so frightened it kicked up its heels and set off round the field, braying and bucking for all it was worth. I only just had time to leap to the ground and make a bolt for it or I could have been caught a nasty blow from one of those hooves. Terrified donkeys have very little sense of direction. I ran like lightning and didn't stop until I was underneath the nearest cover, which turned out to be a car of some description. Very smelly and oily.
It took me quite a while to get my breath back and recover my equilibrium. I could see feet running about on the small pebbles in front of me and Jenny was scolding him, I was very glad to hear. 'Why couldn't you have left him alone? You know how sensitive he is. Poor little cat.' Presently I could see her feet walking towards the car and, after a pause, she knelt down in front of me and put her face right down almost onto the pebbles and looked under the car so that we could see one another.
'Come on,' she said, in her softest voice, holding out her fingers towards me under the car. 'I won't hurt you. Come on. Come on.' It was almost like a purr. I told you she was nice, didn't I.
Even so I took my time and inched out, very very slowly, because there was no knowing where those donkeys were or what He might do. Besides it's a matter of pride not to appear rushed or uncontrolled. She went on kneeling on the pebbles, making encouraging noises and holding out her hands. Even when I reached her and sniffed her finger tips just to make quite quite sure, she stayed still and didn't grab at me, so after a little while I crawled out into the sunshine and allowed her to pick me up. It was nice to be back with her again. I couldn't help purring. She stroked me all down my head and back and all round my ears, the way she does, and I nudged her chin and narrowed my eyes for her and purred louder than ever. Oh it was nice to see her.
She kept me on her lap all through the journey too, because she said I'd suffered enough. Which was true.
'Well don't blame me if it's sick,' He said. Stupid man. As if I'd be sick when she's stroking me. I don't think he's all there.
It was quite a pleasant journey, despite the roaring and rattling about. But when we stopped we weren't at her flat. Now what?
We're in a strange house with its own front door and I think it belongs to him from the way he walks about in it, throwing his coat onto chairs and switching on noise machines and opening windows. He crashes everything he touches. Well I hope we aren't going to stay here long, that's all I can say.
And my food bowl’s empty.
CHAPTER 2
This is a most peculiar house. I can't say I like it much and I don't think Jenny does either. She's been sighing rather a lot lately and that's a sure sign of discontentment in humans. He is being absolutely foul, swearing and shouting and banging things about all the time. It's so unnecessary. With any luck she'll get tired of him soon and then we can go back to the flat, which was a much better place. I can't think why we ever left it.
In the meantime I shall make the best of a bad job. We cats can be philosophical when it suits us. Although it won't suit me for very long because this isn't the sort of house anybody with any class or character would actually want to live in. And I do have a great deal of class and character. Not that I brag. A fact of feline life, that's all. She and I are streets above pokey little houses like this.
I've given it a thorough examination and it doesn't amount to anything I can tell you. At the top of the stairs it's very much like the flat. Only noisier. The number of noise machines that man possesses is quite ridiculous, besides being unnecessary. The first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is to switch on at least three of them, a box that makes faces, a box that boils water and gives out a high pitched whistle, which is most unpleasant, and a box that buzzes. He's very fond of that one and spends a lot of time rubbing his face with it, which just goes to show how very unintelligent he is. No cat in his right mind would ever rub faces with a box, especially one that buzzes and doesn't smell of anything. Chair legs and banisters and empty shoes, yes, but buzzing boxes, very definitely no.
Still, there are one or two corners here that are not unpleasant, a patch of untroubled carpet between a window and a noise machine and a leather sofa I am not supposed to sit on, if you ever heard of anything so stupid, and a dresser that's quite comfortable and so smothered with clobber that no one can tell whether I'm sitting on it or not. The dresser drawers are pretty good snoozing places too, providing nobody goes shutting them, which I'm sorry to say, they often do. Humans are very thoughtless about drawers. It's a fact I've often noticed.
The best rooms are the two on the ground floor, where he says I'm not supposed to go, because that's where the food is. There's so much food in this house you wouldn't believe it, gallons and gallons of milk, butter in great slabs, jugs of cream, huge joints of meat, tubs full of fish, rows and rows of chickens all hanging up by their legs in a freezing cold room they always keep shut, which is rather unreasonable. I wouldn't take much and they've got plenty.
The other room downstairs is full of tables piled with food and chairs squashed under humans eating it, and a pretty horrible sight that is. So unnatural. Quite the most ridiculous method of transferring food from plate to palate that anyone ever devised, poking it into your face on the end of a metal stick. One or two of them manage it quite delicately. Jenny does for example. She's quite neat about it really. But most of them are coarse and clumsy. And the front room humans are the worst I've ever seen.
They make the most appalling noise too, a sort of nasal baying, 'H'yaw h'yaw h'yaw!' like donkeys. Most unattractive. And they all look alike, which is only to be expected I suppose since they all belong to the same family. I know that because when any of them arrived he always says, 'Here come the Yuppies, heaven help us!'
And Jenny says, 'At least they pay.'
Then He snorts down that long nose of his and says, 'Sting 'em eh?' Although he never does. I've watched him very closely and I've never seen him sting anybody. In fact I don't think humans possess stings. It would be altogether too civilised for them, great crude clumsy things that they are. He just fancies himself, that's all it is. Bragging. He will keep saying he's watching me 'like a hawk'. A hawk! I ask you! Have you ever seen a short-sighted hawk? Although I must admit He does watch me. It's 'Where's that damn cat?' every other minute of the day, and 'You haven't let the cat in have you?' and 'I will not have animals in my kitchen'. Which is pretty rich when you consider that his kitchen is absolutely swarming with animals, morning, noon and night. Most of them distinctly unappetising specimens like humans and mice and cockroaches. He's so ridiculous I sometimes wonder if He knows how stupid he is. Ah well! It's not every animal lucky enough to be as intelligent and as beautiful as we are.
And He needn't think He can keep me out of anywhere.
Well I got in. I like a challenge. It's quite a good place. I suppose that's why He wanted to keep me out of it. Perverse you see. But not intelligent. He was actually banging out of the door when I slipped in. They'd left one of the windows open. Just a crack but it was enough. I'm very agile. Like greased lightning, Jenny always says. Anyway I was through that gap in less time than it takes to blink and slithering down the glass towards a work-top covered in fish. Imagine it! Lying there in lovely slimy heaps with their eyes glazed and their barbels sticking up like whiskers. Trouble was they were all too big and I didn't have time to sniff around for pieces. The place was full of humans you see and you can never be absolutely sure what any human being is capable of doing. Not on first acquaintance anyway. So I hid.
There was a convenient space in a cupboard underneath the work-top. Not particularly comfortable because there were rather a lot of saucepans in there and saucepans are always so knobbly, but dark, and the door was off its hinges, which was another advantage. Humans are a bit too prone to go shutting cupboards when you're still inside them. But I told you that before didn't I.
Luckily these humans were much too busy to shut anything. And so noisy. Banging frying pans and saucepans, clunking dishes, roaring ovens, slapping those fish about, and shouting and whistling all the time. Made me wince. But I stayed where I was and endured it because I knew it was only a matter of time before they started to drop things.
I was right, of course. I always am. Not that I brag. The first thing that fell was a sliver of that very tasty pink fish they call salmon. It landed in front of my cupboard. All I had to do was stretch out a paw and sneak it in. It was delicious. After that it snowed good things. Shreds of plaice, two more slices of salmon and a fine chunk of cod, enough to chew on for several minutes.
But then I heard one of them say something that made me put my ears right back.
'That cat's in here, Leroy. Eatin' the bits.'
I sat quite still and waited to see what would happen next, thinking that I might have to make a dash for it.
Another voice spoke. Quite a good voice, I thought, warm and drawly, a purring sort of voice.
'What you want, man? He no trobble. Let he alone.'
And a hand reached down into my hidey-hole and tickled me under the chin. An excellent hand. The best I've ever smelt and I've smelt some pretty ripe ones. There were traces of roast meat on it, three different kinds of fish, cream, butter and a lot of other things I'd have recognised given just a little more time. I could have breathed in that combination for as long as he liked. But that wasn't all. Besides being a treat to the nostrils, that hand was a really good colour. Not ebony like me, of course. I wouldn't expect that. In fact I doubt whether any human being could equal my superlative colour. But close. A rich dark brown with a good sheen to it.
Now I don't know if you've noticed but most humans are an awful colour. A sort of wishy-washy pink like pork. And some of them don't have any colour at all, just a nasty grey. So you can imagine how pleased I was to see that hand. It made me wonder what the rest of him was like. So I stretched out my neck and leant out of the cupboard to see.
He was the most feline person I'd ever seen in my life. A long lean man, with an easy spine and a way of walking that was a joy to watch, rolling on the balls of his feet, instead of slap-slap flat like most of them do. And what a catty face! Broad forehead, long wide nose, sharp little teeth, round glass in front of both his eyes and a mane of hair, bushing out all around his face, thick and bristling and absolutely black. I liked him at once.
'Hello dere, cat,' he said. And he picked up a shred of chicken and dangled it right into my mouth.
I had a very good morning. I ate so much my belly was as tight as a drum, which is a marvellous feeling I can tell you. And when I simply couldn't eat any more, not even salmon, my friend Leroy held the door open so that I could stroll upstairs and sleep it off.
And the beauty of it is, He didn't know anything about it.
This place improves. He doesn't get any better, of course. You can't expect miracles. But there are plenty of other people here and some of them aren't bad. Take Leamington Spa, for instance.
She's little and quiet and old and she comes in twice a week and eats the roast-of-the-day. I know that because He always says, 'Here comes Leamington Spa,' in his sneering voice. 'Roast-of-the-day, what d'you bet?'
And Leamington Spa squeezes herself into the chair in the corner and puts her napkin across her knees and waits. The first time I saw her I knew she was intelligent and kind and likely to give me tit-bits if I asked her prettily enough. So I sat under the table and waited till his big feet had trodden out of the room and then I jumped up onto the chair beside hers and gave her my most loving look.
'You're a nice little cat, aren't you,' she said. So I was right about her intelligence.
Then she stroked me very gently across the head and neck, so I was right about her being kind.
But it took quite a long time to purr the food off her plate. She eats very slowly, chewing a great deal, with her jaws rocking from side to side and a far-away expression in her eyes. But I reckoned she'd be worth waiting for, and so she was. It was cold, of course, and rather congealed and I had to take it under the table to eat it because He'd just come back into the room. But I had established a precedent.
The next time she came in I went straight to her table and sat in the chair opposite hers so that she could see at once that we would be having dinner together.
She was pleased to see me. I could tell that from the tone of her voice. 'Well hello, little cat. You're getting to be quite a friend of mine,' she said. 'What have they got to offer us today?' Us, you notice. Not me. I told you she was kind.
It was roast beef and rather stringy which was a bit of luck because she couldn't chew it very well so quite a lot of it got passed down to me. I would have had it all if it hadn't been for him, oozing across the middle of our excellent arrangement with a cloth over one arm and that silly false smile on his face.
'Is that cat annoying you, madam,' He said. Oh he's got no class at all. As if I'd annoy anybody. As if I could.
Leamington Spa was a match for him. 'Oh no,' she said, looking up at him mildly. She has a soft face despite her whiskers, which are haphazard but quite bristly. 'Oh no. He's no trouble. I like the company.'
'If he's a nuisance, you've only got to say and I'll have him kicked out.' You see the sort of man he is. He can't even understand a little old lady. Kicked out indeed!
Didn't get him anywhere though because the minute his back was turned she dropped me a huge piece of meat, dripping gravy.
It's been very hot for the last few days. I don't mind the heat, of course. We cats are able to cope with most things. Unlike humans who complain at the least change. They've had all the kitchen windows wide open. Not that I worry about windows now either. Leroy always lets me in through the door.
The eating room has been more like an oven than the oven. And crowded with people. That Yuppie family is enormous. And their loud talk is worse in the heat.
'I couldn't take a holiday now, darling. With all the oiks on holiday! You must be joking.'
'Actually my cousin is lending me his yacht.'
'My mater’s in Antibes.'
'God, this heat is killing!'
Jenny's been carrying food in and out from the kitchen to the eating room. It's the first time she's done it since we arrived and it's making her look very hot and harassed. She doesn't like doing it, although I notice that she tells him she does, 'No, no, darling. It's quite all right. I don't mind helping out.'
I know better, of course. I can always tell when she's lying. She puts on a look. Deliberately. I could tell you the actual moment when she starts to arrange it on her face. When she's really happy she never smiles like that.
He knows she’s lying too. He says things in his false voice, like, 'I must make a special fuss of you.' Oh yes? I could tell him what he ought to do. Let her sit down for five minutes and have a rest. Or, 'What would I do without you?' I know what he'd have to do without her. He'd have to do all the work himself, lazy slob.
She goes on running about for him with her hair standing on end with grease and nasty little cuts on her fingers and her clothes all stained with sweat. I don't know when he imagines we're supposed to have any time together. I haven't sat on her lap for weeks! It's just as well I've got Leroy and Leamington Spa.
Well you'll never guess what's happened now. He's seen one of the mice. Oh he is quick! Like lightning! They’ve been here for months. I wonder he couldn't smell them. No sense of smell, that's his trouble. I told you that, didn't I.
Anyway, he's been running around all day squawking like a chicken, 'We've got mice! Mice! We shall be ruined! What if the inspector comes? Oh God, mice in my kitchen!'
I sat in the window seat and watched him for as long as I could bear it which wasn't very long I can tell you. Human hysteria gets very wearing very quickly. But when I got up and stretched myself ready to stroll away from it all, He suddenly went quite berserk, grabbed hold of me by the scruff of the neck as if I were a kitten or paralysed or something, and lifted me up in the air, shouting 'This is it! This is it!' I was not pleased. I put my ears right back and narrowed my eyes till I could barely see anything at all and swore at him in my most menacing way, deep down in my throat and baring my teeth. He didn't even seem to notice. There are times when I really wonder whether he can see anything at all. And I'm sure he's deaf.
'This is it!' He roared. 'We'll lock this damned cat in. Let him sort it out. You're always telling me what a marvellous mouser he is. Now we shall see.'
I couldn't believe my ears. He's spent all this time kicking me out of the place and roaring and carrying on about not having animals in his kitchen and now He wants me to stay there all night and catch mice for him. In this heat too! The effrontery of it! No mention of reward you notice. No 'Could you fancy a nice little bit of plaice?' or 'Would you like some cream you marvellous cat?' Oh no! Just, 'Let him sort it out.'
