Jennie

“But I can’t get at my middle,” he complained, for indeed the underside of his belly defied his clumsy efforts to reach it, bend and twist as he would.

Jennie smiled. “‘Can’t’ catches no mice,” she quoted. “That is more difficult. Watch me now. You won’t do it lying on your side. Sit up a bit and rock on your tail. That’s it, get your tail right under you. You can brace with either of your forepaws, or both. Now, you see, that bends you right around again and brings your stomach within reach. You’ll get it with practice. It’s all curves. That’s why we were made that way.”

Peter found it more awkward to balance than in the other position and fell over several times, but soon found that he was getting better at it and that each portion of his person that was thus made accessible to him through Jennie’s knowledge, experience and teaching brought him a new enjoyment and pleasure of accomplishment. And of course Jennie’s approval made him very proud.

He was forging ahead so rapidly with his lesson that she decided to see whether he could go and learn by himself. “Now how would you go about doing the inside of the hindquarter?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Peter cried. But it wasn’t at all. In fact the more he tried and strained and reached and curved, the further away did his hind leg seem to go. He tried first the right and then the left, and finally got himself tangled in such a heap of legs, paws and tail that he fell right over in such a manner that Jennie had to take a few quick dabs at herself to keep from laughing.

“I can’t – I mean I don’t see how …” wailed Peter, “there isn’t any way …”

Jennie was contrite at once and hoped Peter had not seen she had been amused. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she declared. “That wasn’t fair of me. There is, but it’s most difficult, and you have to know how. It took me the longest time when my mother tried to show me. Here, does this suggest anything to you – Leg of Mutton? I’m sure you’ve seen it dozens of times,” and she assumed an odd position with her right leg sticking straight up in the air and somehow close to her head, almost like the contortionist that Peter had seen at the circus at Olympia who had twisted himself right around so that his head came down between his legs. He was sure that he could never do it.

Peter tried to imitate Jennie but only succeeded in winding himself into a worse knot. Jennie came to his rescue once more. “See here,” she said, “let’s try it by counts, one stage at a time. Once you’ve done it, you know, you’ll never forget it. Now –

“One – rock on your tail.” Peter rocked.

“Two – brace yourself with your left forepaw.” Peter braced.

“Three – half sit, and bend your back.” Peter managed that, and made himself into the letter C.

“Four – stretch out the left leg all the way. That will keep you from falling over the other side and provide a balance for the paw to push against.” This too worked out exactly as Jennie described it when Peter tried it.

“Five – swing your right leg from the hip – you’ll find it will go – with the foot pointing straight up into the air. Yes, like that, but outside, not inside the right forepaw.” It went better this time. Peter got it almost up.

“Six – NOW you’ve got it. Hold yourself steady by bracing the right front forepaw. SO!”

Peter felt like shouting with joy. For there he was, actually sitting, leg of mutton, his hindquarter shooting up right past his cheek and the whole inside of his leg exposed. He felt that he was really doubled back on himself like the contortionist, and he wished that Nanny were there so that he could show her.

By twisting and turning a little, there was no part of him underneath that he could not reach, and he washed first one side and then, without any further instruction from Jennie, managed to reverse the position and get the left leg up, which drew forth an admiring, “Oh, you are clever!” from Jennie – “it took me just ages to learn to work the left side. It all depends whether you are left-or right-pawed, but you caught on to it immediately. Now there’s only one thing more. The back of the neck, the ears and the face.”

In a rush to earn more praise Peter went nearly cross-eyed trying to get his tongue out and around to reach behind him and on top of him, and of course it wouldn’t work. He cried – “Oh dear, THAT must be the most complicated of all.”

“On the contrary,” smiled Jennie, “it’s quite the simplest. Wet the side of your front paw.” Peter did so. “Now rub it around over your ears and the back of your neck.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to laugh at himself. “How stupid I am,” he said. “That part is just the way I do it at home. Except I use a wash-rag, and Nanny stands there watching to make certain I go behind the ears.”

“Well,” said Jennie, “I’m watching you now …”

So Peter completed his bath by wetting one paw and then the other, on the side and in the middle of the pads, and washing first his ears, then both sides of his face, the back of his neck, his whiskers and even a little under his chin, and over his nose and eyes.

And now he found that having washed himself all over, from head to foot, the most wonderful feeling of comfort and relaxation had come over him. It was quite a different sensation from the time that Jennie had washed him and which had somehow taken him back to the days when he was very little and his mother was looking after him.

This time he felt a kind of glow in his skin and a sense of well-being in his muscles as though every one of them had been properly used and stretched. In the light from the last of the shaft of the sun that was just passing from the window of the storehouse he could see how his white fur glistened from the treatment he had given it, as smooth as silk and as soft.

Peter felt a delicious drowsiness. His eyes began to close, as from a distance he heard Jennie say: “It’s good to take a nap after washing. I always do. You’ve earned it. I’ll join you, and after we’ve slept a little, perhaps I’ll tell you my story as I promised.”

Just before he dropped off to sleep, Peter felt her curl up against him, her back touching his, warm and secure, and the next moment he was off in sweet and dreamless slumber.

When he awoke, Jennie Baldrin was stretching and yawning at his side, and he joined her, imitating her movements, first putting out his forepaws as far as they would go and stretching backwards from there and then arching her back in a high inverted ‘U’.

“There,” Jennie said when she had done. “How do you feel now?”

“Ever so much better,” Peter replied, and he really felt like a new boy, or rather cat. Then he continued, for he had not forgotten what she had promised – “Now won’t you please tell me about you? Please, Jennie, I should so love to hear it …”

The tabby could not resist a small purr at Peter’s sincerity, but immediately after she became serious. “Dear me,” she said, “I didn’t think I’d ever be telling of this to anyone as long as I lived. Still – since you really wish it, so be it.”

And she began.

CHAPTER SIX

Jennie

“MY NAME,” SAID the tabby, “as I told you, is Jennie. Jennie Baldrin. We are partly Scottish, you know—” she added with considerable satisfaction. “My mother was born in Glasgow, and so was I.”

“I say ‘partly’ Scottish, because way back we came from the continent. Africa, I mean, and then across into Spain. Several of our branch of the family were ships’ cats aboard vessels of the Spanish Armada. My mother’s ancestor was wrecked on the coast of Scotland, which is how we came to settle down there. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes,” replied Peter. “I’ve read about how Drake defeated the Spanish Armada and a storm came up and wrecked all the galleons. But I didn’t know about there having been any cats …”

“Indeed,” said Jennie Baldrin. “Well, there were – dozens of them. Actually we go much further back than that, Kaffir cats, you know, from Africa – Nubia, Abyssinia – places I’m sure you’ve heard about. Someone named Julius Caesar is supposed to have brought us to Britain in 55 to 54 B.C. But that wasn’t our branch of the family. We were in Egypt two thousand years before that when, as you’ve no doubt read, cats were sacred. A lot of people try to be or act sacred, but we actually were, with temples and altars, and priests to look after us. I suppose you have noticed how small my head is. Egyptian strain. And then of course this.”

And here Jennie rolled over on to her flank and held up her paws so that Peter could inspect the undersides of them. “Why, they’re quite black,” Peter said, referring to the pads. He then looked at his own and remarked, “Mine are all pink.”

“Naturally,” Jennie said, quite pleased. “Wherever you come across black pads – that’s it, the Egyptian strain again. Have you ever seen the relief from the tomb of Amon-Ra in the British Museum, the one with the sacred cat on it? They say I look quite like her.”

“I’ve been to the British Museum with Nanny,” Peter said, “but I don’t think I ever—”

“Ah well, never mind,” Jennie went on. “It isn’t really important, especially today when it is what you are that counts, though I must say it is a comfort to know who you are, particularly at times when everything appears to be dead set against you. If you know something about your forebears, who they were and what they did, you are not quite so likely to give up, especially if you know that once they were actually sacred and people came around asking them for favours. Still …” and here Jennie Baldrin paused and gave four quick washes to the end of her tail.

Peter was afraid she might not go on, so he coaxed – “Yes, and after you were born …”

“Oh,” said Jennie, leaving off her washing and resuming her narrative, “we came to London from Glasgow on the train in a basket, my mother and brothers and sisters and I. We travelled at night. I didn’t get to see much because I was in the basket all of the time, and anyway, my eyes weren’t open yet because I was very young. That’s my earliest recollection.

“We were a family of five kittens, two males and three females, and we went to live in the cellar of a boarding house in Bloomsbury. My mother was owned by a printer who had been working in Glasgow and came back to London. It was his mother who managed the boarding house in Bloomsbury. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear …”

“Oh yes,” said Peter, “quite!”

“Our mother was wise and good. She fed, washed, cuffed and taught us as much as she thought necessary. She was proud of our family and our strain, and said that wherever we were, our dignity and ancestry would bring honour to whoever might be looking after us. She most emphatically did not believe it was beneath her to be living in a boarding house or belong to a printer. Do you?”

Peter was somewhat taken aback by the unexpected question, but replied that he did not, particularly if the people were kind.

“Exactly,” said Jennie, and appeared to be relieved. “Our mother said that some of us might go no higher than to be a grocer’s cat, or belong to a chimney sweep or a charwoman, while others might come to live in a wealthy home in Mayfair, or even a palace. The important thing was that they were all people and we were who we were, and if there was love and respect between us, no one could ask for anything better.

“One day, when I was seven months old, it happened to me. Some people came to our house and took me away with them. I was adopted.

“How fortunate I was, or at least I thought so at the time. I went to live with a family in a house near Kensington High Street, a father, mother and little girl. And there I grew up and stayed for three years with never a cloud in the sky.”

Peter asked, “What was the little girl like?”

Jennie paused while a tear moistened her eye again, but this time she did not trouble to conceal it with a wash. “She was a dear,” Jennie replied. Her voice had taken on the tender tone of remembering someone who had been good and beautiful, and her glistening eyes were gazing backwards into the past. “She had long, wavy brown hair and such a sweet face. Her voice was soft and never harsh on my ears. Her name was Elizabeth, but she was called Buff, and she was ten years old. I loved her so much that just thinking about it was enough to set me to purring.

“We weren’t rich, but we were quite well off. I had my own basket without a cushion in it and was allowed to sleep in Buff ’s room. The Pennys, for that was their last name, saw to it that I had some of the meat from their ration, and I had fish every other day and all the milk I could drink. When Buff came home from school in the afternoon I would be waiting for her at the door to jump up into her arms and rub my cheek against hers and then lie across her shoulders and she would carry me around as though she were wearing a fur.”

Peter felt sad as he listened to her story, for exactly as she was telling it was how he would have wished to have had it in his own home – a sweet and friendly puss to be there when he returned, who would leap up on to his shoulder and rub against him and purr when he stroked her and be his very own.

Jennie sighed now as she told about the good times. The first thing in the morning when the maid came in to part the curtains, the little cat would leap up on to the bed, calling and purring to say good morning and begging Buff to play the pounce game which they both loved. This was the one in which the child would move the fingers of one hand under the blankets while Jennie would watch the mysterious and tantalising stirrings beneath the covers and finally rear up and land on the spot, always careful not to use her claws, and Buff would scream with laughter and excitement. What a wonderful way to start the day.

“Oh, and Christmas and New Years,” Jennie continued, “packages arrived tied up in tissue paper and I was allowed to get into boxes that had been emptied, and the whole house smelled of good things to eat. On my own birthday, which, if you would like to remember it, is on April 22nd, I always had new toys and presents, and Buff gave a party for me. Of course I was spoiled and pampered, but I adored it. Who wouldn’t have done so?

“Those were the three happiest years of my life. I was with Buff or her parents every minute that they were home, and I loved them with all my heart. I even learned to understand a little of their language, although it is very difficult, harsh and unmusical. I’ve forgotten most of it now, but then, between the words that I recognised and their expressions or tone of voice, I always knew whether they were pleased or displeased and what they wanted of me.

“One day, early in May, just about two years ago, I noticed that everyone seemed to be very busy and distracted and occupied with themselves and that something strange was going on in the house.”

“Oh dear,” said Peter, beginning to be quite upset, “I was afraid something would happen. It was just too perfect …”

Jennie nodded. “Yes. It seems it’s always that way. I went around peering into their faces, trying to make out what might be going to happen. And then one morning, trunks, bags, valises, holdalls, canvas sacks, suddenly appeared from the attic, boxes and crates, and barrels full of straw and sawdust were brought into the house, and men in rough clothes, aprons and peaked caps came in to pack them, and of course after that I knew. They were going to move. But whether it was to be to a house in another part of the city, a place in the country, or abroad, I had no means of knowing or finding out.

“Until you’ve been a cat yourself, Peter, and have gone through it, you will never understand what it means to sit by, day in and day out, while everything which is familiar and to which you are attached, furniture, and things on mantelpieces and tables, disappear into crates and boxes for shipping, and not know.”

“Not know what?” asked Peter.

“Whether or not you are going to be taken along.”

“Oh, but of course you get taken along!” Peter burst out, thinking how he would act under the same circumstances if he had ever had a cat as sweet and good-natured as Jennie Baldrin. “Why, nobody would think of going away and leaving you behind, even—”

He stopped in mid-sentence because Jennie had turned away abruptly and was washing furiously. There was a kind of desperation in her movements that touched Peter’s heart and told him more plainly than words that she was suffering. He cried: “Oh, poor Jennie Baldrin! I’m so sorry. It can’t be true. Nobody could be so cruel. Tell me what happened.”

Jennie left off her washing. Her eyes were quite misty and she looked leaner and bonier than ever. She said, “Forgive me, Peter. I think perhaps I’d better stop for a little. It hasn’t been easy, remembering back and living over those beautiful days. Come. Take a walk with me and we’ll poke about a bit to familiarise you with this place so that you’ll know the ins and out of it, as well as the secret entrance, and then I can tell you the rest of the story of what happened to me that fatal May.”

Peter was terribly disappointed at the interruption, but he did not wish Jennie to know this, he felt so sympathetic because of the tragedy in her life, even though he could not imagine how people as good and kind as the Pennys seemed to be could go off and leave her behind. But he kept his counsel, and when Jennie jumped down from the bed, he followed her. He was feeling much stronger now and had no difficulty keeping up with Jennie as she squeezed through the slats at the end of the bin and turned left up the corridor.

They prowled down a long, dark corridor, on either side of which were storage bins such as they had just left. They turned into several passageways, went down a flight of stairs, and came around a corner into a place where the room was illuminated by an electric bulb that hung from a wire overhead. It was an enormous enclosure where the ceiling was three times the height of their own and it was filled from top to bottom in the strangest manner, not only with all kinds of things but also with places.

There was a kind of glittering palace, and right next to it some wild stretches of the Scottish Highlands with huge rocks and boulders piled up and menacing trees throwing dark arms to the sky. Then there was somehow a view of the blue sea with some distant mountains, a trellised garden, a cottage with a thatched roof, a row of Arabian nomad tents, a gloomy piece of jungle all overhung with creepers and vines, a railway station, a piece of Greek temple …

Peter cried, “Why, I know what it is. It’s theatrical scenery, like they use in the Christmas Pantomime. I suppose this is where they store it.”

“Is that what it is?” said Jennie Baldrin. “I didn’t know, but I thought it might interest you. I often come here when I feel the need of a change. Let us go over there and sit on that rock in the Highlands, because it reminds me of where we came from, at least the way my mother used to describe it.”

Of course they couldn’t actually sit on the rock, since it was only painted on canvas in an extraordinarily lifelike manner, but when they had squatted down and curled their tails around them right next to the rock, it was really, Peter felt, almost like being in that part of Scotland about which his Nanny too had so often told him.

When he and Jennie had settled, Peter said, “Jennie dear … Do you think perhaps you might go on now …?”

Jennie closed her eyes for a moment as though to help herself return once more to those memories that were so painful to her. Then she opened them again, sighed, and took up her narrative:

“It was a large house, you know,” she said, “and it seemed to take perfect ages to get everything packed and sealed and ready to be moved.

“I walked around and into and over everything and smelled and fretted and tried to feel – you know how we can sometimes acquire bits and pieces of information and knowledge just through the ends of our whiskers—” (Peter didn’t, but he also didn’t wish to interrupt at this point, so he did not reply and Jennie went on) – “but it was useless. I couldn’t make out the slightest hint where everything was going to, or even when, though I knew it must be soon, because for several days the family had not been sleeping there, since all the beds were taken down and crated. Mrs Penny and also Buff would come back during the day and pack, and of course feed me.

“In the evening they would take my basket upstairs to the top-floor sewing-room under the eaves of the roof and leave me there with a saucer of milk and one of water for overnight. The sewing-room was quite bare. I didn’t even have any of my toys. I shouldn’t have minded that if only I hadn’t been so worried and upset by not knowing. Of course, I imagined that very likely the Pennys were stopping with friends or at a hotel where perhaps they couldn’t have me until the new house should be ready wherever it was. But then, on the other hand, how could I be sure they weren’t going far away somewhere over the sea where I could not go along?”

Peter knew all about moving. In military circles people were always packing up their belongings and starting off for India, or Australia, or Africa. And he thought too that he understood the anxiety Jennie must have felt. For he remembered enduring nights of terror and sudden panic himself when the thought had come to him from nowhere at all, as it were, “What if Mummy were not to come back to me ever? Supposing I wake up in the morning and she isn’t there?” And then he had lain fearful and wide awake in the darkness, listening and straining with his ears and all his senses for the sound of her key in the front door and her footsteps in the corridor going past his room. And not until this had come to pass, and more often than not it was well after midnight, would he be able to fall into a restless and troubled sleep.

Jennie’s voice brought him back from these memories. “One morning,” she was saying sadly, “they did not come back; nor did they ever. I never saw them again, my dear, beloved Buff, or Mrs Penny, or Mr Penny. They had gone away and cold-bloodedly abandoned me.”

Peter gave a cry of sympathy. “Oh, poor Jennie Baldrin!” But then he added: “I can’t believe it. Something must have happened to them …”

“I only wish I could think so,” Jennie declared, “but when you grow older – I mean, after you have been a cat for a while, you will come to understand that people are always doing that. They keep us while we are convenient to them, and not too much trouble, and then, when through no fault of ours it becomes inconvenient, they walk out and leave us to starve.”

“Oh, Jennie,” Peter cried again, quite horrified at such cruelty, “I would never go away and leave you …”

“You wouldn’t, perhaps,” Jennie said, “but people do, and THEY did. I remember that morning. I couldn’t believe it at first when the time came and they were not there. I watched at the window. I listened at the door. Time passed. Then I started to shout, hoping perhaps that somehow they had managed to slip into the house without my hearing them.

“I cried myself hoarse. I threw myself against the door. I tried desperately to open it, but it was one of those slippery doorknobs instead of a latch I might have worked. Morning turned into afternoon and afternoon into evening. I hardly slept at all, but kept pacing the floor of the empty sewing-room the whole night hoping against hope that they would come the next day.

“On the morrow something much more terrifying occurred. They didn’t come, but the moving-men did. From the window I could see their van drawn up in front of the house. All day long they went in and out of the house, removing the furniture, crates, boxes and barrels. By late afternoon everything was loaded and tied on behind with ropes. Then they climbed into the front seat and drove away. And that night there wasn’t any milk or water left, and I had nothing to eat or drink, nor the next, nor the one after that.”