The Abandoned (Jennie)

CHAPTER NINETEEN: London Once More

IT was only half true that Peter wanted to go home. For boy and cat were becoming so intermingled that Peter was not at all certain any longer which he really was.

More than once during his voyage aboard the Countess of Greenock and the subsequent adventures, Peter had thought of his mother and father and Scotch Nanny and wondered how they were, if they were missing him and whether they had any explanation for his mysterious disappearance. For certainly, none of them, not even Nanny, who had been right there at the time, could be expected to guess that he had changed suddenly from a boy into a snow-white tomcat under her very eyes almost, and had been pitched out into the street by her as a stray.

He thought it was probable that they would have notified the police, or perhaps, believing that he had run away, placed an advertisement in the `Personal' columns of The Times saying: `Peter: Come home, all is forgiven-Mummy, Daddy and Nanny,' or possibly it might have been more formally worded: `Will anyone who can give information as to the whereabouts of Master Peter Brown, vanished from No. IA Cavendish Mews, London, W.C.2, kindly communicate with Colonel and Mrs. Alastair Brown of that address. Reward!'

But in the main, when he thought of those at home he did not believe that he was much missed except by Nanny who, of course, had been busy with him almost from morning until night, leaving out the hours when he was at school, and now that he was gone would have nothing to do. His father was away from home so much of the time that except for their occasional evening romps he could hardly be expected to notice the difference. And as for his mother-Peter always felt sad and heavy-hearted when he thought about his mother, because she had been so beautiful and he had loved her so much. But it was the kind of sadness that is connected with a memory of something long ago that was. Looking back to what life had been like in those now but dimly recollected days, he felt certain that his mother had been a little unhappy herself at first when he was missed, but then, after all, she never seemed to have much time and now that he was gone perhaps it would not have taken her long to get used to it.

Really it was Jennie who had come more and more to mean family to him and upon whom he leaned for advice, help, companionship, trust, and even affection. It was true, she talked a great deal and was not the most beautiful cat in the world, but there was an endearing and ingratiating warmth and grace about her that made Peter feel comfortable and happy when they slept coiled up close to one another, or when even he only looked at her sometimes and saw her sweet attitudes, kindly eyes, gamin-wise face and soft white throat.

The world was full of all kinds of beautiful cats, prize specimens whose pictures he had seen in the illustrated magazines during the times of the cat shows. Compared to them, Jennie was rather plain, but it was an appealing plainness he would not have exchanged for all the beauty in the world.

Nor was it his newly acquired cat-self that was seeking a return to Cavendish Mews in quest of a home, though to some extent the cat in him was now prey to curiosity as to how things were there without him and what everyone was doing. But he knew quite definitely that his mother and father were people who had little or no interest in animals, or appeared to have any need of them, and hence would be hardly likely to offer a haven to a pair of stray cats come wandering in off the streets, namely Jennie and himself.

Peter's suggestion that Jennie accompany him on a trip home to Cavendish Mews was perhaps more than anything born out of the memory that when he had been unhappy and upset about their treatment of Mr. Grims at the time of the first encounter with him, she had managed to interest and distract him by proposing the journey to Scotland. When he saw her sunk in the depths of grief, and guilt over the fate of the poor old man, Peter had plucked a leaf out of her book on experience in the hope that it would take her mind off the tragedy, and particularly what she considered her share in it. By instinct, he seemed to have known that nothing actually would have moved her from the spot but his expression of his need for her.

Whatever, it was clear after they had set out for Cavendish Mews that she was in a more cheerful frame of mind and anxious to help him achieve his objective.

It is not easy for cats to move about in a big city, particularly on long journeys, and Jennie could be of no assistance to Peter in finding his way back to Cavendish Mews, since she had never lived or even been there and hence could not use her homing instinct, a kind of automatic direction-finder which communicated itself through her sensitive whiskers and enabled her to travel unerringly to any place where she had once spent some time.

Peter at least had the unique, from a cat's point of view, ability to know what people around him were saying, as well as being able to read signs, such as for instance appeared on the front of omnibuses and in general terms announced where they were going. One then had but to keep going in that direction and eventually one would arrive at the same destination or vicinity. In his first panic at finding himself a cat and out in the street, Peter had fled far from his home with never any account taken of the twistings and turnings he had made. However, he was quite familiar with his own neighbourhood, and knew if he could once reach Oxford and Regent streets he would find his way.

However, when it came to the lore of the city and how to preserve one's skin whole, eat, drink and sleep, Jennie as usual proved invaluable.

En route he learned from her all the important things there were to know about dogs and how to handle them, and that for instance he must beware of terriers of every kind, that the average street mongrel was to be despised. Dogs on leashes could be ignored even though they put up a terrific fuss and roared, threatened, growled and strained. They only did it because they were on the leash, which of course injured their dignity, and they had to put up a big show as to what they would do if they were free. They behaved exactly the same when sighting another dog, and the whole thing, according to Jennie, was nothing but a lot of bluff, and she for one never paid the slightest attention to them.

`Never run from a dog if you can control it,' she admonished Peter, `because most of them are half blind, anyway, inclined to be hysterical, and will chase anything that moves. But if you don't run, and stand your ground, chances are he will go right by you and pretend he neither sees you nor smells you, particularly if he has tangled with one of us before. Dogs have long memories.

`Small dogs you can keep in their places by swatting them the way we do when we play-box, only you run your claws out and hit fast and hard, because most of them are scared of having their eyes scratched and they don't like their noses clawed either, because they are tender. Here, for instance is one looking for trouble, and I'll show you what I mean.'

They were walking, through Settle Street, near Whitechapel, looking for a meal, when a fat, overfed Scottie ran barking from a doorway and made a good deal of attacking them, barking, yelping, leaping and charging in short rushes with an amount of snapping of its teeth, bullying and bravado.

Jennie calmly squatted down on the pavement, facing the foe with a kind of humiliating disinterest which he mistook for fear and abject cringing, and which gave him sufficient courage to close in within reach and risk a real bite with his teeth at Jennie's flank. Like lightning flashes her left paw shot out three times, while she leaned away from the attack just enough to let the Scottie miss her. The next moment, cut on the end of the nose and just below the right eye, he was legging it for the cover and safety of the doorway, screaming `Help, murder. Watch!’

`Come on,' Jennie said to Peter. `Now we've got to move out. You'll see why in a minute.' Peter had long since learned not to question her, particularly when it was something that called for split-second timing, and he quickly ran after her out of range, just as the owner of the dog, a slatternly woman, evidently the proprietress of the dingy greengrocery, came out and threw a dishpan full of water after them, but missed, thanks to Jennie's wisdom and speedy action.

`I'm out of practice,' Jennie said, with just a touch of her oldtime showing off for Peter, `I missed him with my third. Still. . . They'll run off screaming for help, and if you stay around you're likely to catch it, as you saw, though not from them. And you don't always have to do that. Quite often they've been brought up with cats, or are used to them, and are just curious or want to play, and come sniffing and snuffling and smelling around with their tails wagging, which as you know means that they are pleased and friendly and not angry or agitated or nervous over something as it does with us. Then you can either bear up under it, and pretend not to notice it, or try to walk away or get up on top of something they can't reach. I, for one, just don't care for a wet, cold, drooly nose messing about in my fur, so I usually give them just a little tap with the paw, unloaded, as a reminder that we are after all quite totally different species and their way of playing isn't ours.

'But supposing it's a bigger dog,' Peter said. `Like the ones in Glasgow …'

Jennie gave a little shudder. `Ugh!' she said. `Don't remind me of those. As I told you then, any time you see a bull terrier, run, or better still, start climbing.

`But a great many of the others you can bluff and scare by swelling up and pretending to be bigger than you actually are. Let me show you. You should have been taught this long ago, because you can never tell when you are going to need it.'

They were walking near Paternoster Row, in the wide-open spaces created by the bombs before St. Paul's Cathedral, and Jennie went over a low coping and into some weeds and fire-flowers that were growing there. `Now,' she said, 'do just as I do. Take a deep breath, that's it, way in. Now blow, but hold your breath at the same time. Hard! There you go.'

And as she said, there indeed Peter went, swelling up to nearly twice his size, just as Jennie was, all puffed out into a kind of a lopsided fur ball. He was sure that he was looking perfectly enormous and quite out of plumb, and he felt rather foolish. He said as much to Jennie, adding `I think that's silly.'

She answered, `Not at all. You don't realize it, but you really looked quite alarming. It's sort of preventive warfare and, on the contrary, makes a good deal of sense. If you can win a battle without having to fight it, or the enemy is so scared of you that he won't even start it, and goes away and there is no battle at all, that's better than anything. It doesn't do any harm, and it's always worth trying, even with other cats. For in spite of the fact that you know it's all wind and fur, it will still give you the creeps when someone does it to you.'

Peter suddenly thought back on Dempsey and how truly terrifying the battle-scarred veteran of a thousand fights had looked when he had swelled up and gone all crooked and menacing on him.

`And anyway,' Jennie concluded the lesson, `if it shouldn't happen to work, it's just as well to be filled up with air because then you are ready to let out a perfect rouser of a battle-cry, and very often that does work, provided you can get it out of your system before the other one does. A dog will usually back away from that and remember another engagement.'

In the main, on this walk across a portion of London, Peter found cats to be very like people. Some were mean and small and pernickety, and insisted upon all their rights even when asked politely to share; others were broadminded and hospitable, with a cheery `Certainly, do come right in. There's plenty of room here,' before Jennie had even so much as finished her gentle request for permission to remain. Some were snobs who refused to associate with them because they were strays, others had once been strays themselves, remembered their hardships and were sympathetic; there were cantankerous cats always spoiling for a fight, and others who fought just for the fun of fighting and asserting-their superiority, and many a good-natured cat belonging to a butcher, or a pub, or a snack-bar or green– grocer would steer them towards a meal, or share what they had, or give them a tip on where to get a bite.

Also Peter learned, not only from Jennie but from bitter experience, to be wary of children and particularly those not old enough to understand cats, or even older ones with a streak of cruelty. And since one could not tell in advance what they would be like, or whether they would fondle or tease, one had no choice, if one was a London stray, but to act in the interest of one's own safety.

This sad piece of knowledge Peter acquired in a most distressful manner as they threaded their way past Petticoat Lane, in Whitechapel, where a grubby little boy was playing in the gutter outside a fish and chips shop. He was about Peter's age, or at least the age Peter had been before the astonishing trans– formation had happened to him, and about his height, and he called to them as they hurried by, `Here, puss. Come here, Whitey …'

Before ever Jennie could warn him, or breathe a `Peter, be careful!' he went to him trustingly, because in a way the boy reminded him of himself and he remembered how much he had loved every cat he saw in the streets, and particularly the strays and wanderers. He went over and held up his head and face to be rubbed. The next moment the most sharp and agonizing pain shot through his body from head to foot so that he thought he would die on the spot. He cried out half with hurt and half with fear, for he did not know yet what had happened to him.

Then he realized that the boy had twined his fingers firmly about his tail and was pulling. Pulling HIS tail. Nothing had ever hurt him so much or so excruciatingly.

'Nah then,' laughed the boy, nastily, 'let's see yer get away…'

With a cry of horror and outrage, and digging his claws into the cracks in the pavement, Peter made a supreme effort and managed to break loose certain that he had left his tail behind him in the hand of the boy, and only after he had run half a block did he determine that it was still streaming out behind and safely attached to him.

And here Peter discovered yet another thing about cats that he had never known before. There was involved not only the pain of having his tail pulled, but the humiliation. Never had he felt so small, ashamed, outraged and dishonoured. And all in front of Jennie. He felt that he would not be able to look at her again. It was much worse than being stood in a corner when he had been a boy, or being spoken to harshly, or having his ear tweaked or knuckles cracked in front of company.

What served to make it endurable was that Jennie seemed to understand. She neither spoke to him sympathizingly, which at that moment Peter felt he would not have been able to bear, nor even so much as glanced at him, but simply trotted alongside minding her own business and pretending in a way that he was not there at all, which was a great help. Gradually the pain and the memory began to fade, and finally, after a long while, when Jennie turned to him and out of a clear sky said 'Do you know, I think it might rain to-night. What do your whiskers say?' he was able to thrust his moustache forward and wrinkle the skin on his back to the weather-forecasting position and reply:

`There might be a shower or two. We'd better hurry if we want to reach Cavendish Square before it starts. Oh, look there! There's the proper bus just going by now. We can't go wrong if we keep in the same direction.'

It was a Number 7, and the sign on the front of it read 'Oxford Street and Marble Arch.'

'For Oxford Street crosses Regent Street, and then comes Prince's Street, and if we turn up Prince's Street we can't help coming into Cavendish Square,' Peter explained, 'and then it's only a short step to the Mews and home.'

Jennie echoed the word 'home' in so sad and wistful a voice that Peter looked at her sharply, but she said nothing more and proceeding quickly by little short rushes, from shop door to shop door, as it were, the two soon had passed from Holborn through New Oxford Street into Oxford Street, and across Regent Street to Prince's Street where they turned up to the right for Cavendish Square.