To Be A Cat

A Strange Discovery

BARNEY WAS STANDING on a chair, where Miss Whipmire had placed him. It was the same chair he’d sat in yesterday when he’d imagined life couldn’t get any worse. How wrong he’d been. He watched as his skeletal head teacher went over and locked the door, wondering why she needed to do that.

She turned and gave him a strange look. Not friendly, obviously, but not cross, either.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

Of course, people ask animals things all the time. Like if a dog decides to go to the toilet on a carpet you might ask, ‘What is the matter with you?’ Or if a goldfish is lying upside down on the top of the water its owner might enquire, ‘Are you dead?’ But when a human asks a member of another species a question, they don’t normally expect an answer, just as Rissa hadn’t this morning.

But Barney really thought an answer was exactly what Miss Whipmire expected.

She walked over, leaned right into Barney’s face. ‘Don’t just sit there. Tell me. I need to be sure.’

She’s mad, Barney thought as he smelled her fishy breath.

‘Well,’ he said, assuming she wouldn’t understand. ‘I’m not a cat really. I’m Barney Willow. And, by the way, you are the most horrible head teacher in the universe.’

He expected her to look blank.

He was talking cat, not human.

But she wasn’t blank. She was smiling – without any sign of pain. And soon the smile was a laugh, and the laugh grew until the sound of it filled the room. It was a horrible laugh. The kind of laugh reserved for witches to use over cauldrons after casting an evil spell. But Miss Whipmire wasn’t a witch. Not a real one, anyway. She was something else, something just as strange. And twice as evil.

She was now putting her hand over her mouth and trying desperately to keep the laugh locked inside, but she couldn’t. She was soon on the floor, curled right up, laughing uncontrollably.

‘He did it!’ she was saying to Barney’s confusion. ‘He actually did it.’

About a minute later she stood up. ‘Oh, that’s funny. That’s so satisfying … Barney Willow! You’re Barney Willow!’

Barney waited, wondering whether to speak again, but before he knew it, words were leaking from him: ‘Yes, I am. How can you understand me?’

Miss Whipmire had understood his miaow – hence the speech marks (and, yes, all those words equalled only one miaow) – but she chose not to answer it. Not right then, anyway.

‘When?’ she said, on the brink of more laughter.

‘What?’

‘Still as slow as ever, aren’t you, Barney Willow? I’ll ask it slowly.’ She closed her eyes and moved her mouth carefully around her words. ‘When. Did. You. Become. A. Cat?’

‘This morning,’ he said. ‘I felt funny for a while, but it was only this morning that I became … like this.’

(Three miaows, long and heartfelt.)

‘This morning … this morning …’ said Miss Whipmire, thinking, and tapping her fingers on her chin as if it were a silent piano.

And then she had another question. ‘And so, where are you?’

Barney was confused. ‘I’m here.’

‘No, you imbecile, the other you. The better you. The cat in your body.’

‘I don’t know. He was walking to the bus stop with Rissa and then he ran away.’

‘Good.’ Miss Whipmire nodded the kind of nod you give when everything is going to plan. ‘Good, good. He’ll be taking some time to adjust, like I told him to. Then he’ll be on his way here. Very good … But not for you, obviously. Bad, bad for you. Because there goes your ticket.’

‘What ticket?’ said Barney, noticing an envelope on the desk with what looked like tickets sticking out.

‘Oh, not these,’ she said, waving the envelope. He could see the address:

Miss Polly Whipmire

63 Sycamore Terrace

Blandford

Blandfordshire

BL1 3NR

‘These are real tickets – my tickets. Mine and my only love’s. Out of here for ever. This time tomorrow I’ll be en route to Old Siam – Thailand. I’m talking about the ticket back to you. Back to you you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ she said, her thin lips curling into a frosty smile. ‘After all, just because you look like a cat doesn’t mean you have the brain of a cat, does it?’ She leaned close into him again. He felt his claws growing, itching to strike her nose. But he was too scared to do anything.

‘Do you know what the IQ of the average cat is?’ she asked him.

‘No.’

‘One thousand and six. That’s nine hundred and six points higher than the average human.’ Miss Whipmire paused, licked her lips as if savouring the taste of something. ‘Anyway, this happens more than you think. See, I’m a cat. Was a cat. Oh yes, that’s right – Blandford High School has had a Siamese cat acting as its head teacher for quite a while now.’ She smiled again as Barney began to absorb the madness of what she was telling him. ‘And do you know what? This school has never had such good results!’