To Be A Cat

Poor Polly

‘OF COURSE, I had to cut the top of the skull off,’ Miss Whipmire explained thoughtfully, admiring her handiwork. ‘And I painted it, to disguise it. But it works quite well. What do you think?’

‘I … I … I … think you’re a monster.’

She shook her head. ‘No, Barney, I can assure you the former Miss Whipmire had a very nice time in my ageing cat body. I told her lovely stories of Old Siam, and I kept her warm and safe.’ She sighed thoughtfully. ‘Of course, I didn’t give her anything to eat or drink, but then, compared to the rabbit kidney she used to give me, I was doing her a favour really. Oh, poor Polly, though. Fading away like that. It was hard. I do still have this lovely little memento to keep me company.’

She tapped the pot again.

Her mouth twitched at the corners, like a cat’s tail. ‘The trouble is, I do have rather a lot of pens. I get them free. One of the perks of the job. But this old head isn’t very big.’ Her mouth twitched its way into a smile again. ‘I suppose what I’m really saying is that I could do with a new pen pot. Do you understand?’

And, just in case Barney didn’t understand, she tapped the side of her head, then pointed at him. ‘And I think yours would hold a few more. Yes, I might even get some marker pens in there.’

‘You’re mad,’ Barney said as he leaped down and began to walk backwards towards the door. ‘You’re absolutely mad.’

‘No, I’ll tell you what would have been mad,’ she hissed. ‘Staying a cat. Now that would have been crazy. To be a cat, that’s no fun … What I went through at the hands of humans … When I was just little old Caramel, well … And not just with Polly Whipmire, either. Oh no, she was the least of it. You see, Polly had neighbours, and the neighbours had children. The Freemans. Torturers, they were. Once, on bonfire night, they … they—’

She stopped. Closed her eyes tight shut, as though the memory was a piece of sharp glass in her shoe.

‘Well, put it this way. I left the house that night with a tail and came back without one. And, of course, I was relieved when I heard the Freemans were moving abroad, to Thailand – my ancestral homeland, as it happens. But my sadness remained, every time I turned round and saw the space where my tail should have been.

‘Anyway, I could have coped with all that … I could have coped with anything if I had been with …’

She stopped for a second, took a deep breath, and carried on. ‘As I was saying, the day I lost my tail I vowed to get my revenge on them, the humans, all humans, especially children. So I remembered one of those stories I was telling you about, passed down from my ancestors in Old Siam. The story of the cat who became a king. A king who terrorized the humans who had cooked his parents. Well, not many children are scared of kings these days … but a head teacher? That was perfect, especially as I lived with someone who had just become one!’

Barney’s tail rubbed up against the door. He had to get out of the room before Miss Whipmire finished her story (we shall keep calling her Miss Whipmire, by the way, because calling her by her cat name, Caramel, makes you think of a nice, soothing, sweet and sugary sort of taste, which isn’t really appropriate). But how could Barney escape? The door was locked. The window was closed, and too high to reach, anyway. It was hopeless.

Please don’t hurt me.

Miss Whipmire didn’t listen to him. She just stood up and walked out from behind her desk as upright and perfectly postured as a ballet dancer, taking careful steps in Barney’s direction.

‘So I waited until she had a bad day in her new demanding job. I didn’t have to wait long. And I knew what to do. I knew I had to make my life look very, very easy. So I stretched out on the rug by the fire, and eventually it came. The wish. And I thought of what the humans had taken from me and I wished right back, thinking of how I could make everything right again.’

Barney could hear pupils out on the playing fields getting ready for the first rugby match of the day. For once he wished he could be out there among them. ‘But I was never cruel to any cat,’ Barney miaowed.

‘You are a human, no matter what you look like,’ Miss Whipmire said in a voice as cold as morning frost. ‘And to a human a cat is just a cat, and an ant is just an ant, and a tree is just a tree. So I’m just like you: I judge the cake on a single slice. You are a human boy, and so you deserve punishment, like all the other human boys.’

‘But why me in particular? You’ve always picked on me – why?’

‘Oh, you want a motive, how sweet. How very human. Well, I can give you one if that will make you happy. I remember things. I remember being a young cat and chased by a King Charles spaniel in the park. I remember a vile little freckle-faced boy laughing and not even bothering to call for his dog. There. What about that?’

Barney pictured the scene. ‘But I wasn’t laughing at the cat … I mean, you … I was laughing at Guster, my dog. And I was laughing because I knew he couldn’t catch you. He’s only a little spaniel. He’s never caught a cat in his life. He wasn’t going to hurt …’

But even as he was saying this, in feeble, weak miaows, he was thinking of Guster’s giant face looking down at him this morning, a face that had been ready to kill. He hadn’t looked like such a ‘little spaniel’ then.

‘I’m sorry,’ Barney pleaded.

‘Oh, you will be. Later, when I take you home and get working on my new pen pot …’

Barney could hear footsteps walk by in the corridor outside the door. The familiar clip-clop of the high heels worn by the school secretary, whose name Barney didn’t know.

Help! he called. Help! Help!

He was desperate. But maybe there were other former cats working at the school, ones that weren’t evil. And, anyway, even if there weren’t, maybe people would worry about a miaowing cat behind a shut door. Miss Whipmire certainly seemed to think so.

‘Sssh!’ she said in one of her shout whispers, crouching with her arms out wide in case Barney tried to run. ‘Silence!’

Help! Help!

Her hands reached towards him, her nails as long as claws.

Outside, the footsteps stopped. Not faded. Stopped.

This concerned Miss Whipmire.

And then it came. A gentle knock on the door, no louder than a rat’s head-butt.

Miss Whipmire sighed, furious. ‘Yes?’ Then she placed a finger to her lips, telling Barney to be silent. But Barney knew this might be his last chance.

Help! he miaowed as loud as he possibly could, and it came out as a kind of distressed aghow sound which would be hard for a cat-loving human to ignore.

‘It’s just … I heard what sounded like a cat,’ said the secretary from beyond the closed door.

Miss Whipmire rolled her eyes. Then gave in. She opened the door.

‘No, Daphne, you didn’t hear a cat,’ she snapped. ‘Now, please disappear and do some secretary-ing. Go. Type something.’

Barney didn’t wait another second. The door wasn’t going to be open long, after all. So he ran, or started to run.

But Miss Whipmire must have seen him and, with some of her Siamese cat reflexes still intact, quickly opened the door wider, squashing Barney’s middle against a filing cabinet.

‘I … can’t … breathe,’ Barney gasped.

‘What was that noise?’ asked Daphne, trying to peer inside Miss Whipmire’s office.

‘It’s the heating system,’ Miss Whipmire lied. ‘It’s playing up. Something’s gone wrong with the pipes. I’ve called a man about it. Now, if that’s all …’

‘Yes,’ said Daphne. ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you.’

Barney felt hope disappear. The air arrived back in his lungs with the close of the door. While he was still coughing he felt Miss Whipmire’s long nails dig into the back of his neck and lift him high into the air.

‘Now, have a little look out of the window,’ she told Barney with fake tenderness. ‘It will be the last time you’ll see daylight, I should imagine.’

Barney caught a glimpse of boys playing rugby, and the trees beyond lining the road. Cars swooshing by. Still, white clouds teasing him like a happy dream.

A second later it was all gone. He was dropped, landing on a cold metal surface next to an old paper file. He looked up and saw Miss Whipmire’s face staring down at him, smiling as if she were doing him a favour. ‘We all end up in the dark sooner or later,’ she said. Then she pushed the drawer of the filing cabinet shut, leaving Barney in the darkest blackness he’d ever known.