To Be A Cat

Human Things

TWO THINGS HAPPENED very quickly once they were inside the kitchen.

First thing:

Miss Whipmire dug her long unvarnished nails into Rissa’s face while simultaneously yanking Barney from her grip.

Second thing:

Miss Whipmire waggled her thumb in the air as she warned Rissa and Barney’s mum away.

‘It’s incredible,’ she said, her voice making Barney think of bubbling cauldrons full of frogs. ‘Humans have had opposable thumbs for over three million years, and yet hardly any of you know how to do the Fatal Thumb Death Press. The humans of Thailand invented it. Or Old Siam, I should say, home of my ancestors … One touch in the right part of the neck and we’ve a dead cat on our hands. Well, that would be true if this really was a cat.’

Barney stared at the fatal thumb. Then at Rissa and his mum, standing on the other side of the kitchen table.

Breakfast was still out.

He saw his mum’s bowl of tasteless diet cardboard flakes (as he always called them), and then another bowl – full of milk but no cereal, with no spoon.

Only two days ago he’d been sitting at this table, eating out of that bowl, believing he had a pretty miserable existence. He’d been stupid.

Yes, school hadn’t been much fun recently. But he had a warm home, full of nice human things, and a mum who loved him and the best best friend who’d ever lived. Life wasn’t ever one ingredient. It was several. And some flavours were bad and some were good, but love was the strongest of all. If you were loved, you had everything. It was the milk that made the cereal of life worth tasting.

Meanwhile, as these near-death thoughts were bursting open in Barney’s brain, Rissa was now staring worriedly over the table. ‘Just let him go.’

Barney could see his mum thinking. Finally the truth had arrived, lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, my goodness! Rissa, you were right, weren’t you?’

‘Afraid so.’

Miss Whipmire laughed. ‘Yes. Everything you see, Mrs Willow, is an illusion. For instance, you see a human holding a cat. When in reality it is a cat holding a human.’

Barney saw his mum’s eyes switch to anger, the way they sometimes used to when she had argued with his dad. Only Barney had never seen her look quite this cross.

‘Put down my son, you evil …’ Barney’s mum was going to say ‘woman’, then ‘cat’, but eventually went for ‘thing’.

‘No,’ Miss Whipmire refused. ‘That’s not going to happen. You see, everything is the opposite of normal from now on. So, the cat – that’s me – and her son – that’s my darling Maurice, who is waiting for me in the car – are going to stay together. Yes. We are going to run away and be happy after years of cruel separation.’

‘But wait,’ said Rissa. ‘We weren’t—’

‘Now,’ interrupted Miss Whipmire sharply. ‘You humans can talk all you want but nothing will change a thing. Just like a cat’s miaows never change a thing. So I suggest you listen, just for once, to what this cat has to say.’

Rissa wasn’t to be silenced. ‘But we didn’t separate you two.’

Miss Whipmire viewed her coldly. ‘No, Polly Whipmire did. The real one. But she’s currently busy in her new office job.’

‘What office job?’ asked Rissa, stalling for time.

‘Pen pot …’ Miss Whipmire hissed. And just in case they didn’t understand: ‘She’s dead.’ Now she had even silenced Rissa. ‘Anyhow, she didn’t have children of her own so I needed to find one, grind him down, then get my son to follow him …’

As Barney listened he felt a weird prickling sensation on his skin.

‘At first I told him he should try turning into Gavin Needle,’ Miss Whipmire continued, ‘as that was the boy he lived with. But, although Gavin is quite an unhappy child, he never had the imagination to be anything other than what he is: a bully. And an idiot. So, in my new job, I went to the English teacher, Mr Waffler, and asked him to single out the boys in the school who had the best imaginations. In his sublime do-goody ignorance he gave me a list and I had a look. Barney was on that list, very near the top – even though he had only just joined the school, Mr Waffler had already singled him out as extremely imaginative.

I knew he was the boy who had once laughed when his dog ran after me, and I thought it would be a sweet punishment if I chose him as the human my darling Maurice would follow. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was that I had met his father in a dark alley one night shortly before I transformed. He was a cat. A silver cat. He told me he was really a human, I fought him out of disgust, took his eye. But, anyway, the name lodged in my mind somewhere. Neil Willow. And I knew that weak-minded fathers make weak-minded sons as apples don’t fall far from trees. So I decided Barney was an easy target …’

Barney’s mum was trembling and speechless. It was too much for her to absorb. But Miss Whipmire’s cruel words carried on. ‘All I had to do was make him as miserable as possible and, being a head teacher, that was pretty easy. Then I sent Pumpkin to take a message to my son at the Needles’ house and it was arranged. I knew, sooner or later, it would happen. And, when Barney was in my office staring at my cat calendar, I planted the idea in his brain. To be a cat, I told him, would really be the best thing he could imagine … And now my son and I are human, and no one will come and separate us.’

Barney’s mum was shaking with fear and anger. ‘But I’m a mother too. And that’s my son. What do you need him for? You could just … leave him here. And go. We won’t stop you.’

‘A nice idea,’ said Miss Whipmire, pretending it really was, ‘but I’m going to take him just in case. Oh, and if you contact the police or go to the papers he’ll be gone …’

Barney’s mum was desperate as her son started to be carried away. ‘Please! No!’

Miss Whipmire tutted. ‘I wouldn’t cry too much for him. After all, he obviously wasn’t happy being your son. Or he wouldn’t still be a cat.’

Miss Whipmire walked backwards, holding her thumb up like a weapon, as Barney saw his kitchen, his hallway, his mum, his best friend – his wonderful best friend – slipping away like a dream he didn’t want to end.