Pinky Pye (4 page)

"See! I have friends," said Jerry. "Hi, Touhy," he called nonchalantly.

They sauntered up one narrow boardwalk and down another and they speedily determined which cottages had a boy or a girl in them. This was not hard because there would be a wagon in front of the house or a wet bathing suit on the line. All other households did not have the same Fourth-of-July swimming rule theirs did apparently.

And then they started for home. They knew what was poison ivy and they stayed out of it. "See that? That's poison ivery," said Uncle Bennie in regard to every single plant he saw, even plain pepper grass. There would be no chance of his getting poison ivy because he was not going to step on any plant at all. That was what he had decided.

At home, breakfast was waiting for them. Just as each one hungrily took his first bite of pancake there came certain unusual noises from the front stoop. There were faint mews. But Gracie was on the mantel smelling old seaweed. And then there were frantic-sounding thrashings and beatings-about of something. Mama got the broom, and they all went to the front door. There, on the stoop, tangled in an old torn crab net, was a tiny skinny black kitten looking furious and bewildered. She had a string tied around her neck with a sign on it.

A BANDID
, said the sign.

"A bandid?" said Rachel. "Must mean bandit. A bandit."

Everybody laughed at this idea, and the kitten, trying desperately to get loose, spat at them all.

"Abandoned!" said Papa, who was excellent at riddles. "That's what this sign means. Abandoned."

"An abandoned kitten!" they exclaimed compassionately.

"Is there anything else on the note?" asked Jerry, and, turning it over, he saw that there was. "My name is Pinky," he read, and, "I don't know how old is I."

"Oh, isn't it cunning?" said Rachel. "It is like in books. People abandon a kitten or a baby in a church pew or at some kind person's doorstep, hoping he will give it a home."

"I wish they had thought of church this time," said Mama wistfully.

Papa was gently untangling the kitten from the net. The kitten was crying so loudly its mouth was as wide open as a baby bird's. Why the kitten was named Pinky was a mystery, for it was mainly black with the exception of one pure white paw and a white nose with a comical black spot just off center. At last, clawing, scratching, biting, and hissing, the wispy little ball of fur was disengaged from the crab net. She faced them all with her A BANDID sign on her, arched her back, flattened down her ears, and challenged the entire group of them—people, dog, and cat. Suspecting that she would soon make a dash for freedom, Papa scooped her up in his hands.

Ginger whined. He wanted to chase her. "The poor little thing!" said Jerry. "Aren't you ashamed!"

Meanwhile, they all had a feeling that someone else was around—a person. When the children had returned from their walk just a few minutes ago, no one, no cat, nothing had been on the little front stoop. But the kitten, abandoned as she had been, must have been abandoned by someone. She could not have written the note around her neck herself, could she? Or hobbled there in her net? The Pyes listened. Saying nothing, keeping very quiet, their patience was rewarded, their suspicions proven correct. A little red-haired girl stuck her head around the corner of the house. Seeing that she had been observed, she withdrew it immediately. However, she couldn't resist, after a moment, sticking her head out again, as though to make sure of what she'd seen, and then quickly withdrawing it.

"Come here," demanded Papa.

The girl remained hidden, or perhaps she had run away. "Now you just come right here," said Papa kindly but firmly. And the girl came out. She had another crab net in her hands, and it was full of squirming, struggling kittens. "Yours is the prettiest," said the little girl. She looked to be about seven years old.

"Ours!" said Mama.

"Take it," said the girl. "Their mother was abandid by summer people last year. And now their mother has abandid them, or is lost. I caught them in a crab net this morning."

"Do you mean to say that summer people abandon their pets at the end of the season?" demanded Papa.

"That's right," said the girl, whose name was Rose.

"Oh, no!" said all the Pyes. "Abandoned!"

"Why don't you keep the kittens since you caught them?" suggested Mama.

"We already have nine abandid kittens, and my mother says that is all."

"Anyway," said Papa, speaking up firmly, "we are keeping this abandid kitten. I like her."

Everyone looked at Papa in amazement. Never on his bird travels had he brought home a bird. Now here he was on a bird expedition and adopting a kitten! The kitten, Pinky, looked up at him narrowly. The bristles on her back were going down. "We'll keep her," said Papa, "if you will promise to put bells on all your nine cats. That is to preserve our bird life," he explained to Rose, who seemed puzzled.

"Imagine bells on nine cats!
Ts, ts.
Rose's poor mother!" said Mama.

"Jingle bells, jingle bells," sang Uncle Bennie.

Papa had seen to it that practically all the cats in Cranbury had bells on them, and now, here he was, agitating for bells on all the cats here!
Well, no wonder,
thought Rachel.
He has to have some birds to study.

"How did she get the name of Pinky?" she asked Rose.

"Because she has such a pink little tongue."

"Oh, of course."

"Could I have my sign back now?" said the little girl, for the deal seemed to be closed.

"Oh, couldn't we keep it for Pinky's scrapbook, her baby book?" asked Rachel. Rachel was a great keeper of scrapbooks and even had them for all her dolls.

"Well, all right," said Rose. "I'll make another one." And off she went with her sackful of kittens, to leave them, one by one, on other inviting doorsteps.

Mama said weakly, "We already have one cat, Gracie."

"Now we have two," said Papa firmly. And Pinky spat at Mama. "Ah, she's a little wild," said Papa fondly. "But with love and good food she will be a wonderful pet."

"Well," said Mama, a soft look coming over her face. "The poor abandoned little thing. If we don't take her, who knows what awful person might and keep her just for the summer and then—abandon her again. Maybe we should take them all," she said, compassion overriding her common sense.

"One is plenty," said Papa.

"Woe," said Pinky, for that was the way she said "mew."

"Ah-h," said Uncle Bennie, "a baby."

Rachel asked to hold her. She pressed the tiny kitten, which seemed to weigh nothing, against her cheek. "Oh, you cunning little thing!" she said. Pinky gave her first purr. She did it again, looking as astonished as the Pyes at her unusually loud and enginelike noises. Her whole skinny little body shook. These purrs may have been the first ones of her life.

For the next two hours Rachel sat in a little rocking chair holding the kitten. She rocked her and rocked her, and she sang softly to her. Tired from her adventures and travels and having only this morning been torn asunder from her life in the reeds and rushes, Pinky fell asleep, her little pointed face resting in the palm of Rachel's hand.

Gracie pretended not to notice this scene. Whenever she came in the living room, she skirted the edges, hitched her shoulders, sat down on the hearth, and shook her front paw as though she had stepped in mud. As the day went on, Gracie wore a smug smile on her face. Once she came up to Pinky and gave her a patronizing sniff. Then she gave Pinky a little lick and hastened away as though ashamed of her sentimentality. Gracie had often been a mother long ago, and possibly Pinky aroused her old feelings of mother love.

After a while Pinky gave a little yawn showing her raspberry-colored tongue. It looked as soft as a rose petal, but it felt as rough as a thistle. And at this moment Ginger, who had spent these two hours with Jerry and the wagon boys, rushed in to have a drink. He drew back in surprise when he saw Pinky. Apparently he had thought she'd be gone by now. And the sudden sight of Ginger interrupted Pinky in the middle of a stretch. She just kept her back up and arched it to its capacity. Ginger barked. Pinky spat. She was not the least afraid, and the fact that Ginger was the worst chaser of cats in all of Cranbury would have made no difference to her even if she had known it.

Pinky had not spent her early weeks in the jungle of sea grass and marsh for nothing, living by her wits and cleverness. She had no intention of running away. Continuing to arch her bony back, she hissed again and again, like a snake. She stiffened all her fur, and you could almost count the hairs, they stood out so. She was puny, but she was full of dynamite. Rachel couldn't hold her. She jumped down and she leaped toward Ginger as if on springs, sideways, all four legs going up in the air at once in the manner of certain mountain goats. Spitting and hissing, she came in her sideways leaps. Her ears were pasted down, her blue eyes were black.

She slapped at Ginger and then she raced for the couch and dived under it. While Ginger sniffed and barked at the place in the middle of the couch where she had disappeared, she came out from the far end, circled the room, silently attacked him again from the rear, and again tore under the couch just in the nick of time.

Ginger, the intellectual dog, had been fooled by a mite of a kitten. Everybody had to laugh, even Ginger, who now showed he could take a joke. His tail began to wag. He began to enjoy himself. The kitten came out, and he and Pinky began to spar with each other, not in the bloody fashion with which he sparred with his enemy cats in Cranbury, but enjoying the bout in a good and sporting way.

When Pinky grew tired, she sat down on Ginger's front feet. "Aw-w-w," said Rachel. "We ought to have a picture of that."

Pinky cleaned her white paw. "It's her boxing mitt," said Jerry.

Rachel was overcome with love for Pinky. Much as she loved Ginger—after all she had helped to dust the pews that had earned the dollar that had bought Ginger in the first place—still, Ginger really counted as Jerry's dog because Jerry and Ginger were usually off somewhere together, the reservoir, East Rock, somewhere. And Gracie, the ancient New York cat, loved only Mama. No one else. Perhaps this kitten would love her, Rachel, the best.

That night, after supper, while they were all sitting on beach chairs outdoors, Pinky tried sparring with Gracie, but Gracie sent her spinning and then retired to the little roof over the small front porch that had already become her favorite spot in their new surroundings. From there, like an umpire, she could watch Ginger and Pinky spar, her head going back and forth dizzily and her tail waving like a signal.

"Oh, remind me," said Papa, as they all laughed at Grade's bobbing head, "to close that little window up in the eaves when we go in."

But no one remembered to remind Papa because everyone was too engrossed with Pinky, the waif. "Come here, you sweet little bandit," said Rachel.

"Woe," said Pinky, and abandoning the game with Ginger, she sprang sideways toward Rachel, "
ss-ss-ss-ss
," hissing and spitting as she came because she knew this was amusing.

"She knows me already," said Rachel.

For a while Pinky's chief pastime was sparring with Ginger. These sparring matches were spectacular, and it was hard for any member of the family to get any work done, for of course everyone had to watch. The minute Ginger and Pinky got out in the morning they started their sparring, which usually took place on the little boardwalk in front of the stoop.

Pinky would fall to right away. Pretending fury, she plastered back her ears, stood on her hind legs, and, giving the impression she was battling for her life, she socked at Ginger again and again. It was lucky that Ginger had had so much training with the cats of Cranbury or he might have made a poor showing. But he was very nimble and turned round and round, giving short happy yelps and hitting Pinky now and then lightly with his paw. Ginger was not a big dog and he was graceful, but compared to Pinky he seemed gigantic and clumsy.

The Pyes were not the only watchers. Pinky and Ginger usually had a large audience, and the larger it was, the better they sparred. Ladies on their way to the store had to stop and watch, and men on their way to the post office or to catch the boat stopped and watched too. Children often forgot to lick their ice-cream cones, and once in a while the wagon boys just didn't bother to meet boats at all but stayed to watch the match. So newcomers to the island called "Wagon! Wagon!" in vain.

Sitting on the stoop, watching Pinky and Ginger, Rachel felt her heart swell with pride and love. What a kitten she had! The show would end when all of a sudden Pinky would stop, just stop and walk off and clean her white paw, indicating she had wasted enough time now.

However, sparring was not Pinky's only accomplishment. She was a high jumper, and it was a beautiful sight to see her leap after a butterfly from the top of the stoop, in total abandon, not caring where she would land. It was as though she had the idea she could fly. And she loved to surprise people. She would appear from nowhere, race up a wispy, meager little bush, and as its topmost branch swayed under her fragile weight, she would intently survey the scene, pondering her next daring leap.