The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (22 page)

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.

Now that they were at last in Cavendish Square, Peter was all afire to hasten on to the Mews. Here once more were all the familiar sights close to home that he knew so well, the small oval park surrounded by tall green shrubs, planted hedge-like so close together that they formed a palisade barring out all but cats and giving entrance actually only through the iron gate at the north.

Here, likewise inside the little gardens, were the nursemaids knitting by their prams, the children playing, safe from the traffic passing through the streets outside. Around the oval he recognized all the sleepy, dignified-looking houses on three sides of the square, elegant even to the one that had been firebombed and gutted and hid its wounds and empty spaces behind its untouched outer walls, doors and boarded-up windows that all the more gave one the impression that it had shut its eyes and did not wish to be disturbed.

There, standing in front of it too, was Mr. Wiggo, the Police Constable, tall and comforting looking in his round blue helmet, dark blue cape and clean white gloves; Mr. Legg, the Postman, was coming out of No. 29; the delivery wagon from

the Co-op was just turning the corner; it seemed to Peter that any moment he must see Scotch Nanny wearing her crisp, starched, blue-and-white Glengarry bonnet with the dark blue ribbons streaming from it, come marching into the square from the Mews, with perhaps even himself being held by the hand and dragging a bit maybe because he did not like being babied.

There it all was. Only a bit further and he would be seeing the home that he had left what seemed like such a long, long time ago. He said to Jennie, `Hurry, Jennie. Come along. We're almost there.'

But much as she disliked having to do so, Jennie had to caution him and restrain his impatience, for this was after all new territory into which they were coming as strangers, and it behoved them to tread softly, make their manners, get acquainted, and above all answer questions politely and listen to what the residents had to say. Thereafter they would be free to come and go as they pleased provided they were accepted by the important members of the community. But to go rushing pell-mell through a district which obviously housed a large cat population, without pausing for amenities, could only lead them into trouble.

`It will only be a little longer, Peter,' Jennie said. `But everybody would be most upset if we didn't stop and make ourselves known. Remember, we are strangers here. Come, walk quietly with me around the right side of the square and we'll see what they are saying. We'll tune in on them.'

Peter did not wholly understand what Jennie meant by this until they passed the area-way of No. 2A where lived the janitor who was also the caretaker and keeper of the key for the tiny gardens. And there for the first time he encountered the wonders of feline communication by whisker antenna. It was like broadcasting. They thought something, and in a moment you knew what they were saying, or thinking of saying, at any rate, because it came in through your whiskers or the vibrissae or feeler hairs growing out from above your eyes. Then you thought the reply, and it went out to them. It operated only over short distances and one actually had to be close to the cat with whom one was communicating, but work it did.