The Story of Jennie- or the Abandoned (8 page)

`But of course I do!' Peter hastened to explain, `it's just that I'm not yet quite familiar with the different way cats feel than the way people feel. And I will do as you say, and I do want to learn …'

From her expression, Jennie did not appear to be too pleased with this speech either, but before she could remark upon it there came a loud call from the movers: `That's the lot, then,' and another voice replied, 'Righty-ho!' Jennie peered around the corner and said, `They've finished. We'll wait a few minutes to make sure they don't come back, and then we'll start.'

When they were certain that the aisle was quite deserted again, they set off, Jennie leading, past the empty bin and down the corridor in the direction the men had taken, but before they had gone very far Jennie branched off to the right on a new tack until she came to a bin close to the outside wall of the warehouse, filled with horrible, new, modern kind of furniture, chrome-bound leather and overstuffed plush. She led Peter to the back where there was a good-sized hole in the baseboard. It looked dark and forbidding inside.

`Don't be afraid,' Jennie said. `Just follow me. We go to the right and then to the left, but it gets light very quickly.'

She slipped in with Peter after her, and it soon grew pitch black. Peter now discovered that he was feeling through the ends of his whiskers, rather than seeing where Jennie was, and he had no difficulty in following her, particularly inasmuch as it soon became light enough to see that they were in a tunnel . through which a large iron pipe more than a foot in diameter was running. Then Peter saw where the light was coming from. There was a hole in the pipe where it had rusted through a few feet from where it gave exit to the street.

Apparently the pipe was used as some kind of air-intake, or had something to do with the ventilation of the warehouse, for it had once had a grating over the end of it, but the fastenings of that had long since rusted and it had fallen away, and there was nothing to bar their way out.

Peter was so pleased and excited at the prospect of seeing the sun and being out of doors again that he hurried past Jennie and would have rushed out into the street had not the alarm in her warning cry checked him just before he emerged from the opening.

`Peter! Wait!' she cried. `Not like that! Cats never, never rush out from places. Don't you know about Pausing on the Threshold, or Lingering on the Sill? But then, of course, you wouldn't. Oh dear, I don't mean always to be telling you what to do and what not to do, but this is really Important. It's almost Lesson No. 2. You never hurry out of any place, and particularly not outdoors.'

Peter saw that Jennie had quite recovered her good nature and apparently had forgotten that she had been upset with him. He was curious to find out the reasons for her warning. He said, `I don't quite understand, Jennie. You mean I'm not to stop before coming in, but I am whenever I go out?'

'Of course. What else?' replied Jennie, sitting down quite calmly in the mouth of the exit and showing not the slightest disposition to go through it and into the street. `You know what's inside because you come from there. You don't know what's outside because you haven't been there. That's common ordinary sense for anyone, I should think.'

`Yes, but what is there outside to be afraid of, really?' inquired Peter. 'I mean, after all, if you know where you live and the street and houses and all which don't change—'

`Oh, my goodness,' said Jennie, 'I couldn't try to tell you them all. To begin with—dogs, people, moving vehicles, the weather and changes in temperature, the condition of the street, is it wet or dry, clean or dirty, what has been left lying about, what is parked at the kerb, and whether anybody is coming along, on which side of the street and in how much of a hurry.

'And it isn't that you're actually afraid. It's just that you want to know. And you ought to know, if you have your wits about you, everything your eyes, your ears, your nose and the ends of your whiskers can tell you. And so you stop, look, listen, and feel. We have a saying, "Heaven is overcrowded with kittens who rushed out of doors without first stopping and 'receiving' a little."

'There might be another cat in the vicinity, bent on mischief, or looking for a fight. You'd certainly want to know about that before you stepped out into something you weren't prepared for. Then you'd want to know all about the weather, not only what it's like at the moment, but what it's going to be doing later, say an hour from then. If it's going to come on to rain or thunder, you wouldn't want to be too far from home. Your whiskers and your skin tell you that.

'And then, anyway,' Jennie concluded, 'it's a good idea on general principles not to rush into things. When you go out there are very few places to go to that won't be there just the same five minutes later, and the chances of your getting there will be ever so much better. Come here and squat down beside me and we'll just have a look.'

Peter did as she suggested and lay down directly in the opening with his paws tucked under him, and felt quite natural doing it, and suddenly he was glad that Jennie had stopped him and that he hadn't gone charging out into goodness knows what.

Feet went by at intervals. By observation he got to know something about the size of the shoes, which were mostly the heavy boots belonging to workmen, their speed, and how near they came to the wall of the warehouse. The wheeled traffic was of the heavy type-huge horse-drawn drays, and motor-lorries that rumbled past ominously loud, and the horses' feet, huge things with big, shaggy fetlocks were another danger. Far in the distance, Peter heard Big Ben strike four. The sound would not have reached him as a human being, perhaps, but it travelled all the distance from the Houses of Parliament to his cat's ears and informed him of the time.

Now he used his nostrils and sniffed the scents that came to his nose and tried to understand what they told him. There was a strong smell of tea and a queer odour that he could not identify, he just knew he didn't like it. He recognized dry goods, machinery, musk and spices, and horses and burned petrol, exhaust gases, tar and soft coal smoke, the kind that comes from railway engines.

Jennie had got up now and was standing on the edge of the opening with only her head out, whiskers extended forward, quivering a little, and making small wrinkly movements with her nose. After a moment or so of this she turned to Peter quite relaxed and said, 'All clear. We can go now. No cats around. There's a dog been by, but only a mangy cur probably scared of his own shadow. There's a tea boat just docked. That's good. The Watchman won't really have any responsibilities until she's unloaded. Rain's all cleared away. Probably won't rain for at least another forty-eight hours. Goods train just gone down into the docks area. That's fine. Means the gates'll be open, and besides, we can use the wagons for cover.'

'Goodness!' Peter marvelled, 'I don't see how you can tell all that from just one tiny sniff around. Do you suppose I'll ever-?'

'Of course you will,' Jennie laughed, and with a bit of a purr added, 'It's just a matter of getting used to it and looking at things the way a cat would. It's really nothing,' and here she gave herself two or three self-conscious licks, for, truth to tell, she was just a trifle vain and nothing delighted her so much as to appear clever in Peter's eyes, which was only feline.

'Well, I don't understand—' Peter began, saying just the right thing and giving her the lead which she was quick to take up.

'It's really quite simple,' she explained. 'For instance, you can smell the tea. Well, that wasn't around last time I was outside. Means a tea boat has come in and they've opened the hatches. No cats about—I don't get any signals on my receiver, at least not hostile ones. The dog that went by, well, goodness knows, you can smell him. If he had any class or self-respect that might lead him to chase cats, he'd be clean, and a clean dog smells different. This one was filthy, and that's why I say he's nothing to worry about. He'll be slinking along down back alleys and glad to be left alone. And as for the goods train that went by, after you get to know the neighbourhood it'll be easy for you too. You see, the smoke smell comes from the left, down where the docks are, so of course it went that way. And you know it was a goods train, because you can smell everything that was in the wagons. There, you see how easy it is?'

Peter again said the right thing, for he was learning how to please Jennie. 'I think you're enormously clever,' he told her. Her purr almost drowned out the sound of a passing horse-drawn dray. Then she cried to him gaily, `Come along, Peter! We're off!' and the two friends went out into the cobbled street.

THE pair went off down the busy commercial street towards their destination not at a walk, lope, trot, or even a run, but a series of short, swift charges, a kind of point-to-point dash, and again Peter learned something about the life and ways of a homeless city cat that has no friends and must fend for itself.

For, as Jennie explained and he could very well see, in a city that was stony, hostile and full of all kinds of moving vehicles rushing people, bicycles, delivery hand-trucks, carts, lorries, wagons, hardly heeding one another, much less anything that might be so close to the ground as a cat, it would never do to be caught simply carelessly walking along or even running.

`You never leave one place of shelter,' was the way Jennie had explained it to him, `until you have the next one ahead of you picked out where you are going to go in case of trouble of any sort. And then the best thing to do is to make a dash for it and not linger between them. Of course, when you're in your own neighbourhood you know all sorts of spots to get to in a hurry, and you can afford to be more relaxed. But when going through strange territory, always play for safety.'

And so they made. their way from point to point and cover to cover in little short rushes that Peter found most exciting and exhilarating until they reached the gateway to the dockyard where everything was exactly as Jennie had said it would be. The great iron gates to the yards stood wide open, a goods train had been through, indeed the last of the trucks and the brake van actually were not yet inside the gate, though the train had stopped, so long was it. And here too they no longer needed to indulge in the short rushes, for the goods wagons, vans, tankers, box and refrigerator wagons gave them excellent cover and they were able to trot along beneath them in perfect safety and at a rapid pace.

The shack was far down at the very end of the docks, but on the land side of the sheds, and consisted of a little wooden house of but one room with a door leading into it, two windows, one on either side, of which several panes were broken and stuffed with rags, and a crooked stove-pipe that emerged from the tin roof instead of a chimney.

In spite of its drab surroundings amidst coils of rope and cable, rusting steel rails and oddments of wood, weather-beaten and sagging as it was, the shack looked cheerful and even homelike, because on either side of the door, on the ground, were two long green boxes with earth in them, and in the boxes bright red geraniums were growing. From the open doorway as Peter and Jennie approached came the appetising smell of frying liver.

`He's in, and cooking his tea,' said Jennie. `The first thing to do is let him know we are here,' and forthwith she emitted a plaintive and heartbreaking 'MeeeeeeeOW!'

In a moment an old man dressed in shabby clothes and with a stained and untidy moustache stood framed in the doorway with a saucepan in one hand.

"Ullo!' he said, `if it isn't Tabby Puss come back to pay a visit to old Bill Grims! And brought a pal with 'er this time. Here then, puss, puss, puss!'

He had, Peter noticed, snow-white hair that hung down almost to his shoulders it was so long uncut, and fierce, bushy white eyebrows that framed a pair of the mildest blue eyes that Peter had ever seen, eyes that had in them a look of great kindliness and at the same time sadness. His cheeks, bristled with white stubble, were apple-red from the warmth of the shack, his hands gnarled, knotted, and quite dirty.

Peter thought: `How very odd. He's old, yes, quite—and yet what he really looks like most is a little boy. He really doesn't seem to be much older than I am, at least that's the way he feels to me. I think I am going to like him.'

The watchman's expression was so friendly as he put away the skillet and leaned down and said: `There now, you are a fine fellow! Come over 'ere and let's 'ave a look at you,' that Peter wanted to go to him right away, even if his clothes and hands were dirty, but Jennie cautioned him:

`No, no, Peter! Let me handle this. If you give in right away you don't get any milk,' and with that she sent up another plaintive series of miaows, a tone which even to Peter's ears was filled with the most false and evident pathos.

But apparently it struck the proper and necessary chord in the heart of old Mr. Grims, for he said at once: `Reckon as 'aw the two of you could do with a bit of milk, eh? Don't you go 'way, and I'll fetch some right away,' and he turned back into the inside of the shack.

`Aha!' said Jennie with a triumphant look on her face. `You see? I heard the word "milk." I didn't understand the rest.'

'I did,' said Peter. `He said we weren't to go, he was going to fetch some immediately.'

Jennie stared at Peter as though she couldn't believe her ears. `Peter! You mean you can understand everything he says?'

`But of course I can. Why not? He spoke in plain English. If he spoke French or German I'm sure I shouldn't know a word, though Daddy says next year I'm to begin to learn French. ..'

`Well, I never!' Jennie said, and sat down and blinked several times. `This wants thinking over. I never would have believed it. Then you really are a little boy …'

`But I told you I was,' Peter insisted.

`Of course you did,' Jennie admitted, `and I believed you, though not entirely. But now here's the proof for once and all. For if you were entirely a cat you wouldn't understand all of his language, and I must say—'