Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God Read online

  I think that Mrs. McKenzie was shocked at the idea of Mr. MacDhui giving Mary Ruadh her bath, but much as I dislike the man, I, who have been a mother, can testify that no kitten ever received a more painstaking and thorough washing than did she at the hands of her father when he came home at night, for this was the moment in the day that he seemed to enjoy the most, and therefore was almost pleasant—though of course, not to me, for I was not allowed to come into the bathroom, but sat outside in the hall and looked in.

  He sang to Mary Ruadh,—can you imagine?—in his loud and most disgusting voice, the silliest words ever. I remember them. They went:

  There dwelt a puddy in a well,

  Cuddy alone, cuddy alane,

  There dwelt a puddy in a well,

  Cuddy alane and I.

  There was a puddy in a well,

  AN a mousie in a mill;

  Kickmalcerie, cowden doon,

  Cuddy alane and I.

  Now, I ask you, where was the sense in that? But somehow Mary Ruadh seemed to understand, and when her father bellowed, “Kickmalecrie, cowden doon!” she screamed and shouted and splashed with her bath toys until the water shot all the way out into the hallway where I was sitting.

  Then Mr. MacDhui picked her out of the tub and gave her a tousle and a rubdown until her whole body was red, when he would say, “How now, little pink puddy! Now this fine blue towel really becomes you. What shall we have for tea? Kickmalecrie Mary Ruadh!”

  But me, he never so much as deigned to notice.

  After they had their supper in the dining room, with Mary Ruadh sitting on a pile of cushions so that she would be higher, they would go into her room across the hall, where he played with her or sometimes told her some ridiculous kind of story, or she would climb into his lap and laugh and gurgle ridiculously and play with his bristly face and pull his fur and tease him, or sometimes they would even join hands and dance around the room together, and if you think THAT is any way to bring up a child or a kitten, you won’t get me to agree with you.

  That night Mary Ruadh became so excited that she would not calm down to say her prayers that Mr. MacDhui always insisted upon. These were kind of a petition and rhyme that she had to say every night before she went to sleep, and sometimes having to do it made her very willful and naughty. Well, I know, for one thing, how I am when I am made to do something.

  Then Mr. MacDhui changed quite suddenly from being kind and gay to becoming most stern and ugly. He pushed out his great red beard at his daughter and growled, “That will be all and enough of that, Mary Ruadh. You have had plenty of play. Now say your prayers at once or I shall have to punish you.”

  Mary Ruadh asked, “Daddy, WHY do I have to say my prayers?”

  If she asked this once, she asked it at least four times in the week. I had to smile inside to myself, for of course I knew it was just to keep putting it off, just as when we are ordered to do something, we suddenly discover that we have a most important bit of washing to do.

  His answer would always be the same: “Because your mother would have wished it; that is why. She said her prayers every night.”

  Mary Ruadh then asked, “Can I hold Thomasina while I say them?”

  I had to turn away to conceal the smile on my face, because I knew the explosion that was coming from Mr. MacDhui.

  “No, no, NO. You cannot. Kneel now and say your prayers properly this minute.”

  Mary Ruadh asked that same question every night, not, I think, to make her father angry, but rather as a kind of routine in case someday he changed his mind and said yes.

  It always succeeded in making him quite furious, and whereas at other times he simply ignored me as though I did not exist, I am sure at that moment he hated me.

  He then stood beside her bed while she knelt, folded her hands together in the manner that was prescribed for her, and began her petition.

  “God bless Mummy in heaven, and Daddy, and Thomasina—”

  I always waited to make sure that my name was mentioned well up in the list that included such odd bods as Mr. Dobbie the grocer, and Willie Bannock, and Mr. Bridie the dustman, of whom she seemed to be fond, and then I went over and rubbed against Mr. MacDhui’s legs, purring and getting hairs on his trousers, because I was well aware that it infuriated him, but he didn’t dare shout, or kick, or swear, or do anything about it, because by that time Mary Ruadh was in the middle of her rhyme, which went:

  Gentle Jesus, week and mild,

  Look upon this little child;

  Pity my simplicity,

  And suffer me to come to thee—AMEN.

  and which was a very important one so that he could not stir until it was properly finished, by which time I would be under the bed where he could not reach me.

  But he seemed to forget that he was angry when the prayers were finished and she lay upon her pillow with her ginger hair tousled about and he looked down upon her after he had kissed her good night. I used to watch his face, and all the bristle seemed to go out of his beard for once, and his fierce eyes turned soft. It was even more than soft. Soppy! Then he would blow himself up with a deep breath, turn, and stalk out of the room, like somebody in a play.

  But I just stayed under the bed and waited my turn.

  When he was gone, Mary Ruadh would call, “Mrs. McKenzie! Mrs. McKenzie!” and when she came in she would say, “I want Thomasina!”

  I wouldn’t make it difficult for the poor old soul, but by that time would be cruising close to the edge of the cot. Mrs. McKenzie would reach down, pick me up, and put me into Mary Ruadh’s bed. Mr. MacDhui, who had gone off to his study, always heard her doing it, and knew that it happened, but pretended that he didn’t . . .

  Well, that was what THAT day in my life, in fact, many days in my life were like—for in most respects one day was very like another—except for the pain I felt at the base of my spine from the bump I had received when I fell off Mary Ruadh by the statue of Rob Roy, as I have told you already, and which was followed by the morning of my assassination.

  5

  On Thursday mornings, Mr. MacDhui left his house before seven for farm calls in the immediate neighborhood so as to return in time for his office hours, which were from eleven to one, leaving him the afternoon, if need be, for more distant visits.

  Before departing on this day, he rattled off instructions to Willie Bannock: “I shall be stopping at Birnie Farm to see a case of scour, and Jock Maistock suspects the blackleg amongst his Ayrshires, so see that there is an ampoule or two of vaccine in the bag. I shall be testing John Ogilvie’s herd, and I may stop at the McPherson chicken farm, if there is time, and relieve the mind of the widow. If I am late getting back, tell the folk to bide.”

  He did not neglect the morning round through his modest animal hospital, with the indispensable Willie in his train. On this particular day the veterinary seemed more aware than usual of the irony of this routine, which convenience and necessity had dictated should be almost an imitation if not a burlesque of that in the great hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow. There, he knew, each morning the house surgeon, followed by an intern or two, a matron, and a train of nursing sisters paraded through the wards inspecting charts, having a thump or a look at a patient, diagnosing, prescribing, dropping a pleasant or cheery word at each bed, dispensing hope and courage along with medicines, and leaving the ward behind him brighter, happier, and at ease, each human armored more strongly for his or her fight against injury or illness.

  MacDhui, looking with a mind’s eye turned resentful, could see himself in this healer’s role as he had since he had been a boy, a doctor whose mere presence in the sickroom was enough to banish sickness and bar the angel of death. Since it had been denied him, he denied in turn the warmth and love which is so much a part of the cure of any ailing animal.

  They were immured in scrupulously clean cages in which paper or straw might be changed by Willie a dozen times a day, properly diagnosed, drugged, bandaged, fed, watered and thereafter ignored by
him. Pausing before each cage, he regarded each inmate as a specimen and a problem from whose exhibition of symptoms or reaction to treatment there was further knowledge or experience to be gained. But as fellow creatures, prisoners like himself aboard the same revolving ball of rock, dirt, and water, brothers and sisters in one great family of the living, he did not consider them at all.

  They seemed to feel this as he went by and remained quiescent, regarding him with sad or morose eyes, or giving vent to minor-keyed complaints, whines, mews, snuffles—

  They went through the aisle of cages, with Mr. MacDhui appraising and ordering dosage and treatments as always, to Willie’s intense admiration, for Willie was mortally in awe of this great, red, pagan deity who could cure wee beasties. Nor were there any to be “put away,” which came as a great relief to the attendant, for one of his duties was to play the part of executioner when MacDhui decided that an animal was better off dead than alive, a decision from which it appeared nothing could turn him once it had been made.

  It was a job Willie hated, but he never presumed to question the orders of his chief, and with gentleness, chloroform bottle, and rag, got the unhappy business over with as quickly as possible and put the remains on the heap out back of the house, where he would not have to see them until the day’s end when the incinerator was fired and all waste matter from the hospital burned, including small corpses.

  “Try a larger dose of the Number 4 formula on Mrs. Sanderson’s dog and I’ll have another look at it when I get back. I don’t expect I shall be late. If that confounded parrot keeps up its abominable noise, you have my permission to wring its neck.”

  He took his bag, into which Willie, who knew every ailment at each farm and what was required almost before MacDhui told him, had packed syringes, plungers, clysters, sprays, disinfectants, vaccines, dressings, sutures and needles, gauzes and plasters, as well as various stock items against emergencies, went out, climbed into his jeep, and drove off.

  Willie waited until he saw him reach the end of Argyll and turn the corner into the High Street before, with almost unseemly haste, he hurried back to the animal hospital, where he was received with a perfect pandemonium of enthusiastic barks, whines, howls, shrieks, squawks, mews, and general animal hurrah for a loved human.

  Willie, who just about came up to Mr. MacDhui’s shoulder in height, was seventy, and fifty of those years he had devoted to the love and care of animals. MacDhui had inherited him from the man from whom he had bought the practice. Spry and alert, he had a friar’s atoll of white hair about his skull and melting brown eyes that gave away his character and kindness of heart.

  This was The Hour. Dogs stood up frantically on their hind legs inside their cages, pawing and shouting at him, birds shrieked, cats stiffened their tails and rubbed their flanks against the cage doors in anticipation, even the dogs too sick for greater demonstrations managed at least a waving and a thumping of their flags.

  “Now, now—” Willie said, surveying the pandemonium with the most intense satisfaction. “One at a time now, one at a time!” He stopped first at the cage of a fat dachshund, who went hysterical in his arms when he took him out, screaming, wriggling, licking his face, singing a passionate obbligato over the general chorus of enthusiasm. “There, there, now, Hansi—dinna excite yersel’ so, or ’twill appear on your chart, no less, and the doctor will read that I’ve had ye oot for a spell. Ye’ll be going awa’ tomorrow or the next day—”

  Thus he went from cage to cage, bestowing love, the secret medicine which surely effected as many cures as the doctor’s drugs, or helped them along. Cats and dogs that were well enough he had out for a hug, or a bit of play, the sick had their ears and bellies rubbed, the parrot his head scratched, the lot of them, pampered, petted and spoiled until each had had its turn and been calmed down, when the regular routine of care and medication went forward.

  The morning was misty and the smell of sea salt mingled with coal and peat smoke was in the air from the breakfast fires as Mr. MacDhui drove through the streets of gray-stone or whitewashed houses, tall, narrow and slate roofed, down to the quay where the waters of the loch were gray too, and a blue fishing boat with a stumpy mast and the forward well loaded with lobster pots, floats, and gear chuffed out of the harbor.

  He breathed the smell of mingled sea and land, wild sea and rugged woodland and man and habitation smells, with no particular enjoyment, nor did he look to the flight of gulls or the curl of the tide lapping the shore; the beauty of the blue boat on the gray mirror of the loch in the pearly morning mist, already shot through with the light of the mounting sun, was lost upon him. He turned the jeep northward onto the Cairndow road, crossing the river Ardrath by the old saddleback bridge and, when he reached Creemore, took the left fork up into the hills.

  When he had climbed somewhat, he could see the gypsy encampment lying at the foot of a fold in the valley to the south and noted from the smoke and the number of wagons that it was a large one. He recalled what Mary Ruadh had told him of it as seen through the eyes of Geordie McNabb, and the run-in that Constable MacQuarrie had had with them, but he shrugged the whole matter off as none of his business. If the police chose to let them remain there, that was their affair. There would no doubt be the usual neglect of their horses and livestock among these people, who in some instances even in this day and age continued to live themselves like animals, but as long as the police were satisfied he did not care. This the curious paradox of the animal doctor who did not love animals.

  But he would have denied vehemently and truculently, and had, in just such an argument with Mr. Peddie, that he was a cold or loveless man, and with much outjutting of his beard had cited his affection for his daughter Mary Ruadh as the keystone of his life. He admitted to loving little or nothing else but her.

  The minister, with whom he liked to tussle philosophically just because he was so unpredictable, and whose range was from the erudite through the theological to the poetic, had surprised him by indulging in flights of the latter in his reply.

  He had maintained that in his opinion one could not love a woman without likewise loving the night and the stars that made even more of a mystery of her presence, or the soft air and sun that warmed and made fragrant her hair; that you could not love a little girl without loving, too, the field flowers, limp and wilted, with which she returned from a foray into the meadow, clutched in a damp hand. And he had said that, too, you would have to feel love for the mongrel she adored or the cat that she carried and even for the stuff of the frocks that clung to her body. He said that if you loved the wild sea lashed in storm, then you could not help loving the mountains too, which, with their swelling hills and jagged and snow-topped peaks swirled by the wind like sea froth, imitated the waves and presented to one’s gaze the miracle of an ocean petrified in mid-storm. He declared that you could not love the bright, hot, lazy summer days without loving also the rains that came to cool them; that one could not love the flight of birds without loving, too, the flash of the trout or salmon in the dark pool, that one could not love man, any or all of him, without loving the beasts of the field and the forests, or the beasts without loving the trees and the grasses, the shrubs and the heather and the flowers of meadow and garden.

  And here, dropping the rhetorical style into which he had drifted, and truth to tell, held MacDhui rather speechless with astonishment, he slyly descended to a more ordinary and matter-of-fact routine of speech and said that it was difficult to understand how a man could love all or any of these without loving God as well, from any point of view, philosophically, practically, theologically, or just plain logically. The result, of course, had been the usual scornful and indignant snort from MacDhui, who declared that Peddie was better and at least more plausible as poet.

  Mr. MacDhui turned in at the wagon track leading to the Birnie farm and, parking the jeep, entered the stone stalls of the stables with an expression of deep disgust upon his face. The stench was overpowering. Fergus Birnie, a wizened farme
r, was almost as dirty as his cowsheds. He greeted the veterinarian sourly at the entrance and complained, “ ’Tis the lask come back again. The medicine ye gied me was gey unchancy. Ye swyked me wi’ it, Mr. MacDhui, and I’ll thank ye for the shillings back I laid oot for it.”

  MacDhui minced no words. With his red beard thrust into the farmer’s face as near as he could bear the smell of him, he bellowed, “Ye are a filthy dog, Birnie. Yer cattle are in diarrhea again because ye live dirtier than any swine wallowing out yonder in their ane glaur. I’ve warned ye often enough, Fergus Birnie. Noo I’m taking awa’ yer license for the herd and the selling of yer milk until ye change yer ways.”

  He went outside and removed a small metal plate from the door of the barn and put it in his pocket, while Birnie stood there regarding him blankly. “I’ll be back here within the hour,” the veterinarian said. “Call your misbegotten sons over here and wash down these stables and sheds—and yourselves along with it. And wash those cattle until they are clean enough to buss. If there’s so much as a smitch of dirt about here when I return, I’ll charge ye to Constable MacQuarrie for endangering the public health and it’s to jail ye’ll all go.”

  He drove on to the Maistock farm back in the hills, a well-run place, where he complimented Jock Maistock for giving him an early warning of symptoms of the dreaded blackleg in one of his long-horned, fringe-browed Ayrshire cattle. He ordered the suspected animal slaughtered at once, vaccinated the remainder of the herd against the disease, and placed a temporary quarantine on them until time should reveal the extent of the immunity obtained.