Poor Pussy

The knock was much louder the second time.

            As Alice peeped out of the bungalow window at the official, the neighbours’ children saw her.  They jumped up and down, pointing at her and shouting,  ‘She’s there!  She’s hiding from you!’

            Thud!  Thud!

            Would they break it down?  She’d read somewhere that they were allowed to force their way in if they suspected illegal detention. 

She stared out at the grimacing children with hatred.  The concealing hedge to her overgrown front garden had been cut down last spring by the council. 

‘Complaints from passersby,’ the workman had said as he chopped it back brutally. 

‘I was going to get round to it.’

‘Look at this bramble sticking out. Slash kids in the face with all those thorns. Got kids myself and I know even if you don’t.  They never look where they’re going.’

 ‘Well they should,’ she said, grieving for her one child born dead so many years ago.  It wasn’t her fault she was old and her arms weak and that gardeners were impossible to get.  But when the bill came the council clipping cost far more than any private gardener.  She imagined the secretaries showing the hefty bill round the office and laughing,  ‘That’ll teach the old biddy.’

Thud!  Thud!  Thud!

Alice opened the front door a smidgin.  An official gentleman in a smart navy uniform with three shoulder pips in the shape of sleeping cats.  He was as tall as her first headmaster, severe as her final employer.  He flashed his identity card at her, but her slow eyes couldn’t take the words in.

‘Kindness to Pets Society,’ he said.

She stared blankly.

‘We’ve reason to believe you’ve got cats, ma’am.  You know the law. Passed 2009.  Human Depression Virus incubates in cats.  Feline-free East Anglia.  No pussies.’

‘Pussy pussy, you’ve got a pussy,’ yelled the children.  They were giggling coarsely and she felt unclean.  Even children from good neighbourhoods like this, she thought sadly.  In my day. . .

‘Please undo the chain, Mrs George.’

‘Why?  You’ve no statutory right.’

‘Yes we have. Entry to any property where we have reason to suspect cats are being hidden.’ He waved to someone in the brightly painted van on the road and a uniformed woman trotted over.

‘You’ve got a lovely bungalow,’ she said, smiling brightly at Alice through the gap in the door.

Alice stared back.  ‘You’re the cat killers, aren’t you?’

The woman’s smile fixed to her face like a comedy mask.  Behind it, Alice wondered, lay what?  The rubbery lips moved,  ‘People protection, my dear.’

There was nothing for it but to remove the chain and let them in.  Out on the road the children cheered as they continued to watch, picturing the murderous scene inside happily.

The officials sniffed, savouring the heavy catty smell that indicated there was certainly a job to be done.

‘Where are they?  How many?’ they asked in unison.

‘I haven’t any,’ she lied.

‘Now then, Mrs George,’ smiled the man, and Alice thought he had eye teeth like a wolf.  ‘You must have read the council leaflets.’

‘No.’

He raised his eyebrows disbelievingly at his colleague, and she simpered back.

‘Dear Alice,’ said the woman.  ‘I may call you Alice, mayn’t I dear?’

‘No.’

‘Dear Alice, our information campaign has been running for months, ever since Parliament unanimously passed the Safety from Feline Diseases Act. TV, billboards, offices, newspaper leading articles.  Leaflets through every door, posters in shops – and we’ve checked out there’s one in your local shop.  People volun-tar-ily took their animals to their local vets weeks ago – all public spirited people that is.  There was a particularly convincing Newsnight yesterday. . . ‘

‘Haven’t got television.’

The man pushed open her bedroom door and peered in.  ‘Naughty, naughty, Mrs George!’  He pointed at her TV set.

Alice gritted her teeth.

‘I know it’s hard,’ said the woman, arm round Alice’s slight shoulder.  ‘And it’s equally painful for animal lovers like me and Mr Stillman here.  But we must put the health of the nation first, mustn’t we? You have heard of the depression virus, haven’t you?’

Alice nodded fatalistically.

‘And you do realise that one in ten million people per annum, or six people a year, Alice, may contract this dreadful disease, leading to insanity and suicide.  Think of the bereaved mothers, Alice.  The fatherless children.  The grandparent imprisoned in a hospital cot for his or her own safety.  The permanent blighting of so many lives.  So surely it’s worth a little suffering on the part of us cat lovers to prevent all this happening.  And we’ll give you a memento, quite free of charge, of your dear pussy, together with a certificate of thanks shaped like a sleeping cat and signed by the Prime Minister himself on behalf of a grateful nation.  Now Alice dear, have you any pet cats?’

And just at that moment Harry her marmalade tom wandered in from his comfy nest on her boiler and started to curl round her legs.

‘One,’ Alice said, the traitor, too scared even to pick him up and protect him.

‘Handsome fella,’ said the man, squatting down and holding out his hand with a grubby piece of material tucked into the palm.  Harry rubbed his head against the kind hand, purring loudly while the woman pulled a small syringe out of her case.  The cat quietly folded its legs as if too sleepy to run away, and swiftly the woman injected it.  It quivered a few times and then lay still as a discarded fur glove.

‘Well done,’ said the woman, patting Alice on her shoulder.

She stood stone dead as the guardian angel over her grandmother’s grave.  And as useless.

But the woman was pulling a bundle of metal rods out of her case.  ‘His name, my dear?  Harry?  How nice.’  She took two rods and clipped them together at the centre.  With a pocket laser pen she engraved ‘Harry RIP’ and the date in curlicue letters on the horizontal bar of the cross.  She scrutinised her composition proudly.  She’d gone on a calligraphy course precisely so she could fulfil this part of her job more effectively, bringing both greater comfort to those mourning their lost pets and an enhanced wage for herself.  She placed the cross gently in Alice’s hands.  ‘In your garden, dear?  Or shall we take him away with us?’

‘Cats’ crem.  Very hygienic,’ said her colleague.

The memorial fell from Alice’s hands, jabbing the still body at her feet.  She’d betrayed him and stabbed him herself, hadn’t she?  In her mind’s ear she could still hear his plaintive calls for food, to be let in or let out.  And that little comforting growl by which he’d let her know that he, her dearest friend since her husband died, still loved her.

The man was inspecting his victim.  Looking in its gaping mouth he pronounced,  ‘Teeth needed attention.’  He felt the thin body.  ‘Time he went.  Ripe old age.  No suffering.’

She grabbed the corpse from those indifferent hands.

‘Any more, Mrs George?’  He was actually smiling at her.  And then he and the woman     scouted round the bungalow until they’d found and disposed of shy Sooty under the bed and idle Snooty in her basket by the sofa and little Matty in the airing cupboards where she was waiting for her kittens to arrive.

‘Quite a little menagerie,’ said the man as he put his chloroform pad back in its plastic bag for the last time.  ‘Now remember it’s a fine if you start keeping cats again.  Then prison.’

The woman touched his arm.  ‘She’s a bit upset,’ she whispered.  She patted Alice’s head as she sat in the easy chair with the animals heaped at her feet.  ‘In the cause of humanity, dear,’ and she laid the final cross on the arm of the chair.  Looking out into the back garden she continued,  ‘What a lot of trees and shrubs!  You’ll have plenty more birds as compensation, think of that!’

And then, after placing their name cards by her telephone, they left.  Through her desolate haze Alice heard them discussing their next visit further down the avenue. She heard the van drive away.  Then complete silence.

Though not wealthy, Alice’s husband had left her well provided.  The next month she had a high chainlink fence built round her large garden.  It was already full of wildlife – nettles, thistles and willow herb attracted myriad pollinating insects, bindweed clambered over the orchard apples and pears, mile-a-minute vine hid the potting shed and greenhouse.  A self-seeded sycamore was racing to maturity through the summer house roof and the large pond was smothered with waterweeds.  It was a haven for birds, a delight for beetles, slugs and dragonflies.  Far more of a jungle than a garden.

Her husband’s job had taken them to many parts of the world, and she still had good friends in exotic places.  One autumn day when the nosy children were in school, a smart car drove up outside her house.  The driver brought a large box with him and left several hours later without it.

The days passed through winter and spring and the rampant climbers hid her ugly fences from view.  When autumn returned, Alice rang the Kindness to Pets Society.

‘Feline Euthanasia Division, please. . . .  There’s a cat in my garden.  Wild.  Sick.’

‘Hang on in there, lady.  Don’t you go touching the thing.’

She looked at the name cards that had lain dustily all this time next to the telephone.  ‘Is Miss Robins still with you?  And Mr Stillman?  They were so kind when they came to put down. . . .’ but she couldn’t continue.

The van was new and painted even more luridly, but the cat catchers were as kind as before.  ‘Nice to see you looking so much happier than last time, Alice!  But,’ and they peered through the kitchen window into her jungle, ‘how on earth do we find this cat?’

‘I trapped it in the shed at the far end.  Take the path – it’s a bit overgrown, I’m afraid.  Go past the pond, left round the old rose garden where the cats are buried, you’ll see the crosses,’ and she couldn’t prevent a sob.  ‘Then right past the golden yew to the greenhouse.  Be careful by that because there’s some broken glass I haven’t cleared after the storm last year, and go straight on to the shed at the end of the property by the privet hedge.  Well, it’s not a hedge any more and it covers part of the shed.’

‘Don’t you worry, we’ll manage.  Now you get that kettle on, Alice, and we’ll be back in a jiff for a cuppa.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Alice murmured to herself as she watched them trek into her wilderness.  She locked the back door, picked up her hat and coat and set off for a long walk.  She hadn’t fed her fierce young tiger for over a week but even so it would need a little while to locate and deal with its prey.

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