what I was trying to remember! You ate mouse right on the silk counterpane where you’ve been sleeping, and you didn’t wash after you’d finished …”
Peter said, “Why should I? We always wash before eating. At least, Nanny always sends me into the bathroom and makes me clean my hands and face before sitting down to table.”
“Well, cats don’t!”declared Jennie decisively, “and it seems to me much the more sensible way. It’s after you’ve eaten you find yourself all greasy and sticky, with milk on your whiskers and gravy all over your fur if you’ve been in too much of a hurry. Oh dear!” she ended up. “That almost proves it. But I must say I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life!”
Peter thought to himself, “She is good, and she has been kind to me, but she does love to chatter.” Aloud, he said, “If you would like me to tell you how it all happened, perhaps—”
“Yes, do, please,” said the tabby cat and settled herself more comfortably on the bed with her front paws tucked under her, “I should love to hear it.”
And so Peter began from the beginning and told her the whole story of what had happened to him.
Or rather he began away back before it began, really, and told her about his home in the Mews near the square and the little garden there inside the iron railings where Nanny took him to play every day after school when the weather was fine, and about his father who was a Colonel in the Guards and was away from home most of the time, first during the war when he was in Egypt and Italy, and then in France and Germany, and he hardly saw him at all, and then later in peacetime when he would come home now and then wearing a most beautiful uniform with blue trousers that had a red stripe down the side, except that as soon as he got into the house he went right into his room and changed it for an old brown tweed suit which wasn’t nearly as interesting or exciting.
Sometimes he stayed a little while for a chat or a romp with Peter, but usually he went off with Peter’s mother with golf clubs or fishing tackle in the car and they would stay away for days at a time. He would be left with only Cook and Nanny in the flat and it wasn’t much fun being alone, for even when he was with friends in the daytime, playing or visiting, it got very lonely at night without his father and mother. When they weren’t away on a trip together, they would dress up every evening and go out. And that was when he wished most that he had a cat of his own that would curl up at the foot of his bed, or cuddle, or play games just with him.
And he told the tabby all about his mother, how young and beautiful she was, so tall and slender, with light-coloured hair as soft as silk, that was the colour of the sunshine when it came in slantwise through the nursery window in the late afternoon, and how blue were her eyes and dark her lashes.
But particularly he remembered and told Jennie how good she smelled when she came in to say goodnight to him before going out for the evening, for when Peter’s father was away she was unhappy and bored and went off with friends a great deal seeking amusement.
It was always when he loved her most, Peter explained, when she came in looking and smelling like an angel, with clouds of beautiful materials around her, and her hair so soft and fragrant, when he so much wanted to be held to her, that she left him and went away.
Jennie nodded. “Mmmmm. I know. Perfume. I love things that smell good.”
She was indignant when Peter came to the part about not being allowed to have a cat because of the mess it might make around a small flat, and said, “Mess, indeed! We never make messes, unless we’re provoked, and then we do it on purpose. And can’t we just—!” But strangely enough she took Nanny’s part when Peter reached the point in his story about Nanny being afraid of cats and not liking them.
“There are people who don’t, you know,” she explained, when Peter expressed surprise, “and we can understand and respect them for it. Sometimes we like to tease them a little by rubbing up against them, or getting into their laps just to see them jump. They can’t help it any more than we can help not liking certain kinds of people and not wanting to have anything to do with them. But at least we know where we stand when we come across someone like your Nanny. It’s the people who love us, or say they love us and then hurt us, who …”
She did not finish the sentence, but turned away quickly, sat up, and began to wash violently down her back. But before she did, Peter thought that he had noticed the shine of tears in her eyes, though of course it couldn’t be so, since he had never heard of cats shedding tears. It was only later he was to learn that they could both laugh and cry.
Nevertheless, he felt that the tabby must be nursing some secret hurt, perhaps like his own, and in the hopes of taking her mind away from something sad, he launched into a description of the events leading up to his strange and mysterious transformation.
He began by telling about the tiger-striped kitten sunning and washing herself by the little garden in the centre of the square, and how he had wanted to catch her and hold her. Jennie showed immediate interest. She stopped washing and enquired: “How old was she? Was she pretty?”
“Oh yes,” said Peter, “very pretty, and full of fun …”
“Prettier than I?” Jennie enquired, with seeming nonchalance.
Peter had thought she had been, for she was like a round ball of fluff as he remembered, with most proud whiskers and two white and two brown feet. But he wouldn’t for anything have offended the tabby by telling her so. The truth was that for all her gentle ways and the kindly expression of her white face, Jennie was quite plain, with her small head, longish ears and slanted, half-Oriental eyes, and what with being so dreadfully thin making her bones stick out, Peter felt she was really nothing much to look at as cats went. But he was already old enough to know that one sometimes told small white lies to make people happy, and so he replied: “Oh, no! I think you’re beautiful!” After all, he had eaten her mouse.
“Do you really?” said Jennie, and for the first time since they had met, Peter heard a small purr coming from her. To cover her confusion she gave one of her paws a few tentative licks and then with a pleased smile on her thin face, enquired: “Well, and what happened then?”
And Peter thereupon told her all the rest of the story right to the end.
When he had finished with “… and then the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and here I am”, there was a long silence. Peter felt tired from the effort of telling the story and reliving all the dreadful moments through which he had come, for he was yet far from having regained his full strength, even with rest and a meal.
Jennie, undeniably taken aback by the tale she had heard, appeared to be thinking hard, her eyes unblinking, and a faraway look in them, which, however, was not disbelief. It was clear from her demeanour that she apparently accepted Peter’s word that he was not a cat really, but a little boy, and the queer circumstances that had brought this about, and that it was something else that was occupying her mind.
Finally she turned her too-small, slender head towards Peter and said: “Well, what’s to be done?”
Peter said, “I don’t know, I’m sure. I suppose if I am a cat, I will just have to be one—”
The tabby put her gentle paw on his and said softly, “But, Peter, don’t you see, that’s just it! You said yourself that you didn’t feel as though you were a cat at all. If you’re going to be one, you must first learn how.”
“Oh dear,” said Peter, who never did much enjoy having to learn things, “is there more to being a cat than just liking to eat mice and purring?”
The little puss was genuinely shocked. “Is there more?” she repeated. “You couldn’t begin to imagine all the things there are! There must be hundreds. Why, if you left here right now and went out looking like a white cat, but feeling inside and thinking like a boy, I shouldn’t be inclined to give you more than ten minutes before you’d be in some terrible trouble again – like last night. It isn’t easy to be on your own, even if you have learned to know everything or nearly everything that a cat ought to know.”