The Cat Who Couldn't Miaow

The Cat Who Couldn't Miaow

  A.M.Kirkby

  Copyright 2015 A.M.Kirkby

  Kasbah Cat

  Pagliaccio the Opera Cat

  This is his street. White-painted concrete fences. White-painted concrete houses. Grass verges, grey tarmac. A woodpile where he spends his days curled up in a cavity between two huge logs.

  One house where a fat angry man rushes out to shout at him. Two houses where old ladies come to feed him. One is little and square, one taller and thinner; they both have short grey hair. He wonders if they know each other. Sometimes he wonders if either of them knows the other one is feeding him too.

  He lets the shorter one get quite close to him sometimes. But he isn't sure about letting her pick him up, though sometimes he butts his head into her in greeting.

  This is his street all spring. A pair of blackbirds torment him by making a nest in the hedge, and flying at him with their claws out whenever they see him pass.

  Summer is better. He lies on the packed earth in a big abandoned flower pot and feels himself bake nicely in the sun. The ladies keep feeding him, and the baby blackbirds have grown up and flown off (a pity, he never caught any of them), and he is getting nicely fat.

  Autumn comes, and there are falling leaves to chase, and mice in the woodpile.

  This is his street until one day, as winter draws near, he is betrayed. The two old ladies come together with his food today, and as he puts his head down into the dish, one of them grabs him, and the other brings a box out from behind her back, and he is shoved without dignity into the box. He scrabbles with his back legs to try to get away, but it is no use. After that he's in the dark, and he hears engines, and feels strange lurchings, and sometimes the box swinging, and he presses himself close to the towel that covers the bottom of the box, and tries not to slide around. It's dark; there is not even a sliver of light from outside, though he knows it's still daytime. There is nothing he can do. Eventually he sleeps.

  ***

  Things smell different. There is a smell of something cooking, and a clean smell, very fresh, as if the world has just been washed, like the sheets that the tall thin lady used to hang out on the line in her garden.

  Stay in the box, he thinks. The box is safe.

  He hears someone come. The plod, plod of big human feet.

  There is suddenly light, and a pair of big eyes staring at him.

  "Oh, what big eyes," someone says. He looks at them, they look at him; he crouches down, mistrustful.

  After some time the eyes withdraw, and he hears the feet go away. Once he's sure he's alone, he puts his head above the edge of the box and takes a quick look. A big place. No sky but heavy beams and white above his head, and clutter of dark furniture. He snakes his body out of the box and scuttles across the space, towards a promising dark crack below one of the heavy cliffs of wood. There's just enough room to squash himself under it.

  He sees feet. He sees them go towards the empty box.

  Ha, he thinks. You won't find me. But of course they do. And then they go away again.

  ***

  Food comes. It's the same food the old ladies used to give him, but he knows from the smell it's not the old ladies who feed him. Two pairs of feet; one big pair, one small. The big ones tread heavily, but sometimes he's caught unawares by the possessor of the small feet, and has to run and squeeze himself into his hiding place.

  When the feet aren't around he explores a little, never far from the sides of the room where there are gaps under the furniture where he can hide. There's a big table in the middle of the room, and a forest of chair legs where he wanders at night, and there are always shoes by the door, with their interesting smell of human feet. Nothing to catch, though, and nothing to sharpen his claws on. He misses his old logs.

  Food comes again, and again, until he learns that he can rely on it coming. There is always enough, and there is always fresh water, though he wishes there was a dirty puddle somewhere, for puddle water with just the right amount of mud in it always tastes better, somehow.

  He's eating when the small feet appear again. This time he decides not to move, though he stops eating, and looks up, hunkering down on his forepaws in case he needs to run away.

  "Oh hello," she says, and stands, very still, a little way off. A small person in black. Since she doesn't move, he decides it's safe; he puts his head down and starts eating again, but every so often he looks up, just in case she tries any tricks. She doesn't.

  After that he eats when they are there. Sometimes, they eat too, not properly like cats with their heads in the dish but sitting up at a table, taking food to their mouths with their paws.

  Sometimes they give him scraps of food. There is a very rich meat, very salty, and sometimes cream on the end of a finger, or a piece of cheese. He gets used to sitting beside them when they eat. Usually, if he looks up at them, it is enough; but sometimes they are too busy communicating with each other, and forget him, and he has to open his mouth and remind them, soundlessly, that he is there, before they remember to hand something down, or throw it for him to catch.

  There is a door to the place where they keep their food. He looks at it hard, trying to work out how to open it. He tries curling his paw round to pull it open, but it closes on his paw and he only just manages to pull his leg out of the way in time. When one of the people comes, he looks at them in the way he knows works, and opens his mouth.

  "Oh how sweet," the man says. "He doesn't have a miaow!"

  The man opens the door. That becomes a little ritual for them; open mouth, open door. He plays this game with the man even after he learns how to open the door, by pushing at it with his head. It's a good game. He hopes the man enjoys it as much as he does.

  He learns another thing; he learns a noise. It's a strange noise, a sort of plooof, a soft popping that means the door of the cold place has opened, the cold place where the people keep all kinds of good things - meat, and milk, and even better, pots of milk that has gone sour. (Like all things in life, milk is better when it's slightly spoiled.) When he hears the ploof of the fridge door, he comes running, tail straight up and rigid, his whiskers bristling. Here too he makes his hungry silent appeal, opening his mouth soundlessly, and they give him something.

  Every night the people disappear. One night he follows them. There is a big expanse of blue softness from which their heads and arms stick out. That night he is brave; he jumps up on it, feels the soft material yielding under his paws. He kneads it with his paws and feels his claws springing in and out of his soft pads. He walks up towards the people's heads and feels a hand come towards him, and scratch between his ears. He butts his head into it and starts to purr.

  The purr starts low in his throat like a tickle. It fills his head with buzzing, and then it grows and deepens till his whole body is vibrating with it and he's sure even his fur is rippling with the power of the purr.

  He stays the night, sleeping in the furrow between two big warm bodies, curled up with his back against one and his paws against the other.

  (It's such a long time since he last purred, he can hardly remember it. He was a kitten then, paddling his soft pink paws into his mother's fur.)

  And in the morning, there is a sardine for him, a special treat.

  ***

  Days pass and he learns his way around the place. The big soft bed, he discovers, has a window that lets the morning sunlight fall on it; he often sleeps the whole morning there, the sun warm on his fur. He finds another place downstairs, behind a curtain, where he can maintain a watch on the world outside, the pigeons that strut and croo-croo insolently from the trees, a tiny black cat with a white bib and four white paws that slips along the garden path not sparing a
glance for him, the sun reflecting from a pond which he's sure is full of tasty goldfish.

  He gets used to the people and the people get used to him. If he's honest, he gets quite attached to them, but he would never let them know this, because he's a cat, and cats don't show their emotions. (Except, sometimes, when he's on the bed, he walks up the bed stealthily to sit closer to them, and he might accept, though he would never ask for, a caress.) And he learns, just sometimes, to make a little squeak, a tiny little noise that sounds like this: "Quick".

  "Quick," he says, when they open a door for him and he goes through.

  "Quick," when they get some food out for him, and "quick" when they put the plate on the floor for him.

  But when he comes to be in the evening, he says nothing at all, just purrs.

  ***

  He knew it couldn't last. He is disgruntled. He is miserable.

  They have a kitten.

  Goodness, the noise it makes!

  Squalling, squeaking, screaming. Miaow, miaow, miaowwww. Little plaintive I-will-die-if-you-don't-give-me-food miaows. Insistent pick-me-up-right-now-I-need-cuddle miaows. Half-hearted trying-it-on-just-in-case miaows.

  He hisses at it.

  It's a fifth his size. He could eat it for breakfast. But it pays no attention. It walks up and bats him on the head with a tiny kitten-sized paw, and says: "miaow". He stalks off in a huff.

  He curls up on the bed, despite the fact it's the middle of the afternoon and there's no sun to warm his fur, and no people to keep him warm, either. He hears the people he thought loved him cooing at the kitten in silly voices. And the kitten screams.

  He covers his head with his tail and his paws, and sulks, and sleeps.

  He goes down when he's hungry. At least there's food for him.

  He notices, every time the kitten yells, it gets picked up. Huh. He doesn't like being picked up. He likes it when his people come and stroke him, and he can push his head into their hands hard, and purr.

  But they don't notice when he opens his mouth and looks up at them. So he thinks: if the kitten can do it, so can I. I'll scream. He tenses himself up. He makes a big effort. He opens his mouth, and...

  Out comes a tiny little noise. 'Quick!' he says.

  "Oh, was that really...? did he really say something?"

  "It sounded like 'quick'. How sweet!"

  It works. They don't forget the kitten, but he's got their attention. They stroke him, and let him weave his body in and out through their legs and rub his chin against them. When he's had enough, he goes to wait by the door, and for the first time, instead of just waiting, and using his eyes to show them what he wants, he says: "Quick!"

  ***

  He wonders about people. They're noisy, like the kitten. They talk to him, all the time. They talk to each other, too, but that sounds different, somehow; when they talk to him their voices are higher, and more tuneful.

  Too much noise. Too many sounds. They say Dudule, Didi, Dudu, pusscat, pussypussy, c'mere, arnchaluvlie, kittikitti. Are all of these or any of these his name? And sometimes, but only in the place where they eat, and only when he does certain things, they say 'Noh', and they say it very hard, like a sound to break rocks.

  The language they use between themselves is even more confusing. It sounds almost like birdsong, going on and on, meaningless.

  Still, he's learned one thing. Going through the door, he says 'quick!' now every time.

  ***

  They put the kitten in what used to be his box. He's grown up now. He doesn't need a box. He has the bed.

  The kitten is getting above himself. Today, the kitten comes running at him, full pelt, and … stops, just at the last moment, and walks off lazily to sit and lick his paw innocently.

  He's just stopped keeping a look-out, and started to doze a little, when the kitten does it again. This time, it doesn't stop, but leaps right over him, legs spread out to the four corners, and does a backflip in the air that brings it upright on its back legs before it runs off to the other side of the room, where it curls up and appears to go to sleep with one eye open.

  It's impossible. If he goes up to the bed it will only follow him, so he stays downstairs; at least he can keep it away from his food. It looks, for a while, as if the kitten is actually asleep...

  and then it comes dancing across the room, on feet as light as thistledown, its back arched and its tail high, and jumps at him with all its paws extended and a pleased-with-itself look in its bright green eyes.

  He growls. A low, rumbling growl in the very back of his throat, that feels like a purr twisted and gone sour. It's only a warning. It never gets as far as a hiss or a caterwaul.

  It works, anyway. Kitten backs off.

  He rumbles for a little longer, just to be sure. The kitten is looking at him from behind a discarded boot. He lets the rumble die down, and a purr comes to take its place.

  That's good. He can purr, he can growl, he can hiss, he can say 'quick!'

  He never needed to speak, when he was living in the woodpile. He had no one to speak to. Now, he has people to ask for affection and food, and a kitten to keep in line. So kitten can miaow. Big deal, he thinks. I don't need to miaow. I can purr, I can growl, I can say 'quick!', and that's enough for me. Kitten only mews all the time because he's useless, in the way that kittens are; he'll stop, when he grows up. He'll be unbearable otherwise.

  ***

  There comes a night of bright moon, the ground crisp with frost. He knows there are mice running out there in the moonlight, and he can't sleep; he's left his people asleep in their bed, and kitten has been exiled to his box for the night. He sits on the window sill and looks into the garden with his amber eyes, searching for the flash of mouse or the scurry of rat. Something wild stirs inside him and although he knows here it is warm, and life is good, and he is never hungry, just for a moment he misses his old street and the scratch and mustiness of the woodpile.

  He's happily dreaming of mice when he smells smoke, a wisp of acrid stink on the air. He twitches his whiskers in disgust, and looks out again to the moonlit garden. But a minute later the smell is still there, tendrils of nastiness slipping through the night. He needs to hunt.

  He follows it, his mouth slightly open to taste that stink on his tongue, his ears back as he concentrates. He pads silently across the tiled floor towards the kitchen.

  It's coming from the old fusebox near the stairs, that burning smell. As he comes closer, it hisses at him. He hisses back.

  There's something warm and melting, and then he sees a small flame, an evil, greedy looking thing that starts to inch along the rug, and grows as it feeds.

  He looks up at the moon. Bright moon. Cats' moon. Moon will know what to do. Moon always knows what to do. It's in our blood, he thinks.

  He's sure by now that this avid, thin, hot thing that's running, now, across the woollen rug, is danger.

  He looks again at the moon, and feels something stirring in him, which impels him to run, up the stairs, missing one, thumping down on the next, pulling in his back legs for a great pounce that takes him up three at once, and into the bedroom, and suddenly the thing stirring in him is forcing his mouth open, as if he's going to throw up a hairball, and....

  Miaowwwww!

  He screeches, screams like a banshee, caterwauls, shrieks, yowls, wails. He can do it now, all the mewing he's never done in his entire nine lives comes boiling up, and the air is thick with his noise.

  They're awake. One of them puts on the light. One of them shouts, and gets up, and shouts again when he sees the cat there yelling. And then they smell it too, and run downstairs, where the fire has got hold of the rug and is beginning to climb the curtains, like a naughty, no, an evil kitten on a rampage.

  There's more shouting, more noise, and one of the people is throwing water, and the other one has found a red thing that she points at the rug, letting loose a soft avalanche of creamy foam.

  ***

  He's curled up with his people o
n the big soft bed. They are warm, and they love him, and he loves them, even if he does now have to share the bed with a smaller and still disturbingly noisy cat.

  He still says, "Quick!" He still purrs. And sometimes, when the smaller cat annoys him just a bit too much, he growls.

  But he doesn't miaow any more. He did it, the one time that it mattered. And he doesn't need to do it again.

  ***

  The image on the cover is by Swong95765 on flickr, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/29487672@N07/10433247076/ and shows Buckstar the cat, catnapping.