I was pootling around the west midlands, researching a ‘Slow’ guide to the
region, when I came across a very strange village. There was no traffic – no
cars, in
fact, which probably explained why there was no petrol station. There was a
pub, and another one with a broken sign called The Cat and something. I
found
one shop but gave up trying to get served because the woman behind the
counter was too busy chatting to a regular customer.
What really struck me
was
that the houses had bells but no door knockers, no letter boxes, and in fact
most of the doors were ajar although it was December.
The lanes were
thronged
with people carrying letters and greeting each other with “What are you
doing here?” They pushed open the doors of other people’s houses and walked
in with
a cheery greeting. others were talking on mobile phones or standing texting,
but there was no sign of any landlines.
Some riders came past on unusually
vocal
horses.
I passed a spooky old mansion where I had a brief glimpse of a pale,
desperate face at the window. An elderly man was exposing himself in the
garden. I thought I heard a voice “Oh Jack!” but it could have been the wind
in the laurel bushes which almost hid the entrance. I entered the church,
dedicated to St Stephen, and was surprised to find the festival of Diwali in
full swing inside. It was when I was hiding from a man dressed in motorbike
gear,
with staring eyes and a clergyman’s dog-collar, that I made my discovery.
Tucked into a crevice in the wall was a scroll of paper and some paw prints
in the
ancient ecclesiastical dust...
This is I, Sammy the
Cat. You fools who think you know Ambridge, are you not aware that I was
Cleopatra in my first life and then, in the 1930s, the great Mahitabel? At
that time I used a ghost writer to record my thoughts and aspirations. I was
reincarnated in the 1950s (still a she-cat, you understand) and lived in the
stables at Ambridge, quite a come down, I don’t mind telling you, after my
aristocratic lives in Egypt and New York. That life ended in 1955 but the
world has been told a very different story, and it’s time to put the record
straight.
A
young woman owned the stables, but paid scant attention to me. Horses,
horses was all she thought about. Actually, that’s not true, she thought a
lot about
young men and I don’t mean her new husband. Poor soul, he was a bit thick,
and just thought her a bit cold. So, like many humans, he turned to the
solace of
a companion animal. Without him I would have starved, and without me his
soul would have withered. Many a day he would sit on a hay bale, feeding me
sardines out of a tin, and bemoaning his fate. He had to pretend that his
marriage was perfect, you see, because in Ambridge all marriages are
perfect. Oh we
shared such a bond! No love greater between man and beast has ever been
recorded, I dare say. And that Grace woman! Many a time I had to look away
while
she and a farmhand disported themselves behind the hay. Disgusting, it was.
Afterwards the young man would light a cigarette while I washed my whiskers
and thanked my creator that I had a pure mind and body.
Well, the inevitable
happened. It was one cigarette too many and the whole bloody stables went up
in flames. Of course that Grace woman had locked all the doors but she and
her lover managed to climb out through a window and were never seen again.
I,
on the other hand, was pinned to the floor by a smouldering beam. Phil
rushed to the scene but it was all over for me. For one of my lives, anyway.
As he told
a shocked community later: “She died in my arms”. Yes, he was distraught,
and I understand that the nation was distraught, quite right too, although
their
distraughtness may have been a bit misguided.
You needn’t know about my next
life, so ‘fast forward’ as you humans say to the 1980s when I found myself
in
an existence – you can’t call it a life – of stultifying boredom. Can you
imagine how I felt, a cat of royal blood and heroic exploits, loved and
feared in equal
measures, reduced to a mieouing neutered tom, fed pilchards by a dotty old
lady? Sammy she called me. Old Bat I called her. I would have died of
boredom
well before my time anyway, but while I was out philandering (all right,
peeping tomming, since I’d lost my balls) one night, I had the misfortune to
be caught
in the cross fire of a gun fight between the Grundy brothers. The older
brother hastily covered my bullet-holed corpse with a pile of leaves which,
even as I
transmoggyfied into my next incarnation, I thought was too transparent a
crime even for Ambridge, but of course I was wrong. The grieving village
thought I
had died of natural causes.
My lives were being used up rather too fast for
my liking, and to spend the first part of my sixth life in a cats’ home
seemed a hell
of a waste of time. Things seemed to be looking up when I was ‘adopted’ but
imagine my chagrin to find myself back with the Old Bat but now called Ben.
Or
possibly Bill. I wasted no time absenting myself to a posher residence
infested by vermin of the human and rodent kind. I can tell you, I’ve
experienced some
dysfunctional human families in my time, but this one pretty much took the
biscuit. There was Nigel who had an IQ of about 62, and who was rightly
despised
by his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth also despised her brother David because of
some inheritance issue. In fact Lizzie hated everyone except her beloved
twins
who had been brought up by a wet nurse until they were eight or so, and
another brother Kenton who spent rather too much time in her house. The
scene was
ripe for Something Big to Happen. Would Nigel force The Twins to go to a
boarding school to improve their accents? Would David steal the family farm
for his
own brats? What was Kenton really up to?
Things seemed to be coming to a
head around New Year, and having had a disappointing Christmas with the Old
Bat I spent some time under the Lower Loxley dinner table trying to get a
decent meal. Lizzie and Kenton were deep in discussion, speaking so softly
that I
couldn’t hear the details. All I knew was that it involved Kenton in his
highwayman’s outfit (in Ambridge it’s considered quite normal for a grown
man to be
going around dressed as a highwayman) and something WOULD HAPPEN on January
2. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with any of this had I not heard
David ask Nigel: “Are you a man or a mouse?” Naturally that got my attention
and I followed them both up on to the roof, noting that Elizabeth had made a
theatrical departure some time earlier. The night was dark and stormy, the
tiles slick with frost. The two figures battled in the wind, struggling to
unfasten a
banner, leaning ever further out over the void. Suddenly a dark figure in a
cloak loomed over the ridge of the roof, eyes burning like coals... David
shrieked as
the cloaked figure bore down on him. Now, I was hungry and that promised
mouse hadn’t materialised so I rushed forward. David grabbed my tail and
hung
on. I screamed like a devil cat. And Nigel? Well, you know the rest. I never
did get that mouse.
Signed, Sammy the cat
