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Animal
House Folly
Farm Blog
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All the children thought a witch lived in the little house on the corner of Campbell Street. It wasn’t that they had any real evidence, but there was surely no other explanation for the way no one ever saw who lived there and yet the most beautiful garden flourished within its boundaries. Huge white hollyhocks grew up beside the cream stucco walls, campanula spread it’s voracious tentacles over the path to the front door, daisies forced their way through the spaces in the white picket fence and wild red geraniums scattered themselves wherever there was a patch of sunlight. Each day on their way to the local primary school the children would grow silent when they saw the flowers reaching across the footpath. As they neared the house their pace would quicken until finally they ran, breath tearing like fire at their throats, frightened that those huge plants might somehow pull them inside to a fate worse than school. Then when they were safely past they would laugh nervously, looking at each other with relief, each one pretending that it really was just a game and they were only humouring their more cowardly friends. The braver amongst them would pick up gravel chips broken off the asphalt road and throw them as far as they could but never quite far enough to hit a window or the mailbox or to let anyone inside know that they were there. The witch owned a cat. But not a black familiar with piercing hypnotic eyes and bad breath but a luscious golden Persian with half-slit eyes who sat smugly with his paws curled towards him in the half-light beneath the gnarled old quince tree. In the spring white petals would drop delicately onto his well-groomed fur and he would leave them there until he moved to another patch of warmth and before the early dampness of autumn would chase him inside where he would take up residence on the patchwork cushion on the window seat. “Humphrey?” she would say and he would open one lazy eye in order to judge whether it was worth jumping down for his bowl of cream or the fresh cod she would put in the blue and white china bowl on the hearth. He was not an affectionate cat; he never wound his tail around willing legs and bumped his hard little head against an unprotected knee. He never asked for anything but took it for granted that he would be fed, that there would be someone to let him out in the morning and that he would be loved. He was not a pedigree cat. By some accident of fate he had been left in the grounds of the school, a much-wanted Christmas present who had outlived his entertainment value. After two days of wandering from child to child, being chased out of classrooms by irritated teachers and having a pot of water thrown over him by the headmaster’s crotchety receptionist he had wandered down the road and sat by the rickety gate with peeling white paint. When the sun was beginning to burn his whiskers and turn the asphalt to molten tar the woman had picked him up and, clasping him to her apron with its hazy pattern of blue cornflowers, taken him inside. “Bloody fleabag! What the hell do you think you’re doing woman?” The cat looked up at this red-faced bellowing creature hat shattered the air with his bad temper then back to the woman. She looked smaller somehow as if each word was whittling her away into nothing. “He won’t be any trouble and he’ll keep the mice down” her head went lower so that he couldn’t see the tears that were forcing their way up from her throat. “More money going out on something we don’t need! I haven’t worked hard all these years so you can fritter is away on every stray which ends up on our doorstep,” the man paused as if gathering strength for his next onslaught,” I’m retiring in a couple of years if you haven’t forgotten and the last thing we’ll need is an extra mouth to feed. Get rid of him!” The woman was silent. All her married life she had done what the man had wanted in order to keep the peace. On her wedding night as she had got into bed he had turned to her and said “Now you’re mine, body, mind and soul. You’ll do everything I say”. Many times in the years that followed she regretted that she didn’t get straight out and go home to her mother. But the disgrace that would follow her family was enough to keep her in place and she soon became a pale shadow of the girl she had once been. She tended her garden and sat by the fire on winter nights when the frost bit at the geraniums, quietly and methodically doing her patchwork. This was the only place he couldn’t follow and gradually the pretty flowered cushion covers and bedspreads grew throughout the small stucco house on the corner of Campbell Street. She looked up at the sweaty face with its bulging eyes and slack jaw. “No” she said quietly holding the kitten to her,” I’ve never had anything of my own before. He won’t be any trouble. I’ll even pay for his food out of my own money”. The woman had a small investment that she had saved up from the housekeeping money she’d managed to put aside over the years. This was her escape money. Her mother had always told her to have $500 put aside so she could get out if she needed to. Her mother who had always said that marriage was for life and that women made their own beds and had to lie in them. But then perhaps she’d noticed the occasional bruises on her arms when he wasn’t so careful. At this unexpected defiance the man sat down in his armchair. She’d never spoken back before. He picked up his wineglass and the bottle of port he kept on the floor beside his chair. Shakily he poured the wine and threw it down in one gulp. “You make sure to keep him away from me then” he grumbled. She smiled her secret smile then, the one that always annoyed him when he saw her in the garden cutting back the daisies or when her head was bent over her sewing at night. Like she knew something he didn’t. “I’ve paid for everything in this house, just you remember that!” And she had nodded with a sudden happiness, which had annoyed him all the more. So Humphrey had settled into his placid existence. He grew from that scrap of ginger fur into a magnificent honey cushion that sat quietly in the corner and never caught a mouse. He never asked for anything but assumed that food would arrive at the appointed hour, that he would always be let in the door if he sat and looked at the doorhandle and that as long as he avoided the man life would always continue in this way. Then one day the man didn’t leave. He didn’t get up at 7 and sit at the kitchen table banging his knife and fork while the woman tried to lift congealed fried eggs onto his plate. He lay in bed even when Humphrey asked to be let out into the garden. Later when the children ran past the house throwing stones the man ran unsteadily down the front path and yelled at them. He even picked up the chips of gravel and fired them back. The children shrieked in real terror this time as the house unleashed its monster. As the day wore on more shouting came from within the stucco house on the corner of Campbell Street. Humphrey would lift his head and look towards the sound. He padded around to the back door and sat looking expectantly up at the door handle but it didn’t open. No bowl of cream for him to dip his whiskers into and shake over the chipped linoleum, no woman to stroke his head leaving a faint smell of rosemary on his head although he always pretended not to notice. The damp crispness of an early autumn evening drifted down while the cat kept his vigil on the back doorstep. He concentrated all his feline powers on staring at the door as if he could cause it to open by the mere force of his will. Finally when the moon had lifted itself above the houses and the air crackled with ice he heard the click of the lock being drawn back. The woman shivered but it wasn’t from the coldness of the night air. Her face had that folded in look that comes from waking at three in the morning and trying to cry quietly into the pillow. The golden cat slowly ambled through the small gap in the doorway and lightly touched the woman’s leg with his plume of a tail, as if by accident. A butterfly kiss without her knowing he really meant it. He watched her take down the blue and white china bowl with its pattern of bridges and willow trees and half hidden figures waving out and fill it with cream. A wedding present from her mother, a dinner set which had gradually chipped away over the years until this bowl was all the remained. After he had finished Humphrey walked to the window seat and leapt as lightly as he was able onto his cushion. He settled himself into the folds of the cloth, closed his eyes with his all-knowing Confucius look and waited. The man lay on a long floral sofa in front of the fireplace. His bottle of port lay empty beside him with a stain of red seeping gradually into the carpet. His breathing was as heavy and loud as his shouting. The woman sat opposite him and watched until his bright sweaty face seemed to expand in size until it dominated the whole room, the house and her life. The cat opened one eye and looked at her. When she stood up and shuffled past him to her broken night of sleep he changed his position and stretched his legs out and lay watching the man as his breathing became heavier and deeper. When the moon was high in the cool night sky and cast its shadows through the daisies and geraniums the honeyed cat leapt lightly from his cushion and walked towards the man. He sat for a moment watching before he jumped onto the sofa. Delicately he put one paw onto the man’s chest, then another and stood staring intently into this creature’s face. In the moonlight that flooded through the windows his rusty coat was frosted changing him into something mythical and wise. Slowly he walked across the man’s shuddering form and wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell that came from it. He curled himself into a dense ball and settled himself into the warmth. And as the breathing became more laboured and irregular he curled his paws into his chest and closed his eyes to the night. Finally as daylight showed over the tops of the houses and threw an unearthly pink haze over the little stucco house in Campbell Street with its garden of unruly flowers the last shuddering sigh came from beneath the fluffy stray cat who knew he finally belonged somewhere. And then this cat who had never once miaowed or growled, who had never before uttered one sound, began to purr. ©Jen Longshaw
2000-2006 Please do not copy in any manner, print or electronic,
without permission from the author.
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