Читать книгу The Second Cat Megapack - George Zebrowski - Страница 13

THE WOMAN WHO HATED CATS, by Margaret St. John Bathe

She hated their expressive faces and their eyes that changed shape and color. She hated their mysterious appearances and their inexplicable disappearances. As a child she screamed herself into convulsions if one so much as blinked at her. When she grew up, of course, she learned not to scream; yet she could never learn to control the prickling sensation that attacked her spine whenever a cat stopped in its tracks and stared at her.

For that is exactly what all cats did—they stared at her.

It was strange that she who hated cats should so attract their interest. It was no ordinary interest such as a cat displays when it desires a saucer of milk; they were not hungry, stray cats that regarded her so intently; they were plump, well-fed feline citizens of a highly respectable neighborhood. They had no need to ‘meow’ at strange women for sustenance.

She shooed them away but they were not frightened. Rather they took the sound to be indicative of a desire to be friendly and they would bound skittishly in front of her, twining their soft, almost boneless bodies, about her legs. Then it was difficult not to scream. Even though she was middle-aged and her childhood was now an almost forgotten interlude.

She hated them more as she grew older; yet the more she hated them, the more they loved her. She was pursued by cats; gray cats, ginger cats, black cats and tabbies—the legend of the Pied Piper lived again in the respectable neighborhood. The people who put their cats out at night knew where they would go and the people who called their cats in knew where they had been.

She would wake in the morning and find cats on the window-sill staring in at her, ‘meowing’ softly. When she opened the door to bring in the milk there would be cats on the doorstep. Before she could prevent them they would dart into the house and hide in dark corners until she had stopped searching for them. Later, as she busied herself with domestic tasks, they would jump out at her, landing on her shoulders, rubbing their sleek faces against her neck.

In despair she wrote to a psychologist.

“Please,” she begged, “Will you tell me how I can overcome my horror of cats?”

The psychologist replied tersely— “Adopt a kitten.”

She decided to ignore this advice on the principle that kittens grow into cats.

Shortly after this correspondence she noticed her followers began to diminish in number. They no longer swirled about her feet or seized the opportunity to hide themselves in the house; she could open her eyes now in the mornings without the fear of being watched and waited for by those smooth-coated fiends.

Only one cat remained persistent—a handsome tabby with whiskers that must have been at least four inches long, and a heavy, lustrous tail that curved the air in a gesture that was almost a bow.

Disturbing though his persistence undoubtedly was, life was infinitely more tolerable with one cat than with a score. Beyond fixing her with his bright, yellow eyes every time she went in and out of the house, he did nothing to ingratiate himself.

The woman who hated cats saw nothing ominous in his patient squatting—she had no premonition of disaster.

Then one day while polishing a bedroom mirror she received a shock.

Of late she had been troubled by a twitching on each side of her mouth; had taken it as an incipient heat-spot and applied calamine lotion. Today, however, the mirror reflected two small mounds of flesh perforated like a pepper pot and with long strong whiskers sprouting from the holes.

The poor women went very pale and troubled.

Feverishly she searched a drawer for a small pair of tweezers and holding the skin now with one hand she caught one large fine whisker and jerked.…

It was a painful operation and, as the whisker left the follicle under the skin, the woman cried aloud—

“Ow!”

She listened as the cry echoed through the room. A horrid suspicion darkened her mind. She tried the sound again experimentally then she sank into a chair, completely robbed of her strength.

She had not said “Ow”—she had said “Meow.”

The days that followed were nightmarish; yet, by degrees, she became accustomed to the meowing and the whiskers; when she went out to shop she wore a veil and delivered notes over the counter so that she would not have to use her voice. She studied her reflection anxiously every day but there were no further signs of metamorphosis; apart from a growing urge to drink more milk, she remained normal.

She still—thank goodness!—had one big toe and four graduated ones on each foot; her hands were not yet paws, and she had not started to grow a tail. It seemed not unlikely that, in time, she would lose the cat-cry and the unsightly whiskers.

Alas, for her optimism. One day, as she was crossing the hall, a mouse darted in front of her. The woman’s eyes brightened, she held herself tense, then—she pounced.

She was too intent on her prey to notice that she now had paws and claws. It was lovely to feel the soft trembling body of the mouse between her pads. Allowing it to run a little way along the polished floor she sprang after it and tapped it gently on the head. This was fun. Why had she never played this game before? Again she released it, but this time it darted under the clothes cupboard.

In a flash the woman followed but the cupboard balked her. She still possessed a human body and could not squeeze herself into the small aperture between the floor and the piece of furniture. Up and down she ran in a frenzy, peering first one side and then the other. The mouse had escaped, however.

The woman ‘meowed’ heartbrokenly and then, in the manner of all cats, sat down and began to wash behind her ears.

It was late that night when the transition became complete. There was a full moon and the air reverberated with strange sounds. The woman who hated cats drank the last of a bottle of milk, sprang through an open window, and stalked down the garden path.

The handsome tabby was waiting by the gate. He gave a deep-throated purr as she approached and together they disappeared into the shadows.