Paws and Whiskers Read online

  ‘It’s very good, Mother, thank you,’ they answered happily. They were beautiful children, well brought up. But Mrs Tabby worried about them secretly. It really was a terrible neighborhood, and getting worse. Car wheels and truck wheels rolling past all day – rubbish and litter – hungry dogs – endless shoes and boots walking, running, stamping, kicking – nowhere safe and quiet, and less and less to eat. Most of the sparrows had moved away. The rats were fierce and dangerous; the mice were shy and scrawny.

  So the children’s wings were the least of Mrs Tabby’s worries. She washed those silky wings every day, along with chins and paws and tails, and wondered about them now and then, but she worked too hard finding food and bringing up the family to think much about things she didn’t understand.

  But when the huge dog chased little Harriet and cornered her behind the garbage can, lunging at her with open, white-toothed jaws, and Harriet with one desperate mew flew straight up into the air and over the dog’s staring head and lighted on the rooftop – then Mrs Tabby understood.

  The dog went off growling, its tail between its legs.

  ‘Come down now, Harriet,’ her mother called. ‘Children, come here please, all of you.’

  They all came back to the dumpster. Harriet was still trembling. The others all purred with her till she was calm, and then Mrs Jane Tabby said: ‘Children, I dreamed a dream before you were born, and I see now what it meant. This is not a good place to grow up in, and you have wings to fly from it. I want you to do that. I know you’ve been practicing. I saw James flying across the alley last night – and yes, I saw you doing nose dives, too, Roger. I think you are ready. I want you to have a good dinner and fly away – far away.’

  ‘But Mother—’ said Thelma, and burst into tears.

  ‘I have no wish to leave,’ said Mrs Tabby quietly. ‘My work is here. Mr Tom Jones proposed to me last night, and I intend to accept him. I don’t want you children underfoot!’

  All the children wept, but they knew that that is the way it must be, in cat families. They were proud, too, that their mother trusted them to look after themselves. So all together they had a good dinner from the garbage can that the dog had knocked over. Then Thelma, Roger, James, and Harriet purred goodbye to their dear mother, and one after another they spread their wings and flew up, over the alley, over the roofs, away.

  Mrs Jane Tabby watched them. Her heart was full of fear and pride.

  ‘They are remarkable children, Jane,’ said Mr Tom Jones in his soft, deep voice.

  ‘Ours will be remarkable too, Tom,’ said Mrs Tabby.

  2

  As Thelma, Roger, James, and Harriet flew on, all they could see beneath them, mile after mile, was the city’s roofs, the city’s streets.

  A pigeon came swooping up to join them. It flew along with them, peering at them uneasily from its little, round, red eye. ‘What kind of birds are you, anyways?’ it finally asked.

  ‘Passenger pigeons,’ James said promptly.

  Harriet mewed with laughter.

  The pigeon jumped in mid-air, stared at her, and then turned and swooped away from them in a great, quick curve.

  ‘I wish I could fly like that,’ said Roger.

  ‘Pigeons are really dumb,’ James muttered.

  ‘But my wings ache already,’ Roger said, and Thelma said, ‘So do mine. Let’s land somewhere and rest.’

  Little Harriet was already heading down towards a church steeple.

  They clung to the carvings of the church roof, and got a drink of water from the roof gutters.

  ‘Sitting in the catbird seat!’ sang Harriet, perched on a pinnacle.

  ‘It looks different over there,’ said Thelma, pointing her nose to the west. ‘It looks softer.’

  They all gazed earnestly westward, but cats don’t see the distance clearly.

  ‘Well, if it’s different, let’s try it,’ said James, and they set off again. They could not fly with untiring ease, like the pigeons. Mrs Tabby had always seen to it that they ate well, and so they were quite plump, and had to beat their wings hard to keep their weight aloft. They learned how to glide, not beating their wings, letting the wind bear them up; but Harriet found gliding difficult, and wobbled badly.

  After another hour or so they landed on the roof of a huge factory, even though the air there smelled terrible, and there they slept for a while in a weary, furry heap. Then, towards nightfall, very hungry – for nothing gives an appetite like flying – they woke and flew on.

  The sun set. The city lights came on, long strings and chains of lights below them, stretching out towards darkness. Towards darkness they flew, and at last, when around them and under them everything was dark except for one light twinkling over the hill, they descended slowly from the air and landed on the ground.

  A soft ground – a strange ground! The only ground they knew was pavement, asphalt, cement. This was all new to them, dirt, earth, dead leaves, grass, twigs, mushrooms, worms. It all smelled extremely interesting. A little creek ran nearby. They heard the song of it and went to drink, for they were very thirsty. After drinking, Roger stayed crouching on the bank, his nose almost in the water, his eyes gazing.

  ‘What’s that in the water?’ he whispered.

  The others came and gazed. They could just make out something moving in the water, in the starlight – a silvery flicker, a gleam. Roger’s paw shot out . . .

  ‘I think it’s dinner,’ he said.

  After dinner, they curled up together again under a bush and fell asleep. But first Thelma, then Roger, then James, and then small Harriet, would lift their head, open an eye, listen a moment, on guard. They knew they had come to a much better place than the alley, but they also knew that every place is dangerous, whether you are a fish, or a cat, or even a cat with wings.

  3

  ‘It’s absolutely unfair,’ the thrush cried.

  ‘Unjust!’ the finch agreed.

  ‘Intolerable!’ yelled the bluejay.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ a mouse said. ‘You’ve always had wings. Now they do. What’s unfair about that?’

  The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.

  ‘I was bringing a twig to the nest just this morning, and a cat flew down, a cat flew down, from the top of the Home Oak, and grinned at me in mid-air!’ the thrush said, and all the other songbirds cried, ‘Shocking! Unheard of! Not allowed!’

  ‘You could try tunnels,’ said the mouse, and trotted off.

  The birds had to learn to get along with the Flying Tabbies. Most of the birds, in fact, were more frightened and outraged than really endangered, since they were far better flyers than Roger, Thelma, Harriet, and James. The birds never got their wings tangled up in pine branches and never absent-mindedly bumped into tree trunks, and when pursued they could escape by speeding up or taking evasive action. But they were alarmed, and with good cause, about their fledglings. Many birds had eggs in the nest now; when the babies hatched, how could they be kept safe from a cat who could fly up and perch on the slenderest branch, among the thickest leaves?

  It took a while for the Owl to understand this. Owl is not a quick thinker. She is a long thinker. It was late in spring, one evening, when she was gazing fondly at her two new owlets, that she saw James flitting by, chasing bats. And she slowly thought, ‘This will not do . . .’

  And softly Owl spread her great, gray wings, and silently flew after James, her talons opening.

  The Flying Tabbies had made their nest in a hole halfway up a big elm, above fox and coyote level and too small for raccoons to get into. Thelma and Harriet were washing each other’s necks and talking over the day’s adventures when they heard a pitiful crying at the foot of the tree.

  ‘James!’ cried Harriet.

  He was crouching under the bushes, all scratched and bleeding, and one of his wings dragged upon the ground.

  ‘It was the Owl,’ he said, when his sisters had helped him