The Cat by Pat Gray

Author:Pat Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909232716
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2013-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Rat – in common with all characters who have a certain surface smoothness – had depths within him which quite surpassed those of supposedly more serious creatures, perhaps because that very smoothness kept his emotions unnaturally restrained. Although the animals were kind, and indeed clamoured for the Rat to take a leading role in the hope of cheering him, the disappearance of the Mouse seemed to have burdened the Rat with uncharacteristic feelings of depression and guilt. For days he could be seen slouching, coat buttons undone, turn-ups trailing in the mud, across the lawn, careless of his own safety, whistling half-heartedly, or conversing with another who was no longer present. In the night sometimes the animals would hear the voice of the Rat coming from his burrow:

‘Mouse, no, damn you, not there, not that way!’ or the ghostly cry of ‘Mouse! Watch out! Watch out behind you!’

The animals indeed feared that the Rat might so completely lose his grip that he might be picked off by a passing hawk or stray dog, and tried to encourage him to stay at home in safety, but the Rat roamed feckless and disconsolate, poking in the bottom of ditches with his silver topped walking stick, and shouting through the airbricks into the under-floor voids, his voice echoing and shrill.

‘Mouse? Mouse? Where are you Mouse?’

Then one night the Rat fell over something hard in the darkness near the meadow. Before he could pick himself up, a tiny wooden door set into the side of a hedgerow burst open and a fieldvole in striped pyjamas rushed out.

‘Here, what d’you think you’re doing,’ shouted the fieldvole. The Rat felt his ankle, disconcerted to be addressed so rudely by a mere fieldvole. Fumbling in the dark he was surprised to find himself entangled in a length of chain which appeared to have been stretched over the normal path. The chain was painted black, with sharp ornamental spikes. His shin was bleeding.

‘You’re in my garden, Rat,’ said the fieldvole. The Rat looked around and yes, it was true, the fieldvole appeared to have made some attempt to organise the natural unruliness of the meadow by imposing a pattern of borders and cut grass here and there, arranged as if in a curious parody of human garden design.

‘What’s this fence?’ asked the Rat, throwing the chain links away contemptuously.

‘Its mine. The Cat said I could have this part of the garden, and I’ve taken it,’ said the fieldvole.

The Rat was even more taken aback.

‘Have this bit of the garden!’ he repeated. The entire concept was so alien as to appear barely comprehensible.

‘I’ve paid for it and it’s mine. Now, bugger off out of it.’

‘Paid for it,’ said the Rat, scratching his head, and overlooking the insulting tone the fieldvole had used. ‘What with?’

‘I’m not telling,’ said the fieldvole, mysteriously.

‘Rubbish,’ said the Rat, and crossly began to pull up the chain link fence, post by post, out of the ground.

‘I’m not having it,’ he said. The fieldvole looked on, rocking on his heels.

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