The Catlady Read Free Page B

few days later readers of the
Dummerset Chronicle
saw the following notice:

    “You don't have to do anything, Miss Muriel,” Mary said.“I give you my word I'll make sure they go to good homes.”
    In the next few weeks a lot of people came walking, cycling, or riding up the drive to Ponsonby Place. Some owned a cat but fancied having another, some had lost their cats and wanted to replace them, some had never owned a cat before but were attracted by that one word FREE. Many were justcurious and keen to take this chance to see the Catlady in her own home.
    Such was the demand that soon Mary was having to turn people away. She pinned a notice on the front door that said:

    “All those that have gone have got good homes, I'm sure, Miss Muriel,” she said to the Catlady, who was sitting in an armchair in the drawing room with the Queen of the United Kingdom on her lap, reading a book called
The Care of Cats.
    “Well done, Mary dear,” the Catlady said. “Though I shall miss them all very much.”
    Let's hope, she thought, that my Florence (Mama, that is) has a lot of kittens.
    As though to compensate for the losses, Florence gave birth the very next day, on the fine silken bedspread of the four-poster in the bedroom of the Catlady's late parents.

    “Oh, Mama!” breathed Muriel Ponsonby as she bent over the two newborn kittens. One was a tortoiseshell like the mother, the other white like the father, who sat nearby, purring with pride.
    The Catlady had been an only child, but now she thought, I have a baby brother and a baby sister!
    “Oh, Papa,” she said, “what shall we call them?” But of course Percival merely replied, “Mu.”
    “I'll ask Mary,” said the Catlady, and she followed Vicky (who always liked to lead the way) down to the kitchen.
    If only Mary knew, she thought as shetold the good tidings, that these two new kittens are the children of my dear mama and papa, so that now I have the brother and the sister I never had as a child.
    “Come up and see them,” she said. And then as they stood looking down, she said, “What shall we call them? Why don't you choose, Mary Nutt?”
    Mary laughed.
    “We could call them after some sort of nut!” she said.
    “What a good idea,” said the Catlady. “Let's see now, there's walnut and peanut …”
    “… and chestnut and beechnut and groundnut …”
    “… and coconut and hazelnut,” said the Catlady.
    “Hazel,” said Mary. “That would be a nice name for the little female, wouldn't it?”
    “Oh yes!” said the Catlady. “But what about the little tom?”
    “Coco, Miss Muriel,” said Mary. “Short for
coconut.
”
    “I like it!” cried the Catlady.

    My sister Hazel, she thought, and my brother Coco. What fun! How lucky I am to believe in reincarnation. It would be nice for Mary to believe too. Just think. Her father, for instance—Arthur, I think he was called—suppose he's now a boy or a horse, perhaps, or a dog or maybe even something as small as a mouse. No, not a mouse, they don't live long enough. He'd have gone into yet another body by now, dead of old age or, worse, killed by a cat. Just think, if dear Papa had eaten Arthur Nutt!

    But it might help Mary, she said to herself, to know that I, at least, believe that her father is not dead and gone. His body might be buried on some South African battlefield, but his personality, his spirit, his soul, call it what you like, has been reincarnated, has entered some other body. Maybe I should try to explain it to her.
    “Mary dear, tell me, is it very painful for you to talk of your parents?”
    “Painful?” replied Mary. “Yes, it will always be painful. But they've gone. I just have to accept that.”
    “Gone,” said the Catlady.“Gone where?”
    “To Heaven, I suppose. They were good people.”
    “Have you ever thought,” asked the Catlady, “that they might have been reincarnated?”
    “What does that mean?”
    “That they might have been reborn, in some other shape