Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God Read Free

and was properly grateful for all the wonders and beauties of nature, man, and beast as well as the great and marvelous unexplained mysteries of the universe. He did not try to explain God, the Father, or the Son, but worked to help his people love and enjoy Him. A man of unusual tolerance and breadth of vision, he believed that man could deny God for a time, but not forever, since God was so manifest in everything that lived and breathed, in things both animate and inanimate, that He was universal and hence undeniable.
    And yet, human being that he was, he felt the panic when his God chose to turn his back upon the likes of the widow Laggan and his own warm heart was riven with pity for her plight.
    There stood a weeping fat woman dabbing at her eyes with a small cloth, the tears straggling unevenly over the curves of her cheeks and her triple chins quaking and jouncing. And in a moment she would walk out of there and begin to die.
    Peddie felt the strong push of the impulse to rush into the surgery of Mr. MacDhui, crying, “Stop Andrew! Don’t kill the animal. Let it live out its time. Who are you, who hate Him, to play God? But he resisted it. What right had he to interfere? MacDhui knew his business, and veterinarians, just as doctors, frequently had to make decisions and break news that was painful to people, except that to the vet was sometimes given the additional mercy of destruction to save pain and suffering . . .
    Mrs. Laggan said once more, speaking as though to herself, “ ’Twill no’ be the same wi’out Rabbie," and went out. Mr. MacDhui’s beard came in through the door again and he stood there a moment regarding them all truculently, as though experiencing some remnant of the scene that had just taken place and the sympathy engendered for the old woman.
    He asked, “Who’s next?" and his countenance took on even a greater expression of distaste when the Glasgow builder’s wife with the Yorkshire terrier half arose irresolutely from the hard, waiting-room chair and the dog gave a shrill yelp of terror.
    A small voice said, “Please sir, could you spare a moment?"
    Someone remarked, “It’s little Geordie McNabb, the draper’s boy."
    Geordie was eight. He wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt and the kerchief of the Scout Wolf Cubs. He had a round, solemn face with dark hair and eyes and a curiously Chinesey cast of countenance. In his grubby hands he clasped a box, and in the box palpitatingly reposed his good deed for that day. MacDhui strode over to him overpoweringly, overtoweringly, looming over him like a red Magog, thrusting his bristling beard nearly into the box as he boomed, “Well, lad, what is it you want?"
    Geordie stood his ground bravely. Patently, inside the box there was a green frog with heaving sides. The boy explained.
    “There’s something wrong with his foot. And he cannot hop. I found him by the side of the lochan. He was trying very hard to hop but he couldn’t at all. Will you make him better please so that he can be hopping again?"
    The waves of old bitternesses had a way of rolling up inside Andrew MacDhui at the oddest and wrongest moment, causing him to do and say things that he did not mean to at all. Here he was in his waiting room full of clients, and it suddenly came over him as he stood bent over and looking down into the box, Doctor to a frog with a broken leg, that’s what you are, my great, fine fellow—
    And thereupon the old angers and regrets returned to plague and irritate him. Had there been justice in the world, all of these people in the room, yes, and the child too, would have been there to consult him about ailing hearts or lungs or throats or livers, aches and pains and mysterious cramps, sicknesses and diseases, which he would combat for them and put to rights. And there they were instead, with their pampered, snuffling, mewing, and whining little pets kept for their own flattery’s sake, or because they had been too lazy or selfish to bring a