Jennie. Paul Gallico
glow in his skin and a sense of well-being in his muscles as though every one of them had been properly used and stretched. In the light from the last of the shaft of the sun that was just passing from the window of the storehouse he could see how his white fur glistened from the treatment he had given it, as smooth as silk and as soft.
Peter felt a delicious drowsiness. His eyes began to close, as from a distance he heard Jennie say: “It’s good to take a nap after washing. I always do. You’ve earned it. I’ll join you, and after we’ve slept a little, perhaps I’ll tell you my story as I promised.”
Just before he dropped off to sleep, Peter felt her curl up against him, her back touching his, warm and secure, and the next moment he was off in sweet and dreamless slumber.
When he awoke, Jennie Baldrin was stretching and yawning at his side, and he joined her, imitating her movements, first putting out his forepaws as far as they would go and stretching backwards from there and then arching her back in a high inverted ‘U’.
“There,” Jennie said when she had done. “How do you feel now?”
“Ever so much better,” Peter replied, and he really felt like a new boy, or rather cat. Then he continued, for he had not forgotten what she had promised – “Now won’t you please tell me about you? Please, Jennie, I should so love to hear it …”
The tabby could not resist a small purr at Peter’s sincerity, but immediately after she became serious. “Dear me,” she said, “I didn’t think I’d ever be telling of this to anyone as long as I lived. Still – since you really wish it, so be it.”
And she began.
“MY NAME,” SAID the tabby, “as I told you, is Jennie. Jennie Baldrin. We are partly Scottish, you know—” she added with considerable satisfaction. “My mother was born in Glasgow, and so was I.”
“I say ‘partly’ Scottish, because way back we came from the continent. Africa, I mean, and then across into Spain. Several of our branch of the family were ships’ cats aboard vessels of the Spanish Armada. My mother’s ancestor was wrecked on the coast of Scotland, which is how we came to settle down there. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” replied Peter. “I’ve read about how Drake defeated the Spanish Armada and a storm came up and wrecked all the galleons. But I didn’t know about there having been any cats …”
“Indeed,” said Jennie Baldrin. “Well, there were – dozens of them. Actually we go much further back than that, Kaffir cats, you know, from Africa – Nubia, Abyssinia – places I’m sure you’ve heard about. Someone named Julius Caesar is supposed to have brought us to Britain in 55 to 54 B.C. But that wasn’t our branch of the family. We were in Egypt two thousand years before that when, as you’ve no doubt read, cats were sacred. A lot of people try to be or act sacred, but we actually were, with temples and altars, and priests to look after us. I suppose you have noticed how small my head is. Egyptian strain. And then of course this.”
And here Jennie rolled over on to her flank and held up her paws so that Peter could inspect the undersides of them. “Why, they’re quite black,” Peter said, referring to the pads. He then looked at his own and remarked, “Mine are all pink.”
“Naturally,” Jennie said, quite pleased. “Wherever you come across black pads – that’s it, the Egyptian strain again. Have you ever seen the relief from the tomb of Amon-Ra in the British Museum, the one with the sacred cat on it? They say I look quite like her.”
“I’ve been to the British Museum with Nanny,” Peter said, “but I don’t think I ever—”
“Ah well, never mind,” Jennie went on. “It isn’t really important, especially today when it is what you are that counts, though I must say it is a comfort to know who you are, particularly at times when everything appears to be dead set against you. If you know something about your forebears, who they were and what they did, you are not quite so likely to give up, especially if you know that once they were actually sacred and people came around asking them for favours. Still …” and here Jennie Baldrin paused and gave four quick washes to the end of her tail.
Peter was afraid she might not go on, so he coaxed – “Yes, and after you were born …”
“Oh,” said Jennie, leaving off her washing and resuming her narrative, “we came to London from Glasgow on the train in a basket, my mother and brothers and sisters and I. We travelled at night. I didn’t get to see much because I was in the basket all of the time, and anyway, my eyes weren’t open yet because I was very young. That’s my earliest recollection.
“We were a family of five kittens, two males and three females, and we went to live in the cellar of a boarding house in Bloomsbury. My mother was owned by a printer who had been working in Glasgow and came back to London. It was his mother who managed the boarding house in Bloomsbury. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear …”
“Oh yes,” said Peter, “quite!”
“Our mother was wise and good. She fed, washed, cuffed and taught us as much as she thought necessary. She was proud of our family and our strain, and said that wherever we were, our dignity and ancestry would bring honour to whoever might be looking after us. She most emphatically did not believe it was beneath her to be living in a boarding house or belong to a printer. Do you?”
Peter was somewhat taken aback by the unexpected question, but replied that he did not, particularly if the people were kind.
“Exactly,” said Jennie, and appeared to be relieved. “Our mother said that some of us might go no higher than to be a grocer’s cat, or belong to a chimney sweep or a charwoman, while others might come to live in a wealthy home in Mayfair, or even a palace. The important thing was that they were all people and we were who we were, and if there was love and respect between us, no one could ask for anything better.
“One day, when I was seven months old, it happened to me. Some people came to our house and took me away with them. I was adopted.
“How fortunate I was, or at least I thought so at the time. I went to live with a family in a house near Kensington High Street, a father, mother and little girl. And there I grew up and stayed for three years with never a cloud in the sky.”
Peter asked, “What was the little girl like?”
Jennie paused while a tear moistened her eye again, but this time she did not trouble to conceal it with a wash. “She was a dear,” Jennie replied. Her voice had taken on the tender tone of remembering someone who had been good and beautiful, and her glistening eyes were gazing backwards into the past. “She had long, wavy brown hair and such a sweet face. Her voice was soft and never harsh on my ears. Her name was Elizabeth, but she was called Buff, and she was ten years old. I loved her so much that just thinking about it was enough to set me to purring.
“We weren’t rich, but we were quite well off. I had my own basket without a cushion in it and was allowed to sleep in Buff ’s room. The Pennys, for that was their last name, saw to it that I had some of the meat from their ration, and I had fish every other day and all the milk I could drink. When Buff came home from school in the afternoon I would be waiting for her at the door to jump up into her arms and rub my cheek against hers and then lie across her shoulders and she would carry me around as though she were wearing a fur.”
Peter felt sad as he listened to her story, for exactly as she was telling it was how he would have wished to have had it in his own home – a sweet and friendly puss to be there when he returned, who would leap up on to his shoulder and rub against him and purr when he stroked her and be his very own.
Jennie sighed