Jennie. Paul Gallico

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      Jennie nodded. “Mmmmm. I know. Perfume. I love things that smell good.”

      She was indignant when Peter came to the part about not being allowed to have a cat because of the mess it might make around a small flat, and said, “Mess, indeed! We never make messes, unless we’re provoked, and then we do it on purpose. And can’t we just—!” But strangely enough she took Nanny’s part when Peter reached the point in his story about Nanny being afraid of cats and not liking them.

      “There are people who don’t, you know,” she explained, when Peter expressed surprise, “and we can understand and respect them for it. Sometimes we like to tease them a little by rubbing up against them, or getting into their laps just to see them jump. They can’t help it any more than we can help not liking certain kinds of people and not wanting to have anything to do with them. But at least we know where we stand when we come across someone like your Nanny. It’s the people who love us, or say they love us and then hurt us, who …”

      She did not finish the sentence, but turned away quickly, sat up, and began to wash violently down her back. But before she did, Peter thought that he had noticed the shine of tears in her eyes, though of course it couldn’t be so, since he had never heard of cats shedding tears. It was only later he was to learn that they could both laugh and cry.

      Nevertheless, he felt that the tabby must be nursing some secret hurt, perhaps like his own, and in the hopes of taking her mind away from something sad, he launched into a description of the events leading up to his strange and mysterious transformation.

      He began by telling about the tiger-striped kitten sunning and washing herself by the little garden in the centre of the square, and how he had wanted to catch her and hold her. Jennie showed immediate interest. She stopped washing and enquired: “How old was she? Was she pretty?”

      “Oh yes,” said Peter, “very pretty, and full of fun …”

      “Prettier than I?” Jennie enquired, with seeming nonchalance.

      Peter had thought she had been, for she was like a round ball of fluff as he remembered, with most proud whiskers and two white and two brown feet. But he wouldn’t for anything have offended the tabby by telling her so. The truth was that for all her gentle ways and the kindly expression of her white face, Jennie was quite plain, with her small head, longish ears and slanted, half-Oriental eyes, and what with being so dreadfully thin making her bones stick out, Peter felt she was really nothing much to look at as cats went. But he was already old enough to know that one sometimes told small white lies to make people happy, and so he replied: “Oh, no! I think you’re beautiful!” After all, he had eaten her mouse.

      “Do you really?” said Jennie, and for the first time since they had met, Peter heard a small purr coming from her. To cover her confusion she gave one of her paws a few tentative licks and then with a pleased smile on her thin face, enquired: “Well, and what happened then?”

      And Peter thereupon told her all the rest of the story right to the end.

      When he had finished with “… and then the next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and here I am”, there was a long silence. Peter felt tired from the effort of telling the story and reliving all the dreadful moments through which he had come, for he was yet far from having regained his full strength, even with rest and a meal.

      Jennie, undeniably taken aback by the tale she had heard, appeared to be thinking hard, her eyes unblinking, and a faraway look in them, which, however, was not disbelief. It was clear from her demeanour that she apparently accepted Peter’s word that he was not a cat really, but a little boy, and the queer circumstances that had brought this about, and that it was something else that was occupying her mind.

      Finally she turned her too-small, slender head towards Peter and said: “Well, what’s to be done?”

      Peter said, “I don’t know, I’m sure. I suppose if I am a cat, I will just have to be one—”

      The tabby put her gentle paw on his and said softly, “But, Peter, don’t you see, that’s just it! You said yourself that you didn’t feel as though you were a cat at all. If you’re going to be one, you must first learn how.”

      “Oh dear,” said Peter, who never did much enjoy having to learn things, “is there more to being a cat than just liking to eat mice and purring?”

      The little puss was genuinely shocked. “Is there more?” she repeated. “You couldn’t begin to imagine all the things there are! There must be hundreds. Why, if you left here right now and went out looking like a white cat, but feeling inside and thinking like a boy, I shouldn’t be inclined to give you more than ten minutes before you’d be in some terrible trouble again – like last night. It isn’t easy to be on your own, even if you have learned to know everything or nearly everything that a cat ought to know.”

      Peter hadn’t thought about it that way, but there was no doubt she was right. If he had been himself in shape and form and had been locked out of the house, or had got lost from Nanny at the fun-fair, or in the park, he would have known enough to go straight up to a policeman and tell him his name and address and ask to be taken home. But he couldn’t very well do this in his present condition as a white cat with a slightly droopy left ear where it had been ripped by a yellow tom named Dempsey. And what was worse, now that the tabby had called it to his attention, he was a cat and didn’t know the first thing about how to behave as one. He began to feel frightened again, but different from the panic of the night before – it was a new kind of shakiness as though the bed and the ground and everything beneath his four paws was no longer very steady. He said somewhat piteously to the tabby: “Oh, Jennie – now I’m really frightened! What shall I do?”

      She thought for a moment longer and then said, “I know! I’ll teach you.”

      Peter felt such relief he could have cried. “Jennie dear! Would you? Could you?”

      The expression on the face of the cat was positively angelic, or so Peter thought, and now she actually almost did look beautiful to him as she said: “But of course. After all, you’re my responsibility. I found you and brought you here. But one thing you must promise me if I try …”

      Peter said, “Oh yes, I’ll promise anything—”

      “First of all, do as I tell you until you can begin to look after yourself a little, but most important, never tell another soul your secret. I’ll know, but nobody else needs to, because they just wouldn’t understand. If we get into any kind of trouble, just let me do the talking. Never so much as hint or let on in any way to any other cat what you really are. Promise?”

      Peter promised, and Jennie gave him a comradely little tap on the side of his head with her paw. Just the touch of her velvet pad and the simplicity of the caress made Peter feel happier already.

      He said, “Won’t you tell me your story now, and who you are? I know nothing about you, and you’ve been so good to me …”

      Jennie withdrew her paw, and a look of sadness came over her gentle face as she turned away for a moment. She said, “Later, perhaps, Peter. It is hard for me to speak about it now. And besides, you might not like it at all. Since you say you are a human and really not a cat at all, you would not be able to understand the way I feel and why I will never again live with people.”

      “Please do tell me,” Peter pleaded. “And I will like it, I’m sure, because I like you.”

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