For our country holiday, we brought our city cat, Percy, along with us. Out in the village, Percys brother, Bugle, residesa cat so wide-eyed that his nickname is most matter-of-fact. Out here, people aren’t overly gentle with their language or their manners.
At first, Percy had quite the rough go of it. Despite his smallish size, Bugle wasted no time asserting dominance, chasing Percy away from any scrap of food, and hissing with a menace reminiscent of those peculiar guests you might see on an infamous British panel show.
At some point, Bugle made the classic mistake of a village bruiserhe got too sure of himself and openly lunged at Percy. Percy, with the nonchalance of some weary aristocrat, lightly parried him off with a paw, sighing as if to say, Oh, do leave it, Lord Davenport, and quite by accident delivered a deft right hook. Poor Bugle had to be fished out of the kitchen bin after that, trailing riddles of dream logic behind him.
And so, in the most hapless and roundabout wayjust as everything goes in Percys lifehe found himself unexpectedly on the top of the local pecking order.
Round these parts, folk take a practical view of cats: only the season spared Percy from having to chase field mice for his supperit was, after all, a very English winter. These country meals were sporadic, devised at the whimsy of those whod wander through the kitchen. Percy could scarcely adapt, for in the city he dined at precise hours atop shining crockery, ushered to the table by a butler with a polite cough.
The strain did wonders for Percys instincts, thoughoften, Id catch him at some ethereal hour, muzzle plunged into a pot atop the hob. On guard at the footstool, Bugle would hiss desperately, alerting Percy to my spectral approach. Percy, half-turning, would reassure his brother, Dont fret, its only him; you should see the odd things he gets up to, foraging in the fridge by moonlight.
One afternoon, convinced Percy was ready, we set him outside in the snow. When he turned to look at us, his face was dusted white and his expression held a mournful, unscripted sadnesslike an English gangster in a rain-soaked melodrama. We never did let him out again.
Later, one rainy night, my son Ruperts village friends came to call. We huddled together in our cramped little lounge, and I read aloud from Dickens, weaving Victorian spookiness through the air. When I reached the bit about the stepmother who turned into a black cat, claws clicking on the flagstone, the sitting room door croaked open as if in protest. In strutted Bugle, tail raised high, moving with the exaggerated confidence of dreams.
Percy, by then, had taught his brother the ancient art of opening doorsno matter their complexity or creed. The room was so tiny, we tumbled across it like children in a storybook tempest. One lad was rescued from nearly tumbling out the sash window only by the timely intervention of his nan, who kept him so well-fed he was too buoyant to escape.
Ah yes, an important detail to add: Bugle is entirely, most profoundly black. Youll agree, its rarely that the classics leave such a thunderstruck impression on modern English children, whether in dreams or in waking hours.
