The Cat

01

"Doggy!" my brother said, pointing at the cat which was sitting on the kitchen's step.

My brother's name is Peter. He is only two and a half years old, which is thirteen years younger than me. I was preparing his breakfast, and because it was a sunny day I'd opened the back door.

"Cat," I said, "cat."

"Cat."

"Good boy."

There was something I didn't like about that cat. It was horrible, dirty stray, unusually large and muscular, with shabby, dark-grey fur and the most astonishing orange eyes that stared right through me.

"Shoo!" I called.

It stayed exactly where it was, regarding me with an almost human expression of amused contempt.

"Cat, cat, cat, cat!" Peter shouted excitedly.

"Good heavens, Lizzie, what's all the noise?" said my mother as she came into the room. "Goodness, what an enormous cat! Shall we give it some milk?"

"But it probably has fleas, mother."

"Nonsense dear, it's just a little dirty. You would be too if you didn't have anywhere to live."

She went into the larder to get the milk. Meanwhile, as I looked on uneasily, the cat stalked up to Peter.

"It's a real bruiser," I said.

Peter started to laugh happily, reaching out to pat the animal. To my surprise, it put up with his clumsy buffetings, and remained quite calm even when Peter pulled its fur. I crouched down to stroke the animal, not to make friend with it but to check if it had fleas. I was relieved to see that it didn't.

"Then Bruiser is what we shall call him," mother announced, placing a saucer of milk before him.

The animal sniffed it warily, then turned its nose up at it.

"I've never met a cat that didn't like milk," mother said. "Do you think it would prefer sardines?"

"I'm sure it would," I said indignantly. "In fact, why doesn't it go the whole hog and just move in? After all, there's a lot of space."

Although we are not very poor, we are certainly not rich, and our tiny house has only four rooms, a living room, a kitchen and two small bedrooms.

"Don't be silly, dear," my mother trilled from the larder, where she was busy looking for the sardines.

But Bruiser didn't like sardines either. Nor did he like cheese, giblets, liver or trout. I know this because he started to visit us every morning, and each time my mother would try to get him to eat something different. He never even tasted anything.

"What a strange creature," mother concluded one morning. "He doesn't seem to eat at all. The only thing he's interested in is Peter."

It was true that Bruiser and Peter had become the best of friends. Every morning now, when I carried Peter down the stairs, he would shout "Cat! Cat!" or sometimes even "Bwoozer! Bwoozer!", and he would then bawl non-stop until I let the cat in. If Bruiser had been kept waiting outside, he used to look at me in an odd way when he entered. I know it probably sounds stupid, but I'm hardly exaggerating when I described the look on that animal's face as one of smirking insolence.