Here (ta da!) is another installment of “Cat’s Company”, a book first published in 1930 that my paternal grandmother’s cousin gave me when I was a child.
A word about my Aunt Marie: I never met her, but I did speak with her on the phone (long distance from St. Petersburg, FL, so they weren’t exactly long, drawn out conversations) and we did write letters to each other. We bonded early on with our love of animals, specifically cats. I mentioned before that she bred beautiful white Persians, but I didn’t mention that my father’s parents, as well as my father, were scared to death of cats.
I remember overhearing a conversation that my grandmother breathlessly told my mother about how, after arriving at my Aunt Marie’s, one of her prized Persians had jumped onto my grandmother’s suitcase in the guest bedroom. My grandmother had walked in on this poor cat, who was minding his own business, and screamed like a banshee. Instead of fleeing immediately, this particular cat hunkered down on my grandmother’s suitcase even tighter, and refused to budge. This caused my grandmother even more distress, and my aunt had to pull her out of the room and calm her down, assuring her the cat had no designs on attacking her in the middle of the night, and probably just needed a flat space to lick his tail. She managed to get the cat off the suitcase and out of the room so my grandmother could relax.
Here is where my writing ends, and the writing of Michael Joseph and “Cat’s Company” begins:
For some months after the war (WWI) I was without a cat of my own. This sad state of affairs was remedied as soon as I was able to find a London flat which permitted a cat—or cats (the plural is justified) to share my tenancy. As it turned out, the flat was as ideal for cats as it was thoroughly uncomfortable for humans. It was situated on an invisible line which divided a fashionable neighbourhood from a – well, unfashionable is a charitable description of the slum which lay to the east of the house. It was an old, queer building, and the uncomfortable peculiarity of my flat was that all the rooms led from one to the other in a straight line. Outside there was a narrow strip of garden, in which nothing ever grew on account of a high brick wall which successfully obscured the sun. This “Garden” came to be called “The Strut”, and a happy playground it proved to be for Dudley and the Dudley family.
Dudley, a present to me from my favourite aunt, was a little ball of orange fluff with tiny white paws and a pedigree as long as Piccadilly, which was lost in the post. Under the mistaken impression that she was a gentleman cat, I christened her Dudley, on account of her aristocratic manners. But it presently became manifest that Dudley was no gentleman. In fact, she was that rarity among cats – an orange female. And so, like Dickens, whose cat William was rechristened Williamina, we had to call her Lady Dudley. That is to say, we made valiant but futile efforts to give her the additional title. But after a week or so the household reverted to Dudley with the occasional variation of Dudley-Duff.
From the days of her kittenhood, it was plain that she would grow into a distinguished cat. On the small side, she was lithe and graceful as a young panther, and correspondingly strong, as many a neighbouring cat and dog subsequently discovered.
The Strut captured her fancy from the first. As soon as she was old enough to compass the distance she would spring gracefully through the air from the kitchen windowsill onto the top of the brick wall, and there sit sunning herself in splendid isolation. Her tenancy of the wall was, however, promptly disputed by an old grey patriarch of a cat who appeared one morning and stalked along the top of the wall, fur bristling, towards the immobile Dudley.
I happened to be looking out of my bedroom window and thus had an excellent view of the subsequent proceedings. The weather-beaten grey was clearly a veteran. One ear was decidedly smaller, and unnaturally so, than the other; and his fur bore unmistakable traces of recent combat. Dudley, on the other hand, apart from a doorstep skirmish or two, was an untried recruit. There was no time for me to go to her rescue, for the battle began almost instantly. And Dudley began it.
Without warning she advanced swiftly to the attack. Her paw flashed out with lightning speed and an infuriated gasp from the old grey paid tribute to the accuracy of her aim. Instantly following up this advantage with a whirlwind onslaught – she gave the grey no time to recover. Spitting rage, he lost his balance and slithered off the wall down to the flowerbeds on the other side. Dudley looked serenely in my direction, resumed her former position in the most sun-favoured place on the wall, idly licked her paws, and – dozed off to sleep!