Miss Paisley’s cat leaped into her life when she was 54 and the cat itself was probably about two. Miss Paisley was physically healthy and active — an inoffensive, neatly dressed, self-contained spinster. The daughter of a prosperous businessman — her mother had died while the child was a toddler — she had passed her early years in the golden age of the middle classes, when every detached suburban villa had many of the attributes of a baronial halclass="underline" if there was no tenantry there was always a handful of traditionally obsequious tradesmen — to say nothing of a resident domestic staff.
She was eighteen, at a “finishing school” in Paris, when her father contracted pneumonia and died while in the course of reorganizing his business. Miss Paisley inherited the furniture of the house, a couple of hundred in cash, and an annuity of £120.
Her relations, in different parts of the country, rose to the occasion. Without expert advice they pronounced her unfit for further education or training and decided that, among them, they must marry her off — which ought not to be difficult. Miss Paisley was never the belle of a ball of any size, but she was a good-looking girl, with the usual graces and accomplishments.
In the first round of visits she accepted the warm assurances of welcome at their face value — yet she was not an unduly conceited girl. It was her father who had given her the belief that her company was a boon in itself. The technique of the finishing school, too, had been based on a similar assumption.
During the second round of visits — in units of some six months — she made the discovery that her company was tolerated rather than desired — a harsh truth from which she sought immediate escape.
There followed an era of nursery governessing and the companioning of old ladies. The children were hard work and the old ladies were very disappointing.
Penuriousness and old ladies were turning her into a humble creature, thankful for the crumbs of life. In her early twenties she obtained permanent employment as a “female clerk” in a government office. She made her home in Rumbold Chambers, Marpleton, about fifteen miles out of London, and about a mile from the house that had once been her father’s. The Chambers — in this sense a genteel, Edwardian word meaning flatlets — had already seen better days, and were to see worse.
The rent would absorb nearly half her annuity; but the Chambers, she believed, had tone. The available flatlet looked over the old cemetery to the Seventeenth-Century bridge across the river. She signed a life lease. Thus, she was in that flatlet when the cat came, 32 years later.
She had taken out of the warehouse as much furniture as would go into the flatlet. The walls were adorned with six enlarged photographs, somewhat pompously framed, of the house and garden that had been her father’s.
The radio came into general use; the talkies appeared and civil aviation was getting into its stride — events which touched her life not at all. Light industry invaded Marpleton and district. Every three months or so she would walk past her old home, until it was demolished to make room for a factory.
If she made no enemies, she certainly made no friends. The finishing school had effectively crippled her natural sociability. At the end of her working day she would step back 30-odd years into her past.
When the cat appeared. Miss Paisley was talking vivaciously to herself, as is the habit of the solitary.
“I sometimes think father made a mistake in keeping it as a croquet lawn. Croquet is so old-fashioned... Oh! How on earth did you get here!”
The cat had apparently strolled on to the windowsill — a whole story plus some four feet above ground level. “Animals aren’t allowed in the Chambers, so you must go... Go, please. Whooosh!”
The cat blinked and descended, somewhat awkwardly, into the room.
“What an ugly cat! I shall never forget Aunt Lisa’s Persian. It looked beautiful, and everybody made an absurd fuss of it. I don’t suppose anybody ever wants to stroke you. People tolerate you, rather wishing you didn’t exist, poor thing!” The cat was sitting on its haunches, staring at Miss Paisley. “Oh, well, I suppose you can stay to tea. I’ve no fish, but there’s some bloater paste I forgot to throw away — and some milk left over from yesterday.”
Miss Paisley set about preparing tea for herself. It was Saturday afternoon. Chocolate biscuits and two cream eclairs for today, and chocolate biscuits and two meringues for Sunday. When the kettle had boiled and she had made the tea, she scraped out a nearly empty tin of bloater paste, spreading it on a thin slice of dry bread. She laid a newspaper on the floor — the carpet had been cut out of the drawing-room carpet of 34 years ago. The cat, watching these preparations, purred its approval.
“Poor thing! It’s pathetically grateful,” said Miss Paisley, placing the bloater paste and a saucer of yesterday’s milk on the newspaper.
The cat lowered its head, sniffed the bloater paste, but did not touch it. It tried the milk, lapped once, then again sat back on its haunches and stated at Miss Paisley.
The stare of Miss Paisley’s cat was not pleasing to humanity. It was, of course, a normal cat’s stare from eves that were also normal, though they appeared not to be, owing to a streak of white fur that ran from one eyelid to the opposite ear, then splashed over the spine. A wound from an airgun made one cheek slightly shorter than the other, revealing a glimpse of teeth and giving the face the suggestion of a human sneer. Add that it had a stiff left foreleg, which made its walk ungainly, and you have a very ugly cat — a standing challenge to juvenile marksmanship.
“You’re a stupid cat, too,” said Miss Paisley. “You don’t seem to make the most of your opportunities.”
Miss Paisley sat down to tea. The cat leaped onto the table, seized one of the eclairs, descended cautiously, and devoured the eclair on the carpet, several inches from the newspaper.
This time it was Miss Paisley who stared at the cat.
“That is most extraordinary behavior!” she exclaimed. “You thrust yourself upon me when I don’t want you. I treat you with every kindness—”
The cat had finished the eclair. Miss Paisley continued to stare. Then her gaze shifted to her own hand which seemed to her to be moving independently of her will. She watched herself pick up the second eclair and lower it to the cat, who tugged it from her fingers.
She removed the saucer under her still empty tea cup, poured today’s milk into it, and placed the saucer on the floor. She listened, fascinated, while the cat lapped it all. Her pulse was thudding with the excitement of a profound discovery.
Then, for the first time in 30-odd years, Miss Paisley burst into tears.
“Go away!” she sobbed. “I don’t want you. It’s too late — I’m 54!”
By the time her breath was coming easily again, the cat had curled up on the Chesterfield that was really Miss Paisley’s bed.
It was a month or more before Miss Paisley knew for certain that she hoped the cat would make its home with her. Her attitude was free from the kind of sentimentality which one associates with an old maid and a cat. She respected its cathood, attributed to it no human qualities. The relationship was too subtle to have need of pretense. Admittedly, she talked to it a great deal. But she talked as if to a room-mate, who might or might not be attending. In this respect, the cat’s role could be compared with that of a paid companion.