She was so thin, Peter noticed, that she was really nothing but skin and bones, and yet there was a kind of tender and rakish gallantry in her very boniness that was not unbecoming to her. For the rest, she was spotlessly clean, particularly the white patch at her breast which gleamed like ermine and (alone with her remark) made Peter acutely conscious for the first time of his own condition. She was quite right. He was a mess.
His fur was dirty, matted with blood and streaked with mud and coal dust. To look at him, no one would ever have known he had once been a snow-white cat, much less a small boy.
He said to the tabby, ‘I'm sorry. I'll go away as soon as I am able. I don't know how I got here. I thought I was going to die in the street.’
‘You might have,’ she said. ‘I found you and brought you here. I don't think you're very well. Hold still, and I'll wash you a bit. Maybe that will make you feel a little better.’
Although Peter had acquired the body and the appearance of a white cat, he still thought and felt like a boy, and the prospect of being washed at that moment did not at all appeal to him, and particularly not at the hands, or rather tongue, of a bone-thin, scrawny tabby cat even if she had a sweet white face and a kind and gentle expression. What he really wanted was to stretch out on the heavy silk of the covers on the comfortable bed and just stay there and sleep and sleep.
But he remembered his manners and said, ‘No, thank you. I don't want to trouble you. I don't really think I would care.’
But the tabby cat interrupted him with a gentle ‘Hush! Of course you would. And I do it very well, too.’
She reached out a scrawny part-white paw and laid it across his body, kindly but firmly, so that he was held down. And then with a long, stroking motion of her head and pink tongue she began to wash him, beginning at his nose, traveling up between the ears and down the back of his neck and the sides of his face.
And thereafter something strange happened to Peter, at least inside him. It was only a poor, thin, stray alley cat washing him, her rough tongue rasping against his fur and skin, but what it made him feel like was remembering when he had been very small and his mother had held him in her arms close to her. It was almost the very first thing he could remember.
He had been taking some of his early running-walking steps and had fallen and hurt himself. She had picked him up and held him tightly to her and he had cuddled his head into the warm place at her neck just beneath the chin. With her soft hand she had stroked the place where it hurt, and said, ‘There, mother’ll make it all better. Now-it doesn't hurt any more!’ And it hadn't. All the pain had gone, and he remembered only feeling safe and comfortable and contented.
That same warm, secure feeling was coming over him now as the little rough tongue rasped over his injured ear and down the long deep claw furrows torn into the skin of his shoulder and his side, and with each rasp, as her tongue passed over it, it seemed as though the pain that was there was erased as if by magic.
All the ache went out of his sore muscles too, as her busy tongue got around and behind and underneath, refreshing and relaxing them, and a most delicious kind of sleepiness began to steal over him. After all the dreadful things that had happened to him, it was so good to be cared for. He half expected to hear her say, ‘See, mother's making it all better! There! Now it doesn't hurt any more …’
But she didn't. She only kept on washing in a wonderful and soothing rhythm, and shortly Peter felt his own head moving in a kind of a drowsy way in time with hers, the little motor of contentment was throbbing in his throat. Soon he nodded and went fast asleep.
When he awoke it was much later, because the light coming in through the grimy bit of window was quite different; the sun must have been well up in the sky, for a beam of it came in through a clear spot in the pane and made a little pool of brightness on the red silk cover of the enormous bed.
Peter rolled over into the middle of it and saw that he looked almost respectable again. Most of the coal grime and mud was off him, his white fur was dry and fluffed and now served again to hide and keep the air away from the ugly scars and scratches on his body. He felt that his torn ear had a droop to it, but it no longer hurt him and was quite dry and clean.
There was no sign of the tabby cat. Peter tried to stand up and stretch, but found that his legs were queerly wobbly and that he could not quite make it. And then he realized that he was weak with hunger as well as loss of blood, and that if he did not get something to eat soon he must surely perish. When was it he had last eaten. Why, ages ago, yesterday or the day before, Nanny had given him an egg and some greens, a little fruit jelly and a glass of milk for lunch. It made him quite dizzy to think of it. When would he ever eat again?
Just then he heard a little soft, singing sound, a kind of musical call. ‘Errrp, purrrrrrow, urrrrrrp!’.that he found somehow extraordinarily sweet and thrilling. He turned to the direction from which it was coming and was just in time to see the tabby cat leap in through the space between the slats at the end of the bin. She was carrying something in her mouth.
In an instant she had jumped up on to the bed alongside him and laid it down.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that's better. Feeling a little more fit after your sleep. Care to have a bit of mouse? I just caught it down the aisle near the lift. It's really quite fresh. I wouldn't mind sharing it with you. I could stand a snack myself. There you are. You have a go at it first.’
‘Oh, n-no … No-no, thank you,’ said Peter in horror. ‘N-not mouse. I couldn't.’
‘Why,’ asked the tabby cat in great surprise, and with just a touch of indignation added, ‘What's the matter with mouse?’
She had been so kind and he was so glad to see her again that Peter was most anxious not to hurt her feelings.
‘Why, n-nothing, I'm sure. It's … well, it's just that I've never eaten one.’
‘Never eaten one?' The tabby's green eyes opened so wide that the flecks of gold therein almost dazzled Peter, ‘Well, I never! Not eaten one! You pampered, indoor, lap and parlour cats! I suppose it's been fresh chopped liver and cat food out of a tin. You needn't tell me. I've had plenty of it in my day. Well, when you're off on your own and on the town with nobody giving you charity saucers of cream or left– over titbits you soon learn to alter your tastes. And there's no time like the present to begin. So hop to it, my lad, and get acquainted with mouse. You need a little something to set you up again.’
And with this she pushed the mouse over to him with her paw and then stood over Peter, eyeing him. There was a quiet forcefulness and gentle determination in her demeanour that made Peter a little afraid for a moment that if he didn't do as she said, she might become angry. And besides, he had been taught that when people offered to share something with you at a sacrifice to themselves, it was not considered kind or polite to refuse.
‘You begin at the head,’ the tabby cat declared firmly.
Peter closed his eyes and took a small and tentative nibble.
To his intense surprise, it was simply delicious.
It was so good that before he realized it, Peter had eaten it up from the beginning of its nose to the very end of its tail. And only then did he experience a sudden pang of remorse at what he had done in his moment of greediness. He had very likely eaten up his benefactress' ration for the week. And by the look of her thin body and the ribs sticking through the fur, it had been longer than that since she had had a solid meal herself.
But she did not seem to mind in the least. On the contrary, she appeared to be pleased with him as she beamed down at him and said, ‘There, that wasn't so bad, was it? My tail, but you were hungry!’
Peter said, ‘I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've eaten your dinner.’
The tabby smiled cheerfully. ‘Don't give it another thought, laddie! Plenty more where that one came from.’ But even though the smile and the voice were cheerful, yet Peter detected a certain wan quality about it that told him that this was not so, and that she had indeed made a great sacrifice for him, generously and with sweet grace.