There she sat, a small but alert package of fur, sniffing the welcome summer air, seeing all and knowing all. She knew, for example, that the person walking down the tenth-floor hallway, wearing old tennis shoes and limping slightly, would halt at the door, set down his pail, and let himself in with a passkey.
Indeed, she hardly bothered to turn her head when the window washer entered. He was one of her regular court of admirers. His odor was friendly, although it suggested damp basements and floor mops, and he talked sensibly; there was none of that falsetto foolishness with which some persons insulted the Madame’s intelligence.
“Hop down, kitty,” he said in a musical voice. “Charlie’s gotta take out that screen. See, I brought some cheese for the pretty kitty.”
He held out a modest offering of rat cheese, and Madame Phloi investigated it and found it was the wrong variety, and she shook one fastidious paw at it.
“Mighty fussy cat,” Charlie laughed. “Well, now, you sit there and watch Charlie clean this here window. Don’t you go jumpin’ out on the ledge, ‘cause Charlie ain’t runnin’ after you. No sir! That old ledge, she’s startin’ to crumble. Someday them pigeons’ll stamp their feet hard, and down she goes! … Hey, lookit the broken glass out here! Somebody busted a window.”
Charlie sat on the marble sill and pulled the upper sash down in his lap, and while Madame Phloi followed his movements carefully, Thapthim sauntered into the room, yawning and stretching, and swallowed the cheese.
“Now Charlie puts the screen back in, and you two guys can watch them crazy pigeons some more. This screen, she’s comin’ apart, too. Whole buildin’s crackin’ up.”
Remembering to replace the cushion on the cool, hard sill, he went on to clean the remaining windows, and the Madame resumed her post, sitting on the edge of the cushion so that Thapthim could have most of it.
The pigeons were late that morning, probably frightened away by the window washer. When the first visitor skimmed in on a blue gray wing, Madame Phloi first noticed the tiny opening in the screen. Every aperture, no matter how small, was a temptation; she had to prove she could wriggle through any tight space, whether there was a good reason or not.
She waited until Charlie had limped out of the apartment before she started pushing at the screen with her nose, first gingerly, then stubbornly. Inch by inch the rusted mesh ripped away from the frame until the whole corner formed a loose flap. Then Madame Phloi slithered through—nose and ears, slender shoulders, dainty Queen Anne forefeet, svelte torso, lean flanks, hind legs like steel springs, and finally proud brown tail. For the first time in her life she found herself on the pigeon promenade. She shuddered deliciously.
Inside the screen the lethargic Thapthim, jolted by this strange turn of affairs, watched his daring parent with a quarter inch of his pink tongue protruding. They touched noses briefly through the screen, and the Madame proceeded to explore. She advanced cautiously and with mincing step, for the pigeons had not been tidy in their habits.
The ledge was about two feet wide. Moving warily, Madame Phloi advanced to its edge, nose down and tail high. Ten stories below there were moving objects but nothing of interest, she decided. She walked daintily along the extreme edge to avoid the broken glass, venturing in the direction of the fat man’s apartment, impelled by some half-forgotten curiosity.
His window stood open and unscreened, and Madame Phloi peered in politely. There, sprawled on the floor, lay the fat man himself, snorting and heaving his immense paunch in a kind of rhythm. It always alarmed her to see a human on the floor, which she considered feline domain. She licked her nose apprehensively and stared at him with enormous eyes. In a dark corner of the room something fluttered and squawked, and the fat man opened his eyes.
“SHcrrff!GET out of here!” he shouted, struggling to his feet and shaking his fist at the window.
In three leaps Madame Phloi crossed the ledge back to her own window and pushed through the screen to safety. After looking back to see if the fat man might be chasing her and being reassured that he was not, she washed Thapthim’s ears and her own paws and sat down to wait for pigeons.
Like any normal cat Madame Phloi lived by the Rule of Three. She resisted any innovation three times before accepting it, tackled an obstacle three times before giving up, and tried each activity three times before tiring of it. Consequently she made two more sallies to the pigeon promenade and eventually convinced Thapthim to join her.
Together they peered over the edge at the world below. The sense of freedom was intoxicating. Recklessly Thapthim made a leap at a low-flying pigeon and landed on his mother’s back. She cuffed his ear in retaliation. He poked her nose. They grappled and rolled over and over on the ledge, oblivious of the long drop below them, taking playful nips of each other’s hide and snarling gutteral expressions of glee.
Suddenly Madame Phloi scrambled to her feet and crouched in a defensive position. The fat man was leaning from his window.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” he was saying in one of those despised falsetto voices, offering some bit of food in a saucer. The Madame froze, but Thapthim turned his beautiful trusting eyes on the stranger and advanced along the ledge. Purring and waving his tail cordially, he walked into the trap. Itall happened in a matter of seconds: the saucer was withdrawn and a long black box was swung at Thapthim like a baseball bat, sweeping him off the ledge and into space. He was silent as he fell.
When the family came home, laughing and chattering, with their arms full of packages, they knew at once something was amiss. No one greeted them at the door. Madame Phloi hunched moodily on the windowsill, staring at a hole in the screen, and Thapthim was not to be found.
“The screen’s torn!” cried the gentle voice.
“I’ll bet he’s out on the ledge.”
“Can you lean out and look? Be careful.”
“You hold Phloi.”
“Can you see him?”
“Not a sign of him! There’s a lot of glass scattered around, and the window next door is broken.”
“Do you suppose that man … ? I feel sick.”
“Don’t worry, dear. We’ll find him … . There’s the doorbell! Maybe someone’s bringing him home.”
It was Charlie standing at the door, fidgeting uncomfortably.“ ’Scuse me, folks,” he said. “You missin’ one of your kitties?”
“Yes! Have you found him?”
“Poor little guy,” said Charlie. “Found him lyin’ right under your window, where the bushes is thick.”
“He’s dead!” the gentle one moaned.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s a long way down.”
“Where is he now?”
“I got him down in the basement, ma’am. I’ll take care of him real nice. I don’t think you’d want to see the poor guy.”
Still Madame Phloi stared at the hole in the screen and waited for Thapthim. From time to time she checked the other windows, just to be sure. As time passed and he did not return, she looked behind the radiators and under the bed. She pried open cupboard doors and tried to burrow her way into closets. She sniffed all around the front door. Finally she stood in the middle of the living room and called loudly in a high-pitched, wailing voice.
Later that evening Charlie paid another visit to the apartment.
“Only wanted to tell you, ma’am, how nice I took care of him,” he said. “I got a box that was just the right size—a white box, it was, from one of the nice stores. And I wrapped him up in some old blue curtain. It looked real pretty with his fur. And I buried the little guy right under your windows, behind the bushes.
And still Madame Phloi searched, returning again and again to watch the ledge from which Thapthim had disappeared. She scorned food. She rebuffed any attempts at consolation. And all night she sat wide-eyed and waiting in the dark.