Free Downton Tabby by Chris Kelly Page A

which was like forbidden catnip to Lady Serval. At first it looked like Lord Grimalkin would never forgive her, but then he did.
    Lady Korat consulted a cattery for a suitable newsuitor for Minxy, and they came up with Matthmew Clowder, a cousin she didn’t know from a vole in the ground. But Minxy was in heat again, and it was time to set aside formalities before someone got hurt.
    The Lord and Lady Grimalkin
    request the pleasure of the company of
    Mr. Matthmew Clowder
    on Sunday, the eleventh of June at twelve o’clock
    P.M.R.S.V.P.
    P.S. Minxy’s in the shed.
    Just listen and you’ll know which one.
    Matthmew arrived and immediately fell head over haunches for Minxy because pheromones. Minxy wanted to marry Matthmew, and then she didn’t, and then she did again. If you’ve ever let a cat out, and back in, and back out again, you’ll know this makes perfect sense.
    This was before the invention of the balled-up sheet of printer paper, so cats had time on their paws, and love/hate courtships dragged on and on.
    Not everyone was pleased to see another new cat at Downton Tabby. As the Dowager Catness once said, “Visitors bring fleas.”
    Which was, unfortunately, both cruel and true. Lady Korat asked Mrs. O’Celot to run her a flea bath.
    And you know how a cat can be sitting there, and sitting there, and sitting there, and then suddenly tear out of the room like ball lightning? Well, after a lifetime in fawning worship of her mistress Lady Korat, the evil maid Mrs. O’Celot suddenly decided she hated her.

When I take a bath, I put everything neatly back in place. You wouldn’t even know I’d been in the bathroom.
    —S IR A LFRED H ITCHCOCK

Love Signs
    F OR THE WELL-BRED E NGLISHMAN, ROMANTIC love was so difficult to arrange, it’s a wonder there was any breeding at all. And things were scarcely easier for the servants, as we know from Kazuo Ishiguro’s magisterial work The Remains of the Day (Vom Kriege) , in which a butler and housekeeper almost kiss once in thirty years, but don’t, which says something about fascism, but I forget what.
    Which is why, if you watch The Remains of the Day on Netflix, it hardly ever recommends that you might also like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
    By the Regency era, the whole rigmarole of romance had become so subtle and complex that gentlewomen developed the Language of the Fan—a system of communication still used, in a modified form, by cats today.

T HE L ANGUAGE OF THE F AN

    Drawing the fan across the cheek: “I love you.”
    Drawing the fan through the hand: “I hate you!”
    Twirling the fan in the right hand: “I love another.”
    Rapidly closing the fan: “I am jealous.”
    Fanning quickly: “I am engaged.”
    Fanning slowly: “I am married.”
    Spinning the head: “I am possessed.”
    Changing the fan from left hand to right: “You are impudent.”
    Rapidly opening and closing the fan: “You are cruel.”
    Sliding the fan across the forehead: “You have changed.”
    Twirling the fan in the left hand: “Go away, please.”
    Twirling the fan in the left hand, drawing it though the right hand rapidly, opening and closing it rapidly, drawing it across the forehead and eyes, and tapping: “I hate you, you’re cruel, you’ve changed, go away, don’t let the door hit you.”

T HE L ANGUAGE OF THE T AIL
    (Note: The Language of the Tail differs from the Language of the Fan in that cats don’t know where to buy fans, and wouldn’t be able to hold one, anyway. Also, while the Language of the Fan was used by women and their suitors, the Language of the Tail is used by cats to “speak” to their “masters.”)
    Resting the tail: “I love you.”
    Resting the tail: “I hate you.”
    Swishing the tip of the tail slowly left: “Feed me cold cuts.”
    Swishing the tip of the tail slowly right: “No one knows you as I do.”
    Tapping the tail: “I meant it about the cold cuts.”
    Tapping the tail rapidly: “Our bond is stronger than death.”
    Tapping