Free Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God by Paul Gallico

by the arm. “Gently now, Tammas. Don’t take on so. The dog is still alive and in good hands. Mr. MacDhui will do the best he can for him.”
    The blind man groped for an instant and then quavered, “Mr. MacDhui? Mr. MacDhui? Is that where we are?”
    “Take the dog inside,” Mr. MacDhui ordered Willie Bannock, who carefully relieved the policeman of his quivering burden. The veterinarian glanced at the dog as it went by and wrinkled his nose; the life seemed all but crushed out of it.
    “Is it Mr. MacDhui?” the blind man said again, and turning his sightless face to him, put out his hand, touched and held his arm. “I’m an old man. I cannot be doing without him. Save my eyes for me, Mr. MacDhui—”
    The plea went into the bowels of Mr. Veterinary Surgeon Andrew MacDhui like a knife thrust and turned there, for with three words—“save my eyes”—the blind man had brought back again all of the frustration and failure of his forty-odd years of living. He would have given the next forty to have heard those words spoken to him as a doctor of medicine, to have been called upon to give of his skill, love, and devotion to the saving of human sight, or health, or life itself instead of being asked to put together again, like Humpty Dumpty, the fragments of a dog.
    Something of what was passing through his mind communicated itself to his friend, Mr. Peddie, either because of the tortured misery the minister thought he glimpsed at that moment in the face of the animal doctor, or because he himself was so well acquainted with MacDhui’s story, since they had known one another since their schoolboy and student days in Glasgow.
    It was to the young Peddie that the boy MacDhui had confided his ambition to become a great physician just about the time that the former had decided for the ministry, and they had argued and discussed the respective merits of their chosen professions then, boasted, bickered, and let their ambitions soar.
    And it was only Peddie, the young divinity student, who saw fall the tears of grief, rage, and frustration when the tyrannical father cut short his boy’s hopes and ambitions and compelled him to follow in his own profession of animal medicine.
    “He means—” Mr. Peddie began, but MacDhui quelled him with a look.
    “I know what he means,” he said. “The dog is three-quarters dead and ought to be put out of his misery, but—I’ll save Tammas’s eyes if I can—” Then to all of those in the waiting room he shouted, “Go home. Come back tomorrow. I have no time for you now.”
    One by one they picked up their pets and filed out. MacDhui said to Peddie, “There’s no use your waiting. It will be sometime before I can tell. Get Tammas home. I’ll let you know—” He went into the surgery and closed the door behind him.
    The constable led the blind man out. Peddie was about to follow when his glance fell upon the child sitting quietly in the corner hugging her cat to her and he went over to her in surprise.
    “Hello, Mary Ruadh. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you out playing?”
    She looked up at him confidingly, for they were old and trusted friends, and replied, “Thomasina’s very sick. She can’t walk at all. I’m bringing her to Daddy to make well.”
    Mr. Peddie nodded and absent-mindedly stroked the head of the ginger cat and scratched it under the chin as he always did when he came upon the two together. The accident to the blind man’s dog, though he had not witnessed it, had been a shock to him, and, too, he had felt the depth of pain of MacDhui’s reaction.
    Mr. Peddie nodded again and said, “Ah well, I’ve no doubt he’ll put her right again,” and went out after Constable MacQuarrie.

6
    O n that fatal day I awoke, as usual, at dawn and prepared to engage in my accustomed routine—a yawn, a good stretch lengthwise followed by a round humpbacked one, and then escape from the house.
    I had a secret exit and entrance, of course, but I could use them