Free The Catlady by Dick King-Smith Page B

Beatrice or chat about school days with Ethel or one of the other girls.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud, impatient meowing from the waiting cats.
    The Catlady sighed. “Coming, dears!” she called.
    She sat at the head of the table, nibbling a biscuit. Later, when all had been cleared away and washed up, she would make herself a nice cup of tea, but at that moment she realized for the first time that she was not only lonely for human conversation but that she was tired.
    The older I get, she thought, the more cats and so the more work I have, and it'll be worse soon. Both Cousin Madeleine and Edith Wilson are pregnant.
    By the time she got to bed that night (after paying her respects to the infant Queen Victoria), the Catlady had come to a decision. “There's only one thing for it, dears,” she said to the patchwork quilt of different-colored cats that covered her. “I shall have to get help.”
    The next day she composed an advertisement to be placed in the local newspaper, the
Dummerset Chronicle.
It was very short. It said:

    For some days the Catlady waited, rather nervously, for replies. She had been a recluse for so many years now that she was not looking forward to the ordeal of interviewing a whole string of strange people.
    She need not have worried. As soon as the locals of Dumpton Muddicorum read the “Situations Vacant” in the
Dummerset Chronicle
, they said to each other, “Look at this, then! It's the old Catlady, advertising for home help. What a job, eh? Great rambling place, crawling with cats, and stinking of them too, no doubt. And as for her, well, if she ain't a witch she's as mad as a hatter! Anyone who applies for that needs their heads seen to.”
    And no one did.
    Muriel Ponsonby did not renew the advertisement. Perhaps it's just as well, she thought. I probably wouldn't have got on with the person. I'll just have to manage somehow.
    Nonetheless, when shopping in the village, she did ask the shopkeepers if they knew of anyone suitable, but none of them did.
    “Not at the moment, madam,” said the butcher, tipping his straw hat to her, “but I'll be sure to let you know if I hear of anyone.” And the others replied in the same vein. They winked at other customers when she had left their shops, and the customers smiled and shook their heads, watching her pedal rather shakily away on her tall black bicycle with the big wicker basket on the handlebars.

    Poor old dear, they thought. She needs some help, no doubt about that, but she'll be lucky to get anyone. Shame, really, she's a nice old thing.
    As for the village children, they sniggered behind their hands. “It's that old Catlady!” they whispered. And when she had gone by, they curled their fingers like claws and hissed and catcalled, pretending to scratch one another.

    The weeks went by, and Cousin Madeleine and Edith Wilson both gave birth, one to four and one to six kittens. These were just ordinary kittens (for no one among the Catlady's family or friends had died), but with a total now of thirty animals in her house, she found herself wishing very much that someone— anyone—had answered that advertisement.
    By now the little tubby ginger female that was, its owner knew beyond doubt, the reincarnation of the late great Queen was weaned. The Catlady found that, try as she would to treat all her animals alike, this one had already become special. She took tocarrying her about and had at long last decided what to call her.
    After the first shock of finding who was within the little furry body, she had very gradually given up treating this kitten with such exaggerated respect. She stopped curtsying to it and backing out of the room. From first addressing it as “Your Majesty,” she had then progressed to “Victoria” and later, so familiar did she now feel with this royal personage, to “Vicky.”
    The other cats, incidentally, on learning from the ginger kitten who she had been in her previous incarnation, treated