The Cat and the Old Woman
There was once an old woman who lived with a cat in a crumbling house in a village. The woman was so old, she had forgotten exactly how old she was. She was hard of hearing, and loose toothed. Also her eye-sight had become blurred, so that she did not see how lined her face was, nor the rivers of wrinkles down her thin arms and legs. She dressed in clothes that had been fashionable in her youth, but were now years out of date and shabby. Her two woollen cardigans, which she wore when she felt chilly, were almost threadbare as the wool had been eaten away by moths.
The cat was in a similar condition to her. It too was old, with matted fur that stuck out in clumps from its body. Its bones were stiff. Movement was dififcult, so much so, that the cat had lost interest in the outside world and only went out to do its toilet on a patch of soil in front of the house. The cat, when young, had been very active, particularly in courting female cats, and had preened itself at every opportunity so as to be as attractive as possible. But now, its passion and vanity long since gone it was content merely to eat and sleep and stay forever in the house it had been born into.
There was a rumour in the village that the old woman had money, left to her by her parents whom she had lived with, and taken care of until their deaths. When they had died she was already well past middle age, far too old, she thought, to even think of marriage. She had became even more isolated since their deaths and only spoke to people when she went once a fortnight to the village to do some shopping. The old woman's only friend then as now was the cat.
The gossips in the village said that the woman had hidden her money in the house, as she like her parents, considered banks unsafe places. But no-one had ever heard her talk about where it was or how much she had, so the villagers had to content themselves with imaginings.
The old woman and her cat lived modestly only spending money on essentials. But she never needed much and neither did the cat.
Every evening after they had eaten and she had washed up her dishes, and the cat's bowl, she rested on her rocking chair by an open coal fire and invited the cat to join her. The cat always waited for her invitation and never leapt up onto her without being asked.
"Come and sit with me, dear cat," she would say. Then the cat would spring awkwardly onto her lap and curl up there purring and licking its lips in recollection of the pleasure of its recent meal. She chattered to the cat and from time to time it would look up and stare at her as though it had understood every word.
"Death will come for me soon dear cat and you know I have no fear, though I will miss you. But I need you here, for you will take care of everything after I have gone. I am sure of that." Then she would sing, in a croaky voice, songs that only old people remembered until as often as not they both fell asleep until the morning. And she would awaken in her chair, stiff and covered in cat fur.
On Christmas Eve the old lady had visitors. Every year, Bill and Alfred, distant relatives, came to see 'dear Aunty'. She always changed her clothes specially for the occasion. "I have to be clean and neat for guests ," she told the cat who scratched itself behind its ears as she spoke.
She always stared out the window for hours, looking out for them. The cat, beside her, stared out too. And when she saw Bill and Alfred turn the corner at the top of the street and walk towards her door she scurried to await their ring. She opened the door at exactly the same time as Bill pressed the bell,
"Oh do come in, tea is ready. The tea cosy is keeping the pot warm," she said and lifted her cheek up hoping for a peck from either one of them.
But of course Bill and Alfred hadn't really come with goodwill and Christmas cheer to see her but to snoop, once again, around the house hoping to discover her loot. Bill bent down and rubbed his stubbled cheek against her face and pouted his lips in the air as he made a kissing sound. The two lumpy looking men trooped after her into the sitting room then slumped into the velvety sofa next to the fire, boredom and fatigue already taking hold of them, whilst Aunty whipped off the tea cosy and poured tea. They tried to get these formal pleasantries over quickly so they sipped tea with her, for as short a time as possible. (An hour once a year was a long time if you weren't in the least bit interested in the person you were with). Alfred (the better actor of the two) sat on the edge of the chair while pretending he was really interested in Aunty's stories which he had heard every year. He held his tea-cup by the handle with his little finger sticking out and nodded and made the appropriate sounds of "Ah!oh! tut tut! ummmm. Bill couldn't be bothered to talk or listen to her. "I don't know how you can do it Alfred. God she is boring." He just concentrated on the afternoon tea she provided, so he tucked a white napkin under his collar and held his plate of Aunty's home made cakes close to his chin and rapidly shoved one after the other into his mouth. Meanwhile Aunty, chattering away, leant over to the low table in front of her to the silver tea tray and poured herself yet another cup of tea from a round tea cosied tea pot,
"You will take care of the cat when I am gone won't you dears," And Alfred would nod as though he were saying yes, but he couldn't stand that cat; it reminded him of Aunty, even looked like her, old and ugly.
"For if you take care of the cat, it will take care of you, as the dear little thing has for me." and on and on she chattered.
The only time Bill entered the conversation was when he tried to probe her about her money."Your parents were wealthy weren't they Aunty? They didn't believe in banks did they? so where did they put all their money ?" But Aunty either didn't hear, or didn't want to understand what Bill was asking.' Have another sandwich Bill." she said, as she brought over a doilly covered plate of triangular shaped bread and fillings. He tried to ask the same questions in a different way and again she would pass the plate of food to him. Each year he hoped that this time she might, absentmindedly, reveal how much money she had, and most importantly of all -where it was. But she didn't.
The cat, meanwhile,sat on the window-sill staring out at the neighbour's white blank wall. But the old cat listened to every word and he saw everything that happened. Alfred, pretending he had got up to help himself to another slice of cake, crept out of the room, to snoop around the house. As he disappeared around the door he shouted.
"I would just love to hear your life story Aunty and all about your cat. Do tell me everything and don't leave anything out." And then Bill followed leaving the old woman chattering away to the empty air. As Bill tip-toed past the window he shoved the cat, as he did every year, off the window-sill causing it to crash land onto the threadbare carpet. It squawked in pain then went and clambered up and sat upon the windowsill again this time turning to face into the room. It watched as Bill and Alfred both dashed up the stairs as quietly as possible of course hearing Aunty repeating her favorite saying, "My parents were the first ones to tell me to "Take care of the cat and the cat will take care of you." On and on she babbled."
After their search they returned to the room sat on the sofa as Aunty came to the end of her tale.
"Well dears, that is my story. Do tell me what you are both up too?"
"Have to go Aunty , train to catch," they said in unison.
See you next year," they shouted as they leapt up from the sofa grabbed their coats and dashed out of the front door.
"Going, gone already dears?" she questioned as she got up and rushed to the window just in time to see the two bald headed men disappear around the corner.
"Bye, Bye!" she waved, "Bye, Bye!". She stood there for ages until it was dark. The cat watched with her.
Some time later the old woman died. A neighbour, unable to sleep because of the din from the lonely, hungry cat's mewing, had discovered the cold body dressed as usual rigid on the rocking chair. The old woman was buried. There wasn't much money in her bank account for a fancy funeral, only enough for a plain wooden coffin and a few words from the vicar . Her fond relatives cousin Alfred and Bill came to this simplest of funerals and cried, pretended tears of course - but only when the vicar watched.
"Someones has to take care of Aunty's cat," said Bill. "So we will have to move in to dear dead Aunty's house."
They moved in, the next day, and closed all the curtains in the house as a mark of respect, they said, but it was so that nobody could look in. They threw the cat out, and locked the door, then thoroughly searched every part of the house again and again for the money. But they found nothing. They searched through her litter, old photos yellowing papers, thirty year old news papers piled up high, egg cartons, and matted string. They found nothing so they threw the whole lot out.
The hungry, abandoned cat returned to the house at night when the new occupants were soundly snoring and sat staring out of the same window. The cat often stayed until morning as it was warmer inside than outside in the garden. Then when Alfred saw it there he would kick the poor cat, once again, out of the house, "Gerr out you smelly, stinking bounder," he yelled as he raised the animal up on the end of his thick leather boot and tossed it off, and out the door. Bill, too, was no animal lover, "Aunty's cat is back again, the Devil! he said. "The only meat I like is dead meat,"he yelled as he whisked the cat off the sill, carried it outside and slammed the door shut. But the cat came back. It crept back into the house through one of the many broken windows and sat and stared out into the dark.
After many months of living in that dilapadated house Alfred and Bill had a final search for Aunty's 'treasure'. They ripped floor boards up and poked through the plaster hoping to find a secret hole perhaps, but as before they remained seekers - but not finders.
"We'll put the house up for sale," said Alfred, "We wont get much for it the state it is in." "Better than nothing," said Bill lamenting the fact that they hadn't found the pile of money. They put the house up for sale at an auction. Nobody wanted it except some developers who bought it at a rock bottom price.
"Thanks for nothing Aunty,' said Bill upon receiving the meagre sum, "But at last we have got something from you, you mean, old bag," he yelled up into the sky.
The developers entered the house and ruthlessly ripped out everything, before knocking the house down. Soon a pile of rubble and rubbish containing all the memories from the dead old woman's life were all that remained from eighty six years of life.
However, the cat came back and sat upon the pile over the exact spot where it had always sat, before the house had been demolished. There the cat mewed for hours and hours staring ahead under the light of the moon.
The developers brought cranes and diggers onto the site ready to start work, once planning permission had come through for the project.
They hired a night-watchman as a guard. The man they found didn't cost too much as he was old, well past retirement age, with yellow tobacco stained fingers and a salt and pepper coloured beard matted with bits of food or tea. This night-watchman sat inside a metal hut when it was cold outside and kept watch from out of the window encrusted with tobacco smoke and general grime. When the weather was fine, or his arthritis wasn't troubling him, he sat outside on an up turned, wooden crate. He had heard about the old lady that had once lived above this heap of rubbish and rubble but he didn't pay attention to the gossip about her having left a fortune.
"I don't have money," he would say to occasional visitors from the company, "but I don't want for anything".
He began to notice that he shared the site with a regular visitor. A bony cat sat and shivered on one particular spot on top of the stones and rubbish. It hardly moved but only mewed from time to time.
One evening, the night- watchman threw the cat the leftovers from his fish and chip dinner but the cat ignored it and didn't eat, but sat and stared. The old man clumsily got up off his orange box crate seat and lurched towards the cat. The cat winced as the man lifted his hand in the air above it's body as though expecting a hit. But the night watchman stroked the stiff fur with his clumsy, thickened fingers, then picked up the scraps of food and gently offered them to the starving animal. For the next few nights this ritual occurred with the old man lumbering over to the cat which sat rigid as a piece of pottery upon that spot where it had always sat.
Then on a night like all the others the old man had a fright. The cat started to act strangely. After being fed the food as usual from off the dirty smelly hands of the man ,the cat dropped the food from it's mouth and started to dig it into the ground beneath it's feet. It leapt into the air vertically pounced again at the dead fish fragments and frantically resumed digging.
"It"s dead my lovely. What are you doing?" By now the dead fish bits were buried under the top soil.. "Come away ,calm yourself my lovely, I'll get them out and wash them in the gents down the road in the pub." So with his dirty mug filled with tea placed safely out the way he knelt down and scratched away at the earth with his teaspoon like a trembling archeologist. As his eyesight wasn't too sharp he had to peer down so low his nose almost scraped the ground. But he still couldn't see the bits of fish and kept on digging with his spoon until he uncovered a faded photograph of a lady with tightly permed hair, wearing a matching pastel cardigan over a jumper. A pearl necklace framed the opening of the cardigan. He didn't recognise the cats former owner, smiling out from her youth.
"We seem to have lost the fish but let me see what else is here "he muttered. The cat dug with him. The cat flung up a heap of earth and revealed a large, rectangular tin box with a faded photo of a long since dead monarch smiling regally on it.
The old man tried to open it but he couldn't and the box fell from his fingers and landed upside down. The lid had loosened open. Breathing heavily, he bent over and lifted the tin, and out tipped an enormously, thick wedge of hundreds and hundreds of pound notes held together by a rotting elastic band. The cat purred and slunk around his baggy trousers. He patted the cat and picked up the wedge of notes.
"You have found the money for me you old rascal" he whooped and chuckled dancing up and leaping about.
Then he quickly locked up his hut and rushed down to the pub and bought his first bottle of whisky, and a drink for everyone in the pub. But not being a drinking man and wanting for little, he sat stroking his glass of alcohol musing how he would spend the money and how much to give to his mates who might need a penny. Then he suddenly remembered the cat 'I've left my friend behind," he mumbled to the astonished drinkers who watched him as and he lumbered out from the pub as fast as his old legs would take him. He returned to the site, breathless.
It was dark so he struck a match and called out, "Where are you my lovely, where are you?" Silence. And then he heard a plaintive mew. The night- watchman turned to the faint sound and there the cat sat on the same spot it had always sat. "Come to me, my lovely," he said. The cat appeared not to hear, and mewed. Then slowly the cat turned to the night -watchman and looked at him; its eyes bright like green glass marbles. It stared at him, stood up - then rushed and leapt into the night-watch-man's arms and......... the two of them went off happily, to live the remainder of their days....... together.
And may they be long and bountiful.
The council for the defense stood up, "Wait to hear what i have to say and proceeded to give his evidence.
