Millamant was a skinny Burmese with a squint, and mad was understatement. I mean, she liked being wet. The first time Claws and I found Mill swimming in the water butt, we naturally assumed she was drowning and set up a scream for help. This brought Great-aunt Harriet out of her cottage, who assumed the same thing and tried to pull Millamant out. Millamant scratched her. Deeply. In reply, Great-aunt Harriet pushed Millamant right under water and stumped off, shouting to Henry that she couldn’t abide cats and this one was crazy. Later, she found Mill in the bath with her and threw her out of the window, yelling to Henry that he was to stop owning cats at once, before everyone else went mad too. Mill didn’t care. She had a wash in the water butt and then got in the shower with Henry.
Great-aunt Harriet didn’t really dislike cats. She just needed the right cat to belong to. This became clear when one of her nephews arrived for a visit. He had brought his cat, Mr. Williams, in a sort of glass box pitched sideways into the back of his sports car. Mr. Williams was black and well-mannered and scared of almost everything. Well, so would I be scared of everything if I was forced to ride around sideways in a glass box. As soon as Henry saw Mr. Williams, he strode to the car and opened the box.
“That’s no way to treat a cat!” Henry said. “Turn your car around and drive away. Now.”
“But I’ve come to stay with Aunt Harriet,” the nephew protested, “for a week.”
“Oh no, you haven’t!” Great-aunt Harriet screamed from inside her cottage. “Go away at once!”
Henry looked very surprised at this. Great-aunt Harriet was supposed to be very fond of this nephew. She was leaving him her things in her Will. But as soon as Henry opened the glass box, Mr. Williams had done a vanishing act almost as good as mine and ended up clamped to Great-aunt Harriet’s chest. Shortly, Great-aunt Harriet arrived in the doorway of her cottage with the trembling black cat in her arms. He had his claws into her everywhere he could hang on to. Every claw said, “This human is mine!” Great-aunt Harriet accepted this at once, the way humans do, and she told the nephew he was not to set foot in her cottage ever again. The nephew drove sulkily away and Mr. Williams stayed. He was as unbalanced as Mill in his way. He liked it when Great-aunt Harriet called him her cutchy-wootchy-darling-diddums and tickled his tummy—but we forgave him for that, considering what he had been through.
Great-aunt Harriet made Henry drive her into town to alter her Will, so that she could leave her things to Henry instead. Henry told me that the things were all hideous china ornaments and he hoped she would change her mind. Then he drove off to visit one of the farmers on the moor, who had asked to see him urgently, and came back with the sixth cat.
The sixth cat was called Madam Dalrymple and she was white and fluffy as a dandelion clock—or she was when Henry had washed the muck off her. Nobody knew where she had come from or who had belonged to her and Madam Dalrymple was far too stupid to explain. She certainly did not belong on the farm where Henry found her. He had discovered her struggling in the farmer’s pigpen, in considerable danger from the sow who lived in the pen. Henry had to bathe her four times. Unlike Millamant, Madam Dalrymple hated water and actually scratched Henry, but this was practically the only touch of spirit she ever showed. She was stupid. She lay about in picturesque poses and sighed to anyone who would listen that what she really, really needed was a blue satin bow around her neck. I mostly ignored her, except for when she tried to sit on Henry’s knee. I always made her sit on his feet instead. Henry’s knees are mine—both of them.
A couple of weeks after Madam Dalrymple arrived, all the farmers on the moor came to see Henry, looking grave and anxious. We went up on the roofs and stared at their Land Rovers and Jeeps and vans. Several of them had dogs in them, so we had to stay on the roofs until they had gone. Then I went down and sat on Henry’s papers so that he could explain to me what it was all about. I am the only one who is allowed to sit on Henry’s desk, or climb on his computer.
Henry was looking as upset as the farmers. It seemed that there was a Great Beast loose on Ettmoor, probably from a zoo somewhere, Henry said, although nobody really knew where it had come from or even what kind of animal it was. It had only been seen for brief moments at dusk from a long way off, but it had eaten a lot of sheep and attacked a number of other animals too. Henry spread out the various photographs the farmers had brought and I sat soberly with my tail around my legs and looked at them.
I felt the hair on my spine and my tail trying to bush out. At one photo, I had to struggle not to do a strong vanishment and end up cowering in the back of the airing cupboard or somewhere. This one had caught the Beast slinking into a distant hedge. It was dark and shaped very like a cat—but not at all like a cat either. It was—wrong. It was, well, a monster. And it was obviously huge. If I had had any doubt about its size, there was the picture of a horse it had attacked. The poor creature had lost half its hide down one side, in eight long bleeding streaks. That Beast had claws. And then there were pictures of the poor mutilated remains of a dog and several cats the thing had played with. My back shuddered and I thought uneasily of myself and Claws playing with the mice in the sheds. This Beast played just the same way.
“Yes,” Henry said, “this is a real creature—and a real menace too, Little Dot. The farmers want me to help them track it down and shoot it. They’ve tried to catch it several times, but it always seems to slip away when they think they’ve got it cornered. They want me to apply some science to the hunt.” He sighed. “They say science, Little Dot, but I can see this is going to take magic. Normally I’d hate the idea. It seems so unfair. But just look at those cats. It’s got to be stopped. And until we’ve caught it, you cats are going to stay indoors at nights. Make that clear to the others, will you?” He sighed again. “Hens inside too, I suppose.”
I explained about the Beast to the others, but I am not sure they believed me. Only Madam Dalrymple was prepared to stay inside in comfort. Every evening became a frenzy of hens running and cackling, with Henry galloping around the yard driving them into the coach house, and then getting more and more exasperated as he grabbed Orange as Orange tried to slither out into the landscape and seized Millamant dripping from the water butt. Then Claws had to be tempted out of the sheds with a slice of mackerel and Mr. Williams wheedled with a chunk of melon—for some reason this was Mr. Williams’s favorite food—and the rest of us thrust indoors with urgent entreaties. “Get in or I’ll kick you, cat! I’m out of patience! And, no, the catflap is now locked, understand! Even for you, Little Dot!” This last regardless of the fact that I was only watching. It took nearly an hour before the five of us were moodily gathered on Henry’s bed—or under it, if it was Millamant—and Mr. Williams finally thrust into Great-aunt Harriet’s cottage. Actually Mr. Williams came straight out again through the bathroom window as soon as Henry was indoors. He gets claustrophobia, you see.
During this time, when he was not at the Scientific Institute or conferring with the farmers, Henry built the Mobile Hen Coop. Mr. Williams and I both found it fascinating. It was a long, long wooden triangle, with two sloping sides and flat ends and bottom. In one sloping side there were three sliding doors for the hens to go in through and boxes full of straw inside for the hens to roost in. Once the hens were inside it for the night, Henry said, the sliding doors would be shut to keep them safe.
“But here’s the clever part,” Henry said. “If it stays in one place it kills all the grass.”
“Weeds,” said Mr. Williams. “They’re weeds in this yard.”
“Weeds then,” Henry agreed, “but I don’t want them killed whatever they are.”
“Finest clumps of nettles in the county,” Mr. Williams observed. “Thistles and camomile, too.”
“Medicinal and magical uses for all three,” Henry said. “Do stop mewing at me, Mr. Williams. It puts me off. Anyway, this Coop is designed to rise in the air and move to another place by magic. Watch.”
Mr. Williams had to go away when Henry demon
strated the magic. He said it made the roots of his fur sore. But I stayed and watched. I found I understood that magic—but then I told you I was special.
Unfortunately the hens shared Mr. Williams’s feelings about magic. None of them would go near that Coop. They ended up being chased into the coach house every night and disturbing Great-aunt Harriet just as usual.
I used the Coop as a plaything after that. If I spread myself along the pointed top, I found I could activate the magics and send the Coop floating in any direction I wanted. To my surprise, Madam Dalrymple was the only other cat who thought this was fun. As soon as she saw me on the Coop, she hopped up behind me, and, not in the least worried that the magics bushed her coat out until she looked like a fluffy snowball, she went for sedate rides round and round the farmyard. Henry stood in the kitchen door and laughed helplessly at us whenever he took a break from making magics to catch the Beast of Ettmoor.
He had designed several rings of big black magic generators, and these were placed out on the moor to surround the areas where the Beast had been active. Every day his farmer friends moved the generators a few feet in a carefully planned direction, so that eventually the Beast would be trapped inside a small tight circle. Then they would go in with their guns.
Henry had a map laid out on the dining room table with little tiny models of the generators on it. “Do they know you’re using magic?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the table to look at it.
“No, I call them field-static generators,” Henry said. “They wouldn’t believe they were paying for something that worked, if I said it was magic. I’ve had to ask them to pay for the cost of materials, you see. I made the things down at the Institute.”
The little model generators looked so enticing that I couldn’t resist putting out a paw to the nearest. It wobbled beautifully. To my utter indignation, Henry promptly pushed me off the table. I sat at his feet and did my Outraged Stare at him.
“No,” he said. “No touching, not even for you, princess. This map is part of the magic. I think the dining room door is going to be shut from now on.”
“Don’t you trust me?” I said.
“Not where little wobbly things are concerned, no,” Henry said. “Run away now, there’s a good cat.”
I stalked out into the yard, so furious that my tail lashed at thistles and clumps of other weeds all the way to the Coop. Henry didn’t trust me! I couldn’t believe it! I jumped up on the Coop and took it around in a great angry circle until it was pointing at the gates. The gates are always open in Henry’s farm. I was almost through into the road when Madam Dalrymple bounded elegantly among the weeds and jumped up behind me.
“Where are we going?” she asked, settling herself tastefully.
“Away,” I said. I didn’t want her. I was angry. But I had to go somewhere now I was out in the road, so I turned right, uphill, the way that led to the hill paths. The Coop didn’t like the climbing. It slewed and it slogged and it crawled. In the end I wrestled it around onto the nearest level path, which happened to be the path that Henry had taken nearly a year ago when he found me. The Coop went much better there. We were fine until a light foggy rain began to fall.
Madam Dalrymple shifted and twitched. “Where are we really going?” she said. “Is it far?” She looked very odd, with every hair on end and a raindrop on each hair. She made a silvery ball rather like the ornaments Great-aunt Harriet had hung on a tree at Christmas.
“I’m going to look at the storm drain where Henry found me,” I said. I thought I might as well.
“Your birthplace,” Madam Dalrymple said placidly. “How correct. He’s told you all about it so often, of course. Even I can begin to understand him when he talks about it now. But I wish I could understand human talk like you do. I’d ask for a blue satin ribbon. Do you think he’d get me one?”
“No,” I said. I was having problems. A peculiarity of the magic on the Coop, which had not shown up when we were just jogging around the yard, was that if you went in a straight line, you went faster and faster. It seemed to double its speed continuously. Rain was hitting my eyes like needles and whipping off my whiskers. Rocks and blurred grass raced past underneath.
“This is fun,” said Madam Dalrymple, vast with magic.
I didn’t think so. I could see and hear the storm drain thundering under the path already. We were whizzing up to it, and after that, the path turned a sharp corner. I knew we were going to whizz straight out over the hillside. I couldn’t possibly stop us in time. “Get ready to jump off!” I gasped at Madam Dalrymple.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” I began. And then we were at the storm drain.
“Steady, steady!” said a big black lady in the middle of the path. The pale palms of her hands slapped against the triangular front of the Coop and it came to the ground with a crunch. “Where you going so fast?” she said to me.
“I—er—thought I’d look at my birthplace,” I explained.
“You weren’t born here, honey. It was up the hill a piece,” she said. “There you got swept away.”
“Good heavens!” Madam Dalrymple said, leaning over to look at the rushing water. “You might have been drowned!”
“That is so, but never you mind that now,” the woman said. “There are three things I’m telling you I want you to learn and remember. Say them after me, honey, not to forget. The first one is The higher the fewer. You got that?”
“The higher the fewer,” I repeated, gazing up at her. Her face was black and wet as my nose. I’d never seen a human like her before.
“And you?” the woman said to Madam Dalrymple, but Madam Dalrymple just stared. She has no memory at all. The woman shrugged and turned back to me. “Now, Chocolate herrings are impure. That’s two,” she said.
“Chocolate herrings are impure,” I said, still gazing. She smelled the same way the magics of the Coop did, but stronger and spicier. I began to wonder if she was quite a human.
“That’s good, that’s great,” she told me. “Now the last is The Beast of Ettmoor.”
“The Beast of Ettmoor,” I said obediently. The woman had a turban on her head that stuck up in two black peaks at either side of her head. They reminded me of my own ears. “If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “who are you?”
“My name is Bastet, Little Dot,” she said, “and my calling is cats. Have you got my three sayings in your head? You about to need them badly.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” Bastet said. “Then walk around to the other end of this thing you riding and go home. I send a friend to you any second now. Makes seven. That’s a good number.”
I jumped down and picked my way over the mud and stones of the path to the opposite end of the Coop. By the time I got there, Bastet had gone. I was not surprised. I think she was very magical indeed. I jumped, rather sadly, up onto the Coop, facing the way we had come, and I was just about to get it going again when another whiff of that spiced magic smell struck my nose. I looked up the hillside and saw something mostly white struggling down through the heather. A pleading mew came from it.
“It’s all right!” I called out. “I’m waiting for you.”
A large cat, almost twice my size, came scrambling and sliding down the wet rocks to the path. She was so wet and draggled and humble that I never thought of being afraid of her. “Oh dear,” she said, “I’m so sorry to bother you, but could you find me somewhere to shelter? I’ve nowhere.”
“You can come home with us,” I said. “I’ll speak to Henry. Hop up.”
The large cat looked up at me and at Madam Dalrymple staring vaguely down at her. Then she looked at the Coop. “Is there a way to ride inside?” she asked diffidently.
“Well, we’ve got three doors,” I said, “but I don’t know how to open them.”
“Like this, I think,” the large cat said, and somehow she managed to push the middle hatch aside and crawl inside the Coop. “Lots of lovely straw,” she said. “Thank yo
u.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. There was something about this big, wet, polite cat that made me like her.
“She’s got just the same markings as you have! All those dots!” Madam Dalrymple said, craning down to look through the hatch.
I craned down to look too. Inside the hatch I could see splodges of gray, tabby, ginger and pink, blots of black and dots of sandy brown and cream. But, to my relief, because this cat was so much larger, she seemed more white than anything. I like to think I am unique. “The effect is quite different,” I said haughtily.
“Not a lot,” said Madam Dalrymple. “We’ll have to call her Big Dot.”
I made a silently offended No Comment and moved the Coop off.
It was quite as difficult going back. The farther we went, the faster the Coop moved. By the time we reached the farm road, we were scorching along as fast as a car. I worked frantically to slow us down. And of course Madam Dalrymple, in her usual maddening way, chose the moment that I was trying to aim us at the farm gate to say, “Why did that woman tell you to remember nonsense?”
“I don’t know!” I spat, as we hurtled into the yard. Mr. Williams, who was sitting in our way, rose six feet in the air and managed to miss us. Orange and Claws squirted out of nettle clumps to either side. We raced on until we hit the water butt and stopped. Millamant came head and shoulders out of it, squinting reproachfully. “Where’s Henry?” I asked her.
“In the living room, but you won’t want to go there,” Mill replied.
“Of course I will. It’s got the best chairs,” I said.
As I bounded away toward the catflap, Mill said, “I did warn you!” but I took no notice. I raced through the kitchen and past the dining room—where the door was now closed on that map—and galloped into the living room. There I stopped as if I’d run into the water butt again.
Henry was standing there holding both the hands of a human woman. He had a beaming, dazzled look and he was staring into the human’s face with the same expression that he usually saves for me. I suppose she was a handsome human, in a thin, dark way, but still … I mewed. Loudly.