By
Rhys Hughes
"The cat is late," announced Mark.
But Vanessa shook her head. "The cat has a name."
"Pangur Bn," hissed Mark.
"Well?" murmured Vanessa with hooded eyes.
"Our dear friend Pangur Bn is late. Is that better? He's not here. He is absent. We remain unmolested."
It was true. They lay next to each other in bed under an unoccupied quilt. He was not sitting on it, kneading the pattern of interlocking squares, snagging an occasional claw on a loose thread, glaring at them with large yellow eyes. There was no presence demanding breakfast. They were free to drift back to sleep, and yet it was already an hour past dawn. The situation was unprecedented.
"What if he's ill?" cried Vanessa.
Mark sighed and his knees twitched, as if he really intended to get up and go down. "I'll take a look..."
Vanessa decided to treat this as a genuine offer. "Good idea."
"Shall I bring you a cup of tea as well?"
She smiled. "Yes please."
He scowled and stood and struggled to pull on his trousers. From Vanessa's position, it looked as if he was trying to escape a quicksand.
Pangur Bn was gone. There could be no more doubt about it. Mark brought the news up the stairs with the tea. Vanessa sampled both with a pout. Then she said:
"Go out into the garden and call for him."
Mark blushed. "Why should I?"
"It's your moral duty."
He hunched his shoulders and stepped towards the window. He always felt embarrassed calling a cat's name in public. The neighbours might hear. It didn't seem a very manly thing to do: he couldn't say why. He looked down onto the garden. There was movement in the bushes, a flash of dark caramel, like toasted sunlight.
"A cat!" he squealed.
Vanessa was by his side. "Where?"
"Cover yourself!" he spluttered. "The neighbours..."
"Pangur Bn?"
"No."
"A different cat? In our garden?"
He frowned. "I'd say so."
They went down together, she wrapped in a dressing-gown with a frayed belt. This was destined to snap and expose her excellent bosom to the world. Mark knew that. He continued to frown, lacking the incentive to do anything else with his face. The catflap was still swinging and muddy pawprints outlined a complex dance on the stone tiles. He stood above them as if he was decoding a choreography diagram. At the furthest limit of the prints lay a mouse, very dead.
"A present for us," he said.
"The alien cat must have brought it," he added later, over coffee. "For us to eat. Our breakfast on this fine morning."
"But I'm a vegetarian," sniffed Vanessa.
"A concept beyond a cat's understanding..."
"I want Pangur Bn back."
"You do indeed," he conceded ruefully.
They chewed toast in silence. The mouse had been quietly disposed of. The absence of Pangur Bn was dramatic, like the simmering aftermath of an argument when all words have been exhausted but rage still twists the heart into a corkscrew. The morning was ruined. Already Mark felt the rest of the day weighing on him, interminable, awful. And there was no escape, nowhere to go. It was Sunday.
"I might put up those shelves later," he suggested.
"No you won't."
"Or fix your portable steam-cleaner."
"Not that."
He threw down his knife into the jam pot. It did not stick deep and quiver upright as he had hoped. It was not the strike of a hero. It penetrated half an inch and overbalanced, staining the tablecloth a pale cherry.
"What then?" he demanded, slamming his fist, but the cups did not rattle.
She raised her eyebrows at his uselessness and said: "You will call Pangur Bn until he comes. And if he does not come, you must call him some more."
"Yes," he mumbled with lowered head.
Vanessa sat in her rocking-chair and thought about her cat and his huffs. He was big on huffs and good at them. When he wanted milk and there was none to be had, or when his favourite windowsill was cluttered with ornaments, or when he burned his nose on a candle: at these times and others he would demonstrate his ability at the art of huffing. His back turned to the object of dismay, his tail lashing like an electric cable severed in a storm, he would emit a constant low note, not quite a growl, not quite a squeak, but a complex tone pitched somewhere between the two, like bagpipes sat on by a hungry man.
His big huffs were noteworthy, but his biggest huff was incredible. He indulged it once a year. Whenever they went off on holiday, they would make arrangements for a friend to visit the house and feed him. Pangur Bn was very precise in his dietary requirements, which included the angle of his bowl in relation to his milk-dish. A lapse in this respect was most irksome to him. However hard the friends tried, they made mistakes. Pangur Bn would use bristling scowls to teach them what was wrong, and slowly over the course of the week they would make enough little adjustments to satisfy his feline majesty. By this time, Mark and Vanessa would be back, and the biggest huff would be discharged in their direction. It was an annual event.
Now Vanessa craned her head at weird noises which were emerging from the adjacent room. She rose and wandered in their direction. She stood on the threshold of the open door.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
Mark lowered the handkerchief from his mouth. "Recording my voice."
She realised he had been talking into a microphone. "Why?"
"To call the cat. I'm going to make a tape-loop of me calling his name over and over. And then I can play it outside and call him all day without tiring, and still have time to do other things."
"But why the handkerchief?"
He licked his lips anxiously. "So the neighbours won't think it's me."
Pangur Bn did not come back, but the strange cat did. They caught sight of its tail disappearing through the catflap. And there was another mouse, but this time the cupboards were open and the plates were strewn about the floor around it. A very distasteful sight.
"The little rascal!" muttered Mark.
"Rummaging among our things!" growled Vanessa.
"Where does it come from, I wonder?"
Vanessa stooped to pick up the mouse by the tail. Mark was left to clear up the plates.
"Pangur Bn! Pangur Bn!" called a voice from the garden.
"It's going to rain," said Vanessa.
"I'll bring the tape-recorder inside," replied Mark.
"That's for the best."
Mark went out and Vanessa seemed to hear the giggles of neighbours. Probably a trick of the wind in the bushes. The weather was taking a turn for the worse. And Pangur Bn was exposed to the elements. So was her husband, but he didn't count as much.
"Poor thing!" she said when he returned.
"Thank you," responded Mark, but then he realised she was looking beyond him into the garden. He sighed. "I wish I was a cat!"
She regarded him with surprise.
"You're full of good ideas today!" she exclaimed.
The sun went down and stayed there, but they went the other way, up to bed. The early stars twinkled through the window over the roofs of houses. Two of them were yellow.
"Like Pangur Bn's eyes," Vanessa remarked.
"You don't think he has become a constellation?"
"Don't be silly!" she chided.
He accepted the rebuke mildly, for he was her husband. "You know something? He would never have allowed us to retire to bed at this hour, if he was still here. He always had his supper at midnight."
"What are you saying?"
"That maybe the absence of Pangur Bn has a few advantages."
"Such as?"
He swallowed dryly. "We are free to play."
"In what way?"
"Well, we can read books or make love. We can do these things in peace!"
She was silent for a whole minute.
"Shall we try both of them? Now?" she asked.
"In any particular order? Or at the same time?"
"Silly!" she repeated, but now she meant it as a compliment.
There was a third mouse waiting for them when they went down the next morning. And the cupboards were open again. But now some effort had been made to drag the plates to the table. They had been abandoned under that item of furniture. Mark and Vanessa tidied them up together, more at ease in each other's company than they had been for years.
"What does this mean?" they wondered.
There was no sensible answer. But the clock was urging them to work, chopping the riddle to pieces with every jolt of its rapier-thin second hand. As they rushed coffee and prepared to leave, Mark indicated the catflap with a nod of his head.
"Shall I lock it?"
"To stop the strange cat getting in? But what about Pangur Bn?"
He shrugged. "Fair enough."
"Leave it open..."
He frowned as they passed through the hallway and reached the front door. "Do you think it really is trying to look after us?"
"The new cat?"
"Leaving food, I mean. Nearly laying the table..."
She smiled without irony. "If it wants to do the washing and ironing too, I don't mind!"
"Better make the most of it."
"You're right. How long can this last for?"
All week. The alien cat must have entered the house twice every day. The evidence was there when Mark and Vanessa woke in the mornings and when they returned from work in the late afternoons. They caught occasional glimpses of their visitor when they peered through the back windows into the garden. But Pangur Bn himself did not appear.
The ritual with the plates became more uncanny. At last they were forced to the conclusion that the disruption of their kitchen was more serious than a game. There were no more mice. The benefactor was clearly intent on experimenting with a variety of offerings. A blackbird, a goldfish and a chicken leg undoubtedly raided from some dustbin: these were prepared just for them with feline elegance, dumped in the middle of plates and ungarnished.
Cutlery soon joined the crockery. Forks, knives and a spoon, positioned around the plates. Then the salt and pepper. Empty glasses were added on Thursday. An extraordinary achievement for a cat to manipulate such objects with its paws! Vanessa began to perceive a curious symmetry in this behaviour.
"I think I know where Pangur Bn is," she said on the final morning of the working week.
Mark gasped. "Where?"
"On holiday."
"What?" he blurted.
"Probably abroad. He's copying us. Every year we go away and arrange for a friend to feed him. He has done the same."
"Don't be absurd!"
"Consider more carefully. It makes perfect sense. If Pangur Bn's meals aren't arranged properly, he refuses to eat. And that's what we've been doing: refusing to eat! So the other cat has been adjusting its offerings to us and also the manner of presentation."
"What an idea! It's ridiculous," he shouted. Then he added more thoughtfully: "So yes, I guess it might be true..."
At the end of the day she found him standing at their front door. She gripped his elbow. "What's wrong?"
"I was waiting for you."
"Why?" she asked.
"I don't want to go in alone."
"But you finish work an hour before me!" she cried.
"Yes, I've been loitering here. I have a feeling something grand is about to happen when we step inside."
She wrinkled her nose. "What's that smell?"
"I think it's basil and walnut tagliatelle."
She pressed her ear to the door. "I can hear pots and pans being rattled. And now a cork popping."
They held each other very close.
"Let's open the door," she said at last.
There was a single candle on the table. The flame flickered in the gentle gust from the swinging catflap.
The two glasses were filled with wine.
Mark sat and tucked the napkin into his shirt. After a moment's hesitation, Vanessa followed his example.
They broke freshly-baked bread.
"This meal is truly wonderful!" he exclaimed.
Vanessa paused and lowered her fork. "Why didn't we think to check Pangur Bn's basket?"
"What for?"
She rose and moved to the corner of the room, grasping the basket and holding it upside-down. The blankets fell out, and underneath them a selection of glossy magazines and pamphlets.
"What are these?" he cried.
She examined them. "Holiday brochures."
"Where for?"
"Catalonia!" she laughed. "Where else?"
The following morning they were woken by the postman sliding the mail under the door. They raced down to seize it. Among the bills and promotional offers, they was a single postcard.
"Barcelona!" panted Vanessa.
"What does it say?" gulped Mark, trying to read over her shoulder.
She inspected it. "I don't know!"
"Perhaps he can't write English?"
She nodded sagely. "He's a cat."
"In that case, how did the postman decipher the address?"
They exchanged profound glances. Then they opened the door and ran out onto the pavement. The postman was already at the end of the street. But this was the moment Mark had been waiting for, half in dread, half in hope. The belt of her dressing-gown finally snapped. He covered her excellent bosom with his hands and helped her back inside. No point causing a public disturbance.
"Shall we meet him at the airport?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Cats probably have other methods of leaving the country. Pea-green boats and suchlike."
"I hope he has bought us a nice souvenir."
"Same here."
"What shall we do now?"
They licked their lips and said together: "When the cat's away..."
Absolutely.