The Cat Who Had 14 Tales

An interminable screech was coming out of that wall, like nothing the Madame had ever heard. It chilled the blood and tortured the ears. So painful was the shrillness that Madame Phloi threw back her head and complained with a piercing howl of her own. The strident din even waked Thapthim. He looked about in alarm, shook his head wildly, and clawed at his ears to get rid of the offending noise.

The others heard it, too.

“Listen to that!” said the one with the gentle voice.

“It must be the new man next door,” said the other. “It’s incredible!”

“How could anyone so crude produce anything so exquisite? Is it Prokofiev he’s playing?”

“I think it’s Bartók.”

“He was carrying his violin in the elevator today. He tried to hit Phloi with it.”

“He’s a nut . . . . Look at the cats! Apparently they don’t care for violin music.”

Madame Phloi and Thapthim, bounding from the room, collided with each other in a rush to hide under the bed.

That was not the only noise emanating from the next-door apartment in those upsetting days after the fat man moved in. The following evening, when Madame Phloi walked into the living room to commence her listening, she heard a fluttering sound dimly through the wall, accompanied by highly conversational chirping. This was agreeable music, and she settled down on the sofa to enjoy it, tucking her brown paws neatly under her creamy body.

Her contentment was soon disturbed, however, by a slamming door and then the fat man’s voice bursting through the wall like thunder.

“Look what you done, you dirty skunk!” he bellowed. “Right in my fiddle! Get back in your cage before I brain you!”

There was a frantic beating of wings.

“GET down off that window or I’ll bash your head in!”

The threat brought a torrent of chirping.

“Shut up, you stupid cluck! Shut up and get back in that cage or I’ll . . .”

There was a splintering crash, and then all was quiet except for an occasional pitiful “peep!”

Madame Phloi was fascinated. In fact, when she resumed her watching chore the next day, pigeons seemed rather insipid entertainment. Thapthim was asleep, and the others had left for the day, but not before opening the window and placing a small cushion on the chilly marble sill.

There she sat, a small but alert package of fur, sniffing the welcome summer air, seeing all and knowing all. She knew, for example, that the person walking down the tenth-floor hallway, wearing old tennis shoes and limping slightly, would halt at the door, set down his pail, and let himself in with a passkey.

Indeed, she hardly bothered to turn her head when the window washer entered. He was one of her regular court of admirers. His odor was friendly, although it suggested damp basements and floor mops, and he talked sensibly; there was none of that falsetto foolishness with which some persons insulted the Madame’s intelligence.

“Hop down, kitty,” he said in a musical voice. “Charlie’s gotta take out that screen. See, I brought some cheese for the pretty kitty.”

He held out a modest offering of rat cheese, and Madame Phloi investigated it and found it was the wrong variety, and she shook one fastidious paw at it.

“Mighty fussy cat,” Charlie laughed. “Well, now, you sit there and watch Charlie clean this here window. Don’t you go jumpin’ out on the ledge, ‘cause Charlie ain’t runnin’ after you. No sir! That old ledge, she’s startin’ to crumble. Someday them pigeons’ll stamp their feet hard, and down she goes! . . . Hey, lookit the broken glass out here! Somebody busted a window.”

Charlie sat on the marble sill and pulled the upper sash down in his lap, and while Madame Phloi followed his movements carefully, Thapthim sauntered into the room, yawning and stretching, and swallowed the cheese.

“Now Charlie puts the screen back in, and you two guys can watch them crazy pigeons some more. This screen, she’s comin’ apart, too. Whole buildin’s crackin’ up.”

Remembering to replace the cushion on the cool, hard sill, he went on to clean the remaining windows, and the Madame resumed her post, sitting on the edge of the cushion so that Thapthim could have most of it.

The pigeons were late that morning, probably frightened away by the window washer. When the first visitor skimmed in on a blue gray wing, Madame Phloi first noticed the tiny opening in the screen. Every aperture, no matter how small, was a temptation; she had to prove she could wriggle through any tight space, whether there was a good reason or not.

She waited until Charlie had limped out of the apartment before she started pushing at the screen with her nose, first gingerly, then stubbornly. Inch by inch the rusted mesh ripped away from the frame until the whole corner formed a loose flap. Then Madame Phloi slithered through—nose and ears, slender shoulders, dainty Queen Anne forefeet, svelte torso, lean flanks, hind legs like steel springs, and finally proud brown tail. For the first time in her life she found herself on the pigeon promenade. She shuddered deliciously.