Schrodinger the cat
A heartwarming short story for cat lovers...
Pictured: Schrodinger enjoying a nice sleep after a good meal
They say
that a criminal always returns to the scene of his crime. Perhaps that was the
reason that I ventured into Pluto Close today. Whatever my reason might have
been, it was a mistake.
Too
late, I saw Mrs Barnaby coming down the Close towards me and she spotted me
right away, even though her eyes are old and rheumy. She used her stick to
propel herself towards me at great speed, as if she could not wait to confront
me. The stick must have been a recent acquisition as I had never seen it
before. It looked as old and as gnarled as she was.
I could
have turned and fled but that would have aroused suspicion. I had to brass it
out, so I greeted her with a cheerful
insouciance.
“Good
afternoon, Mrs. Barnaby. How are you this fine day?” I enquired.
She came
to a halt in front of me and glared.
I was
boxed in.
To
either side there were unbroken rows of red brick terraced houses and ahead of
me, a bitter old woman.
The only
escape route lay behind me, the way I had come, but there was no turning back,
not, at least, until I had confronted the enemy. I was like the Light Brigade
at the Battle of Balaclava. The only way was forward into the valley of death.
Mrs
Barnaby fired her opening salvo.
“I
thought you’d gone to live somewhere in the North,” she snapped.
“And so
I have,” I lied. It was a lie that I had been forced to peddle due to recent
events. “I live in Yorkshire these days. I’m down here on a business trip. I’ll
be getting the train back up to Doncaster from King’s Cross come five o’clock.”
She
thrust her seamed face towards my own. Mrs Barnaby was standing very close to
me. I detected the faint but unmistakable smell of urine.
“Where’s
Tiddles?” She demanded.
Unfortunately,
old people often become obsessive, and Mrs. Barnaby is a prime example of this
phenomenon. She is obsessed with her pet cat Tiddles, which went missing a
considerable while ago. It is time that she let the matter go. It really is
making her ill. Sometimes I fear for her sanity.
“Tiddles?”
I asked, stroking my chin as if baffled. I knew very well what she was
referring to. And she knew that I knew. She stuck her bony index finger into my
chest. It was like a claw.
“You
know where he is. You know far more than you’re letting on,” she asserted, as
if she knew for a fact that I was behind the disappearance of her precious
moggy. This was rather unfair to say the least, as she knew nothing of the
sort.
“I’m
afraid that I know only what I have already told you, Mrs. Barnaby, which is
precious little,” I said as soothingly as possible. “I’d help you if I could,
but I have no idea where little Tiddles might be hiding. Have you tried the Cat
Rescue Centre in Bromley? I hear that they get to know all the latest
tittle-tattle about cats at the Rescue Centre. They might have some news of him
there.”
She eyed
me with the greatest of suspicion.
“Tell me
where he is,” she snarled. “You’ve kidnapped him. You’ve taken him up to
Yorkshire, haven’t you?”
That’s
the trouble with old people. They think that it is their divine right to hurl
unsubstantiated allegations at you and blacken your name in public. The few
passers-by on Pluto Close could hear quite clearly every slur that she was
loudly trumpeting against me.
“I
assure you that I have done nothing of the sort,” I said. I could not help but
get a little terse at this point, and it must have shown in my demeanour, for
when Mrs. Barnaby saw the expression on my face she recoiled in horror.
“You’ve
done something worse than kidnapping, haven’t you?” She asked, although I
believe the question was rhetorical. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed my
little Tiddles. Admit it. I know you have.”
I could
see the curtains twitching in the houses at either side of the Close. I knew
that Mrs. Barnaby was the sort of person who suffered from paranoid delusions;
but did the people who were twitching those curtains know? If not, they might
see us arguing and conclude that a vigorous young man was bullying a feeble old
woman. It was time I made my exit. I shook my head sorrowfully.
“I am an
animal lover like you, Mrs. Barnaby,” I replied. “It saddens me to hear that
you think me capable of a brutal act like that. Now I really must bid you
farewell. I’m sorry, but I cannot help you any further.”
“I saw
the police round at your house just before you left for Yorkshire. What did
they want?” She demanded. “What have you got on your conscience?”
“If you
must know, I have a very clear conscience, Mrs. Barnaby,” I replied in an even
if somewhat steely voice. “If I have done anything wrong in this life it was
due to force of circumstance or for some other good reason, and not to any
failing of my moral compass. And I have always been ready to admit to my
mistakes and to repent them. How many people do you know who can say that?
Precious few, I imagine.”
I had
hoped that this might put an end to Mrs. Barnaby’s ranting but even my fine
speech did not deter her.
“How
many cats have you killed?” She shrieked. “I’m going to ring up the police and
tip them off about you and Tiddles if you don’t tell me the truth!”
I looked
around anxiously, somewhat concerned at the number of people that might have
been within earshot who would have heard me branded a cat-killer.
“I am telling you the truth, Mrs. Barnaby,”
I replied with a deep sigh, so as to affect the air of someone exercising
saintly forbearance in the face of extreme provocation. “I am a cat preserver,
not a cat killer. Now you must excuse me as I have things to do. Good day to
you, Mrs. Barnaby.”
I turned
and walked away.
“Cat
killer!” She called after me as I disappeared in the direction of the high
street.
“Murderer!”
Between
you and me, I have to confess that I knew rather more than I was letting on to
Mrs. Barnaby.
The
evening that Tiddles disappeared, my girlfriend Angela had ended our
relationship, a development which had a rather unsettling effect on my nerves.
I tried
drinking camomile tea, but it failed to calm me down, so I went to the corner
shop and bought a bottle of whiskey. I am not a big drinker but I thought that
for once I would get well and truly drunk. I told myself I had every reason to
get drunk. I had only known Angela for a matter of weeks, but in that brief
period she had come to mean a lot to me, and now I had lost her, and discovered
she had been cheating on me to boot.
I spent
an evening watching the mind-numbing pap that is standard fare on television
these days, while simultaneously ingesting mind-numbing quantities of whiskey.
The combination was most therapeutic.
After
drinking half the bottle, I stood up, glass in hand, to get some ice, and
turned in the direction of the kitchen. As you can imagine I was somewhat unsteady
on my feet by then, and consequently dropped my glass. It smashed against the
stone hearth sending splinters everywhere. I went to get the brush and pan, then
hurried back to the epicentre of the damage to clear up the mess.
As my
pet cat Schrodinger is deaf, I normally take great care to look out for him
when I am moving around in the house, because I know that it would be all too
easy to step on him, particularly as he can’t hear me coming.
On this
occasion, in my drunken hurry, I omitted to think about Schrodinger and kicked
him on my way to the fireplace. The impact was so hard that he became airborne
and landed awkwardly on a shard of glass. It may have pierced an artery,
because blood fountained from his leg. The sight of it instantly sobered me up.
I ran to
the kitchen and took out my first aid kit, and, ignoring his protestations and
scratches, not to mention a few savage bites he inflicted on me, I cleaned up
his wound and dressed it as best I could. Somehow I managed to stop the flow of
blood.
But I
knew full well that this would suffice only as a temporary measure. I would
have to get him to a VET’s practice to have his wound properly dealt with.
However,
there was a problem. I had noticed when bandaging Schrodinger’s leg that his
attempts to fend me off quickly became feeble. It was obvious this was because
of the amount of blood he had lost. He now seemed too weak even to open his
eyes. I gently pulled back his lips with my fingers and examined his gums.
They
were pale compared to the healthy pink colour they normally had. He wouldn’t
make it to the VET’s; he had lost too much blood. The chances were that if he
didn’t get an immediate blood transfusion, he would die here, right in front of
me, on the rug I kept before the hearth.
This was
a possibility I was simply not prepared to accept. I had just lost one great
love of my life and was not prepared to lose another.
But
where would I get a source of type A cat blood at this time of night?
The
answer came to me immediately: Tiddles. He was type A; I had seen it mentioned
in his Feline Medical Profile. Mrs Barnaby had shown it to me in the days when
we were good friends.
I went
to the cellar, found some tubing and hollow needles amongst my medical
equipment, and sterilised them, then I went to the front door with a torch. I
opened the door and stood on the doorstep.
The
night was warm and dry. Cats appreciate good weather, so I thought Tiddles
would almost certainly be out and about.
A few
silvery strands of cloud were dancing attendance on a full moon. This made for
good lighting conditions.
Perfect
for cat hunting.
I looked
over the wall that separated my garden from that of Mrs. Barnaby and spotted
Tiddles foraging about in the undergrowth in her garden. I knew I would have to
lure him to my side of the wall using subterfuge, but once I had him indoors, I
would be able to use whatever methods I needed to enlist his help.
“Tiddles,”
I called in a syrupy voice like the one that I had heard Mrs. Barnaby use.
“OOOOh
Tiiiidd-les. Puss puss puss puss. Come here Tiii-dles.”
He
glanced at me with an expression of disinterest on his face and carried on
scratching about in the bushes. I went indoors and got a cat treat – the sort
that I knew from experience he could not resist.
“OOOOOH
Tiiiidd-les,” I called again, waving the treat around in my hand.
This
time his eyes widened with interest. I saw them glowing in the light of my
torch. He jumped onto the wall next to me and I scooped him up and carried him
indoors, then I set about restraining him in an improvised harness so that I
could carry out an emergency blood transfusion.
I am
sure that if Tiddles had possessed the brain power to understand that he was
going to give blood to help to save his good friend Schrodinger, the little
fellow would have done so willingly; as it was; all he was interested in was
saving his own miserable hide. Consequently, my persuasion had to be somewhat
forceful.
His fur
stood on end so that he resembled a furry football and he hissed and mewled and
whined and fought me tooth and claw to avoid being secured in the harness.
But for
all this I got him trussed up and stuck one of the hollow needles in him. It
was attached to the tube. At the other end of the tube there was a similar
needle. In an instant, blood began to flow from the second needle, and I found
a suitable vein in Schrodinger’s foreleg and stuck the needle in it. He didn’t
resist; he couldn’t, for he was far too weak.
I held
Tiddles aloft like one of those gravity feed blood-bags that you see suspended
on poles above hospital patients. Gradually the blood ebbed from him and flowed
into Schrodinger.
After a
while, Schrodinger’s eyes opened he began to look quite perky, compared to the
way he had been, at least.
Regrettably,
Tiddles did just the opposite. He became feeble and quiet and, ultimately, did
not survive the experience.
When he
had served his purpose I said a prayer, put him in a black bin liner, and
dropped him in the wastebin in my back yard. Fortunately the bin men were due
to collect the rubbish the very next day, and all evidence of Tiddles and his
fate would be removed to a council dump far, far away.
You will
no doubt be delighted to hear that Schrodinger made a full recovery and, to
this day, continues to lead an active and happy life.
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