Jennie

Apparently the pipe was used as some kind of air-intake, or had something to do with the ventilation of the warehouse, for it had once had a grating over the end of it, but the fastenings of that had long since rusted and it had fallen away, and there was nothing to bar their way out.

Peter was so pleased and excited at the prospect of seeing the sun and being out of doors again that he hurried past Jennie and would have rushed out into the street had not the alarm in her warning cry checked him just before he emerged from the opening.

“Peter! Wait!” she cried. “Not like that! Cats never, never rush out from places. Don’t you know about Pausing on the Threshold, or Lingering on the Sill? But then, of course, you wouldn’t. Oh dear, I don’t mean always to be telling you what to do and what not to do, but this is really Important. It’s almost Lesson Number 2. You never hurry out of any place, and particularly not outdoors.”

Peter saw that Jennie had quite recovered her good nature and apparently had forgotten that she had been upset with him. He was curious to find out the reasons for her warning. He said, “I don’t quite understand, Jennie. You mean I’m not to stop before coming in, but I am whenever I go out?”

“Of course. What else?” replied Jennie, sitting down quite calmly in the mouth of the exit and showing not the slightest disposition to go through it and into the street. “You know what’s inside because you come from there. You don’t know what’s outside because you haven’t been there. That’s common ordinary sense for anyone, I should think.”

“Yes, but what is there outside to be afraid of, really?” enquired Peter. “I mean, after all, if you know where you live and the street and houses and all which don’t change—”

“Oh, my goodness,” said Jennie, “I couldn’t try to tell you them all. To begin with – dogs, people, moving vehicles, the weather and changes in temperature, the condition of the street, is it wet or dry, clean or dirty, what has been left lying about, what is parked at the kerb, and whether anybody is coming along, on which side of the street and in how much of a hurry.

“And it isn’t that you’re actually afraid. It’s just that you want to know. And you ought to know, if you have your wits about you, everything your eyes, your ears, your nose, and the ends of your whiskers can tell you. And so you stop, look, listen and feel. We have a saying, ‘Heaven is overcrowded with kittens who rushed out of doors without first stopping and receiving a little’.

“There might be another cat in the vicinity, bent on mischief, or looking for a fight. You’d certainly want to know about that before you stepped out into something you weren’t prepared for. Then you’d want to know all about the weather, not only what it’s like at the moment, but what it’s going to be doing later, say an hour from then. If it’s going to come on to rain or thunder, you wouldn’t want to be too far from home. Your whiskers and your skin tell you that.

“And then, anyway,” Jennie concluded, “it’s a good idea on general principles not to rush into things. When you go out there are very few places to go to that won’t be there just the same five minutes later, and the chances of your getting there will be ever so much better. Come here and squat down beside me and we’ll just have a look.”

Peter did as she suggested and lay down directly in the opening with his paws tucked under him, and felt quite natural doing it, and suddenly he was glad that Jennie had stopped him and that he hadn’t gone charging out into goodness knows what.

Feet went by at intervals. By observation he got to know something about the size of the shoes, which were mostly the heavy boots belonging to workmen, their speed, and how near they came to the wall of the warehouse. The wheeled traffic was of the heavy type – huge horse-drawn drays, and motor-lorries that rumbled past ominously loud, and the horses’ feet, huge things with big, shaggy fetlocks, were another danger. Far in the distance, Peter heard Big Ben strike four. The sound would not have reached him as a human being, perhaps, but travelled all the distance from the Houses of Parliament to his cat’s ears and informed him of the time.

Now he used his nostrils and sniffed the scents that came to his nose and tried to understand what they told him. There was a strong smell of tea and a queer odour that he could not identify, he just knew he didn’t like it. He recognized dry goods, machinery, musk and spices, and horses and burned petrol, exhaust gases, tar and soft coal smoke, the kind that comes from railway engines.

Jennie had got up now and was standing on the edge of the opening with only her head out, whiskers extended forward, quivering a little, and making small wrinkly movements with her nose. After a moment or so of this she turned to Peter quite relaxed and said, “All clear. We can go now. No cats around. There’s a dog been by, but only a mangy cur probably scared of his own shadow. There’s a tea boat just docked. That’s good. The Watchman won’t really have any responsibilities until she’s unloaded. Rain’s all cleared away. Probably won’t rain for at least another forty-eight hours. Goods train just gone down into the docks area. That’s fine. Means the gates’ll be open, and besides, we can use the wagons for cover.”

“Goodness!” Peter marvelled, “I don’t see how you can tell all that from just one tiny sniff around. Do you suppose I’ll ever—?”

“Of course you will,” Jennie laughed, and with a bit of a purr added, “It’s just a matter of getting used to it and looking at things the way a cat would. It’s really nothing,” and here she gave herself two or three self-conscious licks, for, truth to tell, she was just a trifle vain and nothing delighted her so much as to appear clever in Peter’s eyes, which was only feline.

“Well, I don’t understand—” Peter began, saying just the right thing and giving her the lead which she was quick to take up.

“It’s really quite simple,” she explained. “For instance, you can smell the tea. Well, that wasn’t around last time I was outside. Means a tea boat has come in and they’ve opened the hatches. No cats about – I don’t get any signals on my receiver, at least not hostile ones. The dog that went by, well, goodness knows, you can smell him. If he had any class or self-respect that might lead him to chase cats, he’d be clean, and a clean dog smells different. This one was filthy, and that’s why I say he’s nothing to worry about. He’ll be slinking along down back alleys and glad to be left alone. And as for the goods train that went by, after you get to know the neighbourhood it’ll be easy for you too. You see, the smoke smell comes from the left, down where the docks are, so of course it went that way. And you know it was a goods train, because you can smell everything that was in the wagons. There, you see how easy it is?”

Peter again said the right thing, for he was learning how to please Jennie. “I think you’re enormously clever,” he told her.

Her purr almost drowned out the sound of a passing horse-drawn dray. Then she cried to him gaily, “Come along, Peter! We’re off!” and the two friends went out into the cobbled street.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_f462f60a-6636-535a-93e6-c1dbc07a251a)

Hoodwinking of an Old Gentleman (#ulink_f462f60a-6636-535a-93e6-c1dbc07a251a)

THE PAIR WENT off down the busy commercial street towards their destination not at a walk, lope, trot, or even a run, but a series of short, swift charges, a kind of point-to-point dash, and again Peter learned something about the life and ways of a homeless city cat that has no friends and must fend for itself.