| WORSE THAN CATS | ||
| A tale from Mistress Daedra | ||
| There was a widow, come listen to me, Who liv-ed out in the West Country, And a merry old woman was she, was she, Though her husband had been drown-ed in the deep salt sea. |
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| To set your minds at rest, the widow in question made a comfortable living. Her husband had left her five fine fields, six sweet milk heifers, a gentle brown bull, and a profitable creamery to run. Between her snug cottage, well appointed barn, and resident family of cats, she was quite content. Of course, if that had been all there was to it, this would be a much shorter and less interesting tale. Luckily or un, the widow had a son: a greedy grump, who worked much harder at hanging onto his mother’s money than he did at helping her make it. Grumble, as he would, about the work and --to his way of thinking—narrow profit margin, the wretch didn’t really care how well off his mother was. What mattered to him was that the more she had, the more he got. If she asked him to weed the garden, he’d do the vegetables, but complain about the flowers. It took much too long, and besides: what good were posies. “Get goats,” he’d whine, “Let THEM eat the marigolds and petunias. There’d be less to weed, and we could sell the cheese.” His mother would then point out that she’d need help milking the goats, as she already had her hands full taking care of the cows, but her son was nearly as good at ignoring hints as she was at ignoring his faults, and so they contrived to scrape along together for a good many years. One evening, after a particularly wearisome day of milking, churning, and preparing fresh cheese for market, the widow announced that she was going out. Her cousin, whose son Jack was a clever one to be sure, had invited her to dinner and she was all agog to hear about Jack’s latest exploits. “I’m sure she’d have asked you, too, dear,” the widow said, as she donned her bonnet and headed for the door, “but she knew that SOMEONE would have to feed the cows this evening if there’s to be milk tomorrow. I’ve left you a lovely dinner of stew with bread and a lump of sweet butter. It’s on the cupboard.” And with that she was off down the lane at a quicker pace than you might expect for a tired old woman. Well, the young man grumbled, and lounged by the fire, and decided he’d need to rest before undertaking anything as strenuous as eating dinner and seeing that the cows got to eat, too. He kicked off his boots, stretched his toes towards the hearth, quaffed a cup of small ale, and took a nap. When he woke up it seemed that there were cats everywhere. A pair of kittens were playing pounce with his toes. Their mother, a plump calico, was lapping at the last of the butter for his bread, and it seemed that the old ginger tom had already polished off the stew. “By thunder!” the young man swore and would have wrung their necks if he could have caught them easily... but they dodged the boot he threw and skittered and scrambled and ducked out of sight, even after he knocked over a crock of milk chasing them. Having failed to chastise even one of the miscreants, he finally pulled on his boots, and glaring and swearing stomped out to the barn to deal with the cows. “Cats!” He muttered to himself, “Damn Cats! There’s nothing worse that cats!” His temper was in no whit lessened when a lean black stray had the nerve to brush up against his leg as he entered the barn. “You!” he bellowed, snatching the stranger up by the scruff of its neck. “Sneaking in here like all those other mangy thieves! You’ve been stealing the cream from the top of the milk buckets, haven’t you? You and your kind are nibbling away at my inheritance, you miserable creatures! I should kill you all and good riddance.” “Sir!” cried the cat, which caused the young man to stop shaking him, as none of his mother’s cats had ever addressed him before, much less with such wounded dignity. “I assure you that I have never taken anything from you, indeed, I have never eaten so much as a morsel that I have not first earned.” “What? What!” replied the young man, “Are you a liar as well as a thief?” “Never so,” said the cat, “Though I am lately fallen on hard times, you see before you a feline paragon, the veritable king of cats.” “A royal nuisance then,” sneered the widow’s son. “Nay, Sir, I am a mouser par excellence, a hard worker, worthy of my due.” “Feh!” “Truly, Sir, you would do well to release me. It is no small thing to have the king of cats on you side.” “I’d rather have your fur for a rug and the story of how I killed the king of cats to trade for drinks at the village inn,” his captor snarled, and dispatched the cat without further discussion. “So much for the king of cats.” When he had finished tossing a scant meal of hay to each cow and only a little more to the bull, the young man took his trophy back to the house. The cats had gathered to clean up the spilled milk, and he took singular delight in tossing the dead cat among them. “See there, you fiends? I’ve killed the king of cats and may do as much to any of you I lay eyes or hands on again!” There was a split second of silence, then the four cats rose as one, fluffed out to twice their accustomed size and with full-throated banshee wails leaped on the hapless lad. The calico raked his stomach. The ginger tom clawed his back. The kittens clung to his head, digging their claws into his scalp, as they bit his ears and swiped at his eyes. Round and round the cottage the young man flung himself, screaming for help and trying to pluck off his assailants, only to have them tear at his hands and arms. By the time he chanced to stumble over his mother’s broom and began to beat himself about the head and body with it in an attempt to dislodge his tormentors, the cats had abandoned their attack and vanished into the night... though it took him a good many hearty whacks with the broom before he reached that realization. You may imagine the widow’s dismay and disbelief when she returned home somewhat later to find that to all appearances her home had been ransacked by vandals and her son all but flayed by tiny knives. The body of the king of cats had somehow disappeared in the fray, and thus there was nothing but the continued absence of her own cats to give credence to her son’s far-fetched explanation. As time went on, however, and no cat could be purchased, lured, purloined or otherwise constrained to stay on her tland, the widow began to suspect that there was more of truth and less of ale in her son’s tale than she had initially believed.. What’s more, as mice descended in droves and hordes of rats arrived to thrive on the cows’ feed and their produce, the son was finally driven to understand that there was, in fact, something worse than cats, and that was no cats at all. |