TEN LIVES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 120, 10 October 1941, Page 47

TEN LIVES

To Young Listeners, AVE you heard the story of William and his cat Charlie? William was old and he didn’t like other people’s cats, but he loved his old Charlie better than anything else on his big sheep run. So Charlie, of course, loved William. You see they liked more or less the same kind of things, these two; a sunny veranda for their sleep after lunch and a big armchair by the fire for winter evenings, and not too many women about. They hated the same things too; fleas, and rain, and dogs who were allowed inside. But more than anything, they hated the wireless, which was a pity because Johnny the son loved it. And Charlie’s ears would twitch as he lay on his chair, and William would stuff his up with his fingers as he sat hunched over his book by the fire. "A clacking jackinabox! A perishing hurdygurdy" he called it. He hoped Richard hadn’t one of these "new fangled machines." Richard was a friend of his who lived over the hills, and William was going to stay with him while Johnny was away at the ram fair. He liked staying with Richard-but what was he to do with Charlie? He couldn’t leave him at home use the cook only liked cats in their proper place, wherever that might be; anyway he was sure Charlie didn’t like proper places. He couldn’t take him to Richard’s because of the housekeeper. She was a nice little woman-but terribly clean. She wouldn’t want Charlie on the best chairs. Anyway ‘Richard hated cats, and he didn’t really blame him-William couldn’t bear other people’s cats himself-he’d never touch any cat but Charlie, he said. So Charlie was left at the store on the way over. An awfully decent chap the storeman — he’d always liked old Charlie. % * % WILLIAM had been at Richard’s for nearly a week and the two old friends were sitting smoking their after dinner pipes on the veranda. William was talking about the " good old days in Australia," while Richard sat quietly

thinking of Taupo and trout. Across the lawn there was a movement in the bushes, " Look at that beastly stray cat," said Richard. He did look beastly and stray, as he crawled across the lawn and lay at William’s feet. Just the frame of a big grey cat with ears hanging in tatters above his dull green eyes. "Charlie, my poor old chap, trying to find your old man, were you, you old vagabond!" and William picked him up gently. " Worried by dogs-TI’ll teach the brutes, you’d hardly know him for the same cat, Richard. You’ve never seen a finer cat than Charlie when he’s well, fourteen pounds if an ounce." "Fourteen pounds," thought Richard; that was the biggest fish he’d caught last year-a brown trout-a pretty fish. What on earth was that old idiot doing with the filthy cat, putting it in a box and giving it milk — better to kill the thing. e * « EXT morning the cat was very sick. He couldn’t even meow a welcome to William, and Richard said " William, old chap, it’s hard luck but I think we’d better destroy old Charlie." And William thought "Bother you Richard," but he knew the cat couldn’t last long. So he said sadly, "Get the boy to do it.... Poor old Charlie, he’s lost eight of his lives and the ninth is the end of him.... Eight times that cat should have gone west, Richard .. . twice he’s been kicked by a horse till you’d think every bone in his body would be broken. And once old Buttercup drove her horn almost clean through him. ... And another time, Richard, he got caught in a hawk trap and we didn’t find him for days, poor beggar. . . . Yes, he should have died the time we spilt boiling fat on him, or the time he was shut in the oven. But not Charlie! Even when he fell off the launch he kept on swimming till we could pull him up in the landing net." "Landing net," heard Richard, and woke from his dream of fishing. Had William come to his senses at last-had he forgotten the beastly cat? He listened. "He nearly came to a sticky end the time he lay on the warm bread dough and it rose, Richard, it rose till it nearly smothered him." And the old man

chuckled almost forgetting that Charlie was soon to lose his last life. + * ILLIAM saw the old cat buried under a pohutukawa tree, said good-bye to Richard and rode sadly home. Horrible to think of going back to that empty living room. Johnny wouldn’t be home till late .. . he opened the door. "Meow, mee-ow, mee-ow," said Charlie and_ jumped off his chair, winding himself round his master’s legs, rubbing and purring his welcome, " M-me-ow!" "Charlie, youold sinner, you scoundrel, you vagabond! They couldn’t kill you after all. The devil didn’t want you, Charlie, you old sinner with ten lives!" William said he would never touch any cat but Charlie, ... I wonder.(By "STAR.")