Лилиан Браун - The Cat Who Talked Turkey

Qwilleran would be the first to admit that the system was ludicrous . . . but it was simple, and it worked. It gave Koko pleasure, and it gave Qwilleran a challenge. He boasted that he could write a thousand words about anything—or nothing.

On this occasion, the chosen book was The Tiger in the House by Carl Van Vechten, one of the last pre-owned classics that Qwilleran had purchased from the late Eddington Smith. Its cover looked rain-soaked, the spine was tattered, and the gold tooling had worn off, but its three hundred pages were intact, printed on India laid paper, in a limited edition of two thousand, dated 1920.

This copy was signed by the author.

Qwilleran described it in his column as a superb literary work, a scholarly history of the domestic cat, beginning almost forty centuries ago in Egypt. There were names of famous artists and statesmen who cherished the cat as a household pet. And there were the names of tyrants and murderers who hated or feared the very mention of the animal. Particularly interesting were the myths and superstitions that persisted throughout the centuries.

Qwilleran himself, living with a cat that seemed to be psychic, was encouraged in his belief by attitudes in the Orient, where cats were considered supernatural. In Siam they were considered to be royalty. He had long wanted to trace Koko’s ancestry. Readers of the “Qwill Pen” knew Koko to be a smart cat, but even close friends like Polly and Arch had not been told the whole story—for the simple reason that they would scoff. A detective lieutenant Down Below did not scoff; the Pickax police chief had been gradually convinced; and a retired police detective from California was ready to be converted. Qwilleran found it a curious fact that they were all members of the constabulary!

The prospect of doing another one-man show for a Moose County audience filled Qwilleran with elation. He remembered audience reaction to the first one: They were spellbound; they gasped; they cried. In college he had focused on theater training before switching to journalism, and he still relished the idea of using his voice dramatically to influence an audience.

Now, to refresh his memory, he reviewed the script of the Big Burning. The audience had been told to imagine that radio actually existed in 1869, as he announced the news of the disaster, read bulletins from other parts of the county, and interviewed eyewitnesses by telephone.

Radio was still in the future at the time of the Great Storm—1913. There were no broadcasting stations, no home receivers using cat whiskers, no commercials for tin lizzies or potbellied stoves. Then he thought, Why not add to the realism with a few commercials? There could be bargains in kerosene and ten-pound bags of oatmeal.

In 1913 Moose County had no real newspaper—only the Pickax Picayune, with social notes and classified ads. Lockmaster County, to the south, was further advanced. Qwilleran phoned his friend Kip MacDiarmid, editor of the Lockmaster Ledger.

“Kip! Do me a big favor. Meet me for lunch at Inglehart’s and bring some photocopies of the Ledger of 1913. The lunch is on me!”

“Good deal!” said the editor. “Which pages and how many?”

“Just three or four. Inside pages with display ads for groceries, clothing, hardware—whatever.”

The two newsmen met at the restaurant in a Victorian mansion on Lockmaster’s main thoroughfare and were given a table by a window hung with lace curtains. Kip had a glass of wine; Qwilleran asked for Squunk water on the rocks with a twist but settled for club soda. He knew no one south of the border had ever heard of Squunk water.

“Your groundbreaking was a great show,” Kip said. “Did you know the chest was empty?”

“No one had the foggiest idea!”

“I hope you’re going to call the bookstore The Pirate’s Chest. Is Polly excited about running it?”

“Rather!” Qwilleran said. “She looks twenty years younger. And by the way, she wants to know how you run your literary club. She wants to start one at the bookstore.”

“I’ll have Moira get in touch with her; she’s secretary of the Lit Club.”

Qwilleran asked, “Have you heard about the Bicentennial of the town of Brrr? I’m doing a show on the Great Storm of 1913. That’s why I asked for some 1913 clips of the Ledger. ”

“Did you know it was called the Lockmaster Logger then?”

They chatted, stopping long enough to order lunch. Kip recommended the turkey potpie, made with bacon and turnips.

Qwilleran said he’d stick to his favorite Reuben sandwich.

“Are you going to write another book, Qwill?”

“Well, off the record, I’m writing The Private Life of the Cat Who . . . Just a series of sketches of my experiences with two Siamese. Don’t tell Polly. She’d think it too frivolous. She wants me to write a literary masterpiece that will win the Pulitzer Prize. How is Moira? We should all have dinner at the Mackintosh Inn sometime.”

“Good idea! Did you know that Moira is breeding marmalade cats? She wants to know if you’re going to have a bookstore cat. If so, she’d like to present you with a pedigreed marmalade.”

Qwilleran hesitated. He had known some scruffy, overweight orange cats in his time, and he said warily, “That’s a decision for Polly to make. It’s a good thought, though; books and cats go together.”

“I’ll tell Moira to phone Polly. I know it’s a little premature, since you’ve only just dug the hole for the building. But Moira has a handsome devil in the cattery, a few months old, and she would save him for you if Polly’s interested. She said he’s a people cat, born to win friends and influence customers. When do you expect the store to open?”

“Before snow flies.”

“Meanwhile, have you opened your log cabin yet?”

“I’ve alerted the janitorial service to get it ready for summer.”

“I hear there was a murder in the woods near your place. Are you ready with an alibi?”

They rambled on, and the banter reminded Qwilleran of lunches at the Press Club Down Below, when he was an underpaid hack working for the Daily Fluxion. “Let’s do this again, Kip,” he said when they parted.

“And let’s not wait so long next time!”

Only when Qwilleran was driving back to Pickax did he realize he had forgotten to ask about the land-fraud scandal in Lockmaster—and an orphaned daughter who had changed her name and moved to Moose County.

At the barn the Siamese were waiting expectantly, as if they knew he was bringing some tasty fragments of Reuben sandwich. Then he locked himself in his writing studio on the first balcony with a thermal coffee decanter, there to write a “Qwill Pen” column for the following week. It would be about June.

He made notes:

June is bustin’ out all over. (Show)

What is so rare as a day in June? (Poem)

A four-letter word, but a polite one.

The month of weddings, graduations, and the second income-tax estimate.

His note-taking was interrupted by a phone call from Polly, in high spirits.

“Qwill, dear! You’ll never guess what happened today.”

“How many guesses—” he began but was interrupted. He had never known Polly to be so voluble.

“Moira MacDiarmid phoned to offer the bookstore a marmalade cat for a mascot! One with a real Scottish heritage! A genuine people cat! Just what we’ll need to welcome customers and make them feel at home!”

“Male or female?” he questioned with the fact-finding instincts of a newsman.

“A little boy. Breeders call their kittens little boys and little girls, you know. He’s several months old and will be a yearling when the store is ready to open.”