Miniver

Kelly Litton crinkled her nose and wiped the dust off the window pane. She was on tip-toes trying to see daddy returning in the farm truck.

Daddy had promised her a kitten since that day last summer when he’d come in from the barn, carrying a milk crate full of tiny squirming fluffballs. They had felt funny on her fingers. They smelled like sawdust and licked her face. But daddy said he had to drown them.

When she turned six she kept on at him pleasepleaseplease, because she was old enough now. He’d told her if she’d shut up she might get one. Hope kindled.

Today he said he’d found one. Daddy put a pet carrier on the table and unlatched it. “Here y’are, just like you wanted,” he told her.

Kelly’s heart sank. An adult tabby glowered from the cage. Its orange eyes burned like a forest fire. It craned forward, sniffing the table. Ears nicked. Forelegs shaved. Skin latticed with scars. Its dull fur hung like tent canvas.

“They found her in a house down the way, so she’s house-trained. Less work for mama and me, y’understand? She’s yours now.”

“She’s beautiful,” Kelly lied. She didn’t want to anger her father.

The cat edged forward until its bony haunches filled the cage door, then it leapt off the table and vanished into the laundry room.

Kelly named the cat Miniver after a movie poster in her parents’ toilet. She spent her days on the laundry floor crumbling Dreamies with tinned tuna to lure Miniver out from behind the washing machine.

She stole one of her mother’s makeup compacts and lodged it in the corner, braving yowls and lashing claws, so she could see the cat’s face in the small mirror. Miniver just backed deeper into her bolthole, her glower darkening.

At night Kelly lay in bed imagining the cat running with her in the fields, or sitting rapt while she read mama’s magazines to her. But every morning Kelly woke to find the food eaten and the cat crammed back into its dark home, still brooding and wary of all humans.

The kids at school were disinterested in the grainy photos she showed them of her new cat. As the weeks passed Kelly’s enthusiasm for Miniver waned, until one afternoon she got home to find her mother holding an empty tuna tin.

“I found this under the washing machine! Ants everywhere,” she said, slamming the tin on the table. “Crawling with them! We had to pull out the washer, brush it out and spray it clean. You have no idea how hard it is to shift ants once they get in!” She shook her head furiously at Kelly.

“Where’s Miniver?” asked Kelly.

“She ran.”

“Ran where?” Kelly stammered.

“Outside, of course! Chrissakes, she’s your cat. You’re in charge of her!”

Kelly dropped her school bags and ran into the fields, calling for Miniver until the sun was long gone, knowing that the cat had never come to her when she’d called its name before, and it had no reason to now.

*

Miniver was called Cymbeline before. She had belonged to an elderly widow who lived in a two-storey house on the edge of town. There was a garden where Cymbeline hunted birds and brought them inside where they would flutter around the bookshelves. The old lady chastised Cymbeline for these presents, but she never punished her loyal cat. She never let Cymbeline’s bowl get empty and she always let her curl up on her lap in the evenings and snuggle next to her in bed all night.

Miniver remembered the day everything changed. The bowl was empty when she’d got back from gallivanting in the rail yards. The bowl had been empty that morning and it was still empty when she returned. She was perplexed. She sniffed around and picked up a different scent. Something was wrong.

Cymbeline pushed against the kitchen door which yielded enough for her to squeeze past it into her owner’s domain. She yelled. She did not receive any answer. Usually her owner would appear and coo at her and scritch her chin and Cymbeline would rub her flank on her. But today no one appeared. She padded through each room chirruping anxiously and then turned up the stairs.

In the bedroom she found her owner horizontal, motionless, cold. It didn’t smell like it usually did and didn’t respond when she bayed at it.

She slunk low up the side of the body, her tail hairs erect. This felt wrong, taboo. Her owner’s mouth hung agape. The air wasn’t moving. The damp hole smelled earthy like a worm pit.

Cymbeline let out a tremulous cry, only unsettling herself further. She didn’t understand but her instincts told her that things would never be the same. What could she do without her owner? Who else was there for her every day? Who would respond to her cries? What good, then, was crying anymore?

*

Kelly felt numb. She wanted to cry, but there didn’t seem any point. No one would come. She was filled with futility over Miniver’s escape, and rage at her mother’s callousness, and guilt over her own failure to win the cat’s affection. But mostly she felt alone.

She held the packet of Dreamies in her hand, crinkling it. Then she heard a mew from the window, something scraping against the glass. Kelly pulled open the curtains. Moonlight threw Miniver’s shadow across the floor. Her meow was muffled by the corpse of a rat in her jaws. Kelly had seen rats all over the farm, in all states of being, so this didn’t bother her. She opened the window and Miniver dropped onto the floor and gently laid the rat at Kelly’s feet then backed away. She yelled at Kelly, demanding something. Kelly crouched and moved to touch the rat, but the cat squared off and hissed at her. Kelly understood: this wasn’t a gift, it was a demonstration.

She looked at Miniver. The cat met her stare. Kelly slowly reached out to the cat and the cat leaned towards her fingers. Miniver’s gaze never left Kelly’s face, while she sniffed along her fingertips. Then, as easily as opening a door, everything changed. The cat pushed her cheek against Kelly’s hand then padded up beside her and flopped against her ankle, baring her belly in the cold light. Kelly let her hand sink into the patchy fluff and Miniver closed her eyes and purred.

Miniver proved loyal and protective of Kelly. The cat didn’t tolerate her parents’ capriciousness and seemed to sense Kelly’s hatred of them. She would hiss at mama if she came near, and she’d stand growling at her father when he was in one of his moods. (He’d just laugh and kick the cat aside.)

Every afternoon Kelly would glow with pride as she got off the school bus to be greeted by Miniver at the gate, knowing everyone on the bus was watching her walk home with her friend by her side.

Miniver went out every night. Kelly glimpsed her darting between the coops, chasing fieldmice and leaping for bats as they swooped from the eaves. By morning the cat would be sprawled on the bed, straw in her whiskers, sometimes blood on her jowls. Sometimes she woke Kelly by sniffing around her mouth, checking she was alive.

Kelly felt loved.

*

Cymbeline was near death when she heard the front door unlock. A man’s voice called out and another followed. She tried to raise herself, but she was exhausted from hunger. She’d been trapped up here since the kitchen door shut behind her all those weeks ago.

The strangers continued downstairs. She lifted herself off her owner’s body. Her hind legs trailed behind her as she pulled herself to the edge of the bed. She stretched her front paws down in an effort to reach the floor, but she couldn’t reach and she couldn’t hold her own weight, so her body fell to the carpet with a thump. The voices downstairs paused. Then they started in her direction, up the stairs.

She panicked. She knew she had to hide, but she couldn’t even raise herself and there was nowhere to go anyway. The voices drew close and the door started to open. She hissed with all her strength as their flashlight dazzled her. Her weeping encrusted eyes glistened in the beam.

The strangers, two of them, entered the room, and they both reflexively covered their noses with gloved hands. The first one leaned down and put a plastic cage on the floor. The other shook his head at the body on the bed, and the first man nodded. Cymbeline saw the hallway, saw her chance to escape, but she didn’t have it in her. The first man grabbed Cymbeline by the scruff and packed her in the cage.

She had no energy to fight, and as they carried her out she could just barely rouse herself for a final glance back at her owner’s gnawed cheeks and missing nose.

*

One afternoon both her parents were waiting at the gate of the Litton’s farm. But Miniver wasn’t. Her father took Kelly by the neck and guided her to the barn.

Hidden behind a stack of tyres was a circular nest lined with feathers, tails, claws, entrails, a rotting melange of animal parts, rats, mice, frogs, grouse... But it was the chickens that her father was angry about.

“You know anything about this?” he said, his voice barely below a shout.

Kelly counted the chicken heads, eyeless, necks ragged. Maybe a dozen.

“Foxes ain’t so dumb to leave evidence like this. It’s your damn cat, killing my chickens. Ain’t you feeding it?” Kelly stayed silent. “Well, you can forget about getting that new bicycle. That won’t begin to cover it.”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” Kelly wept. “I didn’t know.”

“Goddamn, if you can’t take care of things, you don’t deserve ‘em. Take some responsibility, girl.” He dropped a shovel at her feet. “Pick up all this shit and put it in the burn barrel, and don’t leave none that’ll attract rats.”

He stormed out leaving Kelly wondering: where is she?

In the small hours that night, Miniver appeared at Kelly’s bedroom window with a chicken in her maw, one wing flapping. Kelly opened the window and Miniver let her scoop the chicken into her arms.

“Min, you can’t bring that in here!” she whispered. “If my parents see you...”

The cat didn’t understand. Kelly put on her robe. She opened the door to the landing, muffling the chicken’s clucking as she tip-toed downstairs.

She skipped across the moonlit yard, knowing her father would be up any minute. Miniver cantered after her.

Round the back of the barn the burn barrel was still full. Her father hadn’t lit it yet. Kelly dropped the chicken on the ground, and it flapped its broken wing in circles. Miniver watched as Kelly picked up a shovel. With one hand she hefted the metal blade into the air and brought its edge down on the chicken’s neck.

She picked up its silent, gulping head and explained to Miniver: “I have to be responsible, I can’t leave mess for daddy and mama.”

Miniver sniffed at the head, but she was more interested in the chicken’s thrashing body jerking its way into the short grass. The cat pounced, closing her teeth around its squirting neck. She spread the bird’s one good wing out with her paws and tore through its tendons until the floundering stopped. Kelly watched, fascinated.

*

Her father reached for his bedside alarm. But it hadn’t gone off yet. He sat up, confused. Out the window he saw flames: a thin column licking the sky above the barn. The burn barrel. That damn girl.

He grabbed his robe and went down the hall to find her bedroom was empty. He went downstairs, grabbed the cloth off the kitchen table, and drenched it under the faucet. From the kitchen window he could see the fire getting taller, now licking higher than the barn.

He ran out, the flyscreen crashing against the wall. He rounded the barn and saw flames four times the height of the barrel. Kelly still had the lighter fluid in her hand. He yanked her away from the blaze and shook her.

“The hell’re you thinking?”

“I think I put too much,” Kelly whispered.

“Stand back, goddamnit.”

He edged towards the barrel, holding the wet tablecloth like a matador. He looked over the rim and saw amongst the corpses was the body of a cat, its head severed.

“I took responsibility, daddy. It won’t happen again.”