The Eye of Ra

Her mother insisted on calling the cat Dash. The girl agreed because Mum seemed so pleased with herself for having decided on it, but it didn’t suit him.

His real name was Peter.

It was her secret.

She sat crossed-legged on the cracking linoleum by the scuffed wooden kitchen door, gazing at the pale blue saucer she’d placed in front of the home-made cat flap. It had taken many minutes of careful searching before she’d discovered it, dusty and discarded, in a corner of the grimy cupboard with the old pots and pans.

She watched the creamy milk shiver in anticipation of that perfect pink tongue.

But Peter didn’t come.

She thought about her first day with Peter.

Roger standing in her room on that rainy morning the spring before last. Grasping a tiny scrap of black squirming fluff between two large thick hands with square finger nails. She hadn’t heard him come in – although perhaps some corner of her consciousness had registered the familiar creek of the second floorboard from the door.

Roger hunkering down, reaching out to her with expectant eyes she didn’t meet. Offering the little creature with one hand, pushing the door to with the other. The door swinging part open again, as ever, in an act of futile defiance.

The scrap of dusky fluff making a scrabbling, scratching bid for freedom, then skidding, terrified, under her bed. Roger’s brief yelp of anger. Roger’s fat lips sucking droplets of blood from a hairy knuckle.

He insisted on her calling him Dad. The girl agreed because he seemed so pleased with himself for having decided on it, but it didn’t suit him.

His real name was Roger.

It was her secret.

She’d waited for ages on that first day by her bed, watching the pale blue saucer of milk, placed there to entice the kitten from the succour of his dark under-bed womb.

She remembered the milk starting to quiver excitedly in tiny ripples. Her ears picking out layers of sound one by one - first the distant guitar rhythms, then the syncopated drumbeat and finally the squealing brass cacophony as a freight train rumbled by. The milk sloshing about as the walls shimmied. The kitten springing up in alarm, emitting a thin squeal as it crashed against metal springs on the underside of the bed then lunged into the furthest corner by the wall.

The room settling back into a watchful silence.

Lifting the corner of the pale pink candlewick bed cover and coming face to face with a pair of terrified glinting kitten-eyes. ‘Hello Peter,’ she’d said without speaking. Then softly moving back to give him space, leaving the threadbare cover folded back so the timid creature could see the impatient saucer of milk.

Eventually hunger and thirst had won out.

The perfect pink tongue lapping at the milk tentatively and then eagerly. And afterwards the tiny milky mouth suckling contentedly on her finger.

***

Peter grew up lithe and supple and he could run like the wind.

Peter was in a book when wasn’t being a cat. In the book he was a boy. The others made fun of him because he couldn’t play cricket, the bat too unwieldy for his thin arms. Someone said they should use his spindly legs for cricket stumps.

But Peter could run like the wind and she followed him through the book almost tripping as the dog-eared pages flipped over, trying to keep up, past illustrations of hedgerows and brick walls and rich ivy-covered houses, until she stopped to watch, heart pounding as he climbed a knarled old oak tree in easy graceful movements. Light and agile, lithe and supple.

Peter was her friend.

And she loved him.

It was her secret.

***

Now Peter was gone.

She’d seen Roger in the morning through the part-open bedroom door. He was naked, flesh wobbling, carrying Peter in his thick hands with the square finger nails and hairy knuckles, from the downstairs bedroom where he made Mum moan.

She felt sick.

She watched him in a practised silence that was really a scream, as he tossed the sleek black cat roughly through the doorway, into the monochrome January morning.

Peter light and agile, lithe and supple.

Running like the wind.

***

Peter was gone.

The pale blue saucer of milk waited in silence.

A flashback to the day almost two years ago when Annie’s dad found Eve’s tabby on the railway track.

And behind the wide-eyed Annie, Billy James - a huge Bazooka Joe bubble bursting over his face with a splattering pink pop.

***

Gran arrived in the short January afternoon, well-dressed, wanting to speak to Mum in a hurry. “I’m just on my way to Mary Markey’s funeral”, Gran said in an aside, as if Mary herself had arranged the occasion - and the catering - on a whim.

Gran gazed briefly at the silent child by the kitchen door with a kindly yet important look, somewhere just closer to comfort than blame, as she ushered Mum into the living room.

Then the girl heard both women crying.

Peter didn’t come.

The girl prayed that night by her bed with the pink candlewick cover, in her little room with the door that didn’t quite close, in the house where no-one ever listened or heard.

She dreamed of Peter, lithe and supple running like the wind chasing a field mouse onto the railway track. The rumbling screeching freight train was coming, guitar riffs, timpani and squealing saxophones. The grinding of metal on metal, and metal on bone and fur and soft little bellies that liked to be tickled.

The girl raced after Peter in her dream, wedging her childish body between him and the train, stumbling over the wooden sleepers, feeling the train’s hot, heavy breath on her neck, smelling it’s stench, its iron grip, its hardness demanding young flesh.

Killer of cats, despoiler of girls.

It was her secret.

But that night of nights, the great sun god Ra heard her prayers and summoned his daughter Bast, goddess of the home and the domestic cat, even though the girl had never heard of them.

Peter Skimbleshanks with spindly cricket stump legs. Skimbleshanks the railway cat with an agile leap bounding away from the track, running like the wind, past hedgerows and brick walls and rich ivy-covered houses, and she followed him, heart pounding, as they climbed a knarled old oak tree together in easy graceful movements.

Light and agile, lithe and supple.

The girl woke in a sweat.

The watery winter Sun seeping through the thin off-white curtains bleeding into the room, drenching her bed.

The eye of Ra.

She heard voices.

Loud.

Coming from outside.

The girl leapt the short distance from bed to window.

Men in uniform were hauling something on a stretcher from the rail track. It was covered by a sheet.

She felt sick.

All hope gone.

She tried to look away but her eyes disobeyed, transfixed.

The covered shape was small and narrow.

She hadn’t yet noticed the men behind carrying two more stretchers, with different shapes, different sizes.

Something slipped reluctantly from under the soiled sheet.

A familiar thick hand on the end of part of an arm.

The square finger nails and hairy knuckles stained with blood, the fat lips to suck the droplets - elsewhere.

The girl sat back on the bed with a thud, her thoughts colourless.

A commotion at the front door. A moaning followed by a sudden scream.

A white noise of sounds and voices. Words that failed to penetrate - until a couple popped out from a round wet mouth in the gloomy hall below and floated in gossamer spittle-spheres up the shabby staircase. They hung for a second or two, gloriously iridescent in the narrow shaft of winter sunlight that pierced the dusty air outside the part-open bedroom door, before bursting almost simultaneously into soft misty whisper.

Guilt

Suicide

The girl picked at tiny tufts of cloth on the worn pink candlewick bed cover, and thought she could taste Bazooka Joe bubble gum.

Then a soft brushing sound against the door that didn’t quite close.

A pitter-patter on the wooden floor of her bedroom.

The sleek black creature leapt silently on to her lap, light and lithe, neatly cleaning his face with his perfect pink tongue. He curled in a ball on her lap and in an ancient kitten-memory of mutual comfort suckled milkily at her knuckle.

The girl insisted on calling him Peter. The cat agreed because she seemed so pleased with herself for having decided on it, but it didn’t suit him.

It wasn’t his real name.

That was his secret.

The End

Louise Angus October 2011
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Cats have been kept by humans since ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, the cat god, Bast, was a goddess of the home and of the domestic cat, though she sometimes took on the war-like aspect of a lioness. She was the daughter of the sun god Ra. Bast was also associated with the "eye of Ra," acting as the instrument of the sun god's vengeance.

Skimbleshanks Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats , T.S. Eliot