The White Cat by E Nesbit

Books at bedtime by Calming Anxiety, the white cat by E. Nesbit.

The white cat lived at the back of a shelf at the darkest end of the inside attic, which was nearly dark all over. It had lived there for years because one of its white china ears was chipped so that it was no longer a possible ornament for the spare bedroom. Tavvy found it at the climax of a wicked and glorious afternoon. He had been left alone.

The servants were there with the only people out in the house. He had promised to be good. He had meant to be good, and he had not been. He had done everything you can think of.

He had walked into the duck pond, and not a stitch of his clothes, but had had to be changed. He had climbed on a hay-ric and fallen off it, and had not broken his neck, which as cook told him he would be richly deserved to do. He had found a mouse in the trap and put it in the kitchen teapot so that when cook went to make tea, it jumped out at her, and affected her to screams which were followed by tears. Tavvy was sorry for this, of course, and said so like a man.

He had only, well he explained, meant to give her a little start. In the confusion that followed the mouse, he had eaten all the black current jam that was put out for the kitchen tea, and for this too, he apologized handsomely as soon as it was pointed out to him. He had broken a pain of the greenhouse with a stone and, well, why pursue the painful theme? The last thing he had done was to explore the attic where he was never allowed to go, and to knock down the white cat from its shelf.

The sound of its form brought the servants. The cat was not broken, only its other ear was chipped. Tavvy was put to bed, but when he got out as soon as the servants had gone downstairs, he crept back up to the attic, secured the cat, and washed it in the bath. So that when mother came back from London, Tavvy, dancing impatiently at the head of the stairs in a very wet night-gown, flung himself upon her and cried, "I've been awfully naughty, and I'm frightfully sorry, and please may I have the white cat for my very own?"

He was much sorry that he had expected to be, when when he saw that his mother was too tired even to want to know as she generally did, exactly how naughty he had been. She only kissed him and said, "I'm sorry you've been naughty, my darling. Go back to bed now. Good night."

Tavvy was ashamed to say, and I think more about the China cat. So he went back to bed, but he took the cat with him and talked to it and kissed it and went to sleep with its smooth, shiny shoulder against his cheek. In the days that followed, he was extravagantly good, being good seemed as easy as being bad usually was. This may have been because mother seemed so tired in ill and gentlemen and black coats and high hats came to see mother and after they had gone, she used to cry.

These things going on in the house sometimes make people good, sometimes they just act the other way. Or it may have been because he had the China cat to talk to, however, whichever way it was at the end of the week, mother said. "Tavvy, you've been a dear good boy and a great comfort for me. You must have tried very hard to be good."

It was difficult to say, "No, I haven't, at least not since the first day." But Tavvy got it and said and was hugged for his pains. He wanted said mother, "The China cat? Well you may have it.

For my very own, for your very own, but you must be very careful not to break it and you mustn't give it away. It goes with the house. Your aunt Jane made me promise to keep it in the family. It's very, very old.

Now don't take it out of the doors for fear of accidents. I love the white cat, mother," said Tavvy. "I love it better than all my toys." Then mother told Tavvy several things.

And that night when he went to bed, Tavvy repeated them all faithfully to the China cat. It was about six inches high and looked very intelligent. So you see, he ended. The wicked lawyers taken nearly all mother's money and we've got to leave our own lovely big white house and go and live in a horrid little house with another house glued on its side.

A mother does hate it so. "I don't wonder," said the China cat very distinctly. "What?" said Tavvy, halfway into his night shirt. "I said, I don't wonder Octavius," said the China cat and Rose from her sitting position, stretched out her China legs and waved her white China tail.

"You can speak," said Tavvy. "Can't you see I can? Here I mean," said the cat. "I belong to you now so I can speak to you.

I couldn't before. It wouldn't have been manners." Tavvy, his night shirt round his neck, sat down on the edge of the bed with his mouth open. "Come, don't look so silly," said the cat, taking a walk along the high wooden mantle piece.

Anyone would think that you didn't like me to talk to you. "I love you too," said Tavvy, recovering himself a little. "Well then," said the cat. "May I touch you?"

Tavvy asked timidly. "Of course. I belong to you. Look out," the China cat gathered herself together in jump.

Tavvy caught her. It was quite a shock to find when one stroked her that the China cat, though alive, was still China. Hard, cold and smoothed the touch, and yet perfectly brisk and absolutely bendable as any flesh and blood cat. "Dear, dear white pussy," said Tavvy, "I do love you."

And I love you, heard the cat. Otherwise I should never have lowered myself to begin a conversation. "I wish you were a real cat," said Tavvy. "I am," said the cat.

"Now, how shall we amuse ourselves?" "I suppose you don't care for sport, now seem, I mean?" "Well, I've never tried," said Tavvy, and I think I rather wouldn't." "Well then," Octavius said the cat.

"I'll take you to the white cat's castle," get into bed. Bed makes a good traveling carriage, especially when you haven't any other. Shut your eyes. Tavvy did as he was told.

He shut his eyes, but could not keep them shut. He opened them a tiny, tiny chink and sprang up. He was not in bed. He was on a couch, the soft beasts skinned, and the couch stood in a splendid hall whose walls were of gold in ivory.

By him stood the white cat, no longer China, but real, live cat, and fur as cat should be.

"Here we are," she said. The journey didn't take long, did it? Now we'll have the splendid supper out of the fairy tale, with the invisible hands waiting on us. She clapped her paws, paws now as soft as white velvet, and a tablecloth floated into the room.

Their knives and forks and spoons and glasses, the table was laid, the dishes drifted in, and they began to eat. That happened to be every single thing. Tavvy liked best to eat. After supper, there was music and singing, and Tavvy, having kissed a white soft furry forehead, went to bed in a gold foreposter with a counter-pain of butterfly wings.

He awoke at home. On the mantelpiece, sat the white cat, looking as though butter would not melt. And her mouth, and all the furriness had gone with her voice. She was silent, and China.

Tavvy spoke to her, but she would not answer. She did not speak all day. Only at night, when he was getting into bed, she suddenly mured, stretched, and said, "Make haste. There's a play acted to night at my castle."

Tavvy made haste, and was rewarded by another glorious evening in the castle of the white cat. And so the weeks went on. Days full of an ordinary little boy's joys and sorrows, goodnesses and badnesses. The night spent by a little prince in the magic castle of the white cat.

Then came the day, when Tavvy's mother spoke to him, and he, very scared and serious, told the China cat what she had said. "I knew this would happen," said the cat. "It always does, so you're to leave your house next week." "Well, there's only one way out of the difficulty."

"Draw the sword, Tavvy, and cut off my head and tail." "And then, will you turn into a princess, and shall I have to marry you?" Tavvy asked with horror. "No, dear no," said the cat reassuringly.

"I shan't turn into anything, but your mother will turn into a happy person. I shall just not be any more for you." "Then I won't do it," said Tavvy. "But you must come, draw your sword like a brave fairy prince and cut off my head."

The sword swung above his bed. With the helmet and the brass plate, Uncle James had given him last Christmas. "I am not a fairy prince," said the child. "I am Tavvy, and I love you.

You love your mother better," said the cat. "Come, cut my head off, the story always ends like that. You love mother best. It's for her sake."

"Yes," Tavvy was trying to think it out. "Yes, I love mother best, but I love you." "And I won't cut off your head, no, not even for mother." "Then," said the cat.

"I must do what I can." She stood up, waving her white china tail, and before Tavvy could stop her, she had leapt, not as before into his arms, but onto the wide hearthstone. It was all over. The china cat lay broken.

Inside the high brass bender, the sound of the smash brought mother running. What is it she cried? "O Tavvy, the china cat. She wouldn't do it, sob Tavvy.

She wanted me to cut off her head, and I wouldn't." "Don't talk nonsense, dear," said mother sadly. "That only makes it worse. Pick up the pieces."

"There only two pieces," said Tavvy. "Couldn't you stick them together again?" "Why," said mother, holding the pieces close to the candle. "She's been broken before, amended."

"I knew that," said Tavvy, still sobbing, "oh my dear white cat, the last 'o' was a 'howl of anguish." "Come, crying won't mend us," said mother. "Look, there's another piece." "There's another piece of her close to the shovel."

Tavvy stooped. "That's not a piece of cat," he said, and picked it up. It was a pale parchment label tied to a key. Mother held it to the candle and read.

Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece panel in the white parlour. "Tavvy, I wonder but where did it come from?" "Out of my white cat," I suppose, said Tavvy, his tears stopping. "Are you going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother?

Are you? Oh, do let me come and see too." "You don't deserve, mother began and ended well." "Put your dressing gown on then."

They went down the gallery, passed the pictures and the stuffed birds and the tables with a china run and downstairs onto the white parlour. But they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel because it was all painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it and found a raised spot. It was a knot sure enough.

Then she scraped around with her scissors till she loosened the knot and poked it out with a scissors point. "I don't suppose there's any keyhole there, really," she said. But there was. And what is more, the key fitted?

The panel swung open and inside was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver. There was money and there was dusty old papers that tabby thought most uninteresting.

But mother did not think the money interesting. She laughed and cried and nearly cried and said, "O tabby, this was why the china cat was to be taken care of." She then told him how, 150 years before, the head of the house had gone out to fight for the pretender and had told his daughter to take the greatest care of the china cat. "I will send you word of the reason by hand for sure," he said.

"For they parted on the open square where any spy might have overheard anything." And he had been killed by an ambush, not ten miles from home. And his daughter had never known. But she had kept the cat.

"And now it is saved us," said mother. "We can stay in the dear old house and there are two other houses that will belong with us too. I think, 'O tabby, would you like some pound cake and ginger wine, dear?' Tabby did like and had it."

The china cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner cupboard in the drawing room because it had saved the house. "Now, ideas say you'll think that this is all nonsense and a made up story, not at all. If it were, how would you account for tabby's findings the very next night, faster sleep on his pillow, his own white cat? The furry friend that the china cat used to turn into every evening, the dear hostess who had amused him so well in the white cat's fairy palace, it was she beyond the doubt.

And that was why tabby didn't mind a bit about the china cat being taken from him and kept under glass. Although you may think that it was just any old stray cat that was white that had come in by accident, tabby knows better. It has the very same tender tone in its purr that the magic white cat had. It will not talk to tabby, it is true, but tabby can and does talk to it.

The thing that makes it perfectly certain that it is the white cat is that the tips of its two years are missing, just as the china cats here were. If you say that it might have lost its ear tips and battles, you are the kind of person who always makes difficulties. And you may be quite sure that the kind of splendid magic that happened to tabby will never happen to you.