One afternoon when Tibble was climbing the stairs to his attic, he heard a furious screeching coming from his flat; it sounded like two cats fighting.
He raced up the rest of the staircase three steps at a time and stormed into his living room.
He had a visitor. But it wasn’t exactly a tea party.
Crouched on the floor was the little girl, Bibi. Minou was across from her, also on the floor. There was an empty box next to them and they both had a hand on something. They were yelling at each other at the top of their lungs.
“What is it? What have you got there?” Tibble cried.
“Let go!” Bibi screamed.
“What’s under your hands?” Tibble asked again. “Miss Minou! Will you please let go immediately!”
Minou looked up at him with an expression that was more cattish than ever.
There was a vicious, murderous glint in her eyes and she refused to let go. She closed the hand with the small, sharp nails even tighter around whatever it was she was holding.
“Let go, I said!” Tibble smacked her hand, hard. She slid back and hissed furiously, but she did let go. In almost the same instant, though, she lashed out, clawing him painfully on the nose.
And now Tibble saw what it was: a white mouse. Still unharmed.
Gently Bibi picked up the mouse and put it back in its box, but she was crying from fright and indignation.
“It’s my mouse,” she sobbed. “I only got it out to show her and then she jumped on it. I’m leaving. And I’m never coming back.”
“Wait, Bibi, please,” Tibble said. “Don’t rush off. Listen. This is Miss Minou. She’s, um… she’s…” He thought for a moment. “She’s my secretary and she doesn’t mean any harm. Not at all. In fact, she really loves mice.”
Minou was on her feet now and staring down at the closed box. You could tell she loved mice, but not the way Tibble meant.
“Isn’t that right, Miss Minou?” Tibble asked. “You didn’t want to hurt the poor mouse, did you?”
Minou leant over to rub her head against his shoulder, but he took a step to one side.
“What else have you got there, Bibi?” Tibble asked, pointing at a large collecting tin.
“I’m going round with the tin,” Bibi said. “Collecting money. It’s for the present. The present for Mr Smith’s anniversary. And you’ve got blood on your nose.”
Tibble wiped his nose with his hand. There was blood all over it.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll put some money in your tin.”
“And I’ve come to show you my drawing,” Bibi said. She unrolled a big sheet of paper and Tibble and Minou shouted out together, “That’s the Tatter Cat! It looks just like her.”
“It’s for the drawing competition at school,” Bibi said. “I just came by to show you.”
“It’s beautiful,” Tibble said and felt yet another drop of blood running down his face.
“If I go and look for a plaster in the bathroom,” he said gruffly, “I hope that you, Miss Minou, will be able to control yourself for a moment.” He put the mouse box on his desk, gave Minou a menacing look and backed out of the room.
I’ve got a secretary, he thought. That sounds excellent, very posh. But she happens to be a secretary who wouldn’t hesitate to gobble up a little girl’s white mouse if she got a chance.
He hurried back into the living room with a crooked plaster on his nose and was surprised to discover that Minou and Bibi had become great friends in the meantime. The mouse box was still safe on his desk.
“Can I see the attic?” Bibi asked. “The whole attic?”
“Sure,” Tibble said. “Look around. I’ve actually got two ca—I mean… I have a cat too. As well as a secretary. Um… he’s called Fluff, but he’s out on the roof. Miss Minou, would you show Bibi the rest of the attic? Then I’ll get to work.”
Sitting at his desk, he heard the two of them whispering in the junk room behind the partition. He was very glad that Minou had found a friend and when Bibi finally left he said, “Drop in again, if you like.”
“That’d be fun,” Bibi said.
“Don’t forget your tin. I put something in it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bibi said.
“And don’t forget your drawing either.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And don’t forget your box with the, um… you-know-what in it.” He was too scared to say the word “mouse” in front of his secretary.
“Oh, yeah.”
“And I hope you win first prize!” Tibble called after her.
Downstairs, in the house the attic belonged to, lived Mrs Van Dam.
Fortunately Tibble had his own front door and his own staircase, so he didn’t have to go through her house to come in or go out.
That afternoon, Mrs Van Dam said to her husband: “Put that newspaper down for a second. I need to talk to you.”
“What about?” her husband asked.
“About that upstairs neighbour of ours.”
“Oh, you mean that young fellow? Tibble? What about him?”
“I don’t think he’s alone up there.”
“What do you mean ‘he’s not alone’?”
“I think he has a woman living with him.”
“Oh,” said Mr Van Dam, “that must be nice for him.” And he picked his newspaper up again.
“Yes, but I think it’s a very strange young woman,” his wife said again.
“Either way, it’s none of our business,” he said.
It was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “She spends all her time up on the roof.”
“Who?”
“The woman upstairs. At night time she goes out on the roof.”
“How do you know?” Mr Van Dam asked. “Do you go up on the roof at night to have a look?”
“No, but the lady across the road looks out of her attic window sometimes and she always sees her sitting there. With cats on both sides of her.”
“You know I don’t like gossip,” Mr Van Dam said irritably. He carried on reading while his wife went to the front door, because someone had rung the doorbell.
It was Bibi with her collecting tin.
“Would you like to make a donation for Mr Smith’s present?” she asked.
“I’d love to,” said Mrs Van Dam. “Come in and sit down for a moment.”
Bibi sat on a chair with her legs dangling and the tin on her knee, the drawing under one arm and the mouse box next to her.
“Tell us, have you been upstairs yet? To the attic flat?” Mrs Van Dam asked casually.
“Yes,” Bibi said. “To Mr Tibble and Miss Minou’s.”
“Miss Minou?” Mrs Van Dam asked sweetly, putting a coin in the tin. “Who’s that?”
“His secretary.”
“She sleeps in a box,” said Bibi.
Now Mr Van Dam looked up over his reading glasses. “In a box?”
“Yes, in a big cardboard box. She just fits. Curled up. And she always goes out through the window, onto the roof. And she talks to cats.”
“Oh,” said Mr Van Dam.
“She can talk to all the cats,” Bibi explained, “because she used to be one herself.”
“Who says so?”
“She does. And now I have to go.”
“Don’t forget your tin,” said Mrs Van Dam. “And here, don’t forget this roll of paper. And your box.”
Once Bibi was gone, she said, “There. What did I tell you? Do we have a strange woman living upstairs or don’t we?”
“She does sound a little odd,” said Mr Van Dam. “But I still think it’s no concern of ours.”
“Listen,” she said. “When it comes down to it, it’s our attic. Tibble rents the attic from us. And I have a right to know what’s going on under my roof.”
“What are you doing?” her husband asked.
“I’m going up there.”
“Just like that? What are you going to say?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”
Even though it was a warm spring day and she only had to take two steps out on the street, Mrs Van Dam put on her fur coat.
She was going to ring the doorbell, but Bibi had left the front door open, so it wasn’t necessary and she went straight up the stairs. It was a tall, steep staircase and she was puffing in her thick fur coat.
“Hello, Mrs Van Dam,” said Tibble.
“Hello, Mr Tibble. Sorry for barging in on you like this…”
“No problem at all, come in. Can I take your coat?”
“No, no. I’m not staying,” Mrs Van Dam said as she stepped into the living room.
There was no one there except Tibble.
“Haven’t you made it lovely,” she said, looking around everywhere. “And what a cute little kitchen… and that gorgeous view out over the roofs.”
“Shall I make some tea?”
“No, thank you. I was really only popping in. I just wanted to tell you that I always read your articles in the paper. Lovely articles… and this must be the storage space… you don’t mind me having a look, do you?”
“There’s only junk in there,” Tibble said. “Old chairs and boxes. Things like that.”
But she slipped past him, chattering cheerfully.
“Oh, I always love poking around in places like this!” she said. “Old corners of old attics.”
Tibble tagged along helplessly behind her. Now she’d reached the big cardboard box and was bending over it. The movement made the floor creak under her weight.
Minou woke up. She opened one eye. Then she leapt up out of the box with a shriek.
Mrs Van Dam recoiled in fright. Furious cat eyes glared at her. A hand with sharp pink nails moved towards her and the creature hissed.
“Sorry…” Mrs Van Dam spluttered, backing up quickly. She turned to flee, but Tibble stopped her with a friendly gesture. “May I introduce you to my secretary, Miss Minou… and this is my downstairs neighbour, Mrs Van Dam.”
Mrs Van Dam turned back nervously. The strange creature was just an ordinary young woman with a polite smile.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Mrs Van Dam.
“Won’t you sit down for a moment?”
“No, no. I really must be going. It was lovely of you to show me round your flat.”
She peered at the plaster on Tibble’s nose for a moment and then said, “Bye.”
After she’d left, Tibble let out a deep sigh and said, “This attic is hers. She’s my landlady.”
“How horrible!” Minou said.
“No, it’s all right. What’s horrible about it? I just pay the rent. And otherwise we don’t have anything to do with her.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Minou said. “I mean, how horrible… there must have been at least twenty.”
“Twenty? Twenty what?”
“Cats.”
“Twenty cats? Where?”
“In that coat…” Minou said with a shudder. “That fur coat. I was lying there asleep in my box and suddenly I wake up with a start and there’s twenty dead cats standing in front of me.”
“Oh, that’s why you hissed at her. You came this close to clawing her. You have to control yourself a little better, Miss Minou. Clawing the landlady just because she’s wearing a coat made of cat fur, shame on you!”
“If she comes back I really will claw her,” said Minou.
“Nonsense. She bought that coat in a shop and when she bought it those cats were long dead. It’s all because you don’t mix enough with people. You spend too much time up on the rooftops. You don’t get down to the streets enough.”
“I was on the street last night.”
“You have to get out in the daytime. Go out and do some shopping like other people.”
“All right. But I’m waiting till dark,” Minou said.
“No, the shops will be shut then. You have to go now.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“We need bread and biscuits,” Tibble continued.
“I’m too scared.”
“And we’ve run out of fish. You could pop by the fishmonger’s. He’s got a stall on the corner of Green Square.”
“Oh,” said Minou. “Maybe I can learn to be brave enough. Once I’m out on the street.”
“I’m sure of it,” Tibble said. “You’ll get better and better at it. Just…”
“What?”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t rub up against the fishmonger.”