Considering her demeanor, you would think Queen Druciah was incapable of feeling anything toward any living creature, so it wasn’t especially surprising to see her reaction when one night a rather dirty and disheveled black cat was found resting on one of the chairs on her terrace.
“You have no right to be here, you furry vagabond! Remove yourself immediately! Shoo!” the queen said.
The cat barely raised its head and, opening its eyes slowly, said, “And I say you have no right to disturb me as I sleep. Go away. We will talk about this in the morning.”
Druciah was stunned, for she was used to having her every command obeyed. “How dare you—no one speaks to me that way! Leave now or I will have my guards remove you!” screamed the queen.
But the cat simply turned away. “Your guards?” he harrumphed. “Like your guards could ever catch me? Why, half asleep as I am, I could avoid your guards, even if they cared about your orders, which you know they don’t.” He shifted positions again, stretching fully and turning his head from side to side. “Empty threats are all they are . . . There is nothing you can do to me that can top what I’ve been through already.”
The queen was speechless. She wanted to scream for her guards, but her tongue felt too large to make the words.
“Anyway, who do you think you are?” asked the cat. “You have no idea who I am, and yet already you judge me. You assume automatically that you don’t like me.”
He tilted his head to one side and laughed. “Your first instinct is to call your guards and drive me away. I’d have thought that you’d have had enough of that already, considering the only living things still around you are on the payroll.”
He looked up at her as if to introduce himself. “I am furry, but I am not vagabond.” He ran his tongue his tongue over his paw. “All I need is a bit of grooming, that’s all. You know, I’d love to see what you’d look like after twenty days on the run through the dense jungle.
“And without a rest too,” he continued. “A good brushing and a few squares under my skin, and I could pass for feline royalty, a companion fit for the Egyptian Pharaohs of old.”
This apparently was a bit much for Druciah, who had gotten her wind back. She began to laugh. “You . . . royalty? Don’t make me laugh. A companion for the Pharaohs? More likely a companion for plague fleas.” Having found her voice, she called to her guards. “We have an unwanted visitor.”
Three uniformed guards emerged into the room, one carting a bag made of woven grass. The next ten minutes were an exercise in futility with all three guards stumbling awkwardly about the room unable to capture the animal.
“I thought since this castle was called Cathoon, I would be welcome here. I guess I was wrong,” the feline said. “Why are you so determined not to like me?” He made a series of three hops, which accented the incompetence of her guards.
“What if I told you I was an enchanted cat?” he inquired as he artfully dodged the approaching arms of one of the queen’s clumsy retainers.
“Enchanted? Really? What powers do you possess?” she asked him. “I have spells like recipes in a cookbook. What can your enchantments give me that I don’t already have?”
The black cat laughed. “Are you serious?” he asked as he leaped from a table to the top of a chest of drawers. “It seems to me that people must not like your recipes at all! How else can you explain the lack of hospitality here? From what I see, most people avoid this place like the plague!” He leaped onto a shelf behind her.
“Oh and for the record . . . plague fleas travel on black rats, not black cats.” He jumped again, narrowly avoiding the stumbling guard who almost knocked the queen down. “If you want to avoid catching the plague, a furry friend like me could come in pretty handy.”
Druciah countered, “I have no need for a cat. There haven’t been any rats around here in ages. No rats nor moles, mice nor voles. My castle is clear of vermin of any kind, unless of course you include present company.”
The feline glanced at the stumbling guards, assuming it was they, and not he, she referred to. “No rats!” he exclaimed as he ran across the shoulders of one of the guards. “I am glad to hear that. I am much too valuable an animal to waste my time chasing vermin. Plus they taste terrible, unless, of course, they are prepared by a really gifted chef. As far as I’m concerned, I could go the rest of my life without seeing another rat.”
Druciah seemed as though she wanted to say something, but the cat continued his rant.
“You ever try to have a conversation with a rat? They have absolutely nothing to talk about. And most of them are just awful people . . . and dirty. You don’t want to know about it.” He landed delicately on the windowsill. “No grooming habits whatsoever.” He took the time to clean his front paws again with a few quick licks.
“And I swear, if I have to hear one more time about which sewers have the best . . . ” he jumped again, “ . . . selection of wriggly things to eat, I think I will just lose my lunch. You know, a rat will eat some really disgusting things.” His eyes flashed widely. “I mean really disgusting!”
The queen was by now starting to show signs of amusement. Whether this was from the things the cat was saying or from the sheer ineptitude of her guards would be hard to say. Nevertheless a smile began to form in the corners of her mouth, and if one listened carefully enough, he might have detected some soft chuckling.
The cat railed on.
“Why I knew this one rat that would never shut up.” The cat continued to avoid capture as he spoke. “He just kept yammering on about this, or jabbering on about that . . . and this went on all the time, believe me, all the time. It got so bad that I had to sneak around the cavern on tiptoes just so he wouldn’t notice me. It was important that I not be seen because, if the rat caught even a sight of this bushy tail, it was over. The next three hours of my life would be booked up instantly—and that, my queen, was time I’d never be able to get back.
“Sometimes he’d wake me up in the morning just to tell me that he couldn’t sleep. Can you believe it? And he never felt bad about it either. It was like somehow he had the right to wake me up to keep him company. From the way he tells it, he was some kind of bigwig at one time. Rats,” he sighed. “No thank you, I don’t need ‘em.”
By now the queen’s brief flirtation with amusement had faded, and she became extremely aggravated. “What is wrong with you guards? It’s just a cat . . . and an overly talkative one at that. Just grab him quickly and get him out of my castle. I can’t believe that I have such inept guards. You can’t even capture a little cat!”
Despite his impressive display of catrobatics, the queen’s quarry calmly said, “I don’t understand you, queen. You live here all alone in this enormous cold castle of stone. I would think you would go insane. It’s so cold and empty, and it has no soul. You have no one to talk to.”
The queen looked at her guards as if to say I have them, but the cat shook his head. “They don’t count. You don’t talk to them; you give them orders. The only people you allow around you are your guards and servants, and from what I see, they seem to stay here more out of fear than loyalty.” He jumped again. “It must be terribly lonely for you, being here in this huge and empty place. I’d think that by now you would be tired of being lonely and that you would welcome a furry little diversion like me.”
Druciah stiffened, more upset by the cat’s insight than anything else. “You, Sir Cat, know nothing about me, though you seem to consider yourself an expert.” Still, she turned away. What he’d said obviously struck a nerve.
The guards kept grabbing at him, catching only thin air. It was quite comical they way they thrust and stumbled in pursuit of the wise and unwelcome animal. But then the cat saw the queen was visibly shaken and decided to end the game.
He propelled himself forward and came to rest gently on a table directly in front of her. “My name is Caterwaul,” he said. “I will share my wisdom with you if you let me stay with you here in the castle.” Tired of the chase, he bowed his head to show respect.
Staring upward at Druciah with his big yellow eyes, he added, “Look . . . I need a place to live and you need a friend. So what do you say? Do you want to give it a try?”
The queen appeared to be sniffling, as if fighting back tears, when she said, “Well, I must admit, good Sir Cat, you are a feisty one.” She rubbed her chin in consideration. Just then the guard with the woven grass sack dove toward the cat and captured him.
“I have him your majesty,” said the guard triumphantly, “I have him!” The guard was grinning from ear to ear. He considered it quite an accomplishment to have been able to finally put that cat in his trap. He was so pleased with himself, he appeared to be dancing; but when he checked the contents of the bag, it was empty. The cat was gone.
By some trick, Caterwaul now sat perched on Druciah’s left shoulder. Gliding around her neck, he leaned forward gracefully and whispered in her ear, “I told you I was an enchanted cat.”