Do you or any of your friends have a ginger tom cat? He might very well be called Orlando, after the most famous cat in children’s literature, Orlando the Marmalade Cat. They are gorgeous, sophisticated books that you can devour when you’re long past the picture-book stage. I love them all, but I have an especial spot for Orlando’s Invisible Pyjamas. It’s such a tender book. I adore the passage where Orlando’s wife Grace says she will knit him a pair of pyjama trousers that will match his fur exactly because ‘I know your stripes by heart.’
Until I reread the book today I’d completely forgotten that Orlando’s former girlfriend was a glamorous cat called Queenie. In my book Queenie, that fluffy white Queenie cat has a litter of four kittens at the end of the story. One is ginger, and two are ginger and white, so it’s clear she has a ginger admirer. I wonder if it was Orlando . . .
ORLANDO’S INVISIBLE PYJAMASOrlando breathed a hole in the frost pattern on the window and watched the thick snow falling softly. It was evening; the three kittens were in bed and his dear wife Grace was knitting cat-traps to protect the robins she loved so much.
‘They are such sweet little birds I feel I could eat them,’ she said, ‘but if I hang these nets round the tree trunks, we can’t climb up to catch them.’
A faint glow of light shone through the swirling snowflakes; it shone from the night-watchman’s lantern on the road.
‘He must be lonely sitting out there all night, guarding that big hole the roadmenders are making bigger,’ thought Orlando. ‘I’ll go and have a chat with him and take him a mouse for his supper.’
He took one from the larder and crept past the sleeping kittens. Tinkle, the black one, opened one eye and said, ‘Hello, Farver, you’ve grown a Moustache!’
Orlando winked at him and set out on his journey through the snow. To a cat, snow-flakes seemed as large as snowballs; sometimes Orlando disappeared into a drift that would only have reached a little girl’s knee.
Orlando plodded on till he found Mr Pusey, the night-watchman; the old man was frying his supper.
‘Good evening,’ said Orlando.
‘Oo,’ replied Mr Pusey, ‘Oi be glad to zee you this murksome night! Oi thought as all folks in the world had been bewitched into snow-flakes – not a soul to be seen, and Oi wondering when the spell would be cast on me.’
‘Well,’ said Orlando, ‘here’s a fine mouse for your supper.’ He jumped on to a paraffin can the better to pop it into Mr Pusey’s frying pan.
‘Oo! Oi wouldn’t deprive ye!’ the old man said hastily. ‘You have it, me boy!’ He picked the mouse out of the pan quickly. The can tipped over and Orlando fell off; his hind legs and tail were drenched with paraffin.
It smelt nasty and burnt him. He plunged into the cold snow and rolled, but that did no good. He dashed home to Grace.
Grace tried so hard with the kittens’ help to wash her dear husband clean, but the paraffin nearly suffocated her and burnt her poor tongue terribly.
At dawn, after a restless night, Orlando crept out of the house feeling uncomfortable and miserable.
All day Grace waited for him to return. By tea time she was frantic.
‘Oh my beloved husband!’ she cried. ‘What has happened to you?’
The kittens helped her to search the house and then the garden. Snow had covered Orlando’s footprints and it was bitterly cold. The kittens wore their muffs.
Not a bird dared open its beak for fear of a frozen tongue.
Blanche, the white kitten, set out across the white lawn; Pansy, the tortoiseshell one, climbed up the black and white trees for a better view, while Tinkle pushed his way into the pampas grass. Grace called loudly for Orlando, her voice rang out clearly in the silence.
Suddenly Tinkle found the tip of a pink snake. Very cautiously he patted it. It twitched but did him no harm; he sniffed along it until he came to – Orlando sitting on the other end! The snake was Orlando’s tail!
Poor Orlando, he was quite bald from his waist to the tip of his tail; the paraffin had taken off all his fur.
He hissed at Tinkle and crept further into the frosty bushes. Tinkle was frightened and called his mother.
Orlando told them he was sorry for being cross with Tinkle, but they must leave him, for he could not bear to be seen like this.
‘We’ll never leave you!’ said Grace firmly. ‘Don’t stare at your father,’ she told the kittens who had gathered round. ‘He is unhappy. We must think of a way to get him home without being seen by the neighbours.’
‘Let’s make him a Modesty Awning to hide him on his way back,’ suggested Pansy.
Pansy told them how to make one. The kittens collected moss, dead leaves and twigs which Grace stitched on to a white towel. It looked just like the snowy landscape; they draped it over Grace’s ironing board and carried it on their heads to where Orlando lay shivering.
‘We’ll hold this over you while you walk home,’ Grace explained to him, ‘and nobody will see you.’
The strange little procession reached home unseen, and Grace put Orlando to bed with a Hot Wartle (Tinkle’s name for a hot water bottle). She gave him a bowl of warm haddock milk.
‘I’ll knit you a pair of pyjama trousers so like your own fur that nobody will see the difference,’ said Grace. ‘I know your stripes by heart.’
Mr Pusey came to enquire after Orlando, who showed him the damage done by the paraffin. Mr Pusey was very upset and pursed up his mouth like a spout; he promised not to tell the neighbours how queer Orlando looked. Every day he came and played Snakes and Ladders with Orlando, to help him to pass the time till the pyjamas were ready.
The kittens loved Mr Pusey. Blanche and Pansy felt sorry for the old man who lived out of doors in all weathers. They washed his hands for him, and tidied his eyebrows.
‘Daughters are surely a great blessing, Madam,’ he said to Grace.
Tinkle rummaged among the bits of cheese and toffee papers in Mr Pusey’s pocket. He purred loudly and sang:
His coat is so warm.’
Towards evening Mr Pusey had to go back to his work. Lanterns must be lit and placed round the hole in the road to prevent people from falling into it in the dark.
Orlando grew weary with lying in bed and was terribly afraid that he would be bald for life.
Grace was too busy knitting the pyjamas to entertain him, but the kittens did their best.
‘We’re going to tell you our dreams, every day,’ Tinkle told him. ‘Blanche’ll begin, then Pansy next. Mine’s much the best one so you’d better hear it last.’
‘I dramp,’ began Blanche, ‘that I had a dear little balloon which floated me up to Birds’ Heaven. I was given a drink of magic milk which stopped me wanting to eat the bird-angels. They taught me how to fly, and I had Angel cake for elevenses. One day a darling little girl egg was laid, and I was afraid she’d fall to earth and be smashed. But she grew wings just in time, and then I woke up. D’you like my dream?’ she asked Orlando anxiously. Orlando did, very much.
Pansy continued: ‘I dreempt I was two kittens, a black one at night and a ginger one by day. Each of me had nine lives, so I had eighteen altogether. I got twice as much to eat because they thought I was two kittens. But I got in a muddle and the black one came out in the daytime, and they said, “We fed her last night so she doesn’t want another meal now.” So I decided to wake up.’
‘Now it’s MY turn!’ said Tinkle. ‘I drump I had a lorry-load of ice-cream – that’s all, and can I have a shilling please?’ he asked Orlando.
‘You can have tuppence,’ said Orlando, smiling.
‘Huh. That’s not much to help me on my grown-up way,’ grumbled Tinkle.
The dreams were soon told and Orlando began to worry about himself again.
Tinkle was sorry for him, and ashamed of grumbling: he wanted to please Orlando more than ever.
‘Tell us a story of your yoof,’ he suggested, for he knew that people liked nothing better than to talk about themselves.
‘A story of my youth?’ replied Orlando. ‘Well, if you bring me the family photograph album, the pictures will remind me of things.’
Orlando turned to the first page, and the kittens gathered round.
‘Here is my Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Aunt Caterina in the bicycling bloomers that were the fashion in those days. And here is Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Uncle Tom with his hounds and his hunter, in front of his country mansion . . . Aha!’ laughed Orlando, already cheering up. ‘Here I am as a baby lying on a fur rug.
‘This is my school football team with me in the centre. Here I am with the prize I won for my essay called “Man, the Animal”.’
Orlando passed over the next page, but Pansy made him turn back to it. ‘Whose picture is that?’ she asked.
‘That?’ answered Orlando vaguely. ‘Oh, just a girl called Queenie.’
‘Let me see too!’ cried Grace. ‘Oh, what lovely whiskers she has, and what a beautiful hat . . .’
Grace felt sad, and ashamed of her homely apron.
‘Fine clothes and false whiskers don’t always make good wives,’ said Orlando. ‘Your speckled whiskers are very pretty, darling, and nobody dresses as wonderfully as you.
‘Now, kittens, here’s your Mother, when I first met her. It was during winter sports and she was trying to teach herself to ski. Naturally I helped her, and we’ve helped each other ever since in every kind of way.
‘I was a naughty kitten sometimes,’ Orlando continued, closing the album. ‘Once I rubbed some mustard on my nose to make it red and look as though I had a cold. Mother kept me at home from school for two lovely days, which was just what I wanted.
‘One day Mother gave a tea party for all her lady friends. They were so stiff and polite that I locked them in the drawing room, and they had to climb out through the window. I laughed so much that I felt quite good for a long time after.’
Orlando fell asleep, happier than he had been for a long time.
‘That was a good idea of yours, Tinkle,’ whispered Grace.
By the time Orlando woke up, the moon had risen and the pyjamas were finished; Blanche and Pansy had fluffed up the wool to make it look like real fur.
‘Now Queenie would never have made these!’ exclaimed Orlando delightedly. ‘Only you, dear Grace. I’ll put them on and we’ll all go for a walk.’
The pyjamas fitted him perfectly; it was impossible to see where they began, and he ended.
The cats visited Mr Pusey, who thought Orlando’s fur had grown again.
‘Oo, how glad Oi be to zee you!’ he said. ‘Have a sausage to wipe out all sad remembrances, and a drink of tea to wash away cruel happenings!’
Orlando explained the pyjamas to him, but Mr Pusey insisted that they should eat a sausage, ‘to bolster up hope,’ he said, ‘and drink some tea, for as rain causes grass to grow, maybe it’ll make fur sprout.’
On the way home they met a dog. All their fur stood on end except where Orlando wore his pyjamas. The dog laughed at this and made rude remarks. The cats hurried by in confusion.
The time came when Grace wanted to wash the pyjamas. Sadly Orlando went back to bed and took them off. To his surprise, instead of finding his naked flesh, there appeared to be another pair of pyjamas covering him.
‘How clever of you, Grace, to have made a lining . . . I needn’t stay in bed after all!’
‘A lining?’ replied Grace, puzzled. ‘That’s no lining,’ she cried with delight, ‘that’s your own fur which has grown at last!’
The cats were too happy to speak; they purred loudly until they sneezed.
Orlando decided to present the pyjamas to the Anti-Fur-Trappers’ League for their museum to show people how lovely imitation fur can be.
The Presentation of the Invisible Pyjamas took place in the Town Hall, and the building was crowded. There were long and eloquent speeches, during which Orlando and Grace sat modestly in the limelight.
On the way home the cats met the rude dog again, but when he saw the whole of Orlando’s fur rise on end, he ran off quickly on a pretend errand.
‘All’s well, when ends are well,’ said Tinkle with a grin.
