The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat Read online

  “Now what’s happening?” the flea harrumphed.

  The unfamiliar put-putting of the Oldsmobile caught Pudding’s curious ear. The sounds of the city, too — carriage wheels on cobbles, clopping hooves, the singsong cries of newsboys. The clanking and grating of the work crews.

  Eventually, he meowed.

  When Vincent heard the cat, he thought he was imagining it. He reached over the seat for the bag and opened it in his lap.

  There was Pudding, calicoed with dried blood, squirming in the light.

  “He’s alive!” Vincent cried.

  Blat-blat! Blat-blat! Blat-blat! Gus honked.

  Vincent noticed the cat’s closed eyes and how he kept burying his head to get away from the light. He closed the bag again and didn’t open it until they were in his Greenwich Village apartment with the curtains drawn.

  Now Pudding peeped out at a pleasantly dim room. He lifted his nose and sniffed.

  Mice!

  “What a dump!” the flea exclaimed.

  Pudding crawled out of the bag and settled down for a wash just as Gus sat at Vincent’s piano and began tinkling out the tune he’d whistled earlier.

  An ecstatic shiver ran through Pudding. He limped toward the piano.

  Vincent scooped him up and set him on top. Then they got down to business, Gus on the music, Vincent spinning out the lyrics, both of them singing snatches.

  Come away with me, Lucille,

  in my merry Oldsmobile!

  Down the road of life we’ll fly,

  automobubbling, you and I!

  Pudding perched there with his eyes closed and his white tail tucked around his feet, not just hearing the music but feeling it beneath him.

  After an hour, Gus stood to stretch. As soon as the music stopped, Pudding leapt three-footedly down onto the keyboard. The sound of the notes smashing together so surprised him that he froze and listened until the vibrations died away.

  Vincent and Gus watched to see what he would do next. Pudding reached out a paw and poked. A pure note sounded.

  “He’s purring,” Vincent said.

  When that note faded, Pudding poked out another.

  “That’s it!” Gus cried.

  He sat down again at the piano and, reaching between and around the cat’s white feet, he tinkled out the next bar.

  * * *

  That night the flea said a surprising thing. “You’re blind.”

  “Hold on,” Pudding told him. He was hoping to land his first New York meal. A whole extended family of mice lived in the walls. One had come out to forage. Pudding could see its meaty back as it gathered up crumbs. He limped painfully toward it.

  It had been a long time since he’d tasted mouse. He couldn’t wait.

  “I can’t believe I only just figured it out! That’s why you crash into things. Why you let yourself get picked up and stuffed into barrels and bags.”

  Pudding lost his concentration. “During the day …” he started to explain.

  The mouse looked up and, seeing a pink pair of blinking eyes, scrammed.

  “… I prefer to keep my eyes closed.”

  Pudding wasn’t worried about losing the mouse. Moments later another emerged from the hole in the baseboard and replaced the relative who’d taken fright. Pudding crouched and prepared to stalk his prey. Finally he was a hunter again, one of the Great Race of Tats, the Fearless Pudding the First!

  “Boy, did I pick wrong!” the flea said. “Boy-o-boy! No wonder you’ve dragged me through so much trouble. And for what? This place? Maybe you can’t see it, but I can. Broken-down furniture. Stained rug. He calls those curtains? Rags!”

  He kicked the wall of Pudding’s ear, making it twitch.

  “There’s no way I’m staying here!”

  But to his host — a music-loving, mouse-eating cat — a pianoed apartment in the vermin-teeming city of New York seemed the perfect resting place.

  * * *

  Word soon got around about Vincent Bryan and his amazing composing cat.

  “Pure white and blind,” Gus Edwards told everybody. “Sits on top of the piano. Every now and then he jumps down on the keyboard and makes a suggestion.”

  Gus exaggerated, everyone knew that. But now when Vincent played, people knew who he was. “The guy from Newfoundland with the composing cat, right?”

  By the time Pudding’s leg and back had healed, Vincent was writing extra music and lyrics for a play called The Wizard of Oz.

  In the evenings, while Vincent was playing at the Black Cat, Pudding sat on the windowsill waiting for the late-night crowd to spill out of the clubs. Musicians, painters and poets — they were a parade of shadows to him. All young with artistic hair and bright clothes, they expressed themselves in new ways, in ragtime and jazz. They danced in bare feet, painted in smears and wrote poems that didn’t rhyme.

  They were changing the stodgy old wide world.

  When the streets filled like this, Pudding knew to expect that familiar tune, the one Vincent always whistled on his way home. Though it was three o’clock in the morning and he was tired, Vincent would always sit at the piano and play one last song for his beloved cat.

  The next morning, hungering for music again, Pudding would stroll across the piano keys. If that didn’t wake Vincent up, he’d jump on the bed and knead his pajamaed chest. While Vincent oiled his hair, Pudding would weave impatiently around his legs.

  At last, Vincent sat at the piano, and the complaints streaming from the flea were drowned out once again.

  What did the flea complain about? The same old things! This place was beneath him.

  “It stinks. This is the kind of dump those drunken poo-eaters would feel at home in. The only decent place you brought me to was that hotel. I want a bed like that again.”

  “There’s a bed here.”

  “I want one with an old lady in it to feed you things I like. I deserve it.”

  “What have you done to deserve it?” Pudding asked.

  “I don’t have to do anything. Doing is what the host is for. I just am. Take me away.”

  In truth, although Pudding still wanted to reach the four corners of the wide world, he was worried about what would happen to him when he left. Until something piqued his curiosity, he’d stay put.

  Before long, something did.

  They’d been living in Greenwich Village for several months when it happened.

  First, everything grew very quiet. Then a strange soft light began to fill the small apartment. Outside, people started to laugh and call to each other, but their voices seemed muffled.

  What was going on?

  Pudding leapt onto the windowsill and looked out. Greenwich Village was fast disappearing behind a curtain of white.

  That night, back on his windowsill perch, Pudding waited for Vincent’s whistling.

  “Come away with me, Lucille …”

  He leapt down from the sill and went over to the door.

  “Are we really going?” the astonished flea asked.

  Pudding heard the door to the building open. Vincent came whistling up the two flights of stairs. The moment he stepped inside, Pudding slipped out between his feet and dashed down the hall, hugging the wall.

  A white cat is easy to see in the dark. Vincent noticed Pudding’s escape but went first to set his satchel of music on the table. He didn’t believe the cat could get any farther than the vestibule downstairs.

  He was just coming down the second flight of stairs when another night owl came in the front door of the building.

  “Don’t let the cat out!” Vincent yelled.

  Too late.

  Open-eyed Pudding ran along the snowy street. Only when he’d turned a corner did he pause to marvel at what was beneath his feet. He lifted each paw, set it down again. Such a delicate squeak it mad
e, this cold, cat-concealing cover that had fallen over the village.

  “Giddy-up,” the flea said. “Find me a classy cat, not some mouse-eater. Maybe a Persian.”

  Such a beautiful hush as the feathery flakes fell. Pudding padded on. In the distance, the familiar night sounds were muted. The gurgling of the ice-making factory, the rumble of the Sixth Avenue elevated train.

  Then, as he passed under the triumphal arch in Washington Square, he heard a yowl.

  “Cat!” cried the flea.

  It was a tomcat summoning one of his wives, his cry a deep, slow ululation.

  As Pudding drew nearer to the snow-covered bench where the tomcat sang, he saw an intimidating silhouette, enormous and thick-necked.

  The tomcat saw Pudding, too, and rose slowly from his crouch. His back arched and his tail swelled.

  “I don’t like the look of that one,” the flea said.

  Under his wailing song, a hundred voices belted out. They were the tomcat’s fleas, stamping their legion feet and tunelessly chanting.

  Get that cat!

  Squirt its blood!

  Drink it up!

  Fee fi fo yum!

  It made “The Bloodless Flea’s Lament” sound like a nursery rhyme.

  Pudding began to back away.

  The flea wailed, “He’s going to kill you! Run!”

  Just then Vincent appeared out of the whiteness. He’d been following Pudding’s paw prints in the snow. Relieved, he scooped him up.

  “Don’t run away,” he cooed. “We have a lot more songs to write.”

  After their outing, the flea went right back to complaining. To relieve his own boredom, he added a few new gripes. His armored plates had lost their luster. His mouthparts no longer curled.

  “It’s because of all that mousy blood I’m forced to drink.”

  These new complaints replaced the one he never made again. He never asked for a different host.

  * * *

  The following spring, their situation changed. Royalties started to pour in from “In My Merry Oldsmobile,” making Vincent and Gus rich. Soon after, the flea’s wish came true. Vincent, Pudding and his flea moved uptown.

  The new building had an elevator. There was a doorman, too, who touched the brim of his cap and greeted Vincent with, “Ev’ning, Mr. Bryan.”

  A huge apartment with plush carpets, plump cushions and velvet drapes.

  “Oooh-la-la!” the flea shrieked when they were set down in the middle of it.

  Pudding lifted his nose in the air and sniffed.

  Nothing.

  Vincent toured with an orchestra now. While he was away, which was often, the doorman came to feed Pudding his dinner of minced steak doused with cream.

  “Ev’ning, Mr. Bryan’s cat,” he’d say.

  Sometimes, if the doorman dared leave his post long enough, he’d put a record on the gramophone.

  “Listen to this, Mr. Bryan’s cat. Mr. Bryan wrote this song. It says so right here on the sleeve. He’s famous.”

  “Come away with me, Lucille, in my merry Oldsmobile …”

  This was about the only time Pudding heard music now.

  So began the untraveled part of Pudding Tat’s much-traveled life. The boring part. There was little for an adventurous cat to do in that posh, mouseless apartment where the piano was left shut to keep the dust off the keyboard.

  Not that there was any dust. A maid came to clean every week. Pudding’s windowsill perch was now nine stories up — too high for him to see anything interesting in the street. The closed window sealed out most smells and sounds.

  In the beginning Pudding tried to imagine that he was still a mighty hunter of the Great Race of Tats. He crept soundlessly over the carpets and pounced on figments. Or he stuck his foot in his ear, scratched, and sent the flea flying, then ran off and hid under the divan, pretending that the flea was hunting him.

  The flea bounded frantically from room to room. “Yoo-hoo? Where are you, you tasty rascal! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  When the flea finally found Pudding, he jabbed his mouthparts in deep again. “Yum. Tasty. Dee-lish.” He belched. “Remember back in that horrible barn? The stinky horses and cows? All those disgusting fleas with their songs? Back then I took one look at you and said, ‘There’s the host for me.’ Yes, I’ve been through tough times. But look at me now. Look!” He’d swelled out to the point of popping his armored plates. “This is what I was born for!”

  Pudding did have some glorious washes during those years. Morning and evening, with touch-ups throughout the day. He spent hours running his tongue over every white inch of himself. Then he would cough up the by-product. A hairball to relieve his tedium.

  Here is a summary of his daily activities. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. Wash. Sleep, sleep. Eat. Wash. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. Wash. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Wash.

  Under these conditions Pudding’s longings shriveled, even his longing for music. He grew sleepy and fat. The sleepier he felt, the more he slept. In his dreams he was still a svelte white cat catching mice in Vincent’s Greenwich Village apartment, flinging them in the air to give them a chance before his decisive pounce. Or he was back in the barn with his brothers and sisters, stalking dinner together.

  As for his actual adventures — the plunge down Niagara Falls, his escape from the barrel, the President’s assassination — he thought he’d dreamed them, too.

  Then one day, Pudding woke to the sound of singing.

  “Oh, the flea jumped on the dog!”

  He could hardly believe his sleepy ears. Had that gang of drunken fleas returned?

  No. Instead of a chorus, a lone voice warbled.

  From cat to dog,

  From dog to horse,

  From horse to cow,

  He drank their blood, hey ho!

  “Is that really you?” Pudding asked.

  “Who?” the flea slurred.

  He paused to kick out his legs in clumsy dance. Then he went right back to glugging Pudding’s blood.

  5. Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1910

  Had the flea realized he’d escaped the barn only to end up living the life he’d fled, he would have been horrified.

  But he didn’t. Like his five hundred and ninety-nine brothers and sisters and all the Ctenocephalides felis before him, he was too busy drinking blood and belting out drunken ditties.

  When the flea sang — if we can call it that — Pudding remembered the joyful purr-mew-nicker-clank of his kittenhood in the barn with his brothers and sisters and dear Mother Tat. He remembered the buzz-huff-hum-twitter-thrum-scratch-squeak and the rustle-sigh of the wind. Sounds he never heard now, except in his dreams.

  Meanwhile, the wide world kept on changing. People were moving around even more, and in new ways. The subway stretched the length of Manhattan, all the way to the Bronx. There were automobiles everywhere.

  And since the Wright brothers first lifted into the air in 1903, that amazing invention, the aeroplane, was breaking new records.

  In the summer of 1910, Vincent Bryan and Gus Edwards booked a week in the Chalfonte Hotel in Atlantic City. They went for the Air Carnival. Flying teams competed for prizes while below them, huge crowds lined the boardwalk and beaches waving pennants and swooning from excitement and heat stroke.

  Air travel was the big dream now. The famous explorer Walter Wellman was in Atlantic City, too, but with a much different machine: an airship. A few years before, Mr. Wellman had attempted to reach the North Pole. Now he hoped to be the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air.

  It turned out that Mr. Wellman and his crew were also staying in the Chalfonte Hotel. At breakfast, friendly Gus chatted up their Australian wireless man, Jack Irwin, who was about their age. By the end of the meal he’d invited them to visit the balloon house on the outskirts of Atlanti
c City.

  The next day they found themselves in an enormous canvas hangar, staring up at the airship. It looked like a gigantic floating cigar.

  “Fancy taking a ride in that,” Vincent said.

  “It’s how we’ll all be traveling in a few years,” Gus said. “How about we write another song, Vincie? ‘In My Merry Airship.’”

  “I just can’t see it,” Vincent said, scratching his head.

  “I can’t either, to tell you the truth,” Jack told them. “I’ve crossed the Atlantic more times than I can count. By sea. Rather do it on an ocean liner.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s safer.” He looked away, tugging on the knot of his tie as though it was too tight.

  “Even with icebergs and whatnot?” Gus reached into his pocket and took out his cigarette case.

  A horrified look crossed the wireless man’s face.

  “You can’t smoke in here, mate. That balloon’s filled with hydrogen gas. Do you want to blow us up?”

  After they got back to the hotel, Vincent and Gus took in Atlantic City’s other amusements. They met up with a couple of girls to ride the Loop the Loop on Young’s Pier. They swam in their knitted bathing costumes and ate enough saltwater taffy to make themselves seasick. At the end of the day they strolled the crowded boardwalk, admiring the famous sand sculptures. A president, a sleeping elephant, a cobra rearing from its pile of coils — all life-sized.

  Gus pointed. “And there’s our merry Oldsmobile.”

  An Oldsmobile made of sand! The girls ran off to find a photographer. Gus and Vincent jumped down onto the beach and posed with it.

  * * *

  Not far from where Mr. Wellman and his crew were preparing to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, the former adventurer Pudding Tat crouched in the darkness under a hotel room bed. Vincent, feeling guilty about leaving the cat on his own so much, had decided to bring him along.

  By day, while the bright summer sun sparked off the ocean, under the bed was where Pudding stayed. So many intriguing sounds and smells! The hollow roar of the ocean. Calliope music from the amusement piers. Salt breezes and fried clams and gasoline.