The Mostly True Story of Pudding Tat, Adventuring Cat Page 8

  “Wire the tug,” Mr. Vaniman yelled to Jack. “Tell them to come and get this idiot cat!”

  Jack did what he asked. He was afraid Vaniman would toss the cat overboard otherwise.

  The tugboat had just turned back toward shore when it received Jack’s message to come and get a stowaway cat. With the fog and the sea roiling with waves, Mr. Vaniman had trouble seeing anything. He lowered the convulsing sack anyway.

  In the wind, the bag swung like a pendulum with Pudding and the flea inside it.

  Water! The smell grew stronger. Pudding remembered his terrifying descent in the barrel. He thrashed and thrashed. The airship was rising, but he was going down.

  Down,

  down,

  down,

  down.

  Icy water poured into his nostrils and mouth and ears, silencing him.

  “No!” the flea screamed.

  When the rope slackened, Mr. Vaniman assumed that the bag had landed on the deck of the tug. He waited for the signal to raise the rope again — one sharp pull. Instead, a message came in on the wireless that the tug was returning to shore. The sea was too rough.

  No cat, Jack heard in the dis and dahs.

  He tore off his headset and leapt at Mr. Vaniman, snatching the rope from him and hauling until the dripping bag was back on board. He lifted out the sodden cat, dunked like a teabag in the icy Atlantic.

  Mr. Simon, who had sailed many ships in his time, believed that maritime traditions should be respected. He exploded when he saw the cat.

  “This voyage is doomed!” he yelled at Mr. Vaniman. “Bad enough to put a cat off a ship, but to drown it like an unwanted kitten?”

  Mr. Vaniman yelled back that Simon was an idiot. Mr. Wellman yelled at them both to get to their stations.

  They all disappeared inside the car above, leaving Jack in the lifeboat. Gently, he lifted the body onto a dry bag, wrapped it and held it to his chest.

  As when they’d swirled in the currents of the Niagara River, the flea had held on.

  Now he told his host, “Buddy, can you hear me? It’s your flea. Ctenocephalides felis.”

  He tugged on Pudding’s ear hairs. When this had no effect, he crawled out and stood on the end of Pudding’s pink nose.

  “Noooooo!!!” He cried, screamed, stomped. When this had no effect, he crawled right up Pudding’s nose and had his conniption in there, falling onto his back and kicking all six of his legs at once.

  “This is my host! I can’t live without him! I don’t want to live without him! Take us both away!”

  His tiny legs flailed and his armored plates bristled.

  And Pudding sneezed. The seawater gushed right out of him, sluicing the surprised flea into the bottom of the boat.

  “Kiddo!” Jack cried, overjoyed, just as the wireless began di dahing. He set Pudding down and rushed to his station.

  The flea crawled out of the puddle of seawater and hopped back to his host.

  “Did you see what I did?” he crowed with pride. “I saved you!”

  “Thank you,” Pudding said, shaking himself.

  “Not bad for puny bloodsucker, eh?”

  He sounded like his old gloating self again. Pudding was happy to hear it.

  Jack finished tapping out a reply to the incoming message. QSL: I acknowledge receipt. He shouted the message up to Mr. Wellman. “Gale approaching!”

  “That’s what the cat was trying to tell us,” Mr. Simon roared back. “He’s more reliable than our barometer!”

  * * *

  The gale Pudding predicted blew the airship off course the second day. The wind battered them, but they lashed tight the canvas and adjusted their altitude. Mr. Simon’s straw boater tore off his head, but that was the worst of the damage.

  After the gale, calm descended and for several hours they sailed smoothly. Pudding was welcomed in the airship proper, where Mr. Simon lifted him onto his shoulder while he steered. With the breeze ruffling his white fur, he truly felt like an adventuring cat. In his ear, the self-satisfied flea sang a rousing chorus of “Oh, I’m a Jolly Good Flea.”

  But soon Pudding’s sensitive ears picked out a new sound, a sputtering that, when it grew loud enough for human hearing, brought Mr. Vaniman racing to the engines. He tried to repair the ailing one, but it shuddered and died. It took the whole crew to heave it overboard.

  By the third day, already far off course due to the storm and the altered weight of the ship, Pudding felt that ache again in his left foot. He set off his warning and this time everyone paid attention, even before the wireless message came in.

  A hurricane was heading their way this time. With just one engine, they would never survive it.

  Four hundred miles off the coast, Jack sent the message he’d delivered so often in his nightmares: CQD: All Stations — Distress!

  Luckily, a Royal Mail ship from England happened along. It picked up the crew and their cat. The America, abandoned, was snatched up by the storm and never seen again.

  The adventurers — human, animal and insect — didn’t succeed in crossing the Atlantic, but they did break the world’s record for the longest flight. In recognition of their triumph, who should get his picture in the papers all across the world? Pudding, aka “Kiddo.” And who should be holding him in the famous photograph cut out and pasted in so many young adventurers’ scrapbooks?

  A smiling Mr. Vaniman, who now saw the point of a cat.

  When the Royal Mail ship docked in New York City, the crew and their cat were welcomed as heroes. Pudding spent a week in a gilt cage in the big bright window of Gimbels department store on 34th Street. You can guess how he felt about that, curled up with his paws over his eyes, crowds streaming by, tapping on the glass.

  The flea protested. The noise! The humiliation of being put on display! Though the food was good and Pudding’s blood not so sardiney, he didn’t care. Pudding was wretched in this prison. The flea couldn’t be happy now if his host wasn’t.

  “Let us out of here!” he shouted at the crowd, waving four unseeable fists.

  But the outraged flea could only groan when he saw a familiar planet-sized face pressed against the window.

  “Kitty! Oh, Kitty!”

  “Cripes!” the flea said. “Her again!”

  6. RMS Titanic, 1912

  Pudding Tat did cross the Atlantic — by steamship. He came in the gilt cage he’d suffered inside in the window of Gimbels department store. For the next two years Edith Wellman and her four older sisters went to a London finishing school to learn how to be proper ladies. Proper ladies danced, played the piano and spoke French. They walked with books balanced on their heads. No one explained to them why they needed that particular skill, but they mastered it.

  During these years Pudding was condemned to be an inside cat, though he was desperate to be out adventuring again. He knew he was far from home. So wouldn’t he be near one of those four corners of the wide world?

  The flea neither encouraged nor discouraged his host. His job now was to keep him out of trouble. Any pretty sound would draw him foolishly on. Without the flea’s help, Pudding would surely be trampled, run over or drowned before too long.

  In London, the main peril lay in the personage of Edith Wellman.

  “Here she comes now,” said the flea. “Run!”

  The house, antiqued and brocaded, not far from Kensington Gardens, was finer even than Vincent Bryan’s uptown apartment. Pudding was well fed on plate scrapings of mutton and beef that pleasantly flavored his blood. Yet the flea never over-indulged now. He drank when he needed and always stopped when he was full. Otherwise, who would look out for his host?

  In April, the Wellmans booked a passage on the RMS Titanic and began packing up their many trunks. Home to New York City!

  The morning they left England, a steward carried Pudding Tat in the Gimbe
ls department store cage up the Grand Staircase and under the glass-domed ceiling. Though Pudding saw none of the grandeur of the ship, he smelled its paint-and-varnish newness. He heard the excited squeals of the five Wellman girls as they deposited the cage in their cabin.

  “Let’s go swimming,” the next-youngest-to-Edith suggested.

  “I’m going down to the engine room,” Edith declared.

  “You are not!”

  “I am! I’m going to help shovel the coal.”

  The door slammed. From his gilt prison, Pudding squinted around at the oak-paneled walls. He felt as miserable as Bostock’s lion.

  “Do something,” the flea said. “You’ll feel better. Have a wash. Your coat is looking tatty.”

  Pudding curled into a glum ball.

  “Hey! Don’t go to sleep! Let’s put our heads together. Something will happen. When hasn’t it?”

  This is perfectly true. Every moment something happens, though it isn’t always the something you’re expecting.

  * * *

  At dinner, Mrs. Wellman and her daughters shared a table with an elderly American couple, Isador and Ida Straus, also from New York City. Isador was bald except for a cropped white fringe around his ears and a pointed white beard. Expressive black eyebrows danced above his spectacle rims. Plump Ida let him do most of the talking.

  “Five sturdy daughters you have there,” he told Mrs. Wellman. “My compliments.”

  “They were at school in England,” she said. “And what’s your line of work, Mr. Straus?”

  “You’ve heard of Macy’s?” Ida asked.

  “Macy’s!” Edith shrieked. “Gimbels is better!”

  The two department stores, fierce rivals, stood across from each other on 34th Street.

  Isador peered at Edith through his gold-rimmed spectacles and gave her a pretend frown. “My dear little girl. I own Macy’s.”

  “Edith,” chided her mortified sisters, who had actually learned some manners at finishing school. “Macy’s is wonderful.”

  “But Kitty lived in the window in Gimbels.”

  Everyone knew about the explorer Walter Wellman. The astonished owner of Macy’s said, “Your Kitty is the airship cat?”

  The consommé arrived in china bowls. Isador passed around the basket of rolls.

  “So you’re the explorer’s family? What an honor to be dining with you. An honor despite your preference for Mr. Gimbel.”

  “I’m sorry she offended you,” said Mrs. Wellman, who had spoken these words countless times.

  Isador winked at Edith. “An introduction to this famous cat will probably erase the insult.”

  After dinner, the Strauses visited the girls’ cabin where the celebrity cat was curled up in the golden cage, his face concealed by his tail.

  “He has the prettiest eyes,” Edith told them. “I’ll show you.”

  The old couple cringed as the girl dragged the cat out by the collar and forced open his eyes. Pudding writhed in pain. Isador glanced at Ida. She was biting her tongue.

  “See?” Edith said.

  “Yes,” Ida told her, gently pulling away the girl’s hand.

  “And you keep him in this cage always?” Isador asked.

  Just for the passage, Mrs. Wellman assured them. With all the activities on board it was unlikely they’d be in their cabin much. They couldn’t let the cat roam free, for he was continually trying to escape.

  The Strauses weren’t interested in dancing in the ballroom or swimming in the saltwater pool. Squash and billiards held no attraction for them. In fact, none of the recreations available to the First Class passengers on the world’s most luxurious ocean liner tempted them. They had each other.

  “We’d be happy to keep him for the passage,” Ida said. “Our stateroom is just down the hall. You can pop in to visit him.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Mrs. Wellman said. “What do you think, Edith?”

  But Edith had already run off.

  So the Strauses took charge of the cat, and they all parted happily. Mrs. Wellman, especially. Now the girls could take full advantage of the opportunities the ship offered to practice their expensive new manners on wealthy bachelors.

  Every evening after that, Isador and Ida ordered dinner in their room, keeping their feline guest in mind. Roast duckling or sirloin of beef?

  “Sirloin!” the flea piped up.

  Pudding purred louder when it appeared on the plate. For the pleasure of his flea.

  After dinner, Isador enjoyed a cigar while the white lapful of cat dozed.

  “Ketsele? Mr. Gimbel, my competitor, kept you in a cage. But if you come to Macy’s, you’ll be free. I invite you to visit our linen department. Find a cushion to your liking. Sleep as long as you want.”

  Ida rolled her stockings down over her swollen ankles. “Tell him about the Society.”

  “We have a mutual aid society,” Isador explained to Pudding. “Any Macy’s man or woman? Should something happen to him or her — God forbid — Macy’s will help. We’re in this world together, are we not? Tzedakah is our duty.”

  He paused to puff the cigar.

  Ida pushed the ashtray closer to her husband. “But, Izzy? Does the cat understand Yiddish?”

  “Ah!” Isador said. “As usual, you’re right, my Ida, my bright Ida, my electric light bulb.”

  Stroking the cat, he switched to English. “Kitty? Do you understand?”

  Pudding purred louder.

  “He gets the gist,” Isador told Ida.

  All Pudding understood was that he was free of Edith and out of the cage. At night while the Strauses snored in their beds, he paced the lavish stateroom waiting for the moment when one of the Strauses, or their maid, would forget he was there and open the door. For now two oak-paneled bedrooms, a marbled bathroom and the parlor comprised his territory. The only reminder that he was on a ship came from the faraway throb of the engines powered by eight hundred tons of coal a day shoveled non-stop by two hundred men.

  Under that mechanical throb he heard an orchestra like at the Pan-American Exposition. Several times a day it played, all together in after-dinner concerts, or as a quintet at teatime in the Café Parisien. A piano and a flock of strings — violins, cellos, a bass.

  Such a pure sound after the crackling of the gramophone. If only he could get closer to it!

  Four days into the voyage, Pudding’s sensitive ears picked up a different sound — metal pierced, then ripping.

  The great ship juddered.

  “What was that?” the flea asked.

  The Strauses slept on. Pudding continued to prowl. Soon he noticed something peculiar underfoot. The floor was tilting.

  Not much later, the panicked maid pounded on the door. “Sir! Ma’am! I’m sorry to wake you, but it seems that we’re evacuating the ship.”

  “It can’t be sinking,” Isador called. “This is the Titanic. The papers said it was unsinkable.”

  “Sir, you’re supposed to gather on deck and only bring what you can carry in your pockets.”

  The old couple lumbered out of their beds.

  Then Isador remembered. “Where’s the cat?”

  * * *

  The corridor thronged with frightened passengers.

  “Feet everywhere,” the flea shouted. “Keep to the wall.”

  Pudding hurried along, unseeing and unseen. Somewhere beyond the hubbub he could hear the orchestra playing again. Through the tangle of panicking feet, the notes drew him on.

  Out on the angled deck was where he found them, eight heroic men calmly gliding their bows.

  Cranks squealed as the lifeboats were lowered into the darkness. Pursers shouted commands. “Women and children first! Line up here!”

  The flea quailed. “You gotta listen to me, buddy, if we’re going to get out of this one
.”

  Pudding heard only those clear sorrowful notes.

  The Strauses stepped on deck clutching each other, led by their terrified maid.

  “But the cat,” Isador was muttering. “We promised to take care of him. I’ll go back.”

  A purser shouted, “Come on! Lively now! Women and children!”

  “Mrs. Straus,” the maid begged.

  “Not without Isador. I will not be separated from my husband.”

  “But we’re sinking, ma’am!”

  Ida removed her fur coat and held it out to the maid. “You’ll be cold.”

  The girl took it. Sobbing, she stumbled for the lifeboat.

  Pudding heard a shot ring out. It broke the music’s spell. He remembered that long-ago sound, the bitter odor, and shrank down in fear. Yet when he opened his eyes, he saw a beautiful sight — above him, a thousand stars exploding.

  It was a flare gun. The Strauses, too, watched the shower of light. Nearby the orchestra was playing a dreamy song.

  “Everyone’s getting in that boat,” the flea told Pudding.

  Pudding said, “Let’s listen for a few minutes.”

  “There aren’t going to be any minutes left.”

  Isador heard mewing. When he looked down, the white cat was sitting peacefully at his feet.

  “There you are!”

  He took Ida’s warm hand in his and kissed it. “Light of my life. My electric light bulb. Tell me, do you see the cat, too, or am I dreaming him?”

  “All the blackness?” the flea told his host. “That’s water.”

  At the dreaded word, Pudding snapped to. By then the great ship had begun to tip.

  The end came with a horrifying racket. Baggage, coal, furniture, passengers and crew — everything and everyone slid toward the bow. Half-in and half-out of the water, the Titanic paused with her great propeller tilted to the stars.

  With hundreds still clinging to the rails, the ship hovered between two worlds — water and air, death and life. Then, in one terrible, graceful motion, the Titanic slipped beneath the waves.

  Pudding plunged into the hated water. Instinctively he kicked his legs until he burst back into the air. In the blackness, his eyes stinging from the salt, he swam on. Groans and ghostly pleas sounded all around him, the last cries of people soon to be ghosts themselves.