And as for milk – do you know how long it is since I have seen or tasted milk? In our kind of life, I mean cut off from humans, there isn’t any milk. If you’re thirsty you find some rainwater or some slops in the gutter or in a pail left out, or you can go down the stone steps to the river landings when they are deserted at night, if you don’t mind your water a little oily and brackish.”
Peter was not at all pleased with the prospect and he had not yet got used to the fact that he was no longer a boy, with a home and family, but a white cat with no home at all and no one to befriend him but another scrawny stray.
He was so desperately thirsty and the picture drawn by Jennie so gloomy and unpleasant that he could not help bursting into tears and crying, “But I’m used to milk! I like it and Nanny gives me some every day …”
“Sshhh!” cautioned Jennie, “they’ll hear you.” Then she added, “There’s nobody goes about setting out dishes of milk for strays. You’ll get used to not having it eventually.”
But Peter didn’t think so, and continued to cry softly to himself while Jennie Baldrin watched him with growing concern and bewilderment. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something which apparently she did not very much wish to do. But finally, when it appeared that she could bear his unhappiness no longer, she whispered to him, “Come, now … don’t take on so! I know a place where I think I can get you a dish of milk. We’ll go there.”
The thought caused Peter to stop crying and brighten up immediately. “Yes?” he said. “Where?”
“There’s an old watchman lives in a shack down by the tea docks,” Jennie told him. “He’s lonely, likes cats, and is always good for a titbit, especially for me. He’s been after me to come and live with him for months. Of course, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“But,” said Peter, not wishing to argue himself out of milk but only desiring to understand clearly the terms under which they were to have it, “that is taking from people, isn’t it?”
“It’s taking, but not giving anything,” Jennie said, with that strange, unhappy intenseness that came over her whenever she discussed anything to do with humans. “We’ll have it and then walk out on him.”
“Would that be right?” Peter asked. It slipped out almost before he was aware of it, for he very much wanted the milk and he equally did not wish to offend Jennie. But it was just that he had been taught certain ways of behaviour, or felt them to be so by instinct, and this seemed a poor way of repaying a kindness. Clearly he had somewhat put Jennie out, for she stiffened slightly and with the nearest thing to a cold look she had bestowed upon him since they had met, said, “You can’t have it both ways, Peter. If you want to live my kind of life, and I can’t see where you have very much choice at the moment—”
“But of course I do!” Peter hastened to explain, “it’s just that I’m not yet quite familiar with the different way cats feel from the way people feel. And I will do as you say, and I do want to learn …”
From her expression, Jennie did not appear to be too pleased with this speech either, but before she could remark upon it there came a loud call from the movers: “That’s the lot, then,” and another voice replied, “Righty-ho!” Jennie peered around the corner and said, “They’ve finished. We’ll wait a few minutes to make sure they don’t come back, and then we’ll start.”
When they were certain that the aisle was quite deserted again, they set off, Jennie leading, past the empty bin and down the corridor in the direction the men had taken, but before they had gone very far Jennie branched off to the right on a new tack until she came to a bin close to the outside wall of the warehouse, filled with horrible, new, modern kind of furniture, chrome-bound leather and overstuffed plush. She led Peter to the back where there was a good-sized hole in the baseboard. It looked dark and forbidding inside.
“Don’t be afraid,” Jennie said. “Just follow me. We go to the right and then to the left, but it gets light very quickly.”
She slipped in with Peter after her, and it soon grew pitch black. Peter now discovered that he was feeling through the ends of his whiskers, rather than seeing where Jennie was, and he had no difficulty in following her, particularly inasmuch as it soon became light enough to see that they were in a tunnel through which a large iron pipe more than a foot in diameter was running. Then Peter saw where the light was coming from. There was a hole in the pipe where it had rusted through a few feet from where it gave exit to the street.
Apparently the pipe was used as some kind of air-intake, or had something to do with the ventilation of the warehouse, for it had once had a grating over the end of it, but the fastenings of that had long since rusted and it had fallen away, and there was nothing to bar their way out.
Peter was so pleased and excited at the prospect of seeing the sun and being out of doors again that he hurried past Jennie and would have rushed out into the street had not the alarm in her warning cry checked him just before he emerged from the opening.
“Peter! Wait!” she cried. “Not like that! Cats never, never rush out from places. Don’t you know about Pausing on the Threshold, or Lingering on the Sill? But then, of course, you wouldn’t. Oh dear, I don’t mean always to be telling you what to do and what not to do, but this is really Important. It’s almost Lesson Number 2. You never hurry out of any place, and particularly not outdoors.”
Peter saw that Jennie had quite recovered her good nature and apparently had forgotten that she had been upset with him. He was curious to find out the reasons for her warning. He said, “I don’t quite understand, Jennie. You mean I’m not to stop before coming in, but I am whenever I go out?”
“Of course. What else?” replied Jennie, sitting down quite calmly in the mouth of the exit and showing not the slightest disposition to go through it and into the street. “You know what’s inside because you come from there. You don’t know what’s outside because you haven’t been there. That’s common ordinary sense for anyone, I should think.”
“Yes, but what is there outside to be afraid of, really?” enquired Peter. “I mean, after all, if you know where you live and the street and houses and all which don’t change—”
“Oh, my goodness,” said Jennie, “I couldn’t try to tell you them all. To begin with – dogs, people, moving vehicles, the weather and changes in temperature, the condition of the street, is it wet or dry, clean or dirty, what has been left lying about, what is parked at the kerb, and whether anybody is coming along, on which side of the street and in how much of a hurry.
“And it isn’t that you’re actually afraid. It’s just that you want to know. And you ought to know, if you have your wits about you, everything your eyes, your ears, your nose, and the ends of your whiskers can tell you. And so you stop, look, listen and feel. We have a saying, ‘Heaven is overcrowded with kittens who rushed out of doors without first stopping and receiving a little’.
“There might be another cat in the vicinity, bent on mischief, or looking for a fight. You’d certainly want to know about that before you stepped out into something you weren’t prepared for. Then you’d want to know all about the weather, not only what it’s like at the moment, but what it’s going to be doing later, say an hour from then. If it’s going to come on to rain or thunder, you wouldn’t want to be too far from home. Your whiskers and your skin tell you that.
“And then, anyway,” Jennie concluded, “it’s a good idea on general principles not to rush into things. When you go out there are very few places to go to that won’t
