“Yes, cats are queer folk, sure enough, and often know more than a
simple beast ought to by knowledge that’s rightly come by. There’s that
cat there, you’ve been looking at, will stand at a door on its hind
legs with its front paws on the handle trying like a Christian to open
the door, and mewling in a manner that’s almost like talking. He’s a
London cat, he is, being brought me by a cousin who lives there, and is
called Gilpin, after, I’m told, a mayor who was christened the same.
He’s a knowing cat, sure enough; but it’s not the London cats that are
cleverer than the country ones. Who knows, he may be a relative of
Johnny Reed’s own tom–cat himself.”
“And who was Johnny Reed? and what was there remarkable about his cat?”
“Have you never heard tell of Johnny Reed’s cat? It’s an old tale they
have in the north country, and it’s true enough, though folk may not
believe it in these days when the Bible’s not gospel enough for some
of them. I’ve heard my father often tell the story, and he came from
Newcastle way, which is the very part where Johnny Reed used to live,
being a parish sexton in a village not far away.
“Well, Johnny Reed was the sexton, as I’ve already said, and he and
his wife kept a cat, a well enough behaved creature, sure enough,
and a beast as he had no fault to set on, saving a few of the tricks
which all cats play at times, and which seem born in the blood of the
creatures. It was all black except one white paw, and seemed as honest
and decent a beast as could be, and Tom would as soon have suspected it
of being any more than it really seemed to be as he would one of his
own children themselves, like many other folk, perhaps, who, may be,
have cats of the same kind, little thinking it.
“Well, the cat had been with him some years when a strange thing
occurred.
“One night Johnny was going home late from the churchyard, where he had
been digging a grave for a person who had died on a sudden, throwing
the grave on Johnny’s hands unexpectedly, so that he had to stop
working at it by the light of a lantern to have it ready for the next
day’s burying. Well, having finished his work, and having put his tools
in the shed in a corner of the yard, and having locked them up safe, he
began to walk home pretty brisk, thinking would his wife be up and have
a bit of fire for him, for the night was cold, a keen wind blowing over
the fields.
“He hadn’t gone far before he comes to a gate at the roadside, and
there seemed to be a strange shadow about it, in which Johnny saw,
as it might be, a lot of little gleaming fires dancing about, while
some stood steady, just like flashes of light from little windows in
buildings all on fire inside. Says Johnny to himself, for he was not a
man to be easily frightened, being accustomed by his calling to face
things which might upset other folk—
“‘Hullo! What’s here? Here’s a thing I never saw before,’ and with that
he walks straight up to the gate, while the shadow got deeper and the
fires brighter the nearer he came to it.
“Well, when he came right up to the gate he finds that the shadow was
just none at all, but nine black cats, some sitting and some dancing
about, and the lights were the flashes from their eyes. When he came
nearer he thought to scare them off, and he calls out—
“‘Sh—sh—sh,’ but never a cat stirs for all of it.
“‘I’ll soon scatter you, you ugly varmin,’ says Johnny, looking about
him for a stone, which was not to be found, the night being dark and
preventing him seeing one. Just then he hears a voice calling—
“‘Johnny Reed!’
“‘Hullo!’ says he, ‘who’s that wants me?’
“‘Johnny Reed,’ says the voice again.
“‘Well,’ says Johnny, ‘I’m here,’ and looking round and seeing no one,
for no one was about ’tis true. ‘Was it one of you,’ says he, joking
like, to the cats, ‘as was calling me?’
“‘Yes, of course,’ answers one of them, as plain as ever Christian
spoke. ‘It’s me as has called you these three times.’
“Well, with that, you may be sure, Johnny begins to feel curious, for
’twas the first time he had ever been spoken to by a cat, and he didn’t
know what it might lead to exactly. So he takes off his hat to the cat,
thinking that it was, perhaps, best to show it respect, and, seeing
that he was unable to guess with whom he was dealing, hoping to come
off all the better for a little civility.
“‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘what can I do for you?’
“‘It’s not much as I want with you,’ says the cat, ‘but it’s better
it’ll be with you if you do what I tell you. Tell Dan Ratcliffe that
Peggy Poyson’s dead.’
“‘I will, sir,’ says Johnny, wondering at the same time how he was to
do it, for who Dan Ratcliffe was he knew no more than the dead. Well,
with that all the cats vanished, and Johnny, running the rest of the
way home, rushes into his house, smoking hot from the fright and the
distance he had to go over.
“‘Nan,’ says he to his wife, the first words he spoke, ‘who’s Dan
Ratcliffe?’
“‘Dan Ratcliffe,’ says she. ‘I never heard of him, and don’t know
there’s any one such living about here.’
“‘No more do I,’ says he, ‘but I must find him wherever he is.’
“Then he tells his wife all about how he had met the cats, and how they
had stopped him and given him the message. Well, his cat sits there
in front of the fire looking as snug and comfortable as a cat could
be, and nearly half–asleep, but when Johnny comes to telling his wife
the message the cats had given him, then it jumped up on its feet, and
looks at Johnny, and says—
“‘What! is Peggy Poyson dead? Then it’s no time for me to be here;’ and
with that it springs through the door and vanishes, nor was ever seen
again from that day to this.”
“And did the sexton ever find Dan Ratcliffe,” I asked.
“Never. He searched high and low for him about, but no one could tell
him of such a person, though Johnny looked long enough, thinking it
might be the worse for him if he didn’t do his best to please the cats.
At last, however, he gave the matter up.”
“Then, what was the meaning of the cat’s message?”
“It’s hard to tell; but many folk thought, and I’m inclined to agree
with them, that Dan Ratcliffe was Johnny’s own cat, and no one else,
looking at the way he acted, and no other of the name being known.
Who Peggy Poyson was no one could tell, but likely enough it was some
relative of the cat, or may be some one it was interested in, for it’s
little we know concerning the creatures and their ways, and with whom
and what they’re mixed up.”