Pinky Pye (5 page)

Rachel told people that Pinky was also learning to talk. Whenever Rachel walked past Pinky as the kitten lay sleeping on her becoming olive green pillow, Pinky always waked up enough to make a little remark. "Woe?" she inquired. "Oh-woe."

"It is short for 'Hello,'" explained Rachel, who could interpret everything that Pinky said.

Pinky had the entire family, including Papa, her first befriender, bewitched. Sometimes Gracie and Ginger, who up to this time had not been fond of one another, would stand side by side, heads lowered and dejected, mouths hanging open as they heard the words of endearment that used to fall only on them bestowed upon the enchanting kitten. They now had a common bond of jealousy. Once Ginger cried sadly when Jerry said something complimentary to Pinky. Jerry could not stand this and vowed never again to say anything nice to Pinky in the presence of his best friend, Ginger. "You're the best," he constantly had to reassure his sad-eyed dog.

To top all, Pinky was permitted to sit on Papa's lap as he typed his learned notes, his conclusions based on a day with the terns and quail!

In the beginning Pinky sat quietly enough, her little head going back and forth, intelligently following the sentences as they appeared on the blank paper. Next she tried catching the keys as they flew up. Naturally this smart game intrigued Papa, and he paused to see what she would do after that. She then tapped a key with one little front paw and, as it flew up, she caught it with the other front paw. Sometimes letters appeared palely on the paper. At first these pale letters coming on the hitherto white paper astonished Pinky; but then she performed this typing in a deliberate manner as though she knew what she was doing and what she was typing. From time to time she surveyed her results critically.

None of the Pyes had ever heard of such brightness in a cat, and they were overcome with admiration. Once Pinky actually spelled "woogie." This seemed to be a word, though no one had ever heard of it.

"It's probably in the big dictionary that we didn't bring," said Rachel. "That great big one that has everything in it."

"I wonder what woogie means," said Uncle Bennie.

No one, not even Rachel, could tell him. "But it's a word," she said. "There are plenty of words we don't know the meaning of."

"Oh, it's a word all right," said Uncle Bennie, and he ran off to circulate the news among his small beach friends. "We have a cat," he said to them, "that can typewrite." She had already typewritten the word of "woogie" he said, and other words that he did not know because he did not know how to read very well yet—it wasn't his birthday for some days.

So these little beach boys and girls came early the next day to see the typewriting cat typewrite. Twins named Janet and Joanne, who were Touhy Tomlinson's little sisters and Uncle Bennie's best friends on the beach, came first. "Where's the typewriting cat?" they asked. Having an older brother who teased them, they were skeptical and on guard not to be taken in by some fake. "Where's that cat that typed 'woogie'?" they demanded.

"Why," said Papa. "Here are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Which is which, I wonder?"

The twins, already dressed for the beach in pink-and-white candy-striped bathing suits, smiled tolerantly and said again, "Where's that cat that typewrites?"

"She's having her milk," said Rachel.

The twins studied the kitten lapping up her milk, looking like a regular cat and not like a typewriting one. Their faces were expressionless, neither believing nor disbelieving.

"And we all have to have breakfast before we do anything else," said Mama.

"That's all right," said Janet, with Joanne saying the same thing a split second behind her. "We can watch." Over their bathing suits they had on thin little cotton jackets, though the morning air was quite crisp.

Their mother must be exactly the opposite of ours,
thought Rachel.
She must think it's always warm instead of always cold, like ours.
"You know, twin-sies," she said out loud, "we are going in swimming tomorrow too."

The twins said, "Of course. Why not?"

Uncle Bennie said to them, "Twins, do you know what day tomorrow is?"

"We forgotten," said they.

"Tomorrow is two things," said Uncle Bennie. "My birthday and I am four like you are. You
are
four, aren't you?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," said they.

"And it is the Fourth of July," Uncle Bennie went on. "The day when I have the revolution to stop sucking my thumb."

"We used to suck our thumbs, but Osie put something awful on them and so we stopped," said Janet.

"Who's Osie?" asked Uncle Bennie.

"Osie," they said.

"Oh," said Uncle Bennie.

Papa had a habit of drinking his coffee in a certain special way. The minute he picked up his cup with his right hand, he put the palm of his left hand under the cup and kept it there as he drank. Then his left hand escorted the cup from underneath back to its saucer again. Pinky leaped on Papa's lap to watch this process. The twins watched intently too, their eyes and heads, like Pinky's, traveling back and forth.

After a while Janet, the asker, asked, "Why do you hold your hand under your cup like that?"

"Yes, why?" asked Joanne, the emphasizer.

"To catch the drips," said Papa, "in case coffee has been spilled into my saucer. I don't want drops dripping on my tie or my shirt, do I? In the old days, coffee was always being spilled in my saucer, and there were drips on the bottom of my cup all the time. Of course, now that I am married to Mrs. Pye, there are never any drips on the bottom of my cup anymore. But my hand has this habit," said Papa, "and old habits are hard to break."

This was certainly a long speech for the twins to have to listen to when all they wanted was to see if it was really true that a typewriting cat lived here. They shifted their weight from one bare white foot to the other.

"Well," said Janet with a sigh. "Just say to yourself, 'I'm not going to do it.' And don't. It looks silly."

"You could make a Fourth-of-July revolution too," said Uncle Bennie. "Give it up the end of tomorrow at midnight, like I am my thumb."

"You are right," said Papa amiably. And he put his dry-bottomed cup, empty now, down on the dry saucer, folded his napkin neatly, pushed back his chair, and went to the typewriter, which was on a narrow little table in front of the window that looked out over the ocean. Janet and Joanne, like little automatons, followed. Uncle Bennie, Rachel, and Jerry followed them, tensely hoping their kitten would perform.

"Now you'll see," said Uncle Bennie to the twins.

"Maybe. Maybe not," they said.

Papa sat down. Pinky was in the middle of the floor, thinking.

"Let's get her," said Janet eagerly. "Let's get her and make her type."

"Oh, no," said Rachel. "We mustn't get her. She must come herself. She types because she wants to. No one makes her."

Papa typed a few words. Of course the sound of typing had become music to Pinky's ears, but it was her custom to give an impression of indifference. As the beguiling music continued, she skirted the room and loped toward Papa until she arrived at his feet as if by accident. She then cleaned her white paw and also her left ear, which she neatly turned inside out for the occasion. Then, shaking her head, she leaped onto Papa's lap, stood on her hind legs, sniffed the typewriter, and looked with interest at what Papa had written on the paper. She then sat down on Papa's lap.

"Will she do it now?" asked Janet breathlessly. "Will she typewrite now?" she asked, while Joanne's mouth parted speechlessly. Neither could bear the suspense. "Could she type 'woogie' again, do you think?" asked Janet.

Papa typed a few more words. As though she were pondering the words, Pinky watched alertly. Her eyes did not blink and she was quite unhurried as now, tentatively, she grabbed a key as it flew up. Then Papa let his hands fall to his sides and Pinky stood up, lightly resting one paw on the little table. She studied the keys.

"Studying," said Uncle Bennie delightedly. "It's not easy to typewrite, you know," he said accusingly to the twins.

"We know," they said. "You don't have to tell us."

Slowly, with one paw, her white one, Pinky began to tap the keys, and as a key hopped up, she grabbed it with her other front paw, the black one. Her little head was practically inside the typewriter as she played this fascinating game. It was cute and it was smart, but it was not typewriting. The twins watched impassively.

"Oh, spell something, spell something," groaned Uncle Bennie. What if she would not typewrite now? "Type," he urged. "Type."

And then, as though in answer to his prayers, Pinky sat back on her haunches and began to poke one key with one paw and another key with the other paw. It looked as though she were typing, and she was. These mysterious words appeared on the paper:

dop/go

The peppermint-striped twins scrutinized this achievement, but they said nothing. There might still be a catch to it, and they decided to remain unmoved. But the exuberance of Uncle Bennie and his exultant cry, "She can type, she can type! I told you she could type," and the respectful silence of the rest of the Pyes convinced the twins that these were words.

"What does that typing say?" asked Janet primly and not too eagerly, for it is not wise to act as though one has never before seen words typed by a typewriting cat. "Yes, what does it say?" echoed her sister, who was just as worldly wise. Janet and Joanne could not read yet, not even, "Let us run. Let us jump." But they knew real regular words when they saw them, and they suspected that words had been written.

"It says 'dop go,'" said Papa gravely.

"Dop go!" mused Janet. "Dop go!" she said, her little voice growing incredulous and pitched a little higher. "Joanne," she said. "It says, 'dop go.'"

"I know it," said Joanne. "You don't always have to tell me. It says 'dop go.' It means, Stop go."

With this the twins turned around, marched out of the cottage, and passed the word wherever they went that there was a kitten at Uncle Bennie's that could typewrite. First she typewrote "woogie." And just now she had typewritten "dop go." "Yes," they said proudly. "We saw her. Her name is Pinky."

Children rushed to the Pyes' to see the typewriting cat typewrite. That was all for today, however. Pinky yawned, jumped down, and stretched, first on her front paws and then on her back paws; and then she ran to the side door to go out. So this time the thrill seekers had to content themselves with a sparring match, which was a good sight too, though not on a par with typewriting.

Papa had never been so carried away by a pet. You'd think that Papa, like that other bird man, Bish, who was on his way to the Washington zoo with his pet, his pygmy owl, would have chosen a bird pet, a canary at the least, and not a cat pet. But he hadn't. He was growing just as crazy about Pinky as Rachel was.

"Why not write a book about Pinky this summer, instead of the terns?" suggested Rachel as Papa pulled out the sheet with "dop/go" on it and put his tern sheet in. "Pinky's book," she said.

Papa looked at Rachel straight through his little square eyeglasses; and he didn't say anything.

Uncle Bennie's pet, the dead locust that he had brought from Cranbury, had worn out, and it was time to find a new pet. From dead locusts he had become interested in live ones—live locusts, live crickets, and live grasshoppers. "Do you think it is as easy to find grasshoppers here on this island," he asked his old dead pet, of which there was nothing left but the body, dry and brittle as an old bean pod, "as it used to be in that other town of Cranbury where there is grass, much more grass than here?" There being no answer from his pet, Uncle Bennie had to answer himself. "No," he said.

A plan was beginning to grow in Uncle Bennie's head. This plan was for him to capture enough crickets and grasshoppers to have a chorus in the house to sing to him in the nighttime. Is there anything nicer than to listen to crickets in the nighttime?

In the nighttime, safe from the cats and dog, they could sleep in the little secret room up in the eaves. This room had little swinging doors to it, and Uncle Bennie could easily push these open. Then he could get inside and sleep with his crickets. But Mama forbade him to climb up there. He might break a leg, she said. Rachel would have to climb up and put his crickets in there every night. And he would have to listen, like the others, from below.

In the daytime he could carry a cricket around with him in his pocket. It might sing as he walked along the path. People might say, "Where's that cricket?" When he wanted a certain particular cricket to take for a walk, Rachel would get it for him. "The one in the red box," he'd say. Or, "The blue one."

Rachel was not fond of crickets and grasshoppers in the sunny fields. The way they would hop at her and get in her hair! But she probably would not object to just one grasshopper at a time in a box, or one cricket, for she was very fond of Uncle Bennie and minded him like a true uncle. Sometimes she pretended that he was an old uncle instead of a little one and would hand him a cane to hobble with.