The following is an account of the last known days of Peebles and June, beloved felines of the Churchill-Schultz household of Port Washington, Wisconsin. It was a lifelong dream of Peebles’ to write his own memoirs, and though that dream is now unlikely to ever become a reality, I here put forth these few pages in acquiescence with his final wishes, and in the best approximation I can make of his own style.
Though it is my belief that to determine the true origin of these strange events would be impossible, one must admit the need to start somewhere, and the moment upon which my mind begins most naturally was the moment when my attention was distracted from a solitary dinner by the sound of a mournful yowling coming from downstairs. My bowl of Roast Chicken ramen with leftover turkey was not likely to degenerate any further if left to its own devices for a few minutes, so I arose and went down to see what was the matter. There I found Peebles pacing back and forth upon my mother’s sewing table and staring out the window into blackness.
“Peebles, what is it?” I asked.
The nerves of his small body spasmed and as he whipped his head around to regard me, I was struck by the impression that this was the first time I had ever caught him by surprise.
“What?” he hissed.
“Why Peebles,” I stammered, quite taken aback at his tone. “What was that noise? I heard you…yowling.”
“I wasn’t yowling,” he said, his frightened eyes fixing me with a bold stare.
“But Peebles, there is no one else here!”
“It was June,” he replied quickly.
“Oh…oh. Is she alright?”
“You’ll have to ask her yourself. Isn’t your soup getting cold?” And with that he jumped down and decisively disappeared into the laundry room.
Feeling myself quite dismissed, I returned to the upper part of the house intent on searching out June, but as I came to the top of the stair there she was, curled up in the living room armchair, seemingly asleep.
As Peebles seemed to be engaged all that evening upon some private business, we did not chance to speak until the following afternoon, when he approached me to discuss one of his favorite topics: his proposed memoirs. Of all the serious matters that concerned him – and there were always a great many – none was more often turned over in his mind than this, especially during recent times. I am told that during the past year and a half – most of which I had spent away at school, until my recent withdrawal – he most often spent his evenings before the fire in contemplation of this undertaking, quietly bathing himself and making meticulous notes. Indeed, it seems that this literary expedition was causing him so much worry that it began to contribute to his growing baldness, and ultimately the mental strain became so great that June became convinced that the project was fundamentally unwise, and took it upon herself to convince Peebles to turn it over to me. I do not know how many hours of quiet persistence it took for her to accomplish this, but upon my return home after leaving college for good in October, Peebles informed me that he had given up the idea of authorship and gone over to another manner of thinking. As he put it, “I have decided that you have sufficiently matured as a writer to undertake the task of composing my memoirs.”
From that day on I often found myself in Peebles’ employ. That particular afternoon, as was so often the case, I looked up from some bit of triviality I had become engrossed in to find Peebles standing stiffly in the corner of the room. I quietly put down my own things and eagerly took up the notebook that Peebles had given me.
“Yes, Peebles?”
“If there is one thing I find most abominable, it is poor punning. Let me say, just so we are clear: If you were ever to, for example, refer to me an Aristocat, or make any other dreadfully unclever jokes in that vein, I shall void some of my urine upon that new pair of shoes you have grown so attached to.” Making a mental note to burn some of my earlier, more rudimentary notes and to always close the drawer firmly upon my more recent ones, I assented with what I hoped was a properly chastened “Of course” and was about to return to my business when Peebles held up a paw to stay me.
“Pardon me, Christian, but there is one further matter. I wonder if something might be done about that filthy-clawed vagabond who is so often lurking so hungrily about the premises.”
“Oh yes,” I said, “I know the one you mean. You want me to feed him?”
“Not…in so many words, no. I was wondering if you mightn’t do away with him somehow. If you take my meaning.”
I confessed to him that I did not.
“Well, to speak quite plainly, mightn’t we have him shot?”
“Oh!”
“Yes, he is most unsightly. I believe he is under a certain, shall we say, sad misapprehension that causes him to be perpetually sticking his foul-whiskered face in our lower windows.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I believe he is attempting to court my sister. I have tried to set him right on the matter, but he is so extremely uneducated that he has no knowledge at all of certain… basic procedures that are oftentimes performed on our species, and therefore he is most ignorant of the embarrassing predicament he has placed himself in.”
“Oh, I see. Hmm. Perhaps we should ask June if she has anything to say on the matter?”
This he assented to, and we set out through the house in search of June.
She was found sunning herself under the glass tables that held a number of my mother’s houseplants. I was about to go to her when Peebles put a paw in my way.
“She sleeps,” he whispered.
“I do not,” rejoined June, cocking a languid eye in our direction. “I was merely giving my coat some sun. I am not such a napper as my brother is.”
Upon hearing this Peebles gave a small cough into his paw, as if to express some private disagreement upon this point, but he otherwise kept his peace, and June continued: “Gentlemen, you are welcome to the greenhouse. What may I do for you?”
Peebles began quickly to state our business, but no sooner had he given reference to the “sticky-pawed bandit” than June stopped him with a dry laugh.
“Oh yes, I suppose you mean Harold. No doubt you want to hire some mercenary foxes to make him disappear or embark upon some other equally foul business? I’m afraid I really can’t agree: he’s quite harmless, and I wouldn’t dream of ordering his execution. The poor fellow has led rather a sad life – an ill-advised previous attachment being mostly to blame – and though I do find him slightly exasperating at times, the idea of violence against him is simply absurd. No, while I appreciate your protective instinct, brother, it is in this case quite misguided. In time he will find some bright young thing under a hedge somewhere and this aspiration to the aristocracy shall be quite forgotten. Until then, I shall try to suffer him with perfect patience.”
Peebles could do no more than try to smother a disapproving frown, and the matter was closed.
Before we progress any further with the story, I should like to take this opportunity to clear up one potentially troublesome matter. It strikes me that perhaps one might find the style of Peebles and June’s speech somewhat unnatural for housecats living in the rural American Middle West during the early twenty-first century. This is so; to illuminate this incongruence, we must look to their lineage. Peebles and June, though cats in a Middle American house – and therefore technically Middle American housecats – descend from a long and not inglorious line of British housecats, the Surname of which Peebles tells me is quite revered among all educated felines. This name, however, has never been revealed to me, for the offense of revealing one’s family name to a human is punishable by death. Though it seems to me rather unlikely that such a punishment could ever be successfully carried out upon either of them, Peebles is most firm on the point. It would get back to them, he says, on account of the mice. Evidently they lounge with great impertinence in our ductwork and are not above spying if they think it will get them a bit of cheese. Furthermore, he says, while it is quite true that the rest of his close relations – whose own duty it would be, I was appalled to learn, to take charge of such a punishment, or else lose all honor and standing – still reside in Britain, Peebles and June’s journey across the Atlantic and into Wisconsin was noted in detail by cats of certain aristocratic circles – my mother’s marriage to an American being highly questionable to some of their sensibilities – and therefore the bounty hunters would have little difficulty in tracking them down, despite the intervening distance between the two branches of the family.
But I digress. It seemed to me that an ill-timed appearance by Harold was most probably to blame for Peebles’ mysterious yowling – for I knew so little then, of the real cause of things – and having presumed to solve the mystery, I let my mind rest.
My peace of mind held unbroken for what I believe was five whole days, until Saturday the 8th. I was coming in from the backyard after doing some final raking of the last stubborn leaves – mother insists that it’s only fair that I do all the chores as I’m living at home without bringing in a wage – when, after carefully securing the door, I noticed a number of rather deep scratches in the bottom corner of the door frame. After some thought I decided that they must be recent, for I went in and out of that door at least every couple of days, and was always attentive to it – if ever the latch didn’t catch, the door would open at the slightest bump of a small wet nose, so one had to be careful.
Recalling Peebles’ bold refusal to respond to my inquiries about the yowling, I decided to approach June in regard to the scratches. My relationship with her has always been somewhat more distant than my relationship with Peebles – there is no doubt she has always been closer to my brother Jonathan, who was at the present time away at school – but I have always felt that a heart of extraordinary warmth lay beneath her wry, languid demeanor.
That evening, while Peebles was away on business in another part of the house, I approached her.
“Pardon me June,” I said.
“Yes, Christian dear?” she replied.
“I wonder…there have been…I don’t suppose you know anything about the scratches that have recently appeared on the frame of the door leading into the yard?”
“And which door is that, Christian? Don’t they all lead to the yard?”
“Well, yes. The backyard I meant. The glass door that looks out over the island.”
“Ah yes. No, I’m afraid I can’t tell you the first thing about any scratches on that or any other door.”
“Okay. Sorry, just wondering.”
“Obliged to be of service,” she purred, and I turned to leave the room.
I was on my way down the hall when she called me back.
“Oh Christian, I think I might have mislead you just there. But surely you have already been informed of Peebles’ plan to escape?”
“His what?”
“His plan to escape. No? Well then, yes, seeing that you don’t know, I suppose I could venture to guess that those scratches are attributable to his claws. You see I thought he had told you, and assumed that if that was so, you would likely be aiding him, and there would be no reason for him to prepare for his own flight. But this changes everything. Yes, I’m sorry, I have misled you.”
I could manage no immediate reply to this, and we watched each other in silence for some seconds.
“Again, quite sorry,” she said.
After another period of silence I managed to clear my mind of its sudden mistiness enough to ask, rather pointlessly, “Peebles wants to escape?”
“Yes, yes he certainly does,” she said. “Don’t you, Peebles?” she asked, rather louder.
I turned and looked down the hall, but there was no one there.
“The bathroom,” June said. “He is hiding – from you, at any rate – in the bathroom.”
In two steps I had turned the corner and, flicking on the light switch, found Peebles industriously licking the shower curtain.
“Evening,” he said breezily.
“Peebles,” said I.
“Yes?”
“You’re not trying to escape?”
“Certainly not. I am trying to put more sodium into my diet.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“Dried bits of soap and sweat build up here and make such curtains sodium-rich.”
“Peebles!” I fairly roared.
“Tell him, Peebles,” June said, having appeared at my ankle. “You owe it to him.”
“What do you mean I owe it to him?” Peebles replied coolly. “You act as though you weren’t fully prepared to accompany me.”
“What??”
“I am still debating the matter,” she said in a measured tone.
“Debating the matter, indeed! She protests that love binds her here, which is extraordinary amusing coming from one who has undergone such operations as she has.”
“If you knew anything, you old shirt, you Hugh Whitbread, you would know that love is not something operations can remove.”
“Sister, please. If you weren’t letting your emotions run entirely roughshod over your intellect, you would, I am sure, be the first to admit that just because your tail tingles whenever Jonathan lets you lick a bit of wax from his ears, it doesn’t mean it’s love!”
“How dare you speak the name of my love before a human!”
“How dare you speak of my pilgrimage! Of our pilgrimage!”
As if to punctuate this last remark, Peebles leapt forward and batted June on the nose. She hissed and pounced on him, throwing him over backwards into the bathtub and starting as heated a fracas as I had ever seen them engage in. This skirmish continued for some minutes, and each cat was so merciless with tooth and claw that I feared one or the other might become really injured, and as words were clearly unsuitable for stopping their battle, I was forced to turn the shower on them.
No sooner had they quieted, sopping and furious, than my mother entered the room and dragged me out, accusing me of “torturing the poor kitties.” Of course when mother is near one must not talk to the cats, so I was unable to tell them until much later what I had resolved to say.
About eleven, when mother and father had finally gone to bed, I made my way downstairs to find Peebles and June – still separated by some few feet, and not paying one another the least attention – looking out into the night through the glass of the door that had so recently borne the violence of Peebles’ claws. Without a word I walked among them and looked myself out into the blackness.
“Why?” I asked, turning to face them.
“I feel the draw of the old places. I must go and see where my ancestors are buried,” Peebles replied.
“And where is that?”
“Cornwall.”
“Oh,” I said. “Couldn’t you, perhaps…put it off a little? I mean – I’ll be rather alone, after you’re gone.”
“Ah yes,” June purred tenderly, nuzzling against my shin. “We felt it might be hard on you. As a human, one is expected to have acquaintances outside of ones own family, is one not? But we grow old, Christian. Now is the time for us to attend to our own lives, lest the chance escape us forever. We are not pets, after all, are we?”
“No,” I said, feeling some great glacial weight, cold and slow and terrible, settle onto me.
“No, you aren’t,” I repeated, and, feeling the cold before it came, opened the door.
“Oh Christian,” June said. I fancied I heard the slightest quaver come into her luxuriant voice.
“Yes. Good. I shall get our satchels,” Peebles said, and quickly padded off up the stairs.
“Do you really want to go?” I asked June, when he had gone.
“More than almost anything.” she replied. “It is not really on account of seeing the tombs, of course. But to leap into the night by my brother’s side, to run with him through long, misty fields…yes, I want that very much. There is only one thing I want more, and it is long past time that I accepted that it is something I can never have.
“Of course I am more afraid than I have been of almost anything, either. It is not that the dangers are too great; but what if I am too small? I have not led a strenuous life. I am used to pleasure. I imagine there won’t be a great deal of napping on this expedition, and I wonder if one morning I won’t wake to find all the glory of adventure quite faded, and want nothing more than to nap on through all the day. But I must go with my brother. Old cats ought to be explorers, after all, as he is so fond of saying. He is quite right.”
At this point Peebles returned, bearing two bulky satchels tightly around his midsection, and June would say no more. Peebles lowered his front paws and wriggled and one of the satchels fell to the ground. June picked it up and put it on, and upon examination I found that, though roughly made, they appeared quite sturdily constructed.
“Harold’s brother runs a small leather goods business out of his attic,” June noted, catching the meaning of my inquiring gaze.
“Exorbitant,” blustered Peebles. “Ragamuffins, the whole family. We are most fortunate that their continued existence has not led to our betrayal.”
“What did you pay him in?” I wondered, in spite of myself.
“Why, money.” replied Peebles. “Of course.”
June glanced up at me with what I felt might have been a guilty expression. “One could hardly call it stealing. You all treat any coinage from a dime on down with the most utter disregard.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said dumbly, feeling as if the whole earth were slipping softly but implacably away from me. Weakly I reached out to it: “Couldn’t you stay just one more night? You could…you could sleep in my room.”
Peebles looked over at June, eyes rather wider than I had remembered them being, the very ends of his whiskers faintly quivering. She returned his gaze for some seconds, and then finally spoke.
“I think that as we have already made something of a start, it would be rather unwise to abort. If not tonight, why tomorrow?”
“Yes, you are right,” Peebles said, a trifle unsteadily, turning away.
“I am sorry, Christian. You understand.”
“But – the memoirs! Peebles, I don’t think I can write them alone. I need you here to help me.”
“You see, June, the boy –” began Peebles, turning back.
“No, Peebles,” said June.
“Yes,” said Peebles stiffly. “Again, of course you are quite right. Time and practice, Christian. Time and practice. Do not embark upon them right away.”
“Then what do I practice on?” I pleaded. “I have nothing else to write about.”
“Yes. Hm. Ah. Well, perhaps these very events. Perhaps you could start with an account of our…leave-takings. Oh, you are sure to flourish, Christian, with or without us!”
“Yes. I am sorry, Christian,” June said again. “You understand.”
I lied and told her that I did.
“Tell it to him,” Peebles said intensely.
“What?”
“Tell it to him.”
“It?”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“I don’t care.”
There was a pause.
“Very well.” June cleared her throat and looked up at me. “Longpuddle. We are Longpuddles. Of the Longpuddle family.”
“Tell him he—you can put that in the memoir. I don’t care who knows. We were your cats – for a time.”
I think we were all unaccustomed to such scenes, and again silence drew coolly in. I do not think that I should have ever been able to break it – no word could. There were no more words.
Then there was a yowl. It began low and mournful, and slowly rose to a high keen, and at its highest point cut off, and Peebles turned and dashed through the door at a full run and was gone.
I could still see his sleek hindquarters carrying him away when June dug her paws into my pant leg, compelling my attention.
“Beneath your pillow there is a letter that you are to give to Jonathan, along with a few instructions for you from Peebles. Remember us. We love you.”
And then she too was gone. I looked out. All of the lights of the world were out. It was a new Ice Age. The glacier was creaking against us and in the night, as we slept, it would crush us.
“Christian,” my mother said, coming down the stairs, “what was that yowling? And for God’s sake who were you talking to earlier?”
“I wasn’t talking,” I said, quickly shutting the door.
“You – why are you crying? And – no! No, you haven’t! Not again! What’s wrong with you? Jim! Jim, come down here, he’s let the cats out again!”
“No,” I said. “No I haven’t.”
