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Thomasina
Paul Gallico
From the author of “The Snow Goose”.“I was aware, from the very beginning, that I was a most unusual cat…”Thomasina is the beloved pet cat of 7-year-old Mary Ruadh, whose strict father is the town's vet. When Thomasina falls ill, her father sees no other option but to put the cat down. Heartbroken by his cruelty, Mary stops speaking to her father and falls dangerously ill herself.Meanwhile, Thomasina is rescued by Lori, a young woman who lives alone in an isolated glen and is rumoured to be a witch with healing powers.While Lori helps Thomasina recover from her ordeal, Mary's health continues to deteriorate and it is only when Thomasina makes her miraculous return, on a dark and stormy night, and is reunited with her owner that Mary is pulled from the brink of death.
Copyright (#ulink_2a2ac65a-7bd5-5572-b449-3ee96ee9a1d7)
First published in the USA in 1957
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph in 1957
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Text copyright © Mathemata Anstalt 1957
Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2011
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Cover illustration © Jarom Vogel 2017
Paul Gallico asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007395187
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007542321
Version: 2016-12-21
To Virginia
There is no such town as Inveranoch in Argyll, nor are there any such people alive or dead as written about herein. This is a work of fiction.
P. G.
Contents
Cover (#u29e6c28b-7812-52d8-964b-89ebde314414)
Title Page (#u11e945b7-b722-5aa4-b755-9feff7b5d167)
Copyright (#udf204f97-a3f3-5800-9a57-1948508e64a3)
Dedication (#u07ee0163-5cb0-51cc-b1a0-dfe63e0f7dd3)
Why You’ll Love This Book by Michael Morpurgo (#u46fe92d5-5b2c-58ab-9b5a-b129ad1c4965)
Chapter One (#u70b361b3-7be2-5ef5-acf7-b248a4d5b48e)
Chapter Two (#udd98c859-fcd7-5594-95d4-acc723bd6ccb)
Chapter Three (#u476f0cd5-edda-5e6f-9571-c8656fea38f7)
Chapter Four (#ub05b6dea-5b27-5d72-8fda-20efc2c87541)
Chapter Five (#uf0618d00-a9da-5fe1-9319-5baf5d343609)
Chapter Six (#u51f77ca2-96e7-5b58-98b4-8e574754f9f4)
Chapter Seven (#u7ab54804-1e57-5c9b-b5a3-f82e0f3362d7)
Chapter Eight (#u1ac10b5f-8bff-5d60-b07f-2e8b7c7ea837)
Chapter Nine (#u0f169635-eae9-5b94-93a4-36f9fb49467a)
Chapter Ten (#ud083e803-6fa8-5071-b7cd-75033912d00c)
Chapter Eleven (#u4d35fa9c-aabf-5fc2-b92b-a78b60f1378e)
Chapter Twelve (#u2bd92da2-d0f0-52cd-8bcf-2911467a4502)
Chapter Thirteen (#uabc9af71-3fd4-5649-89da-932e3f134830)
Chapter Fourteen (#ub5ad6710-4360-5384-89d3-444efd214bd1)
Chapter Fifteen (#uc7ca20e8-0178-5bd4-9b09-e4dc73802df8)
Chapter Sixteen (#u067cffae-fd10-5d19-b347-e2c76c087415)
Chapter Seventeen (#u1c4a6b85-d5c7-52f8-9b57-bb3220c7667f)
Chapter Eighteen (#ue6be851c-6f1d-501f-a2e7-5216db4d74f7)
Chapter Nineteen (#uafc0e793-613c-5ae5-9d1b-61eceeb91c3a)
Chapter Twenty (#u055f446c-e0ca-5eb6-b0d7-4c05bbeaf1ae)
Chapter Twenty-One (#uf3d1765a-6339-56d2-95e2-51e87c09d925)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u94fb6d3f-5814-5115-bb8b-64c10f1a4e2a)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#uf0bc8ca4-87f1-5f9d-9109-538416d0f342)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#ua7dff5a6-5416-5809-a64f-93d5db189d00)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u7215bf44-9a84-5b94-9116-10ce3d077748)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#u7fe444af-912d-5ea7-ae45-d453cbce7e6e)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u39f12644-8dc2-5e99-9d38-4eba2f88341d)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#uad2e8272-7c98-5de7-9e3e-7134f673fc59)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#ud10d697c-a8c2-5fc4-ab8d-428ae2134a15)
Chapter Thirty (#u404f945d-10d8-56e6-a0cf-4d014c56ae70)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u23036984-1b3a-5f45-9e50-72869fdbac54)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#u5f2d0d21-7328-57b4-8641-b2e31e85489b)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#uc22a9232-bd2c-59cc-bf30-48a556cbd1b6)
Footnote
Keep Reading … (#u46128df5-8e7a-5686-8a69-f408ea8ce7a6)
About the Author
Collins Modern Classics by Paul Gallico (#u1fc1a9f5-4500-546c-8c5c-49fd3c26d1f9)
About the Publisher (#ue37d067a-2a29-59c6-9899-d5693f6b1d57)
Why You’ll Love This Book by Michael Morpurgo (#ulink_25628d96-abab-5c68-a38b-59dda741d9f9)
Paul Gallico always brings to his stories the ring of truth. It is what writers of fiction have to do if their stories are to be believed. It must be the first rule of every writer of fiction to make our readers believe. If they don’t, then they simply won’t care. They must have a burning desire to turn the page and find out what happens next. One way to achieve this is for a writer to set the story in a known historical context or against a very specific and recognisable geographical background. In The Snow Goose or indeed in The Small Miracle, two of his most popular stories, this great storyteller does just this, leaning heavily on actual events and places for inspiration as well as credibility.
With Thomasina, as with his other great cat story, Jennie, Paul Gallico leaves the comfort zone of reality, and launches off into an unlikely adventure told by a remarkable cat, Thomasina, Mary Ruadh’s ginger cat. Murdered (put down) by Mary’s father, Andrew MacDhui, a country vet; reincarnated by Lori, Red Witch of the glen, Thomasina becomes Talitha who can trace her ancestry back to an Egyptian goddess. She has only revenge in her heart for her murderer. Unlikely it all may be, but because Gallico is such a compelling and inviting teller of tales, we go with him, we believe it absolutely. Whether or not you like cats, this is a tale you cannot put down. You go where Thomasina takes you – she and Gallico between them practically turn the pages for you.
Like Gallico I’ve written several cat stories, but none as fantastical as this, and none as feline either. This is a story that cats would love as much as I do!
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children. He has written over 100 books and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award. His recent bestselling novels include The Fox and the Ghost King, An Eagle in the Snow and Listen to the Moon. His novel War Horse has been successfully adapted as a West End and Broadway theatre play and a major film by Steven Spielberg. A former Children’s Laureate, Michael is also the co-founder, with his wife Clare, of the charity Farms for City Children.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_90eca056-2703-5a3b-88ea-6b0759e6b591)
Mr Andrew MacDhui, veterinary surgeon, thrust his brick-red, bristling beard through the door of the waiting-room next to the surgery and looked with cold, hostile eyes upon the people seated there on the plain pine chairs with their pets on their laps or at their feet awaiting his attendance.
Willie Bannock, his brisk, wiry man-of-all-work in surgery, dispensary, office and animal hospital, had already gossiped a partial list of those present that morning to Mr MacDhui and which included his friend and next-door neighbour, the Minister, Angus Peddie. Mr Peddie, of course, would be there with, or because of, his insufferable pug dog whose gastric disturbances were brought on by pampering and the feeding of forbidden sweets. Mr MacDhui’s glance dropped to the narrow lap of the short-legged, round little clergyman and for a moment his eye was caught up in the unhappy, milky one of the pug rolled in his direction, filled with the misery of belly-ache, and yet expressing a certain hope and longing as well. The animal had come to associate his visits to this place, the smells and the huge man with the fur on his face with relief.
The veterinary disentangled himself from the hypnotic eye and wished angrily that Peddie would follow his advice on feeding the animal and not be there wasting his time. He noted the rich builder’s wife from Glasgow on holiday with her rheumy little Yorkshire terrier, an animal he particularly detested, with its ridiculous velvet bow laced into its silken top-knot. There was Mrs Kinloch over the ears of her Siamese cat which lay upon her knee, occasionally shaking its head and complaining in a raucous voice, and, too, there was Mr Dobbie, the grocer, whose long and doleful countenance reflected that of his Scots terrier who was suffering from the mange and looked as though a visit to the upholsterer would be more practical.
There were half a dozen or so others, including a small boy, who he seemed to have seen somewhere before, and at the head of the line he recognised old, obese Mrs Laggan, proprietress of the newspaper and tobacco shop who, with her nondescript mongrel, Rabbie, his muzzle greyed, his eyes rheumy with age, was a landmark of Inveranoch and had been so for years.
Mrs Laggan was a widow, and had been for the past twenty-five years of her seventy-odd. For the last fifteen of them, her dog, Rabbie, had been her only companion, and his bulk draped across the doorstep of Mrs Laggan’s shop was as familiar a figure to natives as well as visitors to the Highland town as that of the fat widow in her Paisley shawl. Since the doorstep was Rabbie’s place, nose between forepaws, eyes rolled upwards, customers of the widow Laggan had learned to step over him when entering and departing. It was said in the High Street that descendants of these clients were already born with this precaution bred into them.
Mr MacDhui looked his patients over and the patients looked back at him with varying degrees of anxiety, hope, deference, or in some cases a return of the hostility that seemed to be written all over the well-marked features of his face, the high brow, the indignantly flaring red-tufted eyebrows, commanding blue eyes, strong nose, full and sometimes mocking lips, half seen through the bristle of red moustache and beard and the truculent and aggressive chin.
His eyes and, above all, his manner always seemed cold and angry, perhaps because, it was said in Inveranoch, he was on the whole a cold and angry man.
A widower of the stature and flamboyance of Mr Veterinary Surgeon MacDhui was subject enough for gossip in a Highland town the size of Inveranoch, in Argyll, where he had been in practice for only a little over eighteen months. By the nature of his profession he was a figure of importance there since he looked after not only the personal and private pets of the townspeople, but was responsible also for the health of the livestock raised in the outlying farms of the district, the herds of Angus cattle and black-faced sheep, pigs and fowl. In addition, he was the appointed veterinary of the district for the inspection of meat and milk and hygienic dairies as well.
The gossips allowed that Andrew MacDhui was an honest, forthright and fair-dealing man, but, and this was the opinion of the strictly religiously inclined, a queer one to be dealing with God’s dumb creatures, since he appeared to have no love for animals, very little for man, and neither the inclination or the time for God. Whether or not he was an out and out unbeliever as many claimed, he certainly never was seen in Mr Peddie’s church, even though the two were known to be good friends. Others claimed that when his wife had died his heart had turned to stone, all but the corner devoted to his love for his seven-year-old child, Mary Ruadh, the one who was never seen without that ill-favoured, queer-marked ginger cat she called Thomasina.
Mind you, said the tattlers, no one denied that he was a good and efficient doctor for the beasties. Quick to cure or kill, and a mite too handy with the chloroform rag was the word that went around. Those who felt kindly towards him held that he was a humane man not disposed to see a hopelessly sick animal suffer needlessly, while those who disliked him and his high-handed ways called him a hard, cruel man to whom the life of an animal was nothing, and who was openly contemptuous of people who were sentimentally attached to their pets.
And many of those who did not encounter him professionally were inclined to the belief that there must be some good in the man else he would not have had the friendship and esteem of Mr Angus Peddie, pastor of the Presbyterian flock of Inveranoch. It was said that the minister who had known MacDhui in their student days had been largely instrumental in persuading his friend, upon the death of his wife, Anne, to purchase the practice of Inveranoch’s retiring vet and move thither leaving behind him the unhappy memories that had bedevilled him in Glasgow.
Several of the inhabitants of Inveranoch remembered Mr MacDhui’s late father, John, himself a Glasgow veterinary, a dour, tyrannical old man with a strong religious bent who, holding the purse strings, had compelled his son to follow in his footsteps. The story was that Andrew MacDhui had wished to study to become a surgeon in his youth but in the end had been compelled for financial reasons to yield to his father’s wishes and likewise become a veterinary.
One of these inhabitants had once paid a visit to the gloomy old house in Dunearn Street in Glasgow where for a time father and son practised together until the old man died, and had nothing good to say about it, except that it was not much to wonder at that Mr MacDhui had turned out as he had.
Mr Peddie had known MacDhui’s father as a psalm-singing old hypocrite in whose home God served merely as an auxiliary policeman. Whatever seemed healthy or fun, old John MacDhui’s God was against, and Andrew MacDhui had grown up hating Him and then denying Him. The tragedy of the loss of his wife, Anne, when his daughter, Mary Ruadh, was only three had confirmed him in his bitterness.
His scrutiny completed, MacDhui now pointed his beard at old, fat Mrs Laggan and jerked his head in the direction of his office. She gave a little bleat of fright, picked Rabbie up out of her lap and arose painfully, holding him in her arms where he lay on his back, forepaws bent limply, watery eyes revolving. He resembled an over-stuffed black and grey porker and he wheezed at every breath like a catarrhal old man snoring.
Mr Angus Peddie pulled in his feet to let her by and gave her a warm, cherubic smile of encouragement, for he was the very opposite of the figure that a dour Scots churchman is supposed to resemble. He was short, inclined to stoutness, sweet-natured and extraordinarily vital. He had a round, dimpled face and mischievous eyes and smile which, however, could instantly express the deepest sympathy, penetrating understanding and concern.
Peddie’s pug dog, who, as well as suffering from chronic indigestion, staggered under the name of Fin-du-Siècle, an indication of the kind of humour one might be expected to encounter in the large Peddie family, lay likewise wheezing in the minister’s lap. Peddie lifted him into a sitting position so that he could better see Mrs Laggan and her sick dog go by. He said: “That’s Mrs Laggan’s Rabbie, Fin. The poor wee thing isn’t feeling well just now.” The rolling eyes of the two dogs met for a moment in melancholy exchange.
Mrs Laggan followed Mr MacDhui into the examining room of the surgery and deposited Rabbie on his back upon the long, white-enamelled examining table where he remained, his forepaws still limp and his breath coming in difficult gasps.
The veterinarian lifted the lip of the animal, glanced at his teeth, pulled down its eyelids and placed one hand for a moment upon its heaving belly. “How old is this dog?” he asked.
Mrs Laggan, traditionally dressed as became a respectable widow, in rusty black with a Paisley shawl over her shoulders, seemed to shrink inside her clothes. “Fifteen years and a bit,” she replied. “Well, fourteen, since he’s grown from the wee pup he was the day I got him,” she added, as though by quickly subtracting a year from his age she might lure fate into permitting him to remain a year longer. Fifteen was old for a dog. With fourteen there was always hope they might live to be fifteen, like Mrs Campbell’s old sheepdog, which was actually nearly sixteen.
The veterinarian nodded, glanced perfunctorily at the dog again and said: “He ought to be put out of his misery. You can see how bad his asthma is. He can hardly breathe.” He picked the dog up and set him on his feet on the floor where he promptly collapsed on to his belly with his chin flat on the floor and his eyes turned up adoringly at Mrs Laggan. “Or walk,” concluded MacDhui.
The widow had many chins. Fear set them all to quivering. “Put him away? Put the poor beastie to death? But whatever should I do then when he’s all I’ve got in this world? We’ve been together for fifteen years now, and me a lonely widow for twenty-five. What would I be doing without Rabbie?”
“Get another dog,” MacDhui replied. “It shouldn’t be difficult. The village is full of them.”
“Och, how can you be speaking like that? It would not be Rabbie. Can you not be giving him a wee bit of medicine that will keep him going till he gets well? He’s been a very healthy dog.”
Animals, reflected Mr MacDhui, were never a problem, it was the sentimentality of their owners that created all the difficulties. “The dog must die soon,” he said. “He is very old and very ill. Anyone with half an eye can see that his life has become a burden to him and that he is suffering. If I gave him some medicine you would be back here within a fortnight. It might prolong his life for a month, at the most six months. I am a busy man,” he concluded, but then added more gently: “It would be kinder to make an end to him.”
