The Abandoned
(Jennie)
Paul Gallico
An insightful story of cat-ology and the life of homeless cats told as a small boy’s strange dream.
MICHAEL JOSEPH LTD
26 Bloomsbury Street
London, W.C.I
OCTOBER 1950
CONTENTS
1. How it Began
2. Flight from Cavendish Square
3. The Emperor's Bed
4. A Story is Told
5. When in Doubt.Wash
6. Jennie
7. Always Pause on the Threshold
8. Hoodwinking of an Old Gentleman
9. The Stowaways
10. Price of Two Tickets to Glasgow
11. The Countess and the Crew
12. Overboard!
13. Mr. Strachan Furnishes the Proof
14. Mr. Strachan's Proof Leads to Difficulties
15. The Killers
16. Lost in the Clouds
17. Jennie Makes a Confession
18. Mr. Grims Sleeps
19. London Once More
20. The `Elite' of Cavendish Square
21. Reunion in Cavendish Mews
22. Jennie Makes a Decision
23. Lulu.or, Fishface for Short
24. The Informers
25. The Search
26. Jennie Come Out
27. The Last Fight
28. How It All Ended
CHAPTER ONE: How it Began
PETER guessed that he must have been hurt in the accident although he could not remember very much from the time he had left the safety of Scotch Nanny's side and run out across the street to get to the garden in the square, where the tabby striped kitten was warming herself by the railing and washing in the early spring sunshine.
He had wanted to hold and stroke the kitten. Nanny had screamed and there had been a kind of an awful bump after which it seemed to have turned from day to night, as though the sun were gone and it had become quite dark. He ached and somewhere it hurt him, as it had when he had fallen running after a football near a gravel pile and scraped nearly all the skin from the side of one leg.
He seemed to be in bed now, and Nanny was there peering at him in an odd way, that is, first she would be quite close to him, so close that he could see how white her face was, instead of its usual wrinkled pink colour, and then it would seem to fade and become very small like seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
His father and mother were not there, but this did not surprise Peter. His father was a Colonel in the Army, and his mother was always busy and having to dress up to go out, leaving him with Nanny.
Peter might have resented Nanny if he had not been so fond of her, for he knew that at eight he was much too old to be having a nurse who babied him and wanted always to lead him around by the hand as though he were not capable of looking after himself. But he was used by now to his mother being busy and having no time to look after him, or stay in and sit with him at night until he went to sleep. She had come to rely more and more upon Nanny to take her place, and when his father, Colonel Brown, once suggested that it might perhaps be time for Nanny to be leaving, his mother could not bear to think of sending her away, and so of course she had stayed.
If he was in bed, then perhaps he was sick, and if he was sick, perhaps his mother would be with him more when she came home and found out. Maybe now they would even give him the wish he had had for so long and let him have a cat all of his own to keep in his room and sleep curled up at the foot of his bed, and perhaps even crawl under the covers with him and snuggle in his arms on nights that were cold.
He had wanted a cat ever since he could remember, which was many years ago at the age of four.when he had gone to stay on a farm near Gerrards Cross, and had been taken into the kitchen and shown a basketful of
