Read Cat Out of Hell for Free Online Page B

her leg. She screamed and dropped her camera, which he knocked away, in my direction. Then he streaked off and I quickly lay across the camera, as if asleep, while the woman was helped away, hobbling and bleeding, by the native guide.”
    Roger laughs. Wiggy, rather uncertainly, joins in. He obviously feels he should say something.
    “That was quick thinking on your part,” he says.
    “Teamwork,” says Roger, with a sigh.
    There is a sense that this is the end of the instalment. Wiggy scrapes his chair back (does he stand up?). But then Roger resumes.
    “You’re right. Perhaps we should stop now. But you must be wondering why I wanted to visit Bloomsbury, and I suppose I ought to explain.”
    “All right.” The chair is moved back.
    “It’s about humans again. It began with – a boy.” Roger sounds different, suddenly. Less carefree; less in control. This is clearly not a happy story like the one about wantonly injuring a poor American tourist in Egypt. What if she got septicaemia? Roger doesn’t care, and Wiggy doesn’t think to ask. All Roger is concerned about is the “boy.”
    “He was an English boy in glasses and long shorts,” he says. “And I spotted him at the Acropolis one day when I was on my own there. He was sitting on a piece of fallen masonry, in the midday sun, making an elaborate drawing of the Parthenon, working so hard on it that I was sure he was oblivious to everything else, certainly to me.”
    “Why were you on your own? Where was the Captain?”
    “On a bus to Piraeus. He’d gone to check the ferry times. We were leaving Athens the next day for Brindisi. The last words he said to me were –”
    He stops. This is clearly emotional for him. “Sorry,” he says.
    “Roger, if this is difficult for you –”
    “I’m all right. But ten years with the Captain – well, I realise, now, they had made me … hubristic.”
    Wiggy starts to say, “What?” but Roger carries on.
    “And where better to suffer for your hubris than in one ofthe greatest sites of Ancient Greece? This boy – I was really drawn to him, you see. And I’d got used to the insane idea that the only possible bad outcome from interacting with a human would be a bad outcome for him . With his glasses and sketchbook and grey socks, he reminded me of those nice intellectual Durrells on Corfu. I felt sorry for him because he was sitting in full sun without a hat! As it happened, the Captain and I had recently spotted an old panama hat left in the dust near to the site of the Chalkotheke, and in my concern for him I didn’t hesitate: I went and got it and dragged it over. It was possibly the nicest thing I’ve ever done for someone else. Well, how true it is that no good deed goes unpunished.
    “The boy smiled, thanked me, and took the hat. Then he poured some cool water from a flask into a little bowl and gave it to me. I lapped it up, and he stroked my head. ‘You’re not a Greek cat, are you?’ he said. I purred, a bit uncertainly. And then he uttered the fateful words. ‘Ah-ha,’ he said. ‘I thought so.’ What did he mean? Why the ‘Ah-ha’? Did he think I’d replied to him? Up to this time, I’m sure I had never spoken human language to a human. I’m positive I didn’t speak to him! Yet somehow I did betray myself to that boy. It must have been clear that I understood what he said! Something I did gave me away!”
    Roger’s voice, when it rises, is a yowl of anguish. Wiggy takes a deep breath. But he knows better than to interrupt Roger’s flow of thought.
    “And then – oh it was vile,” Roger says, as steadily as he can. “He picked me up by the scruff of my neck and said, ‘I’ve read about cats like you.’ Then he produced some string from his pocket, and before I could do anything, he’d put a running slip-knot around my neck and was pulling me away.”
    “No!” says Wiggy.
    “Yes!” says Roger. “I yowled vehemently, and tried to fighthim, but he held me out at arm’s