THE CAT WHO SAID WONG

It's weird the legs that this story seems to have. It was just a bit of fun.

Inspired by Diana Wynne Jones and a friend, both of whom described cats who didn't meow but said 'Wong'. The story just appeared fully formed one day (the climax coming from a darker tale that I had started but abandoned a few years before), except for the epilogue, that little extra at the end, where the voice inside my head just ket on talking when I reached what I had thought would be the end... I liked it. It felt right. And interesting.

The story was published in THE CABINET PAPER when one of the editors/compilers asked if I'd like to contribute. It was coming up to christmas, and this story seemed to fit both the time of year and the handmade nature of THE CABINET PAPER itelf (that particular issue was a hand stitched bag like thing, made up of many different sized pockets to accomodate writing, tiny artworks, and a CD).

Josh Gaunt read the story in that collection and thought it might make a good short film. We worked on that together as Writer (me) and Director (him) and pitched it to South West Film... they didn't go for it (or maybe they did, they never really told us in the end, but that's another tale and I won't rant about it here). I'll put the script up soon, or at least a sample of it, so you can have a read. I still think that it can work. But it might need to be animation, unless someone has a pack of very well trained cats, or photoreal CGI suddenly gets very cheap. I hold out hope for it. If you're an animator, get in touch. This is something that I'd like to make.




THE CAT WHO SAID WONG by Neil Snowdon


“Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

The huge feet pounded up and down the hallway once again, as the cat watched the little girl and her mother. The little girl stood silent, toeing at the carpet with scuffed blue sandals that were a size too small.

“Wrong!”

The cat watched as Mother stopped and towered, and spat the word again, and the little girl flinched, and seemed to sink a little lower, shrink a little smaller.

It sometimes seemed to the cat that ‘Wrong’ was the only word that Mother knew, and that Father, perhaps, knew none. He made grumbling noises sometimes, and he snored in the night, but the cat had never heard words from him. At least, none she could decipher. She knew what words were, even if she didn’t know what they meant. She was certainly not a stupid cat. She simply did not seem to care. What use, after all, were words to a cat? She could not speak them…

But after many years of listening, she did begin to wonder.

This word: ‘Wrong’. It seemed a very powerful word to her. Certainly it had a very strong effect upon the child who looked after the cat so well, who’s feet the cat slept on at night, and who’s arms woke her every morning with a hug. And it was said to very often in the house to which she had been born… the cat really did have to wonder.

And wonder she did…

And watch, and listen, and worry, and think.

With every passing day, with every passing year the little girl got older and, it seemed to the cat, a little more dead. The ‘Wrongs’ kept coming. Day in, day out. And the child, it seemed , did shrink with every one.

Just a little mind you.

Just a teeny, tiny bit.

But the cat could see it… and, as the years went on, so could anyone who took the time to look. But the girl was such a small girl, and so quiet from the ‘Wrongs’, that no one really noticed, and no one really saw. And life for the poor little girl went on…

And on…

And on…

“Wrong! You’re wrong in what you think. You’re wrong in what you do, and you are wrong in what you are!”

Nothing the little girl could say, it seemed, would escape the vote of ‘Wrong’. And nothing that the little girl could do…

The A’s in school were always, inexplicably, wrong.

The Mothers day cards were always, somehow, wrong.

The state of her room was always, in some small detail, wrong.

The smile on her face was always… wrong.

Nothing the little girl could ever do was ever anything, except wrong…

And the cat continued to watch, and the cat continued to listen; to every uttered ‘Wrong’, and every shed tear that fell from the little girls swollen red eyes and wet blushing cheeks. Sometimes, the cat would lick at the salty little rivers, or wipe away the tears with her fur. And then the little girl would always laugh, and hug the cat harder than ever, until the cat had to wriggle to avoid being squished.

And so life went on…

And the years floated past, like huge nimbus clouds, heavy and slow, casting shadows and blocking out the sun and, all too often, pissing on the world as they passed.

Mothers voice never dimmed in all those years. It never faltered and it never failed, never grew croaky or quiet, or mellow with age. And all the while, the girl, it seemed, grew smaller, and quieter.

Not that she literally shrank you understand: the girl, though little, was no Tom Thumb, and nor did she become so. But some people we say are huge, when really they are not so big, it’s just that their presence in a room can make it seem small, make it seem filled. A living-room or a hall, or whatever you will. That person seems to fill it with their voice and their warmth and the energy that fizzes from them like lemonade that’s been shaken up too hard.

This girl was the opposite of that.

She seemed, to the cat, to be going rather flat. All the bubbles and the fizz were going out of her. And all because her Mother said the little girl was ‘Wrong’.

“You’re just… wrong,” she’d say. “Everything about you … is wrong!”

Wrong…

There was power it seemed, lurking in this word. The cat could see it, and feel it. Could see how it was killing the girl, little by little, inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre… it was crushing the life out of her, wringing her dry like a wet dish cloth. And so, in secret, the cat began to practice… began to teach itself to speak.

In the night, when all the house was sleeping, and in the garden, when no on else was there, the cat purred and growled and whined, and twisted its mouth and tongue, trying to form her single word of power. And slowly, slowly, she got better…

And better.

Closer…

And closer.

From ‘Meow’, she began to say ‘Ow’, and then ‘Wow’… and then ‘Ang’, and then ‘Waahhng’… until finally, one day - with much practice - she said ‘Wong’.

But try though she might - and she certainly did - she could never quite manage to make the sound of an R.

It irked her that she could not. But no matter how she tried, she simply could not make it come…

Perhaps a cats palate is not designed for such things. Perhaps her tongue was not made for such a shape. Or perhaps she simply had what humans call, a lisp… whatever the reason, and for no want of trying, the cat simply could not produce that R.

‘Wong’ was all she could muster.

‘Wong’ was all she could manage.

And so, even though it was, in its own right, wrong, she began teaching other cats how to say ‘Wong’.

She started with the cats that she knew in the neighbourhood; from the garden next door, and the one next to that, and the one next to that, and so on…

Her womanhood here was an advantage. And in that time of the month when boy-cats came from miles to see her, she used it. She held her nose aloft and cast her eyes to the sky. She would not let the boy-cats touch her, wouldn’t do so much as let them sniff, didn’t even look their way. A sharp scratch from a whiplash paw was the prize for any who so much as dared to even try. Only by her rules could the boy-cats come to play.

Soon every tomcat in the neighbourhood knew how to say ‘Wong’ - such motivation makes fast learners of the usually stubborn and dull - while the other females learned because, once it was known how, it seemed the proper thing to do. None could be seen to be left behind, and none could bear to be seen as anything but the very height of sophistication. And so, the neighbourhood cats all began to speak a single lisping word of English… and then, one night in winter, not long before Christmas, the cat who first learned it - the cat who had taught all the others to speak - took revenge for the little girl who loved her. The little girl who was told she was ‘Wrong’.

*

It was cold that night. There was frost on the windows. Father was snoring deeply, which meant that mother was not quite properly asleep when the first cat spoke its ‘Wong’.

It was a quiet ‘Wong’; a mutter if it had been a human voice, but, from a cat, it was a grumbling kind of purr. Mother turned in bed and stared in to the darkness.

At first it seemed she could see nothing. Perhaps, she thought, she had been dreaming; paddling in the shallows of her sleep. But then she caught the glint of glowing eyes…

And they were everywhere.

She stopped breathing for a second: the length of time it took for her to reach a hand out to the bedside lamp and turn it on. The gasp she gave was loud enough to wake her husband.

He came scrambling out of snores and dreams in a twist of blankets, propped himself on to his elbows, and slurred the first full words the cat had every heard escape his lips…

“What the fuck!?”

And then he saw what Mother saw.

The cats…

They filled the room and stared unblinking at Mother and Father, lying there in bed, voices frozen in their throats, both of them too scared to even breathe…

And then - as one - the cats began to speak…

“Wong. Wong. Wong. Wooooooonnnng. Woooooooonnnnnngggg. Woooooonnnnngggg.”

Just one word…

Over, and over…

Louder, and louder…

“Wooooooooooonng, wong, wooOONNNGGG, WONG, WONG, WOOOOOONNNNNNGGG!”

It began as a pulsing sound, rhythmic and steady, building and building, until soon it was a cacophony, every cat reaching fever pitch, the room humming and resonating like a tuning fork, so loud and so strong that Mother and Father could barely hear each other screaming over the noise the cats made; crying and wailing, accusing and judging, condemning them both with their single spoken word, over and over and over and over… again, and again, and again…

*

Christmas that year was good for everyone. The little girl lit up with joy as Mother and Father made up for every dismal Christmas past. By lunchtime the house was filled knee deep with shredded wrapping paper, and there were still yet presents to unwrap. Mother and Father paid much attention to cooking the grandest feast the girl had ever seen, and erecting a tree that was so large it had to bend where it met the ceiling. There was even a fairy perched on top, though its neck was quite certainly broken.

There were crackers so loud that they sounded like cannon, and bought in such numbers the house sounded like a battlefield. The cat, meanwhile, was discovered to be pregnant. And proud she looked as she padded regally about the house, while Mother and Father kept respectful distance and barely uttered a word.


And so our story might have ended… were it not that it featured a cat. For a cat is not a straightforward creature, like a dog. Cats are never simple, and rarely ever content… and a little knowledge can be such a dangerous thing…
T
he little girl lived happily to the end of her days, in a house with many cats, while her parents - out of fear - in the end became quite nice people: adults, much like dogs, can be trained with relative ease…

But cats are a different matter.

Cats are never contented.

And they know when they have the power.

The cat in question - the cat who learned to speak, who learned to say ‘Wong’ and passed her knowledge to every other cat she could - had kittens in the early part of the following year. They were a beautiful brood, a speckled litter of black and ginger and grey, and just as bright as their mother. She taught them well, passing on the power of her single word to them too…

‘Wong’.

The years passed and her kittens had kittens of their own, and those kitten had theirs, and so on, and so on… until, slowly, the cats across the country all began to speak. The knowledge passed from stray to stray, spread far and wide by hobo tomcats as they spread their seed. It was handed down from one generation to the next, muttered and whispered and purred… until kittens were practising it in their sleep, roaring it in their dreams, their one all powerful word.

Some were shy at first, of using their word in front of humans.

But not for long…

Those cats among the first, who were there that night, in the bedroom of Mother and Father, soon spoke to their owners and discovered the power of their single spoken word:

‘Wong’.

Those cats have now passed in to legend. The years have claimed their names, but still, they are remembered. The first owners to hear their speech, it is said, fell to their knees. Some in laughter. Some in fear… but all, it is told, were taken away in giggling madness soon thereafter.

It was not long, however, before the mad were hailed as prophets.

Soon, cats up an down the country were being heard to speak. And the country stopped to listen. My grandfather told me how he saw one of those first, paraded on the television for everyone to see. For everyone to hear…

‘Wong’.

The people watched in wonder. But soon they bowed in fealty.

The cats became our masters in a matter of years. Their berating word of ‘Wong’ was taken to heart by all: we knew, within our hearts, that the cats were right. That we were ‘Wong’ , and had been now for centuries.

Nature had found its voice. The Animal Kingdom spoke in clear and certain terms… and purred when scratched behind the ears.

But still, the wheel has turned, and now we live as slaves, and to live in fear is no good thing. The wisdom of the cats seems now long past, the wisdom of their ‘Wong’ forgot. The cats now have become our Mother…


Be careful dear reader and secret this story well. I heard it from my grandfather, who heard it from the lips of a dying stray, who - to hear my grandfather tell it - spoke to him in an eloquent, though lisping, form of English that my grandfather claimed made him think the cat had, at some time, been to university. The stray had seemed well educated, and had spoke with sadness over what had become of the Feline Revolution, how great ideals were twisted and abused… he died feeling guilty, hoping and praying that some day there would be equality between beasts and men.

I can’t help thinking that he was a dreamer.

I believe it is in the fundamental nature of a cat to feel superior. This will never change. Their current position makes them dangerous… deadly. They might kill me if they know I told this tale. So I write in secret, and I pass it on to you with fear, for I cannot keep this to myself.

Please dear reader, do not get caught with this in your hands, or your fate might be as mine: death at their claw if they find you…

But only if they find you…

And I intend to run.

I’m planning now, biding my time.

I must be patient. My time will come. My time to run and hide, dreaming of -and fighting for - a world in which humans are not just feeders, groomers, providers… a world in which humans are not simply slaves to feline masters…

But that time is not yet.

That time is not now.

By the clock on the wall, the time, right now, is Dinner…


I put down my pen and walk quietly to the kitchen, and bring my masters feast with fear.

I set the bowl of finest china before him and wait to hear his words. I slaved for hours to make this right, to make it nice, to make it just so…

I watch and I wait as the master takes his meal. A tiny lick to taste…

Is it alright?

I cross my fingers behind my back and bite my lip. He takes a mouthful, chews and swallows. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, hear my pulse, loud in my ears…

He stops eating. A fresh mouthful of food, chewed, but not swallowed, drops back in to the bowl with a wet kissing sound. My master looks up at me. His yellow eyes are full of sad disdain.

‘Wong,’ he mewls at me, with a heavy catty sigh.

‘Wong…’

I take the china bowl in hand and turn my back with a scowl. Tomorrow I will run from my masters home. Tomorrow I will be a stray. Tomorrow I will be free… tomorrow…