Paws and Professionals

Chantal Schaul, 2007

It was while two of his student cats presented their role-play that Rubens noticed the critical looks of his mentor. She obviously wasn’t happy with something, though Rubens could not imagine what. He had followed her advice and instructions to a tee – listen to some example conversations, study new expressions, some drilling, and then practice. But Ms Thistlewig seemed miffed. The brown suit she was wearing only accentuated her foul mood.

Felinda, a ginger cat, was Rubens’s best student. She played the part of the angry customer perfectly: “Listen to me, I want to close my account with you, and that’s that!” Grunther, a plump white and grey male, was a tad less confident, but still delivered his lines well: “Not a problem, madam, but I can offer you an upgrade to your existing deal-” – “No! Just cancel everything!” The conversation had been going on for a while. It was a tricky spot for Grunther to get out of. His only objective was to keep the customer, and he was failing to reach it. He pulled his last trump card, the one they had been taught today: “Ms Mona, I shall cancel your monthly payments, but keep your account active. In six months’ time you can tell me to close the whole lot, and I will. How does that sound?” Felinda took a deep breath. “Fine. Bye.” The class meowed in unison.

Ms Thistlewig stomped to the teacher’s desk. She could have looked pretty, still, if it hadn’t been for the permanent imprint of a sour and acidic mould on her face. “Rubens, just a few things.” He knew that was an understatement. It was her usual introduction before shredding his lessons from start to finish. “Fill in your computer questionnaires now,” he ordered the class. The claws started clattering away on the keyboards.

Ms Thistlewig stood aggressively close. Rubens could discern the brand of stale coffee on her breath. “What was the pedagogical value of reading the new expressions aloud? Where were your controlled versus fluency activities? What did you want to test? What were your objectives? Accuracy? Fluency? Task-based exercises? Objectives? Creativity? What are you planning to do on Friday? Email me!” After her tirade, Ms Thistlewig swiveled round and marched out of the classroom without further ado. Rubens took a deep breath to cool down his boiling blood. “Good work today, all of you. Don’t forget to copy your homework assignment, and see you tomorrow.” The cats briefly looked up from their screens, “Good bye Mr Rubens,” and continued to type.

Rubens crashed out on his velvety green sofa as soon as he got home. It had been a long day, building up to his supervised lesson with Thistlewig. She drove him to the brink of despair. In fact, his whole teacher-training course was riddled with pitfalls, most of them unnecessarily put in place by training staff. What criteria they worked with exactly, was a mystery to Rubens. He didn’t think that they had agreed on any common denominators, either. But such was the life of a teacher trainee in the Faculty of Feline Education.

Teaching cats had only recently become popular, after the breakthrough of some specific genetic modification practices. Rubens was not a science man, so he didn’t understand the whole extent of the process. What was important for him limited itself to the fact that cats could now speak, read and type. Therefore they needed an education, preparing them for the special call centre jobs they were destined for. Cats, it had turned out, were very organised and meticulous about their jobs. As long as they had regular meals and the occasional toy, they were perfectly happy. And if there was the occasional case of a depressed cat, well, it was easy to get rid of them. Old grannies were practically fighting each other to take a sad, lonely talking cat into their homes.

To become a fully qualified teacher of talking cats, Rubens had to go through three years of hardship and toil. Miraculously, he had put two thirds of that time behind him, and was now struggling through the last, and hardest, part of the slog. Thankfully, he liked the cats, at least.

Rubens lay back on the worn-out velvet and closed his dark-lashed eyes. He still had piles of tests to correct. And write an essay entitled ‘A personal trajectory of my professional development between 12th and 29th January: the facts.’ There was no point in even trying to relax. Rubens opened his eyes and took the tests out of his leather satchel. Leafing through them, he noticed a sheet of paper which seemed to contain personal notes. Perhaps it had slipped in by accident.

On closer inspection, Rubens found that the notes were, indeed, very personal. He blushed when he read: “Mr Rubens is the most wonderful man I have ever laid my eyes on. If only I could be a full-time woman to appeal to him. Today his nasty mentor is visiting again. She is so nasty to him; I hate her! I want to scratch her eyes out and bite her neck off! Poor Mr Rubens, he doesn’t deserve such treatment! I so adore him. He has wonderful dark eyes and lashes – you’d think he’s constantly wearing mascara. And his hair is so sweetly dishevelled. He probably doesn’t even notice this, he’s so absent-minded sometimes. Sigh.”

Rubens brushed his hand through his hair and blushed a tiny bit. There was no name on the piece of paper. For all he knew, it could be a hoax. And anyway, he called himself back to reality, these were the words not only of a minor, but also those of a cat! What was the world coming to? Cats fancying him?!

The next day, Rubens couldn’t help feeling a little bit uncomfortable in class. He scanned the female cats for give-away signs, but couldn’t detect any. The whole thing must have been a prank, perhaps by one of his fellow trainees. “Missy, could you read through the possible answers to the tricky customer query number 867, ‘How can I return a parcel to Timbuktu without a return address?’” Rubens looked at his watch and waited for the bell to ring.

And so a few more weeks passed in utter agony, as Rubens put his nose through the teacher-training grindstone. The days blended into each other and felt like one endless string of life-draining assignments and heart-crushing training sessions. Oppressive workloads and unexpected auxiliary but compulsory projects meant that Rubens entirely forgot about his private life, including the incident of the feline admirer.

One fateful day, Rubens had forgotten a vital preparation sheet at school, and was forced to go back in the evening. He found the piece of paper he needed, and then thought of checking on his students. The cats had their dormitory at the school, in a common room at the end of the ground floor. He unlocked the door quietly and peaked inside. But, alas, the only living soul he saw was not a cat, but a human being – a girl, to be precise, and of the sweetest constitution imaginable, at that!

“What are you doing in here? This is the cat’s dormitory.” The girl was shocked at Rubens’s sudden appearance. “I… I got locked in here.” – “Where are all the cats?” – “They went out.” She pointed at the cat flap. “It’s their playing and hunting slot.” Rubens cleared his throat. Of course. He’d forgotten about that. “So, anyway, who are you?” – “I visited the school today and somehow got locked in,” she replied innocently. “Come on out then,” he said in a friendly voice, because, by then, he had hopelessly and helplessly fallen in love with the girl. “How old are you?” he asked, just to make sure. “Twenty-one,” she said. All was well, then.

As they walked through the corridor, side by side, Rubens glanced at her occasionally, and very briefly. She had long, swaying mahogany hair and eye lashes of the same hue. They fluttered to reveal her clear blue eyes, as light and bright as a cloudless summer sky. She was tall and slender, dressed in long green velvet, similar to his sofa, in fact, but on her it looked noble and classy.

Once outside, Rubens’s infatuation had spiralled into such deep-felt love that he could not help but ask: “Would you like a lift to anywhere?” To his utter delight and heart-fluttering ecstasy, she agreed instantly. “Oh, yes, the centre of town would be perfect. If you’re going that way,” she added shyly. “Of course, of course,” he trilled, and opened the door for her.

When they arrived at their destination, their relationship had progressed to such an extent that they wordlessly acquiesced to have dinner together. And when they had finished their dinner (neither of them remembered afterwards what or where it was they had eaten) they held hands and crowned their silent understanding with a kiss.

It was when they found themselves back in Rubens’s car, that he finally dared to say: “Erm, I really like you.” And, after a short pause: “Is it mutual?” She smiled broadly and said: “Yes.” He kissed her again, and, only then, thought of asking her name. “I’m Rubens, by the way. And you?” – “My name is Felicity,” she whispered. “I really have to go now, though. He looked at his watch; it was five to midnight. “I suppose it’s getting a bit late. Will I see you again?” – “Yes,” she said mysteriously, and vanished. Thick fog meant that he could not detect in which direction she went.

Throughout the next day, Rubens was anxious about how he could see Felicity again. After all, he knew nothing about her. Their talks over dinner had been enchanting and captivating, but ultimately insubstantial. The only facts he could remember was that she had no living relations. But where did she live? What did she do? Where did she come from?

To Rubens’s delightful surprise, that same evening at seven o’clock, the doorbell rang. He could not have hoped for a more welcome visitor. Felicity smiled and said coyly: “I hope I’m not intruding?” He swooped her inside gallantly. “Of course not. I am overjoyed to see you again so soon!” he chirped. “Please, sit down. Would you like a drink?” She nodded. Thankfully Rubens had a six-pack of Baileys left over from Christmas. He cracked one of the bottles open.

And so they sat together all evening and sipped Baileys. Felicity got rather tipsy, and said she wasn’t used to alcohol, but liked it. Before she made another mysterious exit just before midnight, Rubens managed to steal one gigantic kiss from her, which nearly tipped them over to the early hours of the morning.

When Felicity had left, Rubens realised he had again failed to gain any vital information about her background. All he could hope for was another unannounced visit. She did not disappoint him. As regular as clockwork, she appeared at his doorstep every evening at 7 o’clock, and disappeared again just before midnight. Rubens wondered what the reason for this regular schedule was, but he kept postponing the question. And so the weeks passed.

Rubens and Felicity had moved on in their relationship. As time went by, they swapped the location of the living room with that of the bedroom, and once they had consumated their love for each other, they could no longer get out of that new habit. They still sipped Baileys while deeply looking into each other’s eyes. Sometimes they counted each other’s fingers. And once they even painted the tips of their ears white and attached little tufts of hair to them.

But then, one day, something unexpected and terrible happened. It goes without saying that countless hours of whispering sweet nothings and making love had diverted Rubens from his studies. He had, in fact, neglected his work to such a dismal extent, that Ms Thistlewig’s sharp eyes and perceptive nature had not failed to notice the full extent of the damage. It was on that fateful night that she had discovered the truth. Without a moment’s thought, she jumped into her brown suit at a very late hour and drove straight over to Rubens.

She rang the bell at a higher volume than anyone else had ever managed to do. It also sounded more persistent and threatening. She made the bell sound in such a way that Rubens could not brush it away casually and stay in bed, regardless. He felt compelled to rush to the door and comply with the late-night visitor. Meanwhile, Felicity stayed in the bedroom, a tad impatient, as she had been on the brink of saying good-bye for the night.

“Rubens, how dare you neglect your work like that? Have you lost all sense of duty and responsibility? I am ashamed for being your mentor! What will the headmaster say? And the coordinator? And the subordinator? And the secretary?” Her harsh words rushed past Rubens’s head like a lion’s roar. “I know that this can mean only one thing,” hissed Ms Thistlewig. Rubens was all ears. “It means that you waste your time on frivolities. It mean that you, dear boy, have a lover!” She pronounced that last word in a deep whisper, projecting hot breath on Rubens’s face. He could tell what she’d had for dinner.

Without any warning, Ms Thistlewig stormed past Rubens and straight into the bedroom. Rubens opened his mouth to protest and, that having failed, ran after his demented mentor in order to prevent the worst. But ere he could intervene, she was already inside the bedroom, clutching her face with both hands. “Rubens! You have a cat! I hope to God it’s not a student of yours!” To test the theory, in front of Rubens bewildered eyes, she picked up the cat, a ginger, and looked her straight in the eyes. “Speak if you can!” The cat remained silent. “Very well, I shall squeeze the words out of you, my dear!” She placed the cat on the bed, held it by its tail, and pinched the living hell out of it. That had no effect, so she resorted to placing her palms on either flank and squeezing violently. The cat finally caved in and said: “Ow!”

“There we have it,” triumphed Ms Thistlewig. Can you give me a valid explanation why you have one of your students in your bedroom?” she loomed. Rubens was utterly perplexed. He twitched his shoulders a couple of times. “I shall present this case before the coordinator tomorrow. Think hard of what you can say for yourself.” With those words, she sharply turned around on her heels, and took the cat with her.

Rubens sat down on his bed. It took him several moments to compose himself. Then he felt something hard and spiky under his left thigh. He got up and lifted the covers. There he found a key – as if tossed there casually – and some carefully folded sheets of A4 paper. He opened what appeared to be a letter, not hand-written, but a print-out.

“Dear Rubens’” it started, “I am preparing this letter for an emergency, which I am sure will happen sooner or later. I am risking too much and will be discovered one day. It is important that you keep my secret safe, or else I will be doomed. So here it is, then.

I am not always the person you know. In fact, I am only resuming my human shape between the hours of seven pm and midnight. At all other times I am a cat called Felinda. I have known you for a while now, as you teach the class I am in. My ability to speak accidentally landed me with the genetically modified talking cats, and now I am destined to work in a call centre. I can hardly imagine any worse job, but what am I to do?

You might be wondering why I came to be a cat in the first place. Well, here it is. My mother was all alone when I was born; the man who fathered me had mysteriously disappeared one evening while he was putting up some shelves. Because she was poor, my mother could not afford to quit her job. At the same time she didn’t want to leave me unattended.

Thankfully she knew a wise-woman from the neighbourhood, who performed temporary transformations. The idea was to change me into a cat during the day, for the simple reason that cats can take care of themselves, and have me back as her human child during the evening, after she’d finished work. No one needed to look after me, change my nappies, feed me, wash me, and all the other chores and tasks that a newborn and toddler require.

The arrangement worked so well that it lasted for years. When I finally got to the age of seven, it was high time for the transformation spell to be lifted, but the wise-woman had left the neighbourhood, and was nowhere to be found. My mother had also mislaid the magic formula which, in an emergency, was to get me back to normal. So the years went by and my situation didn’t change.

Then, when I was eighteen, my mother ordered a Congolese bat. She was a collector of bats and had several in the loft. This one was a special fruit bat, which, as far as I remember, lived on fruit only. Unfortunately, this bat carried a deadly virus, and as soon as it was delivered and allowed out of its cage, it infected my mother so badly that she died an agonising, but thankfully quick death. But even while she was bleeding to death from her eyes, she thought of my well-being. She had prepared a safe deposit box for me, with all the money she had in the world. As she took her last few breaths, she gave me the key to this box and said: “Look after yourself, my dear child.”

There I was, all alone in the world, and cat for most of the time. I dug the key in our garden, so I could retrieve it later. When the neighbours found the remains of my mother, I was put in a cat home from which I later escaped. I was homeless for a while, until an old lady took me in. She never found out about my human side because she went to bed at seven. But when she discovered I could speak, she assumed I was one of those genetically engineered cats and returned me to the ‘Talking Cats Foundation.’ And that is how I landed at this dreadful school.

Dearest Rubens, please know that I love you very much and that will never change. I knew that from the first moment I saw you enter the classroom. Maybe you will be able to cope with my cat nature, but if not, could you please safeguard my key until I can collect it, and then I will vanish from your life forever. Your Felicity.”

Rubens developed an instant plan, but execution would have to wait until the morning. To bridge the excruciatingly slow passage of time, he went to a twenty-four hour supermarket and shopped for cat essentials: food and bowls, dried fish, cat milk, a radiator hammock, a climbing tree, a basket, several toy mice, a litter box, and a green velvet collar.

The next morning, he taught his lessons as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and treated Felinda as just another talking cat. During the break, he read a particularly nasty email from Ms Thistlewig. “I have arranged a meeting with the Coordinator next Wednesday at 3 o’clock. I’m looking forward to hear what excuse you come up with for your disgusting behaviour. You should be expelled from the course for this!”

None of this made any difference to Rubens’s intentions. When the bell finally rang after the last lesson, he sidled up to Felinda and whispered: “Don’t leave yet.” She nodded briefly and dawdled shutting down the computer. When the two of them were finally alone in the classroom, Rubens announced: “Don’t worry, Felicity, I will not desert you. Your cat nature does not intimidate me. I will take care of you, as a cat or otherwise. Will you elope with me?” Felinda smiled, as much as her feline features allowed, and she would have cried, if she’d had tear ducts. “Oh Rubens, I am so pleased,” she whispered.

Rubens smuggled her out in his satchel. On the way home, he picked up a random cat from a home, as a cover-up, should Ms Thistlewig ever rollercoaster into his house unannounced again. The only criteria he had for the alibi cat was that it had to be either female or castrated, so to avoid any nasty assaults on Felinda. The cat he ended up with was a quiet fat grey male, called Brian.

Brian settled in quite contentedly, ate incredible amounts of food and slept in Felinda’s radiator seat for the rest of the time. Felinda said she didn’t mind, and, anyway, she got the seat of honour next to Rubens on the sofa. The evening hours went by as usual, Felicity back to her human shape. The two lovers vowed eternal faithfulness and swore to fend for each other until their dying days. Then Felicity revealed that she was pregnant.

“Pregnant?” asked Rubens, confused. “With a cat or a human?” he added. “A human, I believe.” – “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Rubens exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted children!” – “The only problem I can foresee,” Felicity contemplated, “is that, with time, a grave disproportion might develop between my cat body and the baby. I might be unable to move for the largest part of my pregnancy.” Rubens looked deep into her eyes. “I will be there for you.”

The next day, Rubens had to hide his nervousness at school. What would the reaction to Felinda’s vanishing be? The other cats in the classroom seemed unphased. “She probably got run over,” commented Lilu, a mish-mash cat that looked like a cleaning mop. Later that day, a replacement for Felinda was brought in and placed in front of her computer. It was white with some grey tiger spots and went by the name of Molly.

The meeting with Ms Thistlewig and the Coordinator proved somewhat more stressful. “I have been told you took a student cat home with you,” the Coordinator said thunderingly. “Yes,” admitted Rubens, “it’s true. Felinda needed help with some of her sales pitches, so I took her home for the evening. Then it got so late I decided to take her back the next morning. I’m sorry, I know it was unorthodox practice, and it won’t happen again.”

The Coordinator drew some breath and grumbled a bit. Ms Thistlewig intervened. “And why has Felinda disappeared? I’m sorry, but that seems rather suspicious to me!” The coordinator raised one eyebrow and nailed Rubens with his eyes. “Well?” – “Well, I have no idea,” replied Rubens, keeping his voice steady. “It’s a complete mystery to me. One of my students thought she might have got run over last night.” – “Hm, hm,” the Coordinator rumbled and rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger, “I shall take a note of this and remember it for your final exam in front of the jury, Rubens. It will be taken into account for your final mark. After all, we are professionals here.” Ms Thistlewig grinned as they both left the room.

“So far, so good,” thought Rubens, as he flew back to his beloved Felicity. He found her, still a cat, reading one of his books, entitled ‘Pedagogical Twists and Turns: the Revelation.’ For the first time, he noticed the obvious swelling of her belly. He went over and kissed it. “And?” she asked. “All is well so far. No one suspects anything. Still, I don’t trust Thistlewig. It’s better we lie low for a while.”

A few blissful days passed without interference from the world outside. Felinda was not quite happy with Brian’s slobbery behaviour and his habit of pushing all the food over the brink of the bowl with his big nose, thus making a mess on the kitchen floor. His poos stank and she had to constantly watch out and make sure they were buried deep enough. Brian mostly ignored her remonstrative conduct and carried on being a useless layabout.

And then, one fateful day, Ms Thistlewig paid Rubens a visit, together with the Subordinator. He was a little plump man in a tweed suit. His face was knobbly and threaded by a net of purple surface veins, which shone out most intensely from the creases of his lumpy nose. “We’ve come to search your place for Felinda,” erupted Ms Thistlewig. “Let us pass, young man,” the Subordinator added in a nasal voice. “Be my guests,” said Rubens, relieved that they had come at a time where Felicity had shed her cat form.

Ms Thistlewig charged ahead and sniffed her way into the living room. “Aha!” she declared when she saw the cat tree and various toys strewn around the floor. “There is a cat in this house!” – “Yes, let me get Brian for you,” Rubens retorted with a smile. He picked up Brian’s dead weight from the radiator hammock. Brian started purring instantly. Ms Thistlewig pinched his ear and prodded his stomach with her sharp fingernail. Brian was too drowsy to react at first, but further prodding and squeezing finally provoked a long-drawn and suffering ‘meow’ from the depths of his throat. Not satisfied yet, Ms Thistlewig grabbed the cat from Rubens’s arms, dumped him on the floor and stood on his tail with her high heel. Brian jumped up and hissed at her from the bottom of his heart.

“Ms Thistlewig, Brian is just a normal cat. I got him recently.” Brian had capered off and was attempting to hide under the sofa. Alas, his big bum got stuck and stood out with its waggling tail. “Pah, where there’s one cat, there could well be another,” Ms Thistlewig spat, and dragged the Subordinator into the bedroom. To her surprise, she discovered Felicity on the bed, combing her long fiery hair. “Hello,” Felicity smiled. “This is my girlfriend,” Rubens said.

Ms Thistlewig and the Subordinator retreated in defeat. “I will visit your lesson tomorrow at eight o’clock. Be prepared!” were the last words that Ms Thistlewig threw at Rubens, before they both left. But by then Rubens had made the decision to quit cat teacher training and find something less taxing and more suitable for him. The idea had been on his mind for some time now, but tonight’s events had only fortified this train of thought. He would pull himself from the clutches of his disagreeable superiors and start a new life.

He agonised about what to do next for three days and three nights, drew charts on the wall, consulted all his friends, had his tealeaves read, and even went to see a cosmic healer. Then, as he was wading through his seventh packet of Jaffa cakes, he bit his tongue and finally experienced his eureka moment. He would revolutionize the world by inventing a species of cactus that, when you fried and ate it, would make you shit silver coins. Plant biology had always been one of his hobbyhorses, and he now gave himself the freedom to pursue it fully, and without guilt.

While Rubens was thriving in his chosen field, Ms Thistlewig kept climbing the greasy pole at the Talking Cats Foundation. She continued justifying her own job by slowly extending teacher-training to thirteen years, and adding some more arbitrary and pointless requirements at every stage. The last thing Rubens ever heard about her was that she got involved in the paramilitary wing of the T.F.C. and died in battle over a contentious point regarding task-based learning.

Felicity, for her part, started writing children’s stories while she was incapacitated by her pregnancy. During her cat hours, she could not move anywhere, as her belly was five times the size of her. To pass the time when Rubens was working in his newly installed cactus lab, she lounged in bed and typed endless pages on her laptop. By the time their lovely human child was born, she had written a sizeable collection of stories. To her delight, the first publisher to whom she had sent off her work unconditionally accepted to publish it all, unedited, and immediately.

Pregnancy and childbirth became Felicity, so she effortlessly bore eleven more human children, up until she entered her menopause. She also completed eleven more tomes of stories, which were all hugely successful and earned her tons of money. This bottomless well of prosperity assuaged the sad fact that Rubens’s biological research turned out less fruitful than he’d hoped for. Sadly he never reached the point of producing silver stools – although he got very close just days before his death. But he enjoyed his work immensely and never spent one miserable day in his whole life.