Gallico - Thomasina

Contents

Jennie by Paul Gallico (HarperCollins Childrens Books)

First published in the USA in 1957

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph in 1957

This edition published by HarperCollins Childrens Books in 2017

HarperCollins Childrens Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Childrens Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright Mathemata Anstalt 1957

Why Youll 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.

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 dont, then they simply wont 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 Ruadhs ginger cat. Murdered (put down) by Marys 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 Ive 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 Britains 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 Childrens Laureate, Michael is also the co-founder, with his wife Clare, of the charity Farms for City Children.

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 MacDhuis 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 builders 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 Laggans 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 Rabbies 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.