Six Lives of Fankle the Cat by George Mackay Brown Page A

time?”
    â€œI’ll tell you what I heard on the wireless tonight,” said Sam Swann. “A talk about the planet Mars. I learned a few things. There’s volcanoes and icecaps on Mars. Fancy that.”
    â€œI don’t think Fankle’s sick,” said Jenny. “At least, he didn’t look sick last time I saw him. But he might have suddenly got sick. Is this true, Mr Swann, that cats when they get sick go away and eat grass and get better that way?”
    â€œAnother talk last night,” said the old man, “was about the American War of Independence. That was in George the Third’s day, a long time ago. It all started with a gang of ruffians dumping chests of tea into the harbour at Boston, Massachusetts. There’s never a day I live that I don’t learn something from that wireless.”
    â€œGoodnight, Mr Swann and Mrs Swann,” said Jenny.
    Sam Swann followed Jenny to the door. “All that music too on the wireless. High-class stuff, Scottish dance music. Tell me now, Jenny, do you
really
like that pop music?”
    Outside, the night was as black as coal, or tar, or treacle.
    Jenny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The old man said in her ear, in the doorway, and winked, “Cats sometimes fall in love, you know.”
    ***
    Jenny was just going to bed when there was a loud double knock at the door. “Who can it be,” said her father, “at this time of night?”
    It turned out to be Ma Scad. “Is that girl, what’s-her-name, Jenny, in?” she demanded. “She was at my door earlier, asking about a black cat. Well, I have a message for her. A certain farmer in this island – I’m mentioning no names, I’ve been in trouble that way before – if you go, Jan Thomson, to a field of a certain farmer on this same island, you’ll find a post in the middle of the field, and hanging down from the top of the post is a black cat. So I heard, not half-an-hour ago. I came here at once. A dead black cat, to scare the birds. Tell your girl that. I thought she might want to know.”
    ***
    The very next morning Fankle turned up. He was tired and thin and hungry, but he had roses and moonlight in his eyes.

Revenge
    The largest trout ever caught in the island was a twelve-pounder. That trout had been caught on the little island loch by a ne’er-do-well called Steve Smith, in the year 1924. Steve, who lived in a hovel on the loch shore, thought nothing about it at the time; only how he was to have little to eat but trout – fried trout, grilled trout, boiled trout, trout soup, trout and apples – for a whole week and more. The prospect depressed him, for he didn’t like trout to eat all that much. He was very relieved when Mr Twamm, who owned the little hotel in the village, gave him a pound for the fish. Mr Twamm got the trout stuffed; had a suitable case made; and the largest trout ever caught in the island hung thereafter in the hall of the hotel, a proclamation and a challenge.
    The island was visited every summer by a number of trout fishers, all of whom stayed in the hotel. They looked with envy and longing at the twelve-pound trout in the hallway of the hotel. If only they could catch one half that size! One of them was heard to declare, over his malt whisky, that he would give his left hand to land a trout as large! But of course they were only joking. They knew they would go to their graves with nothing larger than a four-pounder to their credit. Indeed they were quite content, on a summer evening, to catch a couple of half-pounders, which they would hand in at the hotel kitchen, to be fried for breakfast next morning.
    But there was one man in deadly earnest about breaking the record. Lieutenant-Colonel Stick came every summer to the island, with his large fat wheezing wife, Mrs Stick, and his pretty, plump, earnest daughter Constantine. The colonel himself was as thin as a twig, which caused the