|
Jenny was real—a very real cat. I knew her in the days when I lived in a house by the big garden where she lived with her master, Captain Tinker. Night after night, from my garden window, I watched little Jenny, wearing her red scarf, jump from a downstairs window of the Captain's house to attend the meetings of the Cat Club.
The Club would gather at the maple tree, which stood near a corner of the garden. The members came, not only from houses alongside the garden, but from beyond the garden's tall board fence. Indeed, this was a Club of neighborhood cats and, as you might expect, they were of all sizes and descriptions. Each cat had his or her own personality. The sight of so many different furry creatures sitting on the meeting ground beneath the maple tree aroused my curiosity. I longed to know more about them and their activities. It was not proper for me, of course, to intrude upon the privacy of Club meetings. But after a while, I began to discuss matters with Jenny's Captain Tinker, and he would tell me what he knew about his little black cat and the Cat Club. People elsewhere in the neighborhood—kindly humans who loved all those cats—gave me valuable information, especially about events that sometimes took place beyond the garden fence. Gradually, with a bit of assistance from my imagination, I was able to piece together these stories. I admit that in writing them I translated cat talk into language which humans could understand. I described cat happenings in terms that would be the most meaningful for you. However, I tried my best to keep the stories absolutely true to the personality of each cat and to the bright warm spirit of the Cat Club. Excerpted from Esther Averill's preface to "Jenny and the Cat Club". |