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thought.
    The Catlady did not get up at all that day, saying that she did not have the energy. It was the same all that week, a week that by chance contained two bereavements for Muriel Ponsonby. The cat that had once been her uncle Walter died, and then her old school friend Margaret Maitland.

    “Both cats were very old, though, weren't they?” Mary said in an effort to console her friend.
    “As I am,” said the Catlady.
    “Anyway,” said Mary,“it's nice for you to think they will both be reborn, isn't it?”
    “As I shall be,” said the Catlady.
    What am I saying? Mary asked herself. I'm barmy too.
    She could not make up her mind whether the Catlady was just tired or whether she was ill. And if so, how ill? Should I call the doctor? she thought.
    What decided her was a request that the Catlady made.
    “Mary dear,” she said. “Would you fetch Percival and Florence and Coco and Hazel? I should like to say goodbye to them.”

    When Mary had done so, she telephoned the doctor. He came and examined the old lady, and then he took Mary aside and said to her, “I'm afraid Miss Ponsonby is very ill. To be honest with you, my dear, I don't hold out much hope.”
    “She's dying, you mean?”Mary asked.

    “I fear so.” Shall I tell him about Miss Muriel's beliefs? she thought. No, he'll think I'm mad as well as her.
    The next morning Mary Nutt woke early and dressed. As she went downstairs from her bedroom in what had been the servants' quarters and made her way to the kitchen, she noticed something odd. There was not a cat to be seen, anywhere.
    She was about to put a kettle on to make tea when one cat walked in through the kitchen door.
    It was Vicky, who stared up at Mary with her customary grumpy look and made a noise that meant, Mary had no doubt, “Follow me.”
    Up the stairs went Vicky, Mary at her heels, and in through the open door of the Catlady's bedroom.

    On the floor, in a rough circle around the bed, were sitting all the other cats of Ponsonby Place: Percival and Florence and their children, Rupert and Madeleine, the newly widowed Aunt Beatrice, Ethel and Edith, and a number of others.

    All sat quite still, gazing up at the bed, on which the Catlady lay stretched and still. On her face was a gentle smile.
    Mary picked up a hand. It was icy cold. “Oh, Miss Muriel,” she whispered. “Who or what are you now?”

Chapter Seven
    The vicar was afraid that the funeral of the late Miss Muriel Ponsonby might be very poorly attended. Her mother and father were long dead, he knew (though he did not know that they, and other relatives, still lived, in different shape, in Ponsonby Place). The only mourner he expected to see was Mary Nutt.
    What a pity, he thought, that the daughter of Colonel Sir Percival Ponsonby and Lady Ponsonby, of Ponsonby Place, one of the finest old houses in Dummerset, should go to her grave almost unmourned.
    In fact, on the day when the Catlady wasburied, the vicar's church was jam-packed.
    All the villagers of Dumpton Muddicorum and all the tradesmen and a number of other people in the neighborhood who owned cats that had once belonged to Muriel, all of these turned up to pay their respects. All the Catlady's oddities were forgotten and only her kindness and cheerfulness remembered.

    “She was a funny one,” they said, “but there was something ever so nice about her. Always so polite too.”
    “Yes, and she was a kind lady, taking in Mary Nutt like she did.”
    Nor were humans the only mourners. At the back of the church, behind the rearmost pews, sat a silent line of cats.
    When it was all over, Mary had her tea in the kitchen while on the floor the various cats had theirs (Vicky first, of course). What's to become of me? she thought. I can't stay here now that Miss Muriel's dead. The house will be sold, I suppose.

    “I don't know,” she said to the cats.“I just don't know.”
    But a week later, she did.
    She was summoned to the offices of the Catlady's solicitor in