I passed some days after our performance in sleeping.
My back pained me. This was from walking on my legs and clawing at the air, as Lion Rampant do.
I grow too old for such frolicks.
Then, when I stepped out to take the sun in my lord’s garden, many were working there.
I fear believe this means my lord may come, with his robustious friends. My house will be in disarray.
I went to find a private place. And as I walked it come to me that I should write our play out fair, with all our speeches, so it can be made into a proper book.
When I saw Nero, I told him this.
“Why?” he arrkst.
I sayt, “I wish to see it imprinted handsome. But I don’t know how this might be done.”
Nero cannot read, and I feared he would make mock of me.
But he sayt we should ask Linkin, who lived in London once.
He led me to Linkin’s house, but we saw none but the Mad Cat there. He was seated on their doorstep.
“Here’s sport,” sayt Nero to me. He cried, “What, friend? Have you forgot your way home?”
The Mad Cat looked at us, lunatick. “One spake a word to me,” he sayt.
“True,” sayt Nero. “’Twas I.”
“Not you,” the Mad Cat replied.
“Then it was the Queen Cat of Heaven,” sayt Nero. “Though why she speaks to you and never me I cannot guess.”
“There is no Queen Cat of Heaven,” sayt the Mad Cat.
That wiped the mirth from Nero’s face. He sayt, “No, friend, that be wicked atheistical talk. You talk like that, they’ll accuse you of treason and all kind of evil.”
“And hang you,” sayt I. “After they’ve stretched you to learn who your friends are. And then they’ll hang us.”
“It is the sun,” sayt the Mad Cat.
“The sun spake to you?” I arrkst.
“The sun will punish all who do not love Creation. As I have told.”
“Well,” sayt Nero, recovering hisself. “He’s in no haste. We’ve scarce seen him this summer past.”
“The harvest will be poor,” sayt I. “We must offer thanks that we have places in households where none will starve.” (I sought to cheer the Mad Cat with a goodly thought.)
“The sun has all the time remaining to this world,” sayt he, as if I had not spoke. “I will not see his vengeance in my life, you will not see it in yours. But all will burn, believe me. I know what I know.”
“If there’s no Queen Cat of Heaven,” I sayt, “who’s been talking to you all these years?”
“Mine own prophetic soul,” sayt he.
“I always believed the moon possessed his brains,” whispered Nero to me. “Now it seems the sun has chased her out.”
Then a gentlewoman oped the door, and called him in. I believe she thought we meant to attack him. We ran off.
At our next Field Day Linkin gave newes that the Mad Cat was gone from this world.
“My mistress,” he sayt, “is most grieved. She says she brought Sugar (her name for the Mad Cat) from Cambridge when her son was but a boy in college. Now her son’s a lawyer in London and does not come to visit her as oft as he should.”
Now here’s a thing. Linkin sayt: My mistress. He used to say: My master. That’s her lawyer boy, even though Linkin has lodged with her since he was a young cat.
This means Linkin has taken the Mad Cat’s place in her household. Will he bring us preachings from the goodly books she reads?
I looked up at the sky, and saw the Queen Cat of Heaven’s myriet [myriad] eyes watching all.
I wondered if the Mad Cat spake true when he sayt there was no Queen Cat of Heaven. And I arrkst myself if her eyes were nowt but sparks flown off the sun. A strange thought.
Then it come to me that one day another cat will call our Earl: My lord. Not in courtesy, but because that cat has taken my place in this household.
The strangest thought of all.
And I do not know how I may have our play printed.
The Earl of Southampton's Cat 
Time passes and men and cats pass from the earth. Strange thoughts indeed.
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I love the lunatick Mad Cat.
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He’ll be missed.
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How we come to think of our own mortality, faith … and to last throughout our art by printing plays!
Great changes in this world!
Shared as I have cat lover friends who are becoming addicts!
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Some things change, some stay the same. 🙂
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Its an age-old practice for a cat to sense a vacancy and move in poste-haste.
This post has made me quite melancholie. RIP Mad Cat.
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Oh dear, he’ll be sorely missed.
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Lovely reflective thoughts from Gib. I’ll miss Mad Cat.
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Truly sad; however, you could resurrect Mad Cat if you desired to do so. After all, some of us believe in resurrection.
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I would struggle to accept these insights from Gib, let alone process them. Surely we will all live forever? I mean, if we eat well and exercise and socialise and exert our brains, old age and death are equally improbable. No, he must be wrong. Indeed, I saw a cat very like him only last week on the internet, and I reject this pessimism outright. Tell him to eat his yoghurt and go to counselling.
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Well, Gib eats better than most cats (and people) in Elizabethan England, appears to take exercise, certainly socialises and exerts his brain… We shall see.
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Poor old Mad Cat. Perhaps now he’ll be in a better position to tell whether Nero was right about the Queen Cat of Heaven.
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I do hope so.
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Very philosophical and melancholy, too. I do hope they find a publisher for the play, but someone needs to tell Gib he may not be able to submit it without an agent. Maybe he could self-publish?
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Reblogged this on basheerabdulwahab.
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“I always believed the moon possessed his brains,” whispered Nero to me. “Now it seems the sun has chased her out.”
Of course, I enjoyed the whole tale, but this, this here is what truly captivated me the most…
And to be true to myself, I was also delighted by this part, line here too…
‘I wondered if the Mad Cat spake true when he sayt there was no Queen Cat of Heaven. And I arrkst myself if her eyes were nowt but sparks flown off the sun. A strange thought.’
Such a remarkable talent you have for the story telling.
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The credit goes to Gib. I’m just his humble editor.
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