Composite Creatures, Caroline Hardaker [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

of years before Jambo, Marcia’s dad had an old rabbit, a real white one, in a three-story wooden structure in the garden. My mum had told me that if I ever saw a white rabbit I shouldn’t chase him, as he’d lead me down his rabbit hole and I’d get stuck there forever. No coming back. I was terrified by Marcia’s dad’s rabbit, and though there was never a chance of him leading me anywhere, I was convinced that every time I blinked, just before my eyes closed, there was a flash of white.

This rabbit was huge, with long ears that flopped down like strips of suede, and he had a black spot between his eyes. His name was Smudge. Marcia once stuck her finger through the wire mesh to show off. Smudge hopped over and after a brief wiggle of his nose clamped his teeth firmly around her fingertip. Marcia shrieked and leapt back, blood already trickling down the back of her hand. In my terror I started to cry too, while Smudge just sat there like a docile lump of snow. While Marcia was being patched up, her dad explained softly that Smudge would have expected her finger to be a carrot or a stick of celery, and it wasn’t his fault. I cried in the car home, not so much for Marcia being driven to hospital for a tetanus, but for Smudge, who would be disappointed that he hadn’t chomped down on a carrot after all.

But neither Jambo nor Smudge left me with the stirrings that Nut had evoked. Maybe they never do, until they’re your own. I read once about a phenomenon which said that every cat-lover thought their cat was the most beautiful, no matter how wonkyfaced or wicked-eyed it might be. And with children, motherhood turns us into lionesses, willing to protect our offspring with tooth and claw. They’re our future, the continuation of our bloodline, though it’s never a future we’ll have much say in.

But I wondered about Nut.

Over the first few days, I watched her through the bars of the baby gate from the top step of the ladder with a cup of tea. The hot air in the house all rose to the roof, which is why we thought it’d be the cosiest place for her. The vast size of the loft also meant she had space to run around, though she didn’t do much moving. Twice a day she’d trot around the outside of the room and then flop down in the middle under the skylight, not asleep, but resting with her eyes half-closed in a state of semi-consciousness. We’d been prepared for this, the muscle-run, the instinctual desire in her to expend energy and build her strength.

It looked like she couldn’t quite work out which sleeping box she liked the best, and went through little phases of choosing one, climbing in, rolling about in it with her feet in the air, and then falling out. First, she chose the plastic fruit crate, and then after a day or two she upgraded to the quartered bedspread, which gave her room to stretch on her back and roll like a fuzzy rolling pin. Though she’d snubbed the cardboard box I didn’t remove it, and within a few days Nut’s main pastime became chewing on its corners and trying to flatten it by climbing on each of its walls. It seemed harmless enough, as long as she didn’t start eating the gnawed-off pieces. She batted the pieces of cardboard around the floor with a front paw before changing her mind again and tearing strips from the box like leaves from a lettuce. She was probably teething.

Art stapled a layer of steel mesh around the baby gates in case Nut tried to squeeze through, but she never approached the bars, at least while I was watching. She didn’t seem to question the barriers of her world. She accepted her lot with heart and soul and gut, as if all she needed existed within those four walls. She didn’t climb the benches to seek the light, or even sniff for wisps of air through weaknesses in the roof slates (of which there were many). She seemed content, and the more I watched her, the more I felt utter relief that she didn’t cry for me, didn’t show any signs of confusion at us disappearing downstairs.

A weight was lifting, a weight that had been thrust on my shoulders since Nut first turned her face to me. It was going to be all right.

Of course, Nut wasn’t supposed to be happy or sad; my reading so far into the biology had told me that. But the reality was always going to differ from the theory, wasn’t it? Nut lived in the immediate present, and didn’t question any other moment than the one she existed in. No before, no after. Just Nut, in the skin of Nut. Maybe this is true contentment. The manual suggested it was the presence of a survival memory which humans have lost, which comes with no sense of regret, or loss or anticipation of failure. With that mindset, you could attempt the same feat over and over, and no matter how many times you failed you wouldn’t be discouraged.

I made sure there wasn’t anything in the loft to provide an education. No predators to dodge, no prey to catch, nothing that might disturb or teach her skills she wouldn’t need. Offering a little rubber toy to chew on rather than the cardboard box could be disastrous if the shaping of a mouse or haddock convinced her through learned behaviour that she should be stalking food or hunting for pleasure. As she’d never be leaving our home, there was no way she’d be able to do those things, and I couldn’t stand the idea of causing her to want more, all for the sake of a squeezy rubber mouse.

You may think that I was thinking about this far too much, and I’d done