The Cathedral Cats

had all settled down in a semi-circle around Bach. A Christmas story?  He purred at them.
They had worked hard today. Bach had sent the youngest and most agile of them up to clean the stained glass windows. The humans had been in of course but Bach could see the tiny marks that only a cathedral cat's tail could polish away. It was a job none of the cats ever minded doing. They liked to lie in the sun coming through the glass and watch their pale grey fur change colour. Bach felt sorry for the cats who lived outside the cathedral and could not see colour the way they did.
But it was Decani of course who had found something. He had finished cleaning his window first. Then he had climbed carefully down the wall and come padding slowly over to Bach. He had waited for Bach to tell Matins and Vespers to "clean right around the lead please" before asking,
     "Who is it?"
     "You know that. It's St Andrew."
     "No, the cat."
There was a cat by the feet of St Andrew. Decani liked St Andrew. He just knew St Andrew would have fed him fish. He had never been close enough to the window to see the cat before.
It had been years since Bach had looked at it that closely but he remembered. Of course he did!
    "It's the cat from the manger," he told Decani, "When you have all finished your work I'll tell you the story of what he did when he left."
That made them work!
Now they were there and Bach told them,
    "You know about the Three Wise Men?"
The cats looked at him.Yes, of course they did. 
    "Well they weren't really very wise at all."
Bach could see Decani thinking about this. With a twitch of his left ear he told Decani to keep quiet. The little cat had almost certainly worked it out for himself.
   "But they brought presents!" Matins protested. The cats liked the presents they got each year.
    "Yes, they did," Bach agreed, "but they were not useful presents."
    "Like tuna," Cantori said. He liked tuna.
    "No. They gave him gold. Joseph might have been able to buy something useful with that but they had to go to Egypt," Bach said. He was a bit vague about all this. All the cats knew what gold was because there was some in the cathedral. They thought it looked nice but they had to keep it clean.
    "And frankincense..." Vespers said. He had managed to learn the word this year and used it on every possible occasion. 
    "Useless stuff," Bach told him, "Kittens can't eat it or play with it and human kittens can't either."
     "Myrrh then?" Cantori asked. 
     "I wouldn't give Myrrh to a kitten!" his mother Cadenza sounded shocked.
      "Well that wasn't very clever of them," Matins told Bach.
      "They weren't wise," Vespers says.
      "They were not in the least bit smart," Cantori said, "Not like cats." He sounded smug.
       "No, they were really wise," Decani said.
       "What makes you think that?" Bach asked Decani. He thought the little cat might have worked it out.
        "They had their - all the mothers and sisters and that sort of human with them - their hair, no their harem. It was the harem who did the sensible things wasn't it?"
         "That's right. The cat at St Andrew's feet is the cat who went to find them. He told his litter brother who had travelled with them. The cats pulled out all the necessary things and the harem was smart enough to know there was a reason for it. They took all the things the baby needed. If the wise men had not listened to their harem then nothing would have happened."
     "Which is why Bach always listens to me," Cadenza told them. Decani looked at his parents and hoped that the cat in the window had been given some fish.