Boche

Boche, the warehouse and office cat at the Frank family’s hiding place, moves between practical usefulness and quiet companionship. She keeps rats out of the storeroom and amuses the people living in hiding; a spoiled jar of pickled tongue becomes a feast for her and Mouschi. In a life narrowed by concealment, Boche’s ordinary animal presence also draws Anne and Peter into an unusually relaxed exchange, turning a visit to the warehouse into a small moment of trust.

Identity and Place in the Annex

Boche was already at the office and warehouse before the residents went into hiding. She belongs to the working world downstairs: her regular function is to keep rats at bay in the storeroom, and she remains a familiar sight when the residents go down. The diary describes Boche as female, though a later conversation exposes how uncertain the residents have been about the cat’s sex.

The cat’s name preserves an old joke about rivalry. For a time, Gies & Co. kept two cats, one for the warehouse and one for the attic. Their paths crossed and they fought; the warehouse cat usually attacked first, but the attic cat ultimately won. The residents likened that reversal to politics: the warehouse cat was named Boche, the German, while the attic cat was called Tommy, the Englishman. Tommy was later gone, but Boche remained to amuse the people who came downstairs. The joke lends a political gloss to a mundane contest without making the cat anything other than a working animal in the building.

Food and Everyday Life

Boche appears amid the material details of scarcity as well as the residents’ affection for animals. When one jar of pickled tongue spoils, the food is not simply discarded; it becomes a feast for Boche and Mouschi. That small transfer from failed human food to cat food places the animals inside the household’s constrained economy, where even an unusable jar is given a purpose.

Her presence also offers a point of lightness amid the diary’s record of deprivation. The residents are tired of eating brown and navy beans, and their evening bread serving has been canceled. Against that stark background, Boche’s raids, antics, and uncertain identity provide a subject for teasing conversation. She does not alter the conditions of hiding, but her recurring place in the residents’ attention makes the warehouse less merely a workplace and storeroom than a shared environment with its own familiar inhabitants.

The Sex-of-the-Cat Dispute

While peeling potatoes, Anne, Margot, and Peter turn to a question they still have not settled: whether Boche is male or female. Peter confidently answers that Boche is a tomcat. Anne laughs at the contradiction with the earlier claim that Boche would soon have kittens. Peter had taken the cat’s rapidly swelling stomach as evidence of pregnancy, but the apparent pregnancy was only a collection of stolen bones. The joke rests on a mistaken observation and on the ease with which the three can laugh together about it.

Peter insists that he can establish the answer from direct observation. He recalls playing with Boche and says he could tell the cat was male. When Anne first accompanies him to the warehouse, the cat is not there; the pair wait, grow cold, and return upstairs without resolving the question. Later that afternoon, Anne hears Peter go downstairs again. She summons the courage to cross the silent house alone and reaches the warehouse, where Boche is on the packing table with Peter, who is preparing to weigh him.

Peter invites Anne to look, picks up the cat, turns him onto his back, and holds his head and paws while explaining what she is seeing. Boche flips over and stands on his small white feet. The lesson settles the issue for Anne, but the episode matters less as a revelation about an animal than as a scene of ease between the two young people: a potentially awkward subject is handled matter-of-factly, with the cat as the immediate focus.

Anne, Peter, and the Cat

Anne notes that she would not have given just any boy a second glance for pointing out a male sexual organ. Peter’s manner makes the difference: he speaks normally about a subject that might otherwise feel awkward, and she perceives no ulterior motive. As he continues, her discomfort falls away; she begins behaving naturally too. They play with Boche, enjoy themselves, chat, and finally walk through the long warehouse to the door.

Their conversation continues from the cat’s anatomy to Mouschi’s neutering. Anne asks whether Peter was present when it happened, and he answers that he was and describes the anesthetic. Boche thus provides the occasion for a conversation that moves from playful disagreement to practical questions about another cat. The episode gives their growing familiarity a concrete setting and action: not a formal declaration, but shared amusement, curiosity, and an unforced walk through the warehouse.

Narrative Significance

Boche is not a human character with an independent plot, but her appearances connect several textures of life in hiding. She is a working cat, a recipient of food that has spoiled, a source of jokes about politics and pregnancy, and the center of an encounter that lets Anne and Peter speak without ceremony. The name’s old warehouse-versus-attic rivalry, the mistaken belief that Boche was pregnant, and the later demonstration of the cat’s sex all turn everyday observation into material for the diary.

The cat’s narrative importance lies in this modest scale. The residents’ days are marked by rationing, silence, and restrictions on movement, yet they still notice a swelling belly, wait in a cold warehouse, laugh over a mistaken guess, and ask how a cat was treated at the veterinarian. Boche gives those ordinary attentions a shared object. In the warehouse, Anne’s curiosity about the animal becomes a small test of comfort with Peter, and the scene ends not in embarrassment but in relaxed conversation and companionship.