Isis’s unusually feral state

Isis’s unusually feral state transforms Theodosia’s cat from a familiar companion into a volatile presence who stalks food, snarls at a closing door, and clings to Alistair Throckmorton’s back. Theodosia tries to manage the danger with patience and an amulet meant to protect Isis, but ultimately gives her a mud bath. By the next morning, Isis is affectionate and purring again: the change makes the bath’s success tangible, while ending the immediate crisis of her frightening behavior.

Behavior and First Attempts at Control

When Isis reaches the sardines, she advances in cautious increments, crouching low and repeatedly pausing as though checking for a threat. Once she gets to the food, her caution gives way to savage intensity: she takes each fish in her mouth, shakes it violently, and only then eats. The contrast between her wary approach and attack-like feeding makes an ordinary meal feel like a small scene of danger.

Theodosia uses the sardines to keep Isis occupied while she slowly closes the door. The click interrupts the meal. Isis looks up, and a low caterwaul begins in her throat, turning a quiet attempt at containment into a moment of risk. Theodosia carefully says her cat’s name; Isis stops snarling and resumes eating. The response suggests that recognition still has some power to interrupt the feral behavior, even if it does not make Isis safe or restore her usual temperament.

The Amulet and a Moment of Calm

Theodosia then needs to coax Isis over to the bed. She settles into a sarcophagus and repeatedly calls Isis’s name, along with Horus, whose protection she has placed in Isis’s amulet. After several hesitant stops, Isis’s eyes become more focused and less frenzied. She reaches the sarcophagus, balances on its edge, then climbs down to Theodosia’s feet and kneads the blanket with her claws. A loud purr follows.

For Theodosia, the shift from uncertainty to purring offers a brief sign that the amulet might be helping. The scene does not establish that Isis is cured: her behavior has softened for the moment, but Theodosia still faces the much larger problem of Britain’s threatened collapse. The contrast keeps the small domestic reprieve in proportion. A protective object and a familiar name can bring Isis close, yet they do not resolve the wider danger or the cause of her condition.

The Attack and the Mud Bath

Isis’s ferocity soon erupts again in the workroom, where Theodosia finds her attached to Alistair’s back. He turns around and tries to bop her with his cane so she will let go, but mostly hits himself. Theodosia’s narration treats his predicament with comic sharpness, noting that he should not have thought to use a cane on her cat; the humor does not erase the danger of an animal that has latched on and will not release its hold.

After several attempts and Alistair’s frustrated curses, Theodosia frees Isis and holds her despite her squirming and fighting. She can no longer postpone treatment: Isis is getting a mud bath. Theodosia has no mud from the Nile River, so she uses rainwater mud from the small square across the street, hoping its purity will be close enough. She avoids the museum’s public lavatory because a visitor might walk in and see her trying to bathe a cat. Her practical concern about discovery sits alongside the physical difficulty of restraining Isis and moving the bucket through the doorway.

Theodosia presents the bath as unpleasant and dangerous to attempt, not as a controlled procedure. She also has a harsher fallback in mind: if the mud fails, Isis will be waxed, as the man at Level Six was. The thought of making her cat hairless is unbearable to Theodosia, lending urgency to the improvised treatment. When Isis bursts through the door afterward and careens down the hall, she does not claw Theodosia or produce one of her terrifying yowls. That change is encouraging, but the scene leaves the outcome unsettled as Henrietta Throckmorton calls out to ask what is wrong with the cat.

Recovery and Significance

The next morning, Theodosia wakes feeling wretched after failing to persuade her parents to return to Egypt and dreaming again about the shabtis. A sensation at her ankle initially seems to carry the nightmare into waking life. Then she sits up and discovers that the apparent attacker is Isis, curled warmly at her feet and gently kneading the blanket. The feral state Theodosia calls Demon Isis is gone: instead of biting, Isis is resting against her.

Theodosia rubs Isis’s tummy and scratches behind her ears. Isis purrs continuously, and the sound confirms what her gentler behavior has already suggested: the mud bath worked. The recovery is expressed through touch and sound, in direct contrast to the earlier snarling, violent shaking of sardines, and struggle on Alistair’s back. Theodosia wants to stay and cuddle her cat, but turns to the work still ahead, beginning with the filthy shabtis. Isis gives her one last affectionate swipe with a paw. Her return to ordinary closeness resolves the immediate domestic crisis, while Theodosia’s quick return to work shows that this relief arrives amid, rather than in place of, the book’s larger threats.