A Comfort of Cats (8 page)

  I knew there was something wrong when we came back two hours later and there were no faces at the hall window to greet us. Even more so when I opened the hall door and nobody came through it as if shot from a catapult. Kidnapped. Dead. The wardrobe had fallen on them. The usual Siamese owner's thoughts flashed through my mind. Then I looked up the stairs, saw the closed door at the top, heard the sound of rampaging elephants inside... My thoughts switched immediately to those sweaters on the bed. I knew what I was going to find.

  He'd done an absolutely outsize wet – through the sweaters, through the quilt, right down to the blankets. The hot water bottle had been dumped on the floor. In a futile hope I picked it up and checked it. Alas, it wasn't the bottle that had done the leaking, though the swamp on the bed was big enough. I looked at the undoubted culprit, watching me warily from the dressing table.

  Why couldn't he have used a
corner
in an emergency, like any other cat? I wailed. If it came to that, why couldn't he have held
on
for a mere two hours? Normal cats don't use their boxes every five minutes like demented fountains. Why did
he
have to make such a point of it?

  He regarded me with his Elizabethan philosopher look. His face always seemed much longer when he was solemn. I knew how he got Nervous, he said. How did
he
know it would only be two hours? He'd thought it was through not doing it that he and Shebalu had got locked in. He'd only been making a Libation.

  He'd done that all right. I had to change all the blankets and it took days, after I'd washed it, to air the quilt. Even then I had to mount guard on it when Sass was anywhere near. He kept sniffing it with an air of unfinished business. More than that, he'd gone right back to his obsession about wool – obviously wetting the sweaters had brought it back to him. It became his main preoccupation and for a while it felt like ours as well.

Charles, given to reading peacefully in his armchair after supper, got fed up with seeing Sass eternally going past with one of his socks. He'd take it away, sit on it, resume his reading... The next thing to catch his eye would be Sass going past with the other sock, en route to dumping it by the kitchen door which was the nearest he could get to putting it outside. If it wasn't a sock then it would be one of Charles's sweaters, dragged along as if Sass's very continuance in this world depended on it.

  According to him it did. Hadn't he stopped wetting on wool because we'd persuaded him, and got shut in the bedroom as a result? Where he and Shebalu might have been locked for Ever if he hadn't done some conciliatory work on the sweaters? Got to wet this one Too, he would inform us, struggling across the floor with his burden – and Charles would yell, slap his book down exasperatedly, and make a hurried grab for that. Why did that cat always take
his
sweaters and socks? he demanded. Why couldn't he occasionally take mine?

  Because I didn't leave them where Sass could find them. On the bed or the bathroom stool was Charles's usual wont. One day, however, Sass went upstairs. I could hear him thumping around. It sounded as if he was moving a piano, but Siamese activities usually do. When he reappeared he was stumbling along with something big and dark, legs straddled as if he were carrying a pheasant. Charles's sweater, I thought, cocking a glance across the room from where I was watching television – and then I realised it was mine. My new Shetland sweater that I hadn't even worn. It had been on a shelf in the bedroom cupboard.

  Charles, it transpired, had put all his things away for once and Sass, searching for a sacrificial offering, must have got the cupboard door open attracted by the peaty scent of the wool, which to him was probably worse even than the ordinary kind. This one smelled Awful, he informed me as he passed. Boy, were we lucky he'd found it. He'd just put it over by the kitchen door and perform his Magic Action on it...

  Oh no he wouldn't, I said. I took it away from him and put it behind me in the chair, not wishing to miss the programme I was watching. Next thing I knew, he'd bitten me hard in the arm and I nearly hit the ceiling.

  As I say, it needs psychology to understand Siamese cats. He hadn't bitten me because he was angry with me. It was just that I was wearing a woollen cardigan, I had the Shetland sweater behind me, the smell he so disliked was coming from my direction. Ergo, the thing to do was to seize me by my woollen-clad arm, drag me to the door and wet on
me
.

  That, at least, was our interpretation of how his small mind worked about wool. With patience we could probably get him out of it, we thought. What we hadn't bargained for was Shebalu joining in the wetting game – for an entirely different reason.

  There was a strange tabby cat coming into our garden. She kept seeing it through the window and getting annoyed. Sass would flatten his ears round the curtain at it, pretend he was a tiger in ambush, leave off next moment to come and see what I was cooking... Not so Shebalu, who would yatter at the intruder like a machine-gun then make straight for the earthbox in the corner.

  We'd never had an earthbox in the living-room before. It had been installed as a mental prop for Sass. Now Shebalu would get into it, squat in girl-cat position, nattering away about Not Knowing what things were Coming To. As she talked, indignation would overcome her and she rose higher and higher in the box. As she did, the stream rose with her and inexorably hit the wall. Some people think that she-cats can't spray. They should have seen our Siamese hose.

  We dealt with the problem as best we could by tacking polythene sheeting against the wall. (We couldn't remove the box on account of Sass.) When we saw her rear begin to rise we gently sat her down, telling her that girls weren't supposed to do that. Eventually it dawned on us what was upsetting her. She thought the other cat was her rival for Sass.

  We were across in the orchard with the pair of them one day when the stranger happened along. We'd learned in the meantime that her name was Belle and she lived at the top of the hill. Seeing our two she came running through the grass towards them, obviously wanting to play. Sass looked interested. Shebalu growled and crouched. Belle turned tail and fled. Shebalu tried to chase her, but we had her on her lead, so instead she turned on Sass. In an instant she had him down and was kicking the daylights out of him. She'd seen him looking at That Hussy! she yelled. He'd been Encouraging her. No wonder she kept coming into Our Garden. She bet he'd sleep on
her
stomach if he could.

  We didn't realise it was jealousy at first. We separated them and carried them back to the cottage wondering what on earth had come over her. We put Sass down in the sitting-room, all round eyes and ruffled fur, and hovered ready to grab him if she sprang again. Instead she marched into the earthbox and sprayed heartily against the wall – not even bothering to sit first, she was so furious. She then came out, having relieved her feelings and sniffed at Sass, who was regarding her as if she were a Gorgon. Suppose she'd better clean him up, she said, and forthwith proceeded to do it.

  We'd have thought it was a momentary aberration – maybe she'd mistaken him in her anger for the other cat – but for the fact that from that time on she only had to catch the merest whiff of Belle, and she immediately pitched into Sass.

  Once I had to carry her down from the hillside behind the cottage completely beside herself with rage. Smelling Belle's scent on a gorse bush – seeing, which was worse, Sass interestedly sniffing at it – she'd leapt upon him with the fury of a Parisian Apache dancer. I separated them. She rushed at him again and I picked him up. She'd Kill Him when I put him down, she informed him. Sass, who always goes completely silent in moments of stress, dug his claws into my shoulder and prepared for take-off. I couldn't manage them both, so I let him go and grabbed Shebalu instead. She is half his size and easier to handle. Holding her firmly by her back legs and the scruff of her neck, I ran back along the hillside shouting for Charles.

  'What is it? An adder?' he demanded, rushing out of the kitchen door clutching the poker. Fred Ferry was as usual out in the lane.

  'It's Sass!' I shouted. 'Shebalu's attacked him and he's bleeding. I've brought her back to keep them apart, but I've had to leave him behind!'

  Charles started to run. I knew what he was thinking. Since we'd lost Seeley we'd never left a cat out of doors alone, and now Sass was loose somewhere – on a trailing lead, which was dangerous in itself – and goodness knew what he might meet up with.

  'How far back did you leave him?' he asked, hurriedly unfastening the gate.

  'Don't know what thee two bist panicking about,' said Fred laconically. 'There he is coming along behind thee.'

  Sure enough, following Shebalu and me at a distance, was a woebegone little figure. Frightened, left behind, maybe thinking I didn't want him – still his one thought was to stay close. Never, of all the Siamese who have given their hearts to us, has one loved us quite so devotedly as Sass.

  Which was all very well but he had a piece out of one ear and Shebalu had hit him on his nose, which was bleeding. What did she mean by it? I asked her. Her? said Shebalu, calm as a Quaker now they were indoors. It was all
his
fault for encouraging that other cat. She strolled across, looked him over and licked his fur back into place. He was as good as new now, she informed us.

  He wouldn't have been for long, the way she was beating him up, but in March we had a week of heavy snow. It kept Belle away. Our two rarely went out. When they did, it was up a solid, snow-packed track from which her scent had been obliterated. Shebalu forgot about her and Sass could breathe again – which was more than could be said for the rest of us.

  Miss Wellington was on the trail. The weather forecast had given snow – heavy over Western hills, which was us. This explained why our starlings had arrived the previous day, several weeks earlier than usual. They nested in our roof every year – they had entrances under the tiles above the gutter – and they moved in like a migrating tribe of Red Indians. We could hear them up there, scuffling in one corner, banging away in another, protesting as they squeezed narrowly in through the holes. Making more noise than any of the others, as he had done for several years previously, was one we could distinguish because he'd somewhere or other learned to wolf-whistle.

  'If theest stopped up they holes,' Father Adams told us every spring, 'they 'ouldn't get in there tearing up thee roof.'

  Actually we wouldn't have turned them out for anything. It had been their nesting place for years. But one or two of them did bang away as if they were using steam-hammers. They'd start up at dawn and I'd lie in bed listening, wondering what on earth they were up to. Extending their quarters? They certainly couldn't be catching insects at that speed, unless the beams were riddled with woodworm... I'd wake Charles to listen. He'd say if it was that rotten the starlings wouldn't make much difference and turn over and go back to sleep. I'd go on listening. Every now and then there'd be a piercing Whee-eeew, as if somebody was saying Now you've done it...

  That, however, was normal breeding-season behaviour. It was different the day before the snow. The starlings came in, rustled about a bit, as if they were unpacking their bags. There were a few flutters and scuffles and squawks. We heard the familiar wolf-whistle, probably saying Gosh, fancy finding this place still standing. Then they settled down, as if they were waiting for something – and twenty-four hours later we had the snow.

  It came during the night. Everybody in the Valley slept peacefully, knowing that the cars were all up at the farm. We'd all heard the forecast and Miss Wellington had phoned everybody anyway, and had stood at her gate to check the cars as they went up one by one. At seven next morning the phone rang again.

  'It
can't
be her,' I said. It was, though. Ringing all of us in turn to tell us the village was cut off. There was a drift beyond the farm, right down to the main road – she'd already been out to have a look at it. She was terribly worried, she said. Nobody could get to work. Shouldn't we get up early and try to dig through?

  In her mind's eye she obviously saw us all digging away as in the salt mines. Out to the main road by nine o'clock and those who worked in town, at their desks by ten. A combination of 'Business as Usual', 'The Mail must go Through' and 'Valiant Expedition to the Arctic'. What she was overlooking was that it was a good half-mile out to the main road and the drift was packed as high as the hedge-tops. Even with elephants we couldn't have got through that lot. There was nothing for it but to wait for the snow-plough.

  There being more important roads than ours we had to wait for several days, though Miss Wellington rang the Council every morning as if we were Mafeking. Meanwhile, cut off, unable to get away, the rest of the village turned its mind to other pursuits. Men sawed wood. Women baked bread because the baker couldn't get through. Children appeared with sledges. People helped one another to clear their paths. Miss Wellington, a woollen scarf over her hat and wearing enormous boots, helped everybody busily. When Charles and I went up to try to get to the village shop for milk, she was scraping away frantically in the drive of the house on the corner. When we came back an hour later, having navigated drifts that had piled up like ice caverns and frozen wastes that looked like the Antarctic, Miss Wellington was scraping away outside the Rose and Crown, obviously trying to set an example.