A Comfort of Cats (9 page)

  'Worried about thee pint?' Fred Ferry jovially enquired, stamping his feet as he went through the door. Miss Wellington regarded him frostily. He wouldn't joke if he needed an ambulance, she said, obviously still harbouring visions of him under the graveyard wall. And how was the milkman going to get through? And the man who came for the insurance?

  They didn't. For days we clambered over the drifts for the milk. Somebody always brought Miss Wellington's. The insurance man, who covered several villages on a bicycle, got so behind he didn't come for weeks.

  Miss Wellington continued to worry, however – if it wasn't about our being cut off by the snow, it was whether the stream would flood when the thaw came. Occasionally, by way of a change, she would potter across to the graveyard and do a stint of worrying about that. Was Tim
sure
the wall was safe? She was so concerned about Mr Ferry. That poor curly kale, weighed down by all that snow – wouldn't it be better for it if Tim cleared it off? Those dear, dear daffodils, flowering so bravely under their covering – she wished somebody would go to their rescue...

  He wished somebody'd rescue
him
, Tim remarked one day, somewhat at the end of his tether. 'Ah!' replied Miss Wellington. 'We shouldn't wait for rescue! We should go out and do things for ourselves!'

  So help him, said Tim, before he knew where he was she had him round the corner digging out that drift. She never gave up, did she? He could see her waving the troops up the Heights of Abraham.

  Her name was Wellington, not Wolfe, but he had something there. Miss Wellington never gave in. Fred Ferry said there were times when he thought this Bannett bloke almost deserved the graveyard, living next door to she.

Sass liked the snow once he decided it was safe, but it took several excursions for him to be sure of it. After every fall he would venture cautiously out and try the surface with a paw. It would crumble. He'd reach out a little further and put his weight on it. Being a big lad, his paw would sink through. He'd reach out as far as he could with the other. Darned if it didn't look as if he was doing the crawl, said Father Adams. What was he going to think up next?

  A good many things. Sass found the snow exciting. Even when he got used to it he still went at it as if he were swimming. While Shebalu stuck to the path when we took them out, shaking her paws in protest at every step, he would dash into any drift he could find like a valiantly paddling retriever. Back indoors, invigorated, he'd look round for something to do – which was how he came to institute his marathon round the settee, which even for a Siamese was pretty peculiar.

  I'd seen Shebalu doing it once or twice. Our room is wide and L-shaped. She'd hurry across from under the table, round the settee, back across the room and under the table... never running, just walking quietly but hurriedly, like the White Rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland.

  We decided she was doing it for exercise. Being indoors so much in winter she probably thought her legs needed stretching. Two or three circuits were enough for her, however, then she'd curl up in a chair and go to sleep. Not so Sass who, when he took up the idea, circled settee and table like a merry-go-round.

  Once, while I counted, he went round twenty-six times non-stop. Charles said he was probably jogging. It wasn't as simple as that, I said. I reckoned it had become another of his compulsions.

  It certainly had. We had a performance every evening. Round and round and round. It went beyond exercise, beyond merely copying Shebalu – you could tell it by his expression. If he
didn't
go round and round like that, Something Terrible would happen.

  That was bad enough. Eventually it even affected Charles, who said there ought to be an Outward Bound course for cats. He knew one cat who'd be on it like a rocket, he said, before he had us all going round in circles. But Sass then developed another compulsion and worked the two of them together.

  It involved going up the bookcase and it was also started by Shebalu, of whom I was beginning to have my suspicions. She knew Sass wasn't a good climber. She knew he had this thing about having to copy her. So every single night without fail she would leap to the top shelf of the bookcase and sit looking down at him expectantly for his reaction, which was to erupt from chair or hearthrug as if she'd pressed a button and start worrying about getting up there himself.

  Another cat would have ignored the challenge. Pretended it didn't matter. In similar circumstances Solomon used to go off and climb something simpler to satisfy honour – usually Charles's dressing-gown behind the bedroom door, which was known as Solomon's ladder. Not so Sass. From the expression on his face, if he didn't make it up the bookcase the haunts would get him. So I'd help him up. I couldn't win, of course. He'd then sit there and worry about coming down again – silently, as is usual when Sass is in a crisis, but you couldn't fail to know he was up there doing it. For one thing there was Shebalu, now back on the hearthrug herself, looking up interestedly as if he was about to jump from a skyscraper. For another, every now and again he'd put a paw on the top of the standard lamp and peer anxiously down through the shade. 'Not through there!' I'd yell and rush to stand on a chair so that he could get down via my shoulder...

  Once a night was enough for the bookcase routine but within minutes of completing that he'd remember the other thing that kept off the haunts and he'd be off on his trek round the settee. If he saw us watching him he stopped and lurked, but the moment we looked away, on he went, round and round, as if he was on a treadmill. The only guaranteed way to break the sequence was to open the door to the kitchen, through which he'd vanish quietly on his next trip round to see if there was anything to eat.

  Did I think he was mental? Charles sometimes asked. Not from the way he nipped into the kitchen, I said.

  It was odd, all the same. He did other odd things, too, though they didn't impinge quite so much on our nerves. The business of moving pens and pencils and paintbrushes around, for instance, took place after we'd gone to bed. At first it was just an odd pencil which I'd find lying tooth-marked on the rug in the morning. I'd pick it up and put it back in the vase on the Welsh dresser, commenting that Sass was being a retriever again.

  Charles, whose hobby is painting, keeps his brushes and pencils in that vase, on hand for the moment of inspiration. He didn't mind Sass taking one pencil – in fact he regarded the tooth marks with affection. Strong little teeth. He certainly gripped things tightly. Funny little chap, wasn't he? he said.

  He didn't say that when, as was inevitable with Sass, there was a build-up in the operation. When we began to come down in the morning to find brushes and pencils strewn around as if our dark man had been distributing largesse. They were scattered across the carpet. They were poked under rugs and cushions. Some of them we didn't find for days. He began to hide my pens, too, which I have a habit of leaving on a shelf of the bookcase. Sometimes I couldn't find a thing to write with.

  It had become another of his compulsions. One which occupied a lot of time. He took to sitting on the Welsh dresser when he thought it was our bedtime, willing us to go upstairs so he could start. As if he were waiting for the coast to be clear before he started running the brandy barrels, said Charles. Perhaps he'd been a smuggler in a previous incarnation.

  Charles was still reasonably light-hearted about it when he made that remark, though he was getting a bit concerned about his chewed-up brush handles. Pencils he didn't mind so much but paint-brushes were expensive, he said. What was more, it wasn't hygienic.

  Rather more hygienic than Sass's next development, which was to start putting the brushes in his earthbox. At that point the project came to a sudden end in a strong smell of Dettol and references to one-way tickets to Siam. The vase joined the onion sack upstairs in the
verboten
room and Sass was most upset, though he showed no sign of it during the day. Only after we went to bed that night did our dark man, normally so silent, start howling... great, soulful howls that announced he'd been doing his Best. He hoped
he
wouldn't be blamed for falling down on the brush ritual. He'd have gone on moving them for Ever and Ever. If anybody's whiskers were going to fall out, it ought to be that Rotten Old Charles's.

  Hating to hear him howling so disconsolately – besides which he kept us awake – we compromised by leaving a selection of removables on the dresser. Pencils he'd already chewed. Old pens that needed refills. A broken wooden curtain ring that Sass immediately adopted as his favourite talisman. His other treasures were moved only during the night, but his ring appeared constantly during the day. Hooked from under the piano. Tossed in front of us to beguile us into playing with him. From time to time, when he thought it necessary, laid reverently in his earthbox. There were times, particularly when he was carrying it round the settee, when he looked like a South Sea Islander with a nose-ring doing a war dance. What did it matter, however, so long as it kept him happy and we were the only ones who knew about it? Letting anyone else see him was a different matter. It would have been added evidence of our oddness. Meantime the thaw came and spring arrived, heralded by Annabel getting a dose of colic.

  It would have been understandable if it had happened while we were snow-bound and she couldn't go into her field – when she spent the day alternately eating hay in her stable and looking out over her tiny half-door. Charles had made it specially to fit her height, so she could get her head over the top. Even so she kept bawling about how bored she was and that she wanted to go out. So every day we took her for a walk up the hill, where a track had been trodden in the snow.

  Annabel loved it. The people who lived at the top gave her sweets and fondled her ears. She had her photograph taken standing importantly by a snowman. Always one for effect, this was when she behaved at her best, with a daily captive audience. She plodded along behind me being Annabel Going To The Klondike, walking obediently in my tracks. She made no attempt now, as was her usual practice on walks, to nip my bottom and then mockingly shake her head, her mouth wide open in a disparaging donkey laugh which held all the more meaning for being silent.

  One afternoon, encouraged by Miss Wellington, we tried to take her out on to the main road. She was sure it was possible and it would set such a good example, she said, if our dear little donkey could do it.

  We tried, not by way of an example, but to see how far we could go over the drift. We might have got through – it had packed like ice on top and Annabel is as sure-footed as a mountain goat – but the wind had come up, loose snow was blowing sideways off the fields, and we walked into a veritable blizzard. Without altering pace for an instant our four-footed friend turned round and started back. Annabel believes in looking after Annabel – no setting examples for her. We emerged like a set piece sculptured in ice, white from head to foot. People said it looked most spectacular and photographed that little incident too. We often wondered what they captioned it in their albums. 'Pioneers en route for the Yukon', or 'The queer lot who live in the Valley?'

  They'd certainly have thought us queer if they'd seen us when Annabel had colic, but fortunately that took place in the dark.

  It was the day after it started to thaw. As I say, it would have been understandable had it happened during the snow, when she mostly stood in her stable eating and shouting complaints and got very little exercise. But the snow was clearing fast. We'd been able to put her on the hillside behind the cottage, where her donkey paths had turned to slush and the grass was showing through.

  Whether she got a chill, whether she ate grass with ice in it, whether Miss Wellington paid her a surreptitious visit and fed her with too many apples – the fact was that when Charles put her in her stable for the night and tipped her bag of bread and carrots into her bowl (we carry the bag ahead of her, rustling it to coax her to follow, otherwise she is likely to disappear deliberately in the wrong direction), instead of tucking into it she stood there with her head down, sighing and looking mournful. Urged by Charles to eat, she buckled at the knees, lay down and closed her eyes. Then she began to roll and kick her legs and Charles came running for me. It takes two to deal with Annabel when she has colic.

  A horse or donkey, rolling in pain, can twist its intestines and die. You have to get them on their feet as fast as possible. Annabel may look small but she is apparently made of cast iron. It was like trying to lift a tank. When we got her up she sagged at the knees and immediately tried to go down again. We half carried her out to the lane, where we put her bridle on her and forced her to walk up and down. It is the recognised treatment for colic, but doing it by torchlight, in a lane deep with slush and with the rain beating down, it looked more as if we were slave-driving some helpless little donkey than doing our best to revive her. We must have looked absolute rotters.