Cats in the Belfry (16 page)

  Far more cautious than her brother, she never risked getting inside a car herself. The most she would do, while I fished frantically for him with a piece of string, was to sit wide-eyed on the bonnet saying he was naughty, wasn't he, and she didn't know what we were going to do with him. She was longing to try it herself all the same. You could see it written all over her small blue face. So when at last the impulse became too great for her she went, obviously reasoning that she knew Sidney and would be quite safe with him, and sat in his side-car – and, such is the injustice of the world, promptly got abducted for her pains.

  Solomon was beside himself with glee when she came back. This time it was his turn to do the shouting, and he made the most of it. Here she was, the Cross-Eyed Wonder Herself, he yelled stalking to meet her as she came, looking rather sheepish, down the path in Sidney's arms. What About Us Smacking Her Bottom For a Change, he roared in a voice that would have done credit to a lighthouse-keeper. He didn't wait for an answer. As soon as Sidney put her down he bowled her over himself, just to show who was who.

  Usually, of course, it was the other way round. Sheba did the preliminary explorations and Solomon followed them up and got into trouble. The hole at the top of the stairs, for instance, where the electricity wires went through from the new part of the cottage to the old – Charles had pasted a piece of paper over that and painted it, to camouflage the spot until he had time to fill it in properly. It was Sheba who discovered that there was a gap at the bottom of the paper with an intriguing draught blowing through it – but while she was content merely to squint underneath it was Solomon, bustling up all bluff and bluster, who promptly thrust his paw clean through it, warning whoever was in there that they'd better come out quick or he'd be in after them. What was more he liked the dramatic effect so much that every time it was papered in future he did it again, and whenever I took visitors upstairs I had to explain not only the large hole perpetually edged with torn paper, but why there was usually a large, goofy-looking Siamese shouting threats down it as well.

  When we had new ceiling-height cupboards built in the kitchen it was Sheba who first ventured cautiously on to the draining board and opened a door with a small, inquisitive paw – but it was Solomon, once she had proved there was nothing there to hurt little cats, who banged them lustily open every day as part of the general routine. When we took them for a walk past the cornfield it was Sheba who first thought of livening things up by jumping on an occasional post and imploring Charles to lift her down – but it was Solomon who had to thunder up and down
every
one like a circus pony and finally, wild with excitement, jumped off on the wrong side and got lost in the corn.

  Whatever was happening, Solomon had to be most important and the only one in the limelight – except when it came to something like having his ears cleaned or his coat combed. Then there never was a cat more willing that Sheba should be first. He sat by with great interest while we worked on her, sniffing at the cotton wool and the saucer of oil, peering knowledgeably into her ears and assuring us that they were absolutely filthy and she couldn't have washed them for
months
. The moment his turn arrived, however, Solomon was gone. Yelling that we were making a big mistake, he wasn't our cat at all, he dashed desperately from cover to cover, anchoring himself by his claws to the backs of chairs and the edges of carpets. And when at last the deed was done – two little screws of wool turned gently in his ears and a comb passed swiftly through his coat, though, as Father Adams said, from the howls it sounded as if we were sawing the legs off a herd of elephants – he went around with his ears turned sorrowfully down, gazing at us so reproachfully from underneath them that we hated ourselves for hours.

  When the winter came and Sheba, treading gingerly out into the first snow they had ever seen, proved that it was quite safe to venture out it was Solomon who every night scratched and rattled at the door, demanding to be let out on the lawn where he tore flamboyantly round in a foot of snow with his tail stuck up like a periscope while she, having done a prim little patrol up the path and back, sat genteelly on the porch cleaning off her paws. In the same way, while it was Sheba who said that winter was a good time for catching birds because we fed them and took to sitting under the lilac every morning with her eyes fixed like sapphire moons on the temporary bird table, it was Solomon who insisted on sitting hopefully on the table itself. Spoiling everything, Sheba wailed when we fetched them in so that the birds could feed in peace, though Solomon insisted that he was disguised as a piece of bread.

  There were some things, however, in which they were unanimous. Like not coming in when we called them and not wanting anybody else to live with us. They got quite worried about that at one time. There was, living further down the lane, a pretty short-haired blue queen with amber eyes called Susie, whose one failing was that she loved everybody. She loved dogs, she loved humans, she loved other cats – she even loved the rangy, battle-scarred tom from ­the farm, as witnessed by the fact that of the squads of kittens she had every year at least nine-tenths were bull-headed and black and white. And one day, to his absolute horror, she fell in love with Solomon.

  He tried looking at her. He explained loudly and at great length that he liked beetles better than girls. It was no good. Every time he put his head out of the door there was Susie sitting on the porch, purring like a sewing machine and waiting to rub cheeks. The expression on his face as he walked self-consciously up the garden pretending he didn't know she was tripping adoringly alongside him was priceless. So was the way, if he saw her coming first, he nipped indoors and peered apprehensively round the hall curtains till she'd gone. Eventually she got wise to that, started coming in to look for him, and, passing the feeding dishes on the way and reasoning romantically that Lover Boy would want her to share his jug of wine and loaf of bread like in the poem, took to polishing off the contents on the way.

  She was wrong there. Lover Boy wouldn't even have given his grandmother a sniff at the dustbin if he could help it, while Sheba was so enraged she forgot all about being a lady, hid behind the door one day and, for the first time in her life, hit Susie on the nose as she passed.

  It didn't help any that we liked Susie and made a fuss of her when she came. Encouraging her to eat his food, wailed Solomon, glowering darkly round the door from a position where he could dodge the moment she started looking lovingly in his direction. Inviting her into our house, complained Sheba, jealously watching her rub against Charles's leg. Why didn't we have her to live with us and have done with it, they demanded indignantly the day they found her washing herself placidly in front of the fire.

  That, as a matter of fact, had occurred to Susie herself. The next time she came she brought along a half-grown black and white kitten. After we had put her outside and told her to go home – much as we liked Susie this really was too much of a good thing – she took the kitten into the coalhouse and slept there all night on the paper sack. It wasn't that she didn't have a home to go to. It was just, she purred happily, shepherding her offspring through the back door at seven the next morning in the direction of the feeding dishes, that she loved Solly, and our cooking, so much she had decided to live with us instead.

  We spent that day in a state of siege, with the back door firmly shut against the invaders and our two telling them to go home from every window in turn. Eventually it began to rain, and to our relief they went – though we felt terribly mean as we watched the long thin blue rear and the little squat black and white one disappearing sadly down the lane.

  Half an hour later, with the rain still coming down in sheets, we heard faint squeaks from outside the back door. We looked at each other in dismay. 'She's got that kitten out there again,' said Charles. 'It'll absolutely drown in all this rain!' Good thing too, said Solomon, lying on his stomach and trying to peer under the door. That might teach it not to eat his food. But the thought of that little shrimp sleeping on the coal all night, getting no breakfast and now shivering out there in the rain all because of Susie's love for Solomon, was too much for us. Defeated we opened the door – and our eyes nearly shot out on stalks.

  There in the pouring rain sat not the little black and white waif of the night before, but two beautiful blue kittens with round topaz eyes, their mouths wide open in a tremolo wail. They had obviously been rehearsed. We had never seen them before, but the moment the door opened they raised two perky little tails and marched boldly in. As they did so Susie jumped off the kitchen windowsill, where she had been waiting, and prepared to follow them. They were the very best she had, she explained in her shrill little voice. As we obviously only liked superior cats, could she bring them to live with us instead? It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, saying that she couldn't, and shutting the door in their faces.

SIXTEEN

I
t is three years now since Solomon and Sheba came into our lives. Sometimes – it is a symptom common among Siamese owners – it seems like thirty. In that time there have been diverse changes in our household. We no longer have Shorty, for instance. He died quite suddenly last year. We felt so guilty in case it was the result of being perpetually knocked off his hook by Solomon and Sheba – though indeed, wedged securely in the armchair in his cage and swearing heartily away with a cat either side of him he always seemed quite to enjoy it – that we sent him to the Ministry of Agriculture for a post-mortem.

  When the report came back a weight was lifted from all our consciences. He had, it said – though how he had managed it on birdseed and water was a mystery – died from a fatty heart and enlarged liver. We didn't replace him. With the cats around it didn't seem fair – and anyway his cage had hardly been relegated sadly to the woodshed for more than ­a week before Solomon, climbing inquisitively over a pile of junk, fell on it and reduced it to a shape which made it, as he himself said after carefully inspecting the damage, quite impossible to keep a little bird in again.

  We still have the fish – though their lives too have not been without event. Last winter the biggest of the lot developed fungus on his head and gills. For a fortnight, while everybody heroically ate shop cake, he swam sadly round in a special fungus-clearing solution in the pastry bowl. At the end of that time the fungus was still gaining and it looked very much as if we might have to listen to Sheba, who visited him hopefully every day and, when she found she couldn't reach him on account of the cake rack tied over the top of the bowl, strongly advised us to hit him on the head and put him down the drain. In desperation I tried a remedy I found in a book in the public library. Put the fish in a solution of one teaspoonful of common salt to a quart of water, it said, increasing the quantity of salt by an additional teaspoonful each day for four days.

  It didn't seem to do our fish much good. Indeed by the evening of the third day he was floating round the bowl on his side, practically at his last gasp. It was Charles who, in a sudden flash of inspiration, realised the truth – that on account of the damp weather the salt we had been using was much more concentrated than usual, and that in consequence we had practically pickled the little chap alive. In a twinkling we had him out of his brine bath and into a bowl of warm, clean water.

  But still he floated. Overcome with remorse we sat up till midnight, taking it in turn to hold him upright and steer him round the bowl by his tail until, at long last, our efforts were rewarded and it gave a faint flicker of its own accord. He recovered rapidly and within a short time, the fungus completely cleared, we were able to return him to the tank. The odd thing was that whereas before he had been completely gold, where the salt had acted on the fungus he was now black. He had a black head and gills, black tips to his fins and a black tail. He looked – said Charles, roaring with laughter, much to the disgust of Solomon who knew he was being talked about and immediately put down his ears and sulked – exactly like old Podgebelly. There was another interesting thing. We had never known before whether our fish, swimming somnolently round in their tank, were male or female. They all behaved exactly the same. Not, however, after the salt bath. Within a few days Podgebelly's double, his smart black tail waggling rakishly through the water, was chasing the girls like mad.

  Solomon and Sheba have had their ups and downs as well. Sheba, not long ago, was bitten on the tail by one of the local toms. How she – so coy she closed her eyes and practically swooned if you so much as glanced at her, so prim she always looked as if she were wearing mittens and a mob cap – could have let such a mangy specimen of feline manhood come within half a mile of her was a mystery, but even she, I suppose, has her romantic moments. She paid for that one, a week later, with an abscess as big as a tangerine on her tail. True to form she was very brave when we took her to the vet, allowing him to open the abscess and pump a penicillin injection into her rump with an air of fragile martyrdom that practically had him in tears over his hypodermic. He said we must keep the incision open for a week, draining it and inserting a penicillin tube twice a day. With some cats, he said, that could be the devil of a job, but with this little sweetheart – here Sheba closed her eyes and smirked at him; the way, no doubt, she had smirked at the tom before he bit her tail – we would obviously have no trouble at all.