More Cats in the Belfry (2 page)

  Through the
front
of the basket was what mattered. That way the kitten could see its intimidator was another cat. Why Saska had to be different and spy through a gap in the wickerwork back goodness only knew, but Shantung had never seen a seal-point before –­ her world had consisted of blues and lilacs – ­and when she saw his black triangular face staring in at her through the little peephole she must have thought it was a cat-demon. She was very brave. Didn't make a sound. Just had diarrhoea again on the spot.

  I did my best. Changed her blanket. Pulled the sofa across in front of the fire, put the basket on it, inserted a saucer of chicken and left the door ajar. In due course the sound of eating came from the depths. She didn't venture out, though. She stayed in hiding at the back, Saska sat on my lap in an adjacent armchair watching television, I worried like mad, and so we passed the evening.

  I took her to bed with me that night in case she developed delayed shock. I hadn't a clue what to do if she did. I could hardly have given a kitten that size the kiss of life. But I put her, still in her travelling basket with a blanket and hotwater bottle in it, on the chest at the bottom of the bed and it was from there, once the light was out, that I heard her voice for the first time. She alternated between dozing for a few minutes and then waking up and screeching like a barn owl in the darkness for her mum. I switched on the lamp and brought her into bed with me. She scrambled out, hid in the basket, and yelled for her mum again. At half-past one, in desperation, I went down to fetch her some chicken, waking Sass as I passed his bed in front of the fire.

  He came with me to the kitchen and started shouting for chicken himself. He could have been heard at the other end of the valley – probably was. He bawling downstairs, she wailing upstairs, half-past one in the morning and all the cottage lights on – it was like old times, I had to admit, even if it did occur to me that I needed my head read.

  I gave him some, took a saucerful up to her. She wasn't backward in eating, that was one thing. The chicken vanished in a flash. She started to purr, which her breeder had said she didn't do. A purr so loud it filled the bedroom. I could hardly believe it. She rubbed her head against my hand. She was making the best of things, of course, as all kittens and puppies do. It is the innate law of survival – if Mum isn't around, tack on to whoever looks as if they might take care of you, the pointer being if they give you food.

  For all that, the courage of such tiny creatures is astonishing. Humans would never be so philosophical. I got back into bed and this time she advanced up the eiderdown and crept into my arms like a small white snowflake. Overjoyed, I stroked her ears: upstanding lilac triangles reminiscent of a couple of pyramids on a miniature Egyptian skyline, that were the biggest thing about her. She liked me. Tomorrow would be a new beginning. It wouldn't take her any time to get used to Sass.

  Like heck it wouldn't. I took the precaution of taking her basket downstairs ahead of her next morning and putting it on the sofa in case she needed a refuge, though I didn't think she would. I went into the hall and called her. I'd forgotten how steep the cottage stairs were for a kitten. She came down as if she was climbing Everest in reverse, front paws plopping down together, bottom perpendicular in the air. Nothing to that, she announced when she reached the bottom. Lay on, Macduff. Was it chicken again for breakfast?

  Unfortunately Saska was crouched in ambush behind the sitting-room door and spat 'Tchaah' at her as she passed. She made for the sofa and into the basket as if shot from a gun and there she stayed for the rest of the day emerging only when he went out of the room, vanishing into the depths the moment he reappeared. When he was around, meals and litter box had to be handed in to her. She wasn't taking any chances. The evening passed like the previous one: Saska on my lap acting as if kittens had never been heard of – couldn't be one within
miles
– and boy, I gathered from his attitude, wasn't that Western good on the telly, look at those horses
run
; Shantung in the depths of the basket not making a sound; me with despondent visions of her living in there on the sofa for ever, and what sort of existence was that going to be for all of us?

  Tuesday was much the same, except that was the day my school-teacher friends, Dora and Nita, came to see her, took her photograph with a Polaroid camera and said, as we watched it develop, that it was odd, but she didn't appear to be on it. She was, but you needed a magnifying glass to see her. For the occasion I'd got out the cats' Snoozabed, sent by an American reader years before as a present for Solomon and Sheba. It consisted of an enormous rectangle of foam rubber four inches deep, with an oval hollow big enough for several cats scooped out of its surface and a pale blue fur-fabric cover over the lot. 'Washable, hygienic, draught-proof – the ideal bed for your pets', read the wording on the outsize box in which it came, and the postman was so intrigued that he asked for days afterwards 'How'd they like the Snoozabed, then?' until in desperation I invited him in to see it, taking up most of the hearthrug with two cats stretched out in it like Turkish pashas, whereupon he said 'Trust the Yanks to think up something like that' and went off, as was duly reported back to me, to tell everybody else on his rounds that I had friends over in America as daft as I was.

  Successive generations of Siamese had luxuriated in it; since Shebalu's death Saska had slept alone in it at night; and now, as he was out in his garden run, I draped a pale pink blanket over it as she was a girl and put Shantung in it to have her photo taken.

  What with her hiding in the folds of the blanket from the two strangers she was sure had come to kidnap her, and the fact that film colour can vary, the picture that came out was what appeared to be an expanse of pale pink sand-dunes with, if one looked hard enough, a couple of pallid pyramids faintly visible over the top of one of them. 'Shantung's ears,' I said, pointing them out. Nita told me later that that was the moment
she
decided I'd never raise her, but she hadn't liked to say so.

  Wednesday morning was when Mrs Binney gave me her opinion, overheard as he came up the lane by my neighbour Father Adams, who called out to me to take no notice of she, she'd put the damper on th' Angel Gabriel hisself if he listened to her, to which Mrs B. replied that he was a daft old fool and marched up the hill in high dudgeon. Wednesday I spent reflecting on how right Mrs Binney probably was – about Shantung, at any rate. And on Wednesday evening something happened.

  I was sitting in an armchair sewing. Saska lay curled in the opposite one, his black whip tail over his nose. Between us, on the sofa, was the cat basket – from which, after a while, there stealthily emerged the small white figure of the May Queen. She paused, studying the recumbent form across the way. The Big Cat was obviously asleep. Paw by paw she crept along the sofa on to the armchair and crouched there, studying him intently. At that point he snored a resounding snore, woke up with a start, saw her looking at him practically nose to nose, and nearly hit the ceiling, after which he hid under the bookcase while the May Queen fled for her basket.

  Next day, presumably having taken comfort from the fact that he hadn't eaten her so far, she ventured into the Snoozabed while he was in the garden house and stayed there when I brought him in. He made no attempt to frighten her, but sat on a nearby chair looking long-suffering. By Thursday evening they were walking past each other across the room – ­obviously deliberately, and obviously equally deliberately ignoring each other. And on Friday evening, washing up after supper, with the door to the sitting-room open so that I could rush to her rescue if need be, as they still showed no real sign of becoming friendly, I nearly dropped a plate with astonishment when something big and dark flashed past the open doorway closely followed by something small and white travelling like a midget express train.

  Before I could move, they hurtled back in the opposite direction, Shantung whizzing along in front this time, ears flattened for lessened wind resistance, Saska bounding behind her in full chase. I peered furtively round the corner after them. Shantung, all six inches of her, had stopped and was sitting in the middle of the floor with a paw raised, daring Saska, advancing across the carpet on his stomach, to come One Step Nearer and she'd Bop Him – and Saska, everything forgotten save that he had a girl to play with again, was looking happier than he'd done in weeks.

  One small hiccup barred the progress of the entente cordiale. Later that evening, ensconced in his favourite armchair with Shantung between his front paws, washing her fit to flatten her to show she was now one of the family, Saska slipped his tongue accidentally into one of her ears. The rest of her, having been around the place for nearly a week, had obviously acquired the cottage smell by this time and was acceptable. Protected by those enormous pyramids, however, the insides of her ears still bore the taint of other cats and places. He withdrew his tongue, curled back his lips in the familiar feline gesture of having just smelled something unbelievably awful, and said 'Tchaah' again – which could have set things right back to square one but for the fact that Shantung took no notice, presumably having decided that he was a bit potty and did that sort of thing from time to time, or else that it was me he was swearing at. As she didn't respond to his Monster act he considered the situation for a moment, steeled himself, then shut his eyes and licked the inside of both ears thoroughly until they tasted right. Had to be done Some Time, he said – after which they curled together in a white and seal-coloured ball and went to sleep. Things at the cottage were apparently back to normal.

N
ot quite, they weren't. Saska, having been looked after for as long as he could remember first by his mother and then by Shebalu, obviously thought that was what female cats were for, and was anxious to re-establish the fact as soon as possible – to which end, having been accustomed to stretching out in the Snoozabed using Shebalu as a pillow, within no time I found him trying to do it with Shantung. She was so small he looked quite ridiculous, spread there like a big brown ink blot with only her tiny head poking out from underneath him. Time and again I rushed to rescue her only to find her purring like a barrel organ, obviously revelling in what she thought was his fond attention. I hoped she wouldn't complain if one day she came out flat, I told her.

  The business of his washing her didn't last long, either. Within days she was washing him, and he was expecting it. It was a mammoth task. He used to sit upright for it and it looked as if she'd taken on cleaning the Post Office tower, but it didn't daunt her. As fragile ­looking as the delicate Oriental silk after which she was named, she reached up to lick his ears as if they were the stars on the twin pinnacles of her ambition – as they probably were. She had a Big Cat to herself. She was Important. Life was Blissful, she kept on telling me.

  It was a complete transformation from the timid little scrap I'd first seen in Devon – as if she'd been kept under by the other cats she'd lived with and was now making up for lost time. She consistently climbed things, fell off them, ate things she shouldn't and told the world about it in the loudest voice I'd ever heard in a kitten. She even talked in her sleep. One of my most vivid memories of her kittenhood is of the two of them curled together in front of the fire in the Snoozabed – ­Shantung muttering dozily away with her eyes shut, Saska regarding her exasperatedly with one eye open. Shebalu never did that, said his expression.

  It was during this period that she developed a quirk she retains to this day. She objects to my using a typewriter. I only have to get it out and set it on the small table by the fire and even before I begin tapping on it she will, without opening her eyes, start protesting in a staccato, Morse code-like voice at my doing Any Such Thing while she, with her Sensitive Hearing, is in the room. I am used to it now. I take no notice and eventually the nattering, not unlike the tapping of typewriter keys itself, subsides – but it was pretty off-putting when she started it as a shrimp-sized kitten. None of our long line of cats had ever done that before, either.

  Out of doors presented more problems. Situated as the cottage is, in a valley surrounded by pine-clad hills, with the metalled lane ending at the front gate and other than that only rough bridlepaths for horse-riders and a few neighbours' cars to bump over, we used to consider it the safest of places for animals to live in. Then Seeley, Solomon's successor, went out one Sunday morning when he was six years old and was never seen again. He couldn't have been run over – we and our neighbours searched for days and we'd have found his body if he had been. Either somebody stole him or – for like all Siamese he was extremely inquisitive – he must have got into a parked car at the top of the hill or along at the pub and been carried off accidentally. If so, we only hoped, since nobody brought him back in answer to our advertising, that whoever found him looked after him and grew to love him as we had done. But after that we decided that never again would any of our cats be allowed to run free unless we were with them. To lose any animal is heartbreaking, and where Siamese are concerned, with their striking appearance and obvious value, the temptation to people without conscience is no doubt considerable. So we trained Shebalu and Seeley's successor, Saska, to collars and leads; they wore them when Charles exercised them in the morning while I was getting breakfast, or when we took them for walks in the forest; and we put up a chalet and large wire run in the garden in which, when the weather was good, they sunned themselves when we weren't on hand to keep an eye on them. After Shantung came I used to take Saska out for his walk and garden inspection on his lead, then put him in the run and keep Tani, as I soon started calling her, with me while I did the household chores, with occasional sorties on the lawn for kitten exercise where Mrs Binney usually caught up with us and delivered her dismal predictions. Then, when I thought they were sufficiently used to each other for Sass not to pounce on Tani in mistake for a fieldmouse, I started to take them into the garden together.