A Comfort of Cats

Ten

We are not the only people odd things happen to, of course, as I was reminded when I was about to start this chapter, by a phone call from a friend.

Sue and her husband Gordon own my favourite dog, an Old English Sheepdog called Pickwick. She also has a Bassenji called Goldie and two cats called Max and Shere Khan. When I answered the phone her voice sounded broken and my heart sank in case it was bad news about my big, mop-headed friend. He has kidney trouble and while the Vet's last report said that Pickwick was currently in better shape than he was and could go on driving them dotty for years, with kidney trouble it is a matter of balance and one can never be sure.

It was all right, Sue assured me hoarsely. It was only that she had flu and had lost her voice. She thought she'd caught it trailing round garages with Gordon, looking for a new car.

'New car?' I said, knowing they'd recently spent a packet on the old one. They'd had to change it, she croaked. The gear-box had now packed in, plus umpteen other things. It just wasn't reliable any more. And their freezer had broken down and the man said it wasn't worth repairing so they'd had to buy a new one. They'd been away when it happened and the contents had all gone soft.

Gosh, I said. How awful. That wasn't the worst of it, she went on. To crown absolutely everything, Goldie had eaten the guinea-pig from next door.

I listened, hardly able to believe my ears. It seemed the little girl next door had wanted to introduce the guinea-pig to Pickwick. Pickwick has that sort of effect. Old ladies dote on him, dour-faced people smile at him – the world is full of Pickwick's friends.

Anyway, apparently the little girl said 'This is Basil, Pickwick,' and held Basil up to the fence and while Pickwick was peering politely through his fringe at him Basil wriggled from her grasp, fell into the garden, and Goldie, the Bassenji hunter, promptly broke Basil's neck. It was a horrifying story, its drama heightened by the fact that Sue was out when it happened. The dogs were in the garden alone, on the other side of the high fence and Goldie, having killed poor Basil, didn't eat him all at once.

There followed a sequence of the utmost high-mindedness – when Sue's next-door neighbour, in spite of what had happened, leaned over the fence flapping frantically with a tea-towel so that Pickwick shouldn't get at the corpse. The fence was too high for her to climb over, she told Sue later, and anyway she was afraid that Goldie might bite – but she knew Pickwick wasn't allowed meat on account of his kidneys and there was no point in making matters worse.

That was pretty good of her, I said. Sue said it certainly was. They'd replaced the guinea-pig, of course. The very next day, though, Goldie had stolen a joint of pork – the guinea-pig incident having obviously gone to her head – and while Sue, with Pickwick shut indoors for his kidneys' sake, was lecturing her about coming to a bad end, Max had come along, taken the rest of the pork up a tree, Shere Khan had joined him and they'd eaten it.

The sequence of incidents I was about to relate pales in comparison with that. It did all happen the same morning, however, which adds a certain drama to the occasion. It was a morning, shortly after Louisa's return from Canada, when I planned to catch up on a few chores. Clean the upstairs windows; machine the seams on a skirt I was making; and if there was any time left after that, start on mowing the lawn.

I knew it was going to be one of those days when, as I put my arm through the side of the open casement to clean the outside panes, I touched the adjoining shutter and it leaned out from the wall. I grabbed it and shouted for Charles. I hadn't, as he seemed to think when he arrived, been swinging on it. Our shutters don't close. They are purely decorative, each held to the wall by two bolts, and the top bolt had simply come adrift.

Charles examined it. Fortunately there was no need to take the shutter off, he said, but he did wish I'd be more careful. He fetched a ladder, mixed some cement, put it in the hole round the bolt. While it set, we supported the shutter with a rope that went from the bed-leg, out through the window and round to a drain-pipe. It was a good thing I had discovered it was loose, I commented. Supposing it had hit somebody on the head? Charles, obviously still convinced I'd been swinging on it, repeated that he hoped I'd be careful from now on. He hadn't time to be always mending things. He wanted to get on with the conservatory.

He didn't get very far with it that morning. I finished the upstairs windows. No more shutters came off. Relieved, I got out the sewing machine and put the seam of my skirt under the foot. I did two measly inches and the whole thing jammed solid, my skirt clamped in immovable teeth.

I do very little sewing and still use Charles's mother's hand machine, which he was able to take apart. He had to, to get my skirt out, though he wasn't very pleased about it. 'How long since you oiled it?' he asked. 'Don't women ever read directions? You should oil it every two or three times you use it, not once in twenty years.'

My grandmother used to do that, I said, and got everything she made covered in oil. 'Women and machinery!' said Charles resignedly. 'Now can I get on with the conservatory?'

Standing on the ladder being tough on his feet, Charles took time off at intervals to rest them. He was, therefore, fortunately indoors with a book when a stone jammed in the lawn-mower a short while later. It wasn't my fault. He will put Annabel on the lawn, saying she likes the grass. She also likes digging holes in it and rolling in them, the lawn being nicely flat. This throws up small stones which are later picked up by the lawnmower, and, being electric, it jams. Usually I can unjam it before Charles heaves into view wearing his Women and Machinery expression, but this time I'd let the motor run a fraction too long and the stone was wedged as if it had been welded to the machine.

I gave the blades a couple of what I hoped would be quiet taps with a flat stone from the rockery. It sounded as if I was hitting an anvil. Hoping Charles hadn't heard it, I removed the mower to the privacy of the garage and strolled, humming, down past the window to the coal-house. Equally nonchalantly I meandered back a moment later carrying the garden fork as a decoy. Nobody indoors, glancing up from a book, could have seen the coal-hammer I had concealed against my off-side trouser seam. At least, I hoped nobody could.

Up in the garage I hit the mower blade with the coal-hammer and it unjammed at the second attempt. Nonchalantly I strolled back down to the coal-house again – it wouldn't do to leave the evidence around. Charles always gets suspicious when he sees the coal-hammer, it being my usual recourse in an emergency.

I was back on the lawn, the mower going great guns, when Charles came out, his feet refreshed. 'Everything all right?' he enquired, as keeper of the cottage machinery. 'Absolutely fine,' I assured him. 'Good,' beamed Charles benevolently, passing on to the conservatory.

I had spoken too soon. I was cutting the second lawn that afternoon when the flower-arrangement woman turned up. I hadn't seen her since our original encounter but she had said she'd be coming again. I'd learned in the interim that her name was Tomsett and that her husband travelled in ball-bearings. I'd jovially remarked to the Rector's wife, who'd told me, that that must be rather uncomfortable. Alas, it fell on stony ground. 'What must, dear?' she enquired.

Anyway, there was Mrs Tomsett in her feathered hat saying she'd like to speak to me – which meant, since she was speaking to me already, that she expected to be invited indoors: something which, in Siamese households, is not always very convenient.

There can be few Siamese owners who, if they are honest, can say they never have to jump to it when the doorbell rings. To hide, for instance, the favourite possession which somebody insists on keeping on the hearthrug. (When Shebalu was young it was the pot-scourer. Another cat I knew was forever bringing down the bath-sponge.) To whip off the covering bits kept over chair-arms in a desperate attempt to preserve them. In the case of two friends of ours, Dora and Nita, whose home is immaculate, to unpin cellophane protectors from the bottom of their velvet hall curtains.

They have two slant-eyed tyrants, Sugar and Spice, who spray as a means of intimidation. Won't let them out? Right, say the cats, taking up positions against the curtains. As Dora points out, they have improved. They used to spray the wall behind the sideboard. They also once sprayed into the control panel on the electric cooker and sabotaged the Sunday lunch. Lately the novelty seems to have worn off a bit. They confine themselves to the curtains. Even so Dora and Nita nearly go mad, pinning on deep cellophane hems when visitors leave, whipping them off when anybody comes, watched by two inscrutable Machiavellis who are likely to spray just for the hell of it the moment the visitors have gone into the sitting-room.

In our case – to revert to Mrs Tomsett – had I known she was coming there were several things I would have done. Moved the earthbox we kept behind the armchair in the hope of one day persuading Sass to use it, for instance. Whipped up the old rug we kept under the earthbox because, so far, we hadn't. Nipped the vinyl corner-pieces off the carpet in the hall which now looked scruffy as well as peculiar. Shebalu had lately taken to raking at them, when she was shut out, as her own method of trying to get in.

Oh well. It obviously wasn't my day. I ushered Mrs Tomsett in. Actually she overlooked the corner-pieces, her eye caught by the flower arrangement on the carved oak chest. It was a big old tureen filled with lilac and yellow tulips. 'Did you do that?' she asked. I nodded modestly. 'Very good,' she said. 'I'm glad my words had some effect.'

As a matter of fact they hadn't. I did that arrangement every spring. In a tureen, because the cats couldn't knock it over. Lilac, because we have loads. The perennial tulips certainly were perennial – they were plastic. Some of the best imitations I've seen. Shebalu pulls the petals off real ones and I hate seeing flowers destroyed.

I ushered her into the sitting-room. She heard I wrote, she said as she sat down. She wrote too. Poetry. She must show me some of her work. What she'd really called for, though, was that she'd heard I was opening a boarding cattery. She'd like to help me by leaving Mauritius with me while she and her husband were in Spain. 'I'll give you full instructions about looking after him, of course,' she said, 'seeing that you've had no experience and Mauritius is rather fussy.'

I swallowed, while twenty years of keeping Siamese passed before my eyes. I never did learn why her cat was called Mauritius. I told her we weren't in the boarding business – the house and run were for our own Siamese. 'As for experience,' I said (I knew my voice was rising)... 'when anyone has kept cats as long as we have...'

From experience I should have expected it. At that very moment Shebalu appeared and got into the earthbox behind the chair, which undoubtedly Mrs Tomsett wouldn't have noticed otherwise. She squatted, then began to rise. I knew what was coming. I leapt forward and held her down.

Mrs Tomsett regarded the pair of us incredulously. Having finished, Shebalu celebrated by galloping merrily round the room and Sass appeared from nowhere and joined in. Going like the clappers, they hurdled Mrs Tomsett's outstretched legs, leaving her nylons neatly laddered as they passed.

Actually it was fitting retribution, better than any reply I could have made, but as Mrs Tomsett got up and made her exit, saying that quite obviously she'd made a mistake, I did wish that just sometimes the cats didn't let us down, particularly when it came to sitting in earthboxes.

We hadn't finished yet, however. Going through the hall, Mrs Tomsett glanced again at my flower arrangement. Stopped. Went over to touch one of the tulips. 'Plastic!' she said. 'Plastic tulips! I might have known it!' With which she departed through the door.

When I told Charles about it, he said 'A Day In The Life Of A Racing Pigeon.' It is one of his favourite comments. Goodness knows what it means. Charles's sayings are apt to be somewhat abstract, like 'Needs must when the Devil drives the barrel-organ.' But this time it sounded most apt.