More Cats in the Belfry

TEN

She did care. She loved him in spite of his consistently treating her as if he were Tarzan – when, if I was around, she would scream blue murder for me to come and rescue her. Fond of being the Rescued Heroine, was Tani, although when she thought I wasn't looking she often bit him back to encourage him to do it again. He was over-rough with her at times, though, and a vet I knew who was an expert in cat behaviour suggested I should get a water-pistol. He'd used it to cure one of his own kittens who'd had a habit of biting, he told me. It would dissuade the offender, who would associate it with what he was doing when it was pointed at him and would realise it was better not to do it. The water wouldn't hurt him – it was just that he wouldn't like it.

So it proved. The most embarrassing part of the exercise was buying the water-pistol. I can still see the look on the assistant's face when I went into the toy shop and asked for one. 'For my Siamese cat,' I explained in case she thought I wanted to play with it myself, at which her eyebrows went even higher. She knew Siamese cats were odd, her expression said, but she really didn't believe they used water-pistols.

I explained it was to stop a male Siamese from biting his timid companion. She smiled hesitantly and helped me select one. Blue plastic – with a good long range, she said. But she still eyed me somewhat warily.

It worked, anyway. It got to the stage where I only had to point it in Saph's direction and without waiting for the spray, he would stop whatever he was doing and flee precipitately. Fascinated by water he might be, but not when it came at him with that force. I caught him several times, however, examining the water-pistol when it wasn't in use, lying on the bookshelf near my elbow. Wondering whether he could operate it himself, no doubt, but fortunately that was beyond him.

Really, though, they were very fond of each other. Originally, once they'd become friends, they'd slept together on Tani's blanket in the armchair in the sitting-room, but Saphra, deprived of his purple towels, had started chewing pieces off the blanket during the night, pulling it down on the hearthrug to get a better grip and leaving Tani sitting forlornly on the chair arm, where I'd find her wearing her long-suffering I've-had-no-sleep look in the morning. So I replaced it with the Snoozabed set on the hearthrug – without a blanket on it for obvious reasons – and they slept happily on the fur-fabric cover, or so I thought.

Until one night, roused by blood-curdling screams which I recognised as Tani's and wondering what disaster had struck this time, I rushed down to find the Snoozabed disappearing under another chair, Tani sitting upright in the last visible corner of it like the Lady of Shalott going down to Camelot, and Saph under the chair, tugging the Snoozabed backwards with all his might, his teeth sunk in the opposite corner.

What did he think he was doing? I demanded, picking Tani up in my arms. It was obvious when I looked at the Snoozabed. He'd been chewing holes in the fur-fabric in lieu of the blanket, obviously tugging the whole thing away to hide for future consumption, and not caring a bit about how much he was annoying Tani, which was probably part of the fun. I dumped the pair of them in the hall, shut the sitting-room door and took them up to bed with me. Better to have them where I could keep an eye on him, I thought. They curled themselves into a combined ball on top of the eiderdown against my back, and settled down for the night. Why hadn't I thought of this before?

It was comforting to wake in the early hours, aroused by somebody stirring, switch on the bedside lamp, look down the bed and see two innocent pansy faces, heads together, looking sleepily back at me – until the owner of the innocent black pansy face got up saying he was Cold, and came and prodded me with a paw to let him under the eiderdown, and the moment he was settled the owner of the innocent lilac pansy face plodded up and prodded me to let her get under as well, and all would be quiet for a time while they warmed themselves, till Saphra would suddenly erupt from under the bedclothes saying now he was Hot and Couldn't Breathe and struggle frantically out on to my pillow, and Tani, saying she was Hot too and the eiderdown was Squashing Her, would struggle out after him, and they'd sit bolt upright by my head till they'd cooled own sufficiently for the performance to start all over again.

After two nights of this I went out and bought a duvet which would lie more lightly on them, with mental apologies to Charles, who'd always resisted our having one saying didn't I remember how in Switzerland they were a foot thick and always fell off and left us frozen... but Charles had never had to sleep with exploding bedclothes.

The duvet was a great success and Saph soon resumed personal control of it. The duvet cover was sunflower yellow, and I put a bedspread over it to stop it getting dirty when they lay on it. Saphra's system was that when it was warm he and Tani slept on top of the bedspread, as I intended. When it got a little cooler, however, he'd stand on my pillow and lift the bedspread gently, with the slightest touch of his paw, as an indication that he wanted to go under the bedspread but on top of the duvet. Bang went the idea of keeping the duvet clean, but if it kept him quiet it was worth it, I thought. So I would hold up the bedspread and he would go under, and I would drop the bedspread over him. Seconds later Tani, who usually sat in the window alcove while this was going on, would pad across my pillow and lift the edge of the bedspread, too, insisting on being let under to join him.

A still lower temperature – say around 3 a.m. – meant that Saph crawled out from under the bedspread and raised the edge of the duvet itself, to show he now wanted to lie directly against me for warmth... followed by Tani crawling out and putting her head under the duvet, so that I had to hold it up again for her.

Once underneath, it was Saphra's prerogative to have First Place, stretched lengthwise against my side – something he adopted as his right. Tani then took up a subordinate position close against him, keeping him warm on his other side. She was so much the complaisant handmaiden on these occasions that I wondered she didn't wear a yashmak. I'm sure Saph would have approved...

After a few nights they expanded the routine to include going downstairs again on some errand of their own before they came back and really settled... a procedure instituted by Saphra, who, after I'd got into bed myself would claw at the closed bedroom door and yell till I opened it, whereupon, followed by the handmaiden, he would disappear down the stairs. After half and hour or so of silence – no fights, no crashes, no yells for help, though I waited anxiously to hear them – up they would come and get into bed, Saph first, Tani behind him, and all would be peace, give or take a wriggle or two, until the following morning.

Curious as to what they were up to, I crept down one night to check. Saph, sitting in the two-foot-deep embrasure of one of the windows overlooking the lawn, looked suitably sheepish at my appearance. Just checking on things, he said. Tani, perched high in the long horizontal window that looked out on the hillside at the back of the cottage, turned her head towards me when I went in, then switched it back to the window again. There were more interesting things outside, it seemed.

There certainly were. Badgers, foxes; I'd found their tracks in the garden, back in the winter when it snowed. Deer, too. There were roe deer in the forest, which came out on to the hillside to graze. I'd pulled back the bathroom curtains one morning and there was a doe right outside the window. She'd stared at me for a moment, then turned and leapt into the pine trees that rose like a backcloth behind the cottage. It was like a stage setting for Hansel and Gretel.

Satisfied, after I'd checked on them, that they weren't up to mischief – only watching wildlife, as was natural for them – from then on I left the bedroom and sitting-room doors open at night so they could go down at will and the sitting-room curtains pulled back so they could look out without hindrance, and they delighted in their freedom of choice. When they did come back upstairs, instead of jumping on the bed immediately, Tani would sit in the bedroom window for a while, staring out at the valley from there, while Saphra did a tour of the room itself, opening cupboards to see what they contained.

That was when the trouble started. The bedroom is small – too small to take a bedroom suite, which we'd replaced by built-in fitments. A low, built-in cupboard in one of the fireplace alcoves, topped by a triple mirror, took the place of a dressing-table. Another long, low cupboard along the wall at right angles to the built-in wardrobe substituted for a tallboy. The only drawback was that, as the cupboards were shallow, there was no room in them for sliding drawers: they had to have shelves and doors.

Drawers would have been difficult for a cat to manage, but opening doors was kitten's play to Saphra. Like Saska before him, he had paws which worked like jemmies – one claw-hook and a tug and the ball-catch clicked back immediately, exposing the contents of the cupboard for examination.

Oh, what treasure was there for a pirate cat! Woollen sweaters to be taken out and chewed – always round the cuffs and welt, so they looked as if mice had been at them. Eventually, in desperation, I transferred the bulkier sweaters to zipped, heavy plastic storage bags and kept them in a cupboard above the wardrobe. The few thinner sweaters that remained intact I put in the bedside cabinet, which did have small drawers, but alas these particular ones proved to be non-Saphra-proof.

I had a thin purple polo-necked sweater, one of my favourites, that I wore one day to a Siamese Cat Club meeting in London. Sitting at the top table with the chairman, delegated to be the next speaker, I took off my jacket because the room was hot, raised my wrist to look at my watch and nearly dropped when I saw, there before my eyes, a large semicircle missing from my sweater cuff. Too late to put my jacket on again – it was time for me to speak. I raised my arm in the air. 'The Menace has struck again,' I began. It brought the house down. All the members there had Menaces of their own and we had a grand time swapping tales about them.

How Saph had done it I didn't know, unless the cuff had been protruding from the drawer. How he got hold of my jewellery, kept on a shelf in the dressing-table cupboard, was on the contrary patently obvious. I could hear him hooking it out during the night. The items were mostly in individual boxes and he enjoyed opening boxes, raking them out with his paw so that they fell on the floor and the covers came off.

He was attracted by anything that glittered, as our first boy Solomon had been. Solomon had once put a set of keys down the clock-golf hole in the lawn and they hadn't been found for ages. Saphra likewise carried his trophies round in his mouth, his initial favourites being a long gilt chain and a gilt brooch fashioned like a feather. The chain I would find on the stairs in the morning, carelessly dropped like spilt pirate booty. The brooch he would hide under the bureau in the sitting-room, pulling it out to play with when he fancied it, particularly when visitors were there, when he was in the habit of walking round like a miniature pirate chief, with a gilt feather sticking out of his mouth. I didn't mind the chain or brooch. They were only costume jewellery. It was when he turned his attention to my earrings that I rebelled. Oval jade earrings set in filigree gold, which I kept in their own velvet-lined box.

He would hook out the box, rake it open, extract the earrings with his teeth and bat them around like marbles. I witnessed the whole procedure one night, sitting up in bed yelling at him to stop. He took no notice at all except to flatten his ears in reproof. Ladies didn't Shout, he said.

Annoyed – the earrings were good ones, doubly precious because they'd been given to me by Louisa – I started barricading the cupboard doors against him every night before I went to bed. Shoes against the jewellery cupboard, piled one on top of the other, one wedged under the bottom of the door. A scratching board, faced with carpet in reverse, sloped against the matching door, in the hope of distracting his attention. A large china storage jar marked SUGAR and filled with sand, against one of the doors of the cupboard that substituted for a tallboy. (Don't ask me why. I went berserk at that stage, gathering together anything I thought would deter him.)

It reminded me of the time when his predecessor, Saska, had started wetting on the rug in the hall and I'd had to cover it with a polythene sheet weighted down with heavy fire-irons, a portable heater and a crow-bar, and remove it all at top speed when anybody came up the front path. Only this was worse because Saphra was as skilful with his paws as Chinese juggler. Down would come the scratching board, whoosh would go the edges, open would fly the doors. Down would tumble the shoe pile, too, out would come the earring box and out would fall the earrings, and I'd leap out of bed, replace them, barricade the doors even more heavily and lie listening to the latest cat-burgling techniques being practised until he got tired and came to bed.

Why didn't I banish him downstairs to the sitting-room again? Because he wouldn't let Tani sleep when they were down there. Besides when they did go to sleep they looked such angels, so comforting curled together on the bed... Sometimes I woke in the morning and found that, Christmas-card picture or not, he'd been busy again while I slept. The earrings were out, the chain on the stairs, or a pair of tights lying mangled on the landing... and I'd hug him, forgive him, and put them all away again.

Then came the day when, cleaning the bedroom, I heard something rattle into the vacuum cleaner and decided I must have brought up a piece of gravel on the sole of my shoe. I went on vacuuming, spotted one of my earrings on the rug in front of the dressing-table, had a sudden dark suspicion as to where the other one might be... I bent down, examined the vacuum cleaner and my suspicion was confirmed. Out, when I lifted the cleaner, tumbled an oval jade stone minus its setting – which fell out after it in a jumble of mangled gold. I sat on the floor and wept, attended by two puzzled cats – one pale, paws folded precisely, assuring me as usual that Nothing was anything to do with her, she was a Good Girl; the other dark-masked, his almond eyes shining like sapphires, asking innocently what all the fuss was about. It was only a little green stone and I had another one.

I got the earring repaired. After my years of living with Siamese cats I was an expert at mending things myself, or tracking down somebody who could. My cousin Dee happened to be going to jewellery classes at the time. Her tutor was a craftsman jeweller, and he repaired the earring as if it had never been damaged. It cost a pretty penny, of course, and what he thought when he heard a cat had done it is anybody's guess, but I put it down to experience, transferred the earrings to the cupboard above the wardrobe, and girded myself once more to face the fray.

So passed the summer, with Saphra continually in trouble. I wouldn't have changed him for worlds, but the affairs of the village passed me by more or less at a distance. Certainly with very little impact. The Friendly Hands Club came back from their holiday jaunt, Mrs Binney not yet having officially landed her catch, though the general opinion of those who'd accompanied them was that it couldn't be very long now. Except, that was, for Fred Ferry's father Sam, who'd gone along the trip himself, arthritis and all, and whose comment was that that Tooting bloke was an adjectival twit and if Maude married he so was she.

It seemed that Mr Tooting had tried to show Sam how best to mount the steps to a museum with the aid of his stick. Sam, having a temper like his son's – and more sense, he'd informed his would-be mentor, than any ruddy townie wearin' a piddlin' pig-keeper's hat – had poked Mr Tooting in the knee with the stick to move him out of the way, Mr Tooting had fallen down the steps, and the coach party had had its biggest laugh of the holiday. The two were not now speaking to each other, and another village feud was in existence.

Nearer home, Poppy Richards had moved into her cottage and was busy settling in and interesting herself in local affairs. She seemed much more sensible than her sister, from what I'd seen of her. She liked Saphra and stopped to talk to him when she went by, and had been added to his list of friends.

Still nearer home, down the lane past Father Adams, Janet and Peter Reason had added four geese and half a dozen ducks to the two horses, labrador dog and tabby cat they already owned, and things had livened up no end. The Reasons had a considerable amount of land, spreading up towards me in one direction and almost the whole of the rest of the way down the valley in the other. The lane, a rough-surfaced bridletrack, ran through the middle of it, fenced only where it passed the horses' field, and for the rest of its length open to the Reasons' low cottage terrace on the right-hand side and their large parking area and stretch of woodland on the other. A wonderful place for a swashbuckling gander and his entourage to wander abroad in, and wander and swashbuckle they did.

Almost any hour of the day except after lunch, when they took a siesta on the sloping lawn above the terrace, Gerald the gander and his wives could be seen marching up the lane, down the hill, or past my side gate and up the forestry track, swaying from side to side like a quartet of outsize skittles, honking to let the world know they were coming and followed, like children trailing a Salvation Army band, by a huddle of quacking ducks.

They ventured incredible distances – far up the lane beyond me, stopping to look in at the gateways of the two other cottages along the route and honk defiance at the Alsatian which thrust its head through a cat-flap in the door of one of them and barked; way up the hill to the farm where they would peer patronisingly in at the unenterprising farm geese in their paddock; on to the Rose and Crown on the corner, before turning, and parading slowly back. Always with Gerald in front like a standard-bearer and the ducks bringing up the rear. And, as the weeks went by and nobody opposed him, with Gerald growing more belligerent.

He offered to fight Fred Ferry whenever they met on the hill. Fred, being a countryman and used to geese, merely swung his knapsack to fend him off and said 'Why dussn't thee go and pester Old Pans?' (Old Pans, incidentally, wasn't nearly as dim as Fred thought she was. When Gerald passed she was usually inside her gate with the bolt on, throwing bread across to land outside Fred's.) Any time walkers ventured down the lane to Gerald's own cottage he stood in the middle of it and dared them, and the walkers usually turned back. Aided by his army, too, Gerald had a wonderful time every Friday morning, when the men from the Council came to check the swallet.

Our local swallet is in the stream bank further up in the forest, and when the stream swells after heavy rain the surplus water, in theory, goes down the swallet into underground caves and comes out, as has been proved by putting dye in it, in a village pond five miles away. If, however, the swallet is blocked by silt and stones brought down by the force of the water, the stream overflows its banks, rushes down like the Lynn in full spate, and washes away the lane surface.

To prevent this, once a week two hefty Council workers parked their van outside my cottage, strolled up to the swallet carrying spades, cleared it of any blockage, ambled back checking the ditch for debris and overhanging brambles, went on down to the Reasons' to check there was no obstruction where the stream crossed the bridleway into the horses' field, then ambled back for a cigarette and an appreciative breath of valley air before heading off back to base.

That was how it was before the coming of Gerald and his supporters. After that, the moment the Council van stopped outside, a procession would appear coming up the lane – a procession in a hurry this time: no time for honking – and when the men opened the van doors to get out they would find themselves confronted by four geese hissing away like steam jets against a backcloth of excited ducks. By dint of brandishing their spades the men would manage to get past them and up the lane to see to the swallet. It was when they returned that the real fun would start. As they passed the van and started down the Reasons' lane, the geese would emerge from behind my coal-shed, where they'd been waiting, and close in behind them. Hissing, rattling their big orange bills, feinting with outstretched necks at the men's legs and having a whale of a time.

One of the men was pretty good at avoiding them. The other, a big bearded man a good six feet tall, was scared stiff and usually ended up doing a sort of jig on the spot, surrounded by geese and ducks and yelling for help. When that happened, if Janet was home she would come to his rescue. If she'd gone to work then I'd go out, wave my crook at them and the geese would disperse. Laughing their heads off by the look of them. I never heard of them actually hurting anybody. And, as Janet said, she couldn't keep them shut in. She was away all day; they were there to eat down the grass; and eat the grass – and police the valley – they did most successfully.

It was mostly the Council men they intimidated, but occasionally they had a go at me. Sometimes, if I was going to town, I would reverse the car out of the garage and park it in front of the cottage before I changed out of my jeans. Up would hurry the geese, ready for their favourite sport, and I would have to open an umbrella at them before I could get out. I kept a red umbrella ready on the passenger seat, and the sight of me backing behind it like a matador towards the safety of my front gate intrigued many a visitor to the valley. Visitors in cars, that was. Nobody would have ventured out on foot.

If I was in the garden with the cats when the geese went by, Tani would bolt, stomach to the ground, into the cottage and hide under the sofa while Saphra, who was made of stronger stuff, watched from the garden wall. Protected by the stream which ran beneath him like a moat he would crouch, wailing defiance at them. He wasn't Afraid. He'd take on the Lot of Them. Just let them Try Anything, he'd howl, with a quick look over his shoulder to make sure I was at back-up position behind him.

It took more than a Siamese cat to put Gerald and Co. in their place, however. Way down past Father Adams's, who surprisingly had no trouble with the geese himself (maybe Gerald knew better than to chance his luck with a real countryman), Peter Reason had constructed a pond for them at the side of the lane by damming the stream, and it so happened that my cousin Dee came out to tea one day, bringing her border terrier Tilly and her friend's cross-Bedlington bitch Tag, whom she was looking after while her friend was on holiday.

We had tea on the lawn with the cats in their run for safety, bees humming in the lavender behind us, white summer clouds drifting like sailing ships over the grass-grown ramparts of the Iron Age fort on the hill at the end of the valley and a buzzard hovering silently overhead. 'No wonder you love it here,' sighed Dee relaxing in her chair. 'I can't think of any place on earth more peaceful.'

She didn't say that half an hour later, when we went out to put the dogs in the car. Tilly, who'd been spayed the previous week and was being rather careful how she moved, stood by the car door waiting to get in. Tag, milling about at the edge of the stream, was sniffing the various scents, when she suddenly heard something down the lane. Her head came up, she saw big white wings flapping like tablecloths down at the pond, and she was gone like an arrow.

'Tag!' Dee and I shrieked in terrified unison. 'Tag! Come back!' She dashed into the mêlée of geese, scattering them in all directions, and then, like the obedient dog she was, she did come back, trotting up the lane with her tongue lolling happily at the fun she'd had. Unfortunately she'd set the stage for melodrama. Roused by the hullabaloo Tilly, forgetting her stitches, tore down the lane, passed Tag without a glance, and jumped on the nearest goose, which immediately sank beneath the pond surface with Tilly on her back and stayed there.

'Tilly!' we yelled, starting to run ourselves. As we reached the pond Tilly fell off into the water, scrambled ashore, and the goose popped up as if on water wings. Unfortunately not for long. Tilly jumped on her again, they went down like a submarine and its conning tower, and while we were still trying to get a grip on Tilly Janet came racing up from the stables, jumped into the pond, grabbed Tilly by her collar and threw her ashore. Up came the goose again, and beat it hastily for the opposite shore, where Gerald and the others were honking in circles.

Wading out of the pond, Janet dealt Tilly a well-deserved slap. Dee, cuddling the miscreant in her arms, turned her back to shield her. 'Don't hurt her. She's just had a hysterectomy,' she wailed.

'She should know better,' snapped Janet angrily. And we couldn't flaw that one. So she jolly well should.

All the way up the lane Dee agonised as to what she should do. Go back and apologise to Janet? I'd do that, I said. Better for Dee to take the dogs home out of the way before anything else happened. Offer to pay damages? I'd pass the message on, I said. Though I really didn't think there'd be any.

Dee safely away with the dogs – and was I glad to see the back of them – I went down the lane to see Janet. There was no sign of the geese. Only, over in a corner of the field by a ruined shed, something big and round and white lay half-concealed in a clump of nettles. Surely the goose hadn't died of shock? How on earth was I going to tell Janet? Coward-like, I didn't. Just apologised and asked how they were. I'd check on the way back, and if there was a defunct goose there I'd decide how to break the news to the Reasons later.

Janet received me just as worriedly. The geese were all right, she assured me (she didn't know about that big white bottom up the lane). She was sorry, though, that she'd slapped Tilly. She'd done it in the heat of the moment. Tilly had deserved it, I said. I must ring Dee, though, and tell her to bath Tilly in a Dettol solution, Janet insisted. With a half-healed incision... one never knew what germs there were in duck-ponds. I promised that I would, came relievedly up the lane – especially when I'd looked more closely at the round white thing in the nettles and found it wasn't a dead goose only an old white enamelled bowl thrown there by some long-gone valley resident in the days before refuse collections – and went up to get the cats in for their supper.

He wished he could have played with those dogs, said Saphra, who'd been sitting watching the whole thing in the cat-run. They knew how to have fun.

Hadn't realised they were white slaver dogs, had he? observed Tani, emerging from the cat-house with the alacrity which was her wont when visitors had gone. It was a good thing she had Brains enough for Both of them.