More Cats in the Belfry

EIGHT

When Saska was at Langford under observation I had asked the vet who was treating him whether there was a nearby practice that specialised in small animals. The local vets I knew of dealt chiefly with horses and farm animals. For years I'd been driving my cats on a round trip of fifty miles when they needed attention, and it was a long journey: I'd done it on occasion in snow, ice and fog, and a cat expert nearer home would be a blessing.

To my surprise the vet told me that Langford had just opened its own Small Animal Practice. Hitherto they had only accepted animals referred to them, as Saska had been, by a vet baffled as to diagnosis. But they had recently taken over the practice of a local vet who had retired, and so long as the animal needing treatment wasn't on the books of another vet in the district it could now be taken direct to Langford.

My previous vet being such a long way away, my cats qualified at once. Tani went there when her loose stomach recurred. She was prescribed special bran to be mixed with her food and never suffered from nervous diarrhoea again. (Nowadays they recommend cooked rice mixed with the food, and that achieves the same result.) Saphra had been neutered there… made much of by the staff, but I did wonder why the senior professor, who also presided over the evening surgery, carried him out to the car when I fetched him that night. Was he glad to see the back of him, and if so why? I wondered. And now there was the episode of the purple towel...

Siamese cats are given to chewing things, and Saphra was no exception. First it was tea-towels, red and white checked ones. He chewed the corners off them any time he could contrive to be on his own in the kitchen, and I used to turn cold at times when I looked at his litter tray and wondered what dreadful malady he'd developed, until I realised it was only the tea­-towels taking their normal course and gave fervent thanks that they had. Then he discovered the purple hand-towels, also belonging to the kitchen, that hung from a rack over the washing machine.

Sitting on the latter he could reach them comfortably, and apparently they were just the job for filling hungry corners. Before long every purple towel I owned had a pair of parallel holes halfway up it, to the limit of kitten-sitting level, and when I hung them on the line after washing people had even more cause to stare when they went by. They looked for all the world like a row of Ku Klux Klan masks.

Then, the Wednesday after his exhibition of jumping on the biscuits, Saphra went off his food. He sat about looking worried, didn't want to go out and eventually disappeared. I searched everywhere I could think of, including the space between the side of the freezer and the wall in the kitchen extension which Saphra, odd-minded cat that he was, had adopted as his private lair. Situated where it was, near the back door, I think his main idea was that if I didn't know he was there I might leave the back door open and he could get out. But he would sit there for long periods meditating, as well. So I looked, and he wasn't there either, but something was. A long, mysterious something which, when I hauled it out, turned out to be a purple towel, half of it eaten away.

Whether he'd had it there for some time as reserve rations or had eaten it at one sitting I didn't know – he could have taken one out of the kitchen cupboard at any time – but the moment I did find him, sitting behind the bedroom curtains and looking wanly out of the window, which was quite out of character for him, I rang Langford, told them what had happened and they told me to bring him over straight away.

Getting the car out, putting a cat in the carrying basket, tearing up the hill at panic stations – I'd done it so many times before. But this time it wasn't a matter of twenty-five miles to go. Ten minutes and Saph was on the surgery table. The teaching professor sounded his heart, felt him all over, took his temperature. That was up a bit, he said, but there didn't appear to be much wrong. He'd give him an antibiotic injection. Would I bring him back next morning and, if his temperature as still up then, they'd do an X-ray. He paused, looked at Saph, who was looking back at him with the most penetrating of sapphire stares, and seemed to remember something. On second thoughts, he said... seeing it was him... they'd do an X-ray anyway.

What did he mean? I wondered. Was he remembering Saska? Or had Saphra blotted his copybook when he was neutered there?

I took him home again. Back to the cottage. He didn't want any supper. But later, in the garden with Tani, with me standing by, worrying myself sick about what the next day might reveal, he stage-managed something that was absolutely typical of him. Suddenly darting across to a clump of ferns he caught, with one swift pounce, a mouse. A baby mouse which he brought across, dumped on the grass in front of me and then, as I bent to retrieve it, grabbed and tossed tantalisingly in the air. It flew sideways and through the mesh of the wire netting round the cat-run. Hoping it was still alive I dashed into the run after it – only to see him, on the path outside, toss his head again, and another mouse flew through the mesh and landed at my feet. He must have caught two at once. True, they were only babies – he must have found a nest – but only he could have picked up two at once. 'Waaah' wailed Tani disgustedly when I asked her what she thought of it, which I took to mean that he wasn't half a show-off and we shouldn't encourage him. He certainly was, I agreed, and told myself there couldn't be much wrong with him, prancing about like that – but he still didn't want any food.

So there we were next morning in the X-ray room at Langford, the veterinary nurse and I in lead-lined aprons and Saphra stretched out on the table between us. I imagine I'd been asked to assist on the premise that my presence might stop him from being scared, but there was no fear of that. 'Now we're going to see whether your sins have caught up with you, young man,' the nurse said with mock severity. Lying on his side, confident that everybody was his friend, he regarded her with wide-eyed equanimity.

The X-rays taken, he was put back in his basket and I was asked to sit in the waiting room while they were developed. It was just my luck – I had been full of equanimity myself until then – that while I was sitting there someone came out of an adjoining room, left the door open, and through it I was suddenly aware of two white-coated figures examining an X-ray plate. They were holding it against a light. It couldn't be Saphra's, I told myself, though I knew it most probably was. 'I wouldn't think that was a growth,' I heard one of the viewers say. I would, at that moment. I'd heard the uncertainty in her voice. I was going to lose my boy the same way I'd lost Saska, I thought, my heart sinking like a stone. Realising that the door was open, somebody closed it. I heard nothing more. A little later, someone came out and said the X-rays had been inconclusive. They were going to keep him in, give him a barium meal and watch its progress. Would I like to go home and ring around mid-day?

I did. Nothing had happened, I was told when I rang. There was something there – at junction of the colon and the rectum. But it wasn't moving. Could I ring again in two hours' time? I did. Still no news. Could I ring in at five o'clock?

At five o'clock they said they wanted to keep him overnight and I rang off sick at heart, convinced I was going to lose him. Tani, talking her head off, was busy shadowing me everywhere, being my Faithful Companion. I have noticed that she does this when she is the only one around. Whether she was missing Saph, or taking advantage of his absence to bring herself to the forefront whereas normally she took second place and occupied herself with her fantasy of kidnappers I don't know, but she went with me to the kitchen, to the bathroom, jumped on the freezer and lectured me while I bolted the back door for the night, stood on the bed and talked to me, tail in air, while I undressed, and curled in my arms and purred like a bumble bee when I lay down, though normally she slept downstairs with Saphra. She was sitting by me on the hall chest, still talking away, when I rang Langford next morning. Whatever it was appeared to have moved slightly, they said. Could I ring again at mid-day? The bulletins being issued about Saphra, as if he were royalty, would have pleased him had he known, I thought. Possibly, being Saphra, he did.

It was a Friday, when I always went to Bristol to see Louisa and help her with any jobs she wanted done. I would ring from there, I told them. At mid-day they said could I ring at three and ask for the professor, who would like to speak to me himself. Sure, once more, that I was going to hear bad news, I had to sit down to make the call at three o'clock, knees knocking together, while Louisa stood by with a glass of brandy. Whatever it was was on its way, reported the professor to my relief, but it was taking a long time. Would I mind having him home for the weekend and watching progress? He didn't seem to like their arrangements, he added in what I thought sounded a hesitant voice. Oh, Lord, what had that cat done now? I wondered. But at least he was coming home. Louisa drank the brandy herself when I told her.

The professor asked me to collect Saph before the five o'clock surgery. He would explain matters when I saw him, he said. It was just after four when I left Bristol, and as I drove out of the city I noticed groups of people congregated along the roadside. At first I wondered what they were waiting for, but then the penny dropped. The Queen had been in Bristol that day, opening a hospital extension. She was due to leave the airport just before five. This was the route to the airport and people were gathering to see her. Schoolchildren. Guides. Scouts. They stood there ready with their flags. A Guide grinned and waved her flag at me. The girl next to her waved and cheered as well. In a flash the whole line was cheering. Goodness knew who they thought I was but I entered into the fun of it, waving back with one hand and bowing graciously as I drove. The cheering and waving spread. I wondered what the royal party must be thinking if they were at all close behind me. For me, though, it was an occasion for celebration. I was going to collect Saphra who, diabolical though he was, had installed himself so dearly in my heart. I waved and bowed all the harder.

When I got to Langford, I found that the reason the Menace was being sent home – expelled, if one looked at it squarely – was, the professor explained, that he wasn't co-operating. Wouldn't use his litter tray. Had only used it once since he'd been there, so how could anything come out? And his bladder was fit to burst he said, feeling Menace's stomach gingerly with his eyes raised to the heavens. I knew at once why it was, but I thought I'd look silly if I explained. I used pine-needles from the forest in Saphra's litter and he wouldn't have anything else. And it had to be changed after every sitting – he wouldn't use a litter tray twice, however large it was. I didn't suppose they had time for that at Langford.

So I brought him home, and Tani was pleased to see him, and he headed for his litter tray and performed at once, a relieved expression on his face. It took until Sunday for anything of note to appear, however. Something that looked like a miniature Catherine wheel, about the size of a 1p piece, and I recognised it straight away. A piece of the fringe off the rug in the hall, coiled tightly round and round.

The professor had asked to see anything that transpired, however, so I put it in a box addressed to him personally, added 'from Saphra' by way of identification and took it over to Langford on Monday morning. Only afterwards did I wonder what his staff had thought, opening what must have appeared to be a present from a grateful cat. Probably by that time both Saphra and I had been written off as odd, I decided. Certainly there wasn't a modicum of surprise in the professor's voice when he spoke to me later on the phone, to tell me he didn't think that could have caused the trouble. They didn't know what had, but he was sure there was nothing wrong with him now. I needn't bring him back again, but would I contact them immediately if I was worried.

I watched like a hawk, but all was well. The only thing I learned from my observation was that Saphra had invented something. Was it, I wondered, the result of having been, if only for a short while, at such an august seat of learning?

It was the following day and it was raining. The cats were in their garden house with their infra-red heater on while I got on with some work. I went up to the garage to get some papers from the car and as I passed their run the flap in the cat-house door lifted smartly and Saphra's face appeared out of the opening. He didn't come out. Just watched me go past with the flap resting flat on his head, keeping off the rain. It wasn't an accident. He did it again when I came back from the garage, peering out with the complacent expression of being perfectly protected from the elements. Saphra had invented a cat umbrella.

I was astounded by his cleverness, and equally bemused by something else that had happened around then. Readers of Waiting in the Wings may have remembered that after Charles's death I'd gone into the legend, told me years before by my father-in-law, that his family was descended from Tovi Pruda, standard-bearer to Canute. I'd found out a great deal about Tovi, including the fact that Waltham Abbey, in Essex, is on the site of a church originally built by him alongside one of his hunting lodges.

I also learned that in 1042 he'd married Githa, daughter of another Danish nobleman called Osgod Clapa, at Lambeth – and that Canute's successor, Harthacanute, had died suddenly while drinking a toast to the bride at the wedding feast. Harthacanute was only twenty-three years old, wasn't very popular, and one wonders what dark deed lay behind the happening. Tovi doesn't seem to have been implicated, however. He and his descendants continued as standard-bearers to the kings of England down to the time of the Norman Conquest, when Tovi's grandson Esegar was Marshal and Staller (the equivalent of High Constable of England) to Harold, fought with him at the Battle of Hastings, and was the only one of the king's retinue to survive it, dying in London three months later.

After the Conquest all the Tovi lands were given to William's henchman, Geoffrey de Mandeville, and the family faded into obscurity, but it was a story that completely fascinated me. My own family goes back a long way, but we have nothing on Charles's history, and when Gemma, one of my cousins-twice-removed, came, with her husband, to stay with my cousin Dee that summer, and Louisa and I went to supper with them and the talk turned to family history, I couldn't resist telling them about Tovi.

I hadn't met Gemma before. It was Dee's side of the family that had kept in touch with hers, and Dee had told me that Gemma wasn't terribly bright. Apparently it was taken for granted in Gemma's own highly intelligent family. Once, Dee told me, when she was staying with Gemma as a child, Gemma had rushed to her mother complaining that Dee had called her a fool, and her mother had replied tartly 'If Dee says you're a fool then you must be.' Even I, though, was at a loss for words when, after I'd conjured up for them a picture of the wedding at Lambeth – Tovi looking, I imagined, rather like Charles: tall, nordic-featured, green-eyed; Githa blonde and slender as a lily in girdled, sweeping white silk; Harthacanute and his nobles carousing lustily (No doubt wearing, in Gemma's imagination, helmets with whacking great horns on them, though actually Viking helmets didn't have horns at all) – Gemma leaned towards me and asked eagerly 'Have you got any photographs?' I was completely stunned. It was quite some while before I could close my mouth and point out faintly that photography had not been invented then. 'Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer,' said Gemma, serenely. I still haven't worked out that one.