A Comfort of Cats (10 page)

  After one car had passed us with slow deliberation, its occupants giving us dirty looks, we took her in on the cottage lawn for privacy. There, in familiar surroundings, she refused to walk at all. She lay on her side and closed her eyes, obviously resigned to leaving the world. At this stage we realised that our outside light was on and we were now more noticeable than ever. Spotlit, she lay there in the pouring rain with Charles and me trying frantically to heave her up. 'Whass be doin' now?' enquired a voice from the darkness. 'Thee dussn't half get up to some capers.'

  It was Father Adams. He'd seen our torch light bobbing about in the lane and had come up to see what it was. He helped us lift Annabel, helped rub her down with sacks, helped massage her rotund white stomach. There have been many occasions when we've been grateful for Father Adams's inquisitiveness and this was definitely one of them. 'Why dussn't try her with a peppermint?' he said at length. ''Tis what the Missis always gives I.'

  It hadn't occurred to us. We hadn't any peppermints anyway, but I did have a bottle of peppermint essence. Fervently hoping I was doing the right thing, I poured some on some bread and offered it to her. Whether it actually did the trick... whether she was feeling better anyway... she turned wanly away, turned back again as she caught the smell... Annabel is fond of peppermints. She took the bread, chewing it languidly, with none of her usual gusto, but so long as she could eat at all, you could bet that Annabel was going to live. She ate another piece. We took her into the lane again and marched her up and down the hill by torchlight. This time there was no faltering. We went up and down for quite a while on the advice of Father Adams – to make sure, as he put it, that her guts was properly unknotted. We must have looked even scattier, walking up and down the hill by torchlight, leading a donkey with nothing wrong with her, apparently just for the fun of it. Not that it really worried us. The main thing was, Annabel was all right.

  We put her back in her stable. She started on her hay at once and we went down to the cottage to change our soaking clothes. Sass and Shebalu, curled together in the armchair, opened one eye each as we went in. Where had we been? asked Shebalu's expression.
Out
on a night like This? Was it time for supper? queried Sass's lifted nose. Was I going to get their hot milk?

  It was far too early. Only half-past seven. Charles commented on how contented they looked.
They
didn't overeat and get colic, he said with feeling. And if they did,
their
gut wouldn't get twisted.
They
wouldn't lie on the lawn like stranded whales while we got soaked to the perishing skin...

  No. They had more subtle methods of getting our attention. Even as he spoke Shebalu got up, yawned, and leapt lightly to the top of the bookcase. Sass, on cue, sat up himself and immediately started looking worried.

  Charles groaned, then brightened. Spring was on the way, he said. We'd soon be getting the caravan on the road. Before that, I reminded him, we had a cat house to put up... Charles groaned even louder.

The cat house was part of our security plan. The remembrance of Seeley's disappearance was always with us and, to guard against the same thing happening again, either Charles or I was always with Sass and Shebalu when they were out and it took up a great deal of time.

  We ought to have a house and run for them, I kept saying. They could be out in it in good weather, enjoying the sunshine, while we got on with other things. We'd still accompany them on walks, of course, and watch over them while they hunted, but we wouldn't be continually panicking in between because they'd managed to vanish in a row of cabbages.

  Charles, agreeing, said he'd put up a cat house himself. It would only take a couple of weeks. The question was, two weeks from when? He already had three major jobs on hand on which he spent an hour or so in turn when the spirit moved him. That way, according to him, they got done before one realised it. One day there they were – finished.

  The conservatory wasn't for a start. He'd been renovating that for years. People sometimes asked, seeing him on the ladder, whether he was putting it up or pulling it down. Fencing the field beyond the cottage was another of our projects. We'd bought it as an additional paddock for Annabel. Charles had so far put one side fence up really expertly, but it wasn't much use without the others. Thirdly – the item which had top priority at the moment – he was building a dresser in the kitchen.

  That, I must admit, was entirely my own fault. The previous autumn, when we'd measured the kitchen for the pine dresser I'd fancied when we brought home the sack of onions, it was to discover that a normal-sized dresser was too small and would look silly and one of the big ones would be far too long. In an unguarded moment I'd thought of the old sideboard out in the woodshed, stowed there years before by Charles. I measured it. It fitted the space exactly. If we used that as a base, I said – faced it with pine-cladding, tiled the top, built pine dresser shelves above it – it would look like a super Swedish-style dresser and make some room in the woodshed into the bargain.

  Charles, fired with enthusiasm, said he'd enjoy doing that. Wasn't I glad now he'd kept that dresser? The pine-cladding part wouldn't take more than a week. He'd have the whole thing finished by Christmas.

  He might have done if it weren't for the fact that Charles is the world's top perfectionist. When, for instance, he found that the sideboard was veneered he insisted on removing all the veneer before he started. Why I couldn't imagine, since pine-cladding was to go on top of it, but Charles said when
he
did a job he did it properly. Stripped of the veneer, there were cracks to be filled in and rubbed down. Again I couldn't think why, until Charles explained that the finish was now so perfect it would be a pity to pine-clad it at all. He would varnish it instead, to bring out the grain, which would be quicker and he could start on the top part even sooner.

  Unfortunately the varnish turned it a peculiar red colour so he reverted to the idea of pine-cladding. He also decided to give it a new back, and new shelves inside. New bottoms to the drawers, too, while he was at it. I didn't want them sticking, did I? he asked when I said but that would take
ages
.

  Oh boy, I said, just give me the chance! Thinking I'd be able to store things in the sideboard from the start, as soon as we'd brought it inside I'd agreed to moving the old kitchen cabinet out to the porch to give Charles more room to work in. I now trudged miles a day carrying cups and plates and cutlery, leaving trails of sawdust behind me, while Charles sawed inspiredly away as if he were Sheraton and the cats played games through the empty drawer holes. Never mind about them sticking. Give me just one drawer I could actually
use
, and I'd stand on my head in celebration.

  Add a cat house to the list? Not on your nelly. We, I said firmly, were going to buy one. Even so the thought was with me that, even if we bought the house itself – there were plenty of wooden sheds with windows on the market – Charles would still have to build a run around it and we'd have Project Number Four under way. At which point, while I was wondering whether my nerves would stand it, the Francises decided to close their Siamese boarding cattery at Low Knap.

  Probably the best-known Siamese cattery in England – at one time it was said to be unique in Europe – it is nearly thirty years since Dr and Mrs Francis set the standard for modern cat boarding. Individual houses – separated, not in rows; large, individual runs; complete disinfection when a boarder moved out, even down to the blow-lamping of the earthboxes. Infra-red lamps over beds that were deep-sided and private, cushions to sit on in the windows – there were Siamese who'd boarded there for as long as three years while their owners were over-seas.

  That in itself was a tribute to the proprietors. Siamese are peculiar creatures. Some catteries refuse to take them at all, saying they are more trouble than any other type of cat. The Francises, knowing this, specialised in the Oriental breeds, boarding only Siamese, Burmese and Havana. It was like visiting a top racing stable to walk past the runs, seeing an aloof-looking aristocrat in each. In some cases there were two or three aristocrats from the same household, lying there like a pride of lions, gazing with disdain at the rest of the world but keeping a hopeful eye open for the Francises.

  Now they had retired. Rather than pass the business on and risk their standards not being maintained, they had closed, which was why we'd bought a caravan. Our cats had always boarded there. Sugieh had been mated there. We'd always left them with every confidence. No place, we said, could ever come up to Low Knap. In future we'd have to take the cats on holiday with us.

  Not that I looked forward to it. I was already waking in the clear cold light of dawn envisaging trouble with Sass over his earthbox and positive mayhem when it came to the cooking. Always, in the kitchen, I had to watch out for stealthy paws. Sass in particular could materialise from nowhere. How would I manage in a caravan, cooking with two of them present and no handy door through which to dump them?

  It is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good, however. The closing of Low Knap might have landed us with the prospect of taking the cats on holiday – I only hoped I was going to survive it – but it also meant that the Francises had some first-class cat houses and runs to dispose of, and we were able to buy one.

  We hired a do-it-yourself van to bring the sections up from Dorset. The rumour went round that we'd been seen driving a lorry piled high with hen houses. According to Father Adams they were speculating at the Rose and Crown as to whether we were planning a caravan park in the new field we'd acquired or had been carried away by watching
The Good Life
.

  I explained to him that the field was for Annabel and the 'hen houses' comprised a single cat house. Ah well, he said, he weren't goin' to tell 'em. What with the things they reckoned we were up to, and what young Bannett were doin' with the graveyard, it gave he the belly-ache laughing just to listen to 'em.

  So the cat house lay in sections on the lawn throughout the winter, covered by a tarpaulin. We wouldn't need it till the spring and Charles was still busy with the dresser. Meanwhile Tim Bannett had bought a field further up the lane from ours because he was planning to expand in the goat business. Polly was ready for mating, he said, and he thought of getting a second nanny – he'd need more room than he had at the cottage. Couldn't he graze them round the edges of the graveyard? I asked. He could always fence off the mounds. After all there are still villages where they graze sheep actually in the churchyard, following the medieval custom...

  There'd probably be a riot if he did, said Tim. He wouldn't like to, anyway. Apart from which, couldn't we imagine what people'd say about the milk? They'd had enough to say about the bright green hens' eggs.

  They had indeed. Fred Ferry swore they'd made his eyes twitch, though the rest of the village attributed that to too much cider. 'Twas St Vitus Dance of the eyeballs,' according to Father Adams, 'and thee dussn't get that through eatin' eggs.'

  Anyway, Tim bought the field and kept going to and fro with fencing poles. On his way he usually stopped for a natter with us over the wall, which naturally didn't go unnoticed. Charles, meanwhile, inspired by the first faint stirring of spring took the tarpaulin off the cat house sections and ordered a ton and a half of paving stones for the base on which it was to stand. These, when they came, were dumped outside our gate, the driver saying it was past his knocking-off time.

  All of which incidents were pieced together, country-style, into the usual wildly wrong conclusion. We'd bought a field. Tim had bought a field. We were going into partnership together. Caravans in our field, chalets in his – we had the sections all ready on our front lawn. He'd been seen in his field hammering in posts to mark the sites. There was the paving for the paths outside our gate. We were going to open at Easter. The bookings were rolling in. We were expecting to make our fortunes.

  Nobody really believed it, of course. It was just a piece of typical village invention, with somebody adding a bit every time the subject came round like children playing a game at a party. The touch that tickled us most was added by one of our neighbours who went abroad from time to time on business. Vastly proud of the fact, he always made sure that everybody knew without actually telling them directly. The next time the subject was raised in the Rose and Crown – 'Well, I'm off to Bahrain,' he announced, 'I only hope that by the time I get back there won't be wooden huts all over the hillside.'

  There wouldn't have been much time for it, since he was only going for three days. As it was, there wasn't even one hut. Apart from the fact that the cat house was going in the garden – on my best flower bed, being the sunniest and most secluded spot – it took us three weeks' solid work to erect it, and even then we were racing against time. Digging up the plants, levelling the ground which sloped considerably – that in itself, took days. Then there was laying the paving-stone foundation for the house – cementing it and waiting for it to set. Meanwhile Charles laid a frame of paving stones on which to stand the run, this being most important. We could fill in the centre at our leisure, Dr Francis had told us, but if we didn't put the framework of the run on paving right from the start, however much our two might languish when we put them in it saying they gave in, we had them Beaten, as soon as our backs were turned they'd be tunnelling as if they were in Colditz. Siamese cats, he said, can dig like moles.