man's left ear on to the top of a tall cupboard. "Holy Moses!" said
Tristan. "What the hell was that?" "That," I said, "was Boris, and
now we've got to get hold of him again." I climbed on to a chair,
reached slowly on to the cupboard top and started "puss-puss-
pussing" in my most beguiling tone. After about a minute Tristan
appeared to think he had a better idea; he made a sudden leap and
grabbed Boris's tail. But only briefly, because the big cat freed
himself in an instant and set off on a whirlwind circuit of the
room; along the tops of cupboards and dressers, across the curtains,
careering round and round like a wall-of-death rider. Tristan
stationed himself at a strategic point and as Boris shot past he
swiped at him with one of the gauntlets. "Missed the bloody thing!"
he shouted in chagrin. "But here he comes again ... take that, you
black devil! Damn it, I can't nail him!" The docile little inside
cats, startled by the scattering of plates and tins and pans and by
Tristan's cries and arm wavings, began to run around in their turn,
knocking over whatever Boris had missed. The noise and confusion
even got through to Mr. Bond because, just for a moment, he raised
his head and looked around him in mild surprise at the hurtling
bodies before returning to his newspaper. Tristan, flushed with the
excitement of the chase, had really begun to enjoy himself. I
cringed inwardly as he shouted over to me happily, "Send him on, Jim,
I'll get the blighter next time round!" We never did catch Boris. We
just had to leave the piece of bone to work its own way out, so it
wasn't a successful veterinary visit. But Tristan smiled contentedly
as we got back into the car. "That was great, Jim. I didn't realise
you had such fun with your pussies." Mrs. Bond, on the other hand,
when I next saw her, was rather tight-lipped over the whole thing.
"Mr. Herriot," she said, "I hope you aren't going to bring that
young man with you again."
Olly and Ginny Two Kittens Who Came to Stay
"Look at that, Jim! Surely that's a stray cat. I've never seen it
before." Helen was at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, and she
pointed through the window. Our new house in Hannerly had been built
into a sloping field. There was a low retaining wall, chest high,
just outside the window and, behind, the grassy bank led from the
wall top up to some bushes and an open log shed perched about twenty
yards away. A lean little cat was peering warily from the bushes.
Two tiny kittens crouched by her side. "I think you're right," I
said. "That's a stray with her family and she's looking for food."
Helen put out a bowl of meat scraps and some milk on the flat top of
the wall and retired to the kitchen. The mother cat did not move for
a few minutes, then she advanced with the utmost caution, took up
some of the food in her mouth and carried it back to her kittens.
Several times she crept down the bank, but when the kittens tried to
follow her, she gave them a quick "get back" tap with her paw. We
watched, fascinated, as the scraggy, half-starved creature made sure
that her family had eaten before she herself took anything from the
bowl. Then, when the food was finished, we quietly opened the back
door. But as soon as they saw us, cat and kittens flitted away into
the field. "I wonder where they came from," Helen said. I shrugged.
"Heaven knows. There's a lot of open country round here. They could
have come from miles away. And that mother cat doesn't look like an
ordinary stray. There's a real wild look about her." Helen nodded.
"Yes, she looks as though she's never been in a house, never had
anything to do with people. I've heard of wild cats like that who
live outside. Maybe she only came looking for food because of her
kittens." "I think you're right," I said as we returned to the
kitchen. "Anyway, the poor little things have had a good feed. I
don't suppose we'll see them again." But I was wrong. Two days later,
the trio reappeared. In the same place, peeping from the bushes,
looking hungrily towards the kitchen window. Helen fed them again,
the mother cat still fiercely forbidding her kittens to leave the
bushes, and once more they darted away when we tried to approach
them. When they came again next morning, Helen turned to me and
smiled. "I think we've been adopted," she said. She was right. The
three of them took up residence in the log shed and after a few days
the mother allowed the kittens to come down to the food bowls,
shepherding them carefully all the way. They were still quite tiny,
only a few weeks old. One was black and white, the other
tortoiseshell. Helen fed them for a fortnight, but they remained
unapproachable creatures. Then one morning, as I was about to go on
my rounds, she called me into the kitchen. She pointed through the
window. "What do you make of that?" I looked and saw the two kittens
in their usual position under the bushes, but there was no mother
cat. "That's strange," I said. "She's never let them out of her
sight before." The kittens had their feed and I tried to follow them
as they ran away, but I lost them in the long grass, and although I
searched all over the field there was no sign of them or their
mother. We never saw the mother cat again and Helen was quite upset.
"What on earth can have happened to her?" she murmured a few days
later as the kittens ate their morning meal. "Could be anything," I
replied. "I'm afraid the mortality rate for wandering cats is very
high. She could have been run over by a car or had some other
accident. I'm afraid we'll never know." Helen looked again at the
little creatures crouched side by side, their heads in the bowl. "Do
you think she's just abandoned them?" "Well, it's possible. She was
a maternal and caring little thing and I have a feeling she looked
around till she could find a good home for them. She didn't leave
till she saw that they could fend for themselves and maybe she's
returned to her outside life now. She was a real wild one." It
remained a mystery, but one thing was sure: the kittens were
installed for good. Another thing was sure: they would never be
domesticated. Try as we might, we were never able to touch them, and
all our attempts to wheedle them into the house were unavailing.
One wet morning, Helen and I looked out of the kitchen window at the
two of them sitting on the wall, waiting for their breakfast, their
fur sodden, their eyes nearly closed against the driving rain. "Poor
little things," Helen said, "I can't bear to see them out there, wet
and cold, we must get them inside." "How? We've tried often enough."
"Oh, I know, but let's have another go. Maybe they'll be glad to
come in out of the rain." We mashed up a dish of fresh fish, an
irresistible delicacy to cats. I let them have a sniff and they were
eager and hungry, then I placed the dish just inside the back door
before retreating out of sight. But as we watched through the window
the two of them sat motionless in the downpour, their eyes fixed on
the fish, but determined not to go through the door. That, clearly,
was unthinkable. "All right, you win," I said and put the food on
the wall where it was immediately devoured. I was staring at them
with a feeling of defeat when Herbert Platt, one of the local
dustmen, came round the corner. At the sight of him the kittens
scurried away and Herbert laughed. "Ah see you've taken on them cats.
That's some nice stuff they're getting to eat." "Yes, but they won't
come inside to get it." He laughed again. "Aye, and they never will.
Ah've know"n that family o" cats for years, and all their ancestors.
I saw that mother cat when she first came, and before that she lived
at awd Mrs. Caley's over the hill and ah remember that "un's mother
before her, down at Billy Tate's farm. Ah can go back donkey's years
with them cats." "Gosh, is that so?" "Aye, it is, and I've never
seen one o" that strain that would go inside a house. They're wild,
real wild." "Ah well, thanks, Herbert, that explains a lot." He
smiled and hoisted a bin. "Ah'll get off, then, and they can finish
their breakfast." "Well, that's it, Helen," I said. "Now we know.
They're always going to be outside, but at least we can try to
improve their accommodation." The thing we called the log shed,
where I had laid some straw for them to sleep, wasn't a shed at all.
It had a roof, but was open all down one side, with widely spaced
slats on the other three sides. It allowed a constant through-wind
which made it a fine place for drying out the logs but horribly
draughty as a dwelling. I went up the grassy slope and put up a
sheet of plywood as a wind-break. Then I built up a mound of logs
into a protective zariba around the straw bed and stood back,
puffing slightly. "Right," I said. "They'll be quite cozy in there
now." Helen nodded in agreement, but she had gone one better. Behind
my wind-break, she put down an open-sided box with cushions inside.
"There now, they needn't sleep on the straw any more. They'll be
warm and comfortable in this nice box." I rubbed my hands. "Great.
We won't have to worry about them in bad weather. They'll really
enjoy coming in here." From that moment the kittens boycotted the
shed. They still came for their meals every day, but we never saw
them anywhere near their old dwelling. "They're just not used to it,
" Helen said. "Hmm." I looked again at the cushioned box tucked in
the centre of the encircling logs. "Either that, or they don't like
it." We stuck it out for a few days, then, as we wondered where on
earth the kittens could be sleeping, our resolve began to crack. I
went up the slope and dismantled the wall of logs. Immediately the
two little creatures returned. They sniffed and nosed round the box
and went away again. "I'm afraid they're not keen on your box either,
" I grunted as we watched from our vantage point. Helen looked
stricken. "Silly little things. It's perfect for them." But after
another two days during which the shed lay deserted, she went out
and I saw her coming sadly down the bank, box in one hand, cushions
under her arm. The kittens were back within hours, looking round the
place, vastly relieved. They didn't seem to object to the wind-break
and settled happily in the straw. Our attempts to produce a feline
Hilton had been a total failure. It dawned on me that they couldn't
bear to be enclosed, to have their escape routes cut off. Lying
there on the open bed of straw, they could see all around them and
were able to flit away between the slats at the slightest sign of
danger. "Okay, my friends," I said, 'that's the way you want it, but
I'm going to find out something more about you." Helen gave them
some food and once they were concentrating on the food, I crept up
on them and threw a fisherman's landing net over them and after a
struggle I was able to divine that the tortoiseshell was a female
and the black and white a male. "Good," said Helen, "I'll call them
Olly and Ginny." "Why Olly?" "Don't really know. He looks like an
Olly. I like the name." "Oh, and how about Ginny?" "Short for Ginger.
" "She's not really ginger, she's tortoiseshell." "Well, she's a bit
ginger." I left it at that. Over the next few months they grew
rapidly and my veterinary mind soon reached a firm decision. I had
to neuter them. And it was then that I was confronted for the first
time with a problem which was to worry me for years--how to minister
to the veterinary needs of animals which I was unable even to touch.
The first time, when they were half grown, it wasn't so bad. Again I
slunk up on them with my net when they were feeding and managed to
bundle them into a cat cage from which they looked at me with
terrified and, I imagined, accusing eyes. In the surgery, as
Siegfried and I lifted them one by one from the cage and
administered the intravenous anaesthetic, I was struck by the fact
that although they were terror-stricken at being in an enclosed
space for the first time in their lives and by being grasped and
restrained by humans, they were singularly easy to handle. Many of
our domesticated feline patients were fighting furies until we had
lulled them to sleep, and cats, with claws as well as teeth for
weapons, can inflict a fair amount of damage. However, Olly and
Ginny, although they struggled frantically, made no attempt to bite,
never unsheathed their claws. Siegfried put it briefly. "These
little things are scared stiff, but they're absolutely docile. I
wonder how many wild cats are like this." I felt a little strange as
I carried out the operations, looking down at the small sleeping
forms. These were my cats yet it was the first time I was able to
touch them as I wished, examine them closely, appreciate the beauty
of their fur and colourings. When they had come out of the
anaesthetic, I took them home and when I released the two of them
from the cage, they scampered up to their home in the log shed. As
was usual following such minor operations, they showed no after
effects, but they clearly had unpleasant memories of me. During the
next few weeks they came close to Helen as she fed them but fled
immediately at the sight of me. All my attempts to catch Ginny to
remove the single little stitch in her spay incision were fruitless.
That stitch remained for ever and I realised that Herriot had been
cast firmly as the villain of the piece, the character who would
grab you and bundle you into a wire cage if you gave him half a
chance. It soon became clear that things were going to stay that way
because, as the months passed and Helen plied them with all manner
of titbits and they grew into truly handsome, sleek cats, they would
come arching along the wall top when she appeared at the back door,
but I had only to poke my head from the door to send them streaking
away out of sight. I was the chap to be avoided at all times, and
this rankled with me because I have always been fond of cats and I
had become particularly attached to these two. The day finally
arrived when Helen was able to s
troke them gently as they ate and my
chagrin deepened at the sight. Usually they slept in the log shed
but occasionally they disappeared to somewhere unknown and stayed
away for a few days, and we used to wonder if they had abandoned us
or if something had happened to them. When they reappeared, Helen
would shout to me in great relief, "They're back, Jim, they're
back!" They had become part of our lives.
Summer lengthened into autumn and when the bitter Yorkshire winter
set in we marvelled at their hardiness. We used to feel terrible,
looking at them from our warm kitchen as they sat out in the frost
and snow, but no matter how harsh the weather, nothing would induce
either of them to set foot inside the house. Warmth and comfort had
no appeal to them. When the weather was fine we had a lot of fun
just watching them. We could see right up into the log shed from our
kitchen, and it was fascinating to observe their happy relationship.
They were such friends. Totally inseparable, they spent hours
licking each other and rolling about together in gentle play and
they never pushed each other out of the way when they were given
their food. At nights we could see the two furry little forms curled
close together in the straw. Then there was a time when we thought
everything had changed forever. The cats did one of their
disappearing acts and as day followed day we became more anxious.
Each morning. Helen started her day with the cry of "Olly, Ginny"
which always brought the two of them trotting down from their
dwelling, but now they did not appear, and when a week passed and
then two we had almost run out of hope. When we came back from our
half day in Brawton, Helen ran to the kitchen and looked out. The
cats knew our habits and they would always be sitting waiting for
her but the empty wall stretched away and the log shed was deserted.
"Do you think they've gone for good, Jim?" she said. I shrugged.
"It's beginning to look like it. You remember what old Herbert said
about that family of cats. Maybe they're nomads at heart-- gone off
to pastures new." Helen's face was doleful. "I can't believe it.
They seemed so happy here. Oh, I hope nothing terrible has happened
to them." Sadly she began to put her shopping away and she was
silent all evening. My attempts to cheer her up were half-hearted
because I was wrapped in a blanket of misery myself. Strangely, it
was the very next morning when I heard Helen's usual cry, but this
time it wasn't a happy one. She ran into the sitting room. "They're
back, Jim," she said breathlessly, "but I think they're dying!"
"What? What do you mean?" "Oh, they look awful! They're desperately
ill--I'm sure they're dying." I hurried through to the kitchen with
her and looked through the window. The cats were sitting there side
by side on the wall a few feet away. A watery discharge ran from
their eyes, which were almost closed, more fluid poured from their
nostrils and saliva drooled from their mouths. Their bodies shook
from a continuous sneezing and coughing. They were thin and scraggy,
unrecognisable as the sleek creatures we knew so well, and their
appearance was made more pitiful by their situation in the teeth of
a piercing east wind which tore at their fur and made their attempts
to open their eyes even more painful. Helen opened the back door.
"Olly, Ginny, what's happened to you?" she cried softly. A
remarkable thing then happened. At the sound of her voice, the cats
hopped carefully from the wall and walked unhesitatingly through the
door into the kitchen. It was the first time they had been under our
roof. "Look at that!" Helen exclaimed. "I can't believe it. They
must be really ill. But what is it, Jim? Have they been poisoned?" I
shook my head. "No, they've got cat flu." "You can tell?" "Oh, yes,
this is classical." "And will they die?" I rubbed my chin. "I don't
think so." I wanted to sound reassuring, but I wondered. Feline
virus rhinotracheitis had a fairly low mortality rate, but bad cases
can die and these cats were very bad indeed. "Anyway, close the door,
James Herriot's Cat Stories Page 5