The Cat Who Came In From The Cold

by Deric Longden

  When I got back Aileen had a collection of replies, all addressed to Thermal – challenging him to a duel with green-top bottles at thirty paces.

  It had been great fun, but last night I had been struggling with the book and I had business letters to write and there I was, at two o’clock in the morning, struggling to find a fresh idea so that I could write a note to the milkman.

  I thought ‘This is stupid,’ and so I had written ‘Two green-tops and one red-top’ on a piece of paper and stuck it outside with the week’s money on top.

  The door bell jangled, and there was the little old man who had helped rescue Thermal.

  ‘Thought I ought to tell you – your lad’s up tree again.’

  ‘Same one?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How does he do it?’

  ‘Beats me.’

  For a moment I thought of leaving him there until dusk, but my better nature got the better of me.

  ‘I’ll get the ladder.’

  ‘I’ll go and arrange them cones.’

  *

  I had the ladder under one arm and Thermal under the other as the old man opened the cellar door for me. Arthur shot out through the cat-flap in a blind panic as I stowed the ladder away on the wall.

  ‘You’re one of them cat lovers I see.’

  ‘No – I’m not really. I just seem to have drifted into it.’

  Tigger glared at me for breaking up her early morning prayer meeting and went off to drag Arthur back into the fold. The old man took Thermal from me and examined him closely.

  ‘He looks a bit pale.’

  ‘He’s a white cat.’

  ‘Even so.’

  Thermal looked as right as rain – I was the one who was white around the gills. The traffic had been heavy this morning and the old man had directed it from the safety of the pavement.

  I still couldn’t work out how Thermal had got up there and another close examination of the tree had convinced me that it was impossible unless he used a trampoline.

  ‘I’ve got to go up to the shops this morning.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘To the supermarket – for my cigarettes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s starting to rain.’

  ‘Would you like a lift?’

  ‘Be very nice.’

  This was going to be the set price from now on. Free transportation in exchange for his sharp eyes and his cone-management abilities. The thought crossed my mind that he might be the one who was hurling Thermal up the tree.

  I took a look around the cellar. Kay and Stuart Evans were coming to stay with us. Kay had been the Deputy Editor of Woman’s Hour in my early days and Stuart was a proper author like Aileen. They had forsaken the bright lights of London and now lived in Grimsby – the pace of life in Huddersfield might be too much for them.

  ‘Is it all right if we bring the hounds?’

  ‘How many hounds have you got?’

  I could imagine dozens of little tails pointing upwards, straight to the sky, as they belted across the fields and through the woods.

  ‘Just the two – Theakstone and Jennings.’

  My heart went out to the two dogs. Having to live with Kay and Stuart was bad enough without being named after a couple of Yorkshire breweries. All the same, I didn’t fancy having Thermal and Tigger torn to pieces by a couple of four-legged lager louts.

  This time it was the hounds who would have to go to earth – in the cellar.

  As it happens they caught us unawares. All four of us were suffering from duvet deprivation. Thermal was trying out the bottom shelf of the tea trolley for a change and Tigger had moved up a layer. Aileen was fast asleep on the settee and I was curled up on the hearth rug when the doorbell rang.

  I heaved open the door and in came Kay and Stuart with Theakstone and Jennings. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dogs.

  ‘What on earth are they?’

  ‘They’re lovely,’ Kay said.

  ‘I’m sure they are – but what sort are they?’

  They were wire-haired, miniature dachshunds and they were lovely. Just six months old and about three inches tall, they were very serious little dogs who obviously did extremely well at school and never caused their teacher a moment’s trouble.

  ‘Thermal will kill them,’ I thought, and at that moment the two cats strode into the hall. Theakstone and Jennings moved closer to each other until their little flanks were touching. They trembled together in perfect pitch.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kay told them, ‘they are only cats.’

  ‘Only,’ I thought. Thermal and Tigger stood side by side like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, staring down at the miniature, wire-haired Abbott and Costello.

  My mind was racing – perhaps I should have locked the cats in the cellar. Then Thermal walked straight up to Theakstone and sniffed at his nose. Theakstone flicked out a tongue and licked his face.

  Thermal loved it. He rubbed his head against Theakstone’s cheek and then started on Jennings.

  Tigger snorted and turned back towards the trolley.

  ‘Doesn’t he embarrass you?’

  She joined in later on, however, and I still can’t get over the sight of my two cats towering above the two little dachshunds – all four of them charging about the house like kids on a day trip to Blackpool.

  That night, before we went to bed, we had to tear them apart and it wasn’t easy. All four of them lay in a pile under the sideboard, and as we pulled out first one and then another, they slid back underneath. It was like trying to unravel a cardigan.

  Thermal was too busy to wake me the next morning, there was far too much going on downstairs, but I seemed to be getting a taste for the early hours.

  I fed the animals and went straight to work in the office. I put in a good hour before the neighbours began to pull back their curtains and I would have done more if Thermal hadn’t decided to demonstrate the finer points of American football to Theakstone and Jennings.

  Enough was enough and I led them off down to the cellar where they could charge about to their hearts’ content – Arthur must have gone down to the Job Centre. It never occurred to me that Theakstone was small enough to go out through the cat-flap – even if he’d had Jennings strapped to his back.

  *

  From my office window I could see Denton, his coal-black fur on red alert as he stalked up the garden path. Tigger would have sniffed at the flowers – Denton seemed to resent them being there at all and slapped a daffodil on the head as a warning to the others.

  He had just sharpened his claws on the holly bush when he saw Thermal coming round the corner – on his own. He must have thought it was Christmas all over again. Thermal, without Tigger riding shotgun – it was what he had always wanted.

  He dropped flat against the soil, back-end swaying as he wound himself up for the charge. Thermal had stopped now and was looking over his shoulder, back at the courtyard.

  Denton went for it, leaves and soil spinning in his wake as he came out from behind the stone mushroom. He went up the path like a rocket and ran slap bang into four vicious bundles of teeth, hair and fur flying straight towards him like the whole Apache nation.

  He went back down the path like Steve Cram on heat. He didn’t go over the hedge or under it – he went straight through it and over the road and into the park.

  Our four heroes shouted rude things after him as they watched him go and then settled down to a raucous session of last one on the mushroom’s a cissy.

  Denton watched them from across in the park, his face a picture of horror. He would have nightmares for months to come – or was he dreaming now? He could swear that two of those cats were barking.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The old man had asked me if I was ‘one of them cat lovers’ and I had more or less denied it. I had never thought of myself as a cat lover. I like cats – but then I like dogs and rabbits and gerbils. I once visited Belle Vue Zoo three times in a week just to see a water bu
ffalo.

  If an animal will meet me halfway then I am putty in its paws or in its hoofs or whatever, but the old man had me labelled along with those women in the television commercials who babble on breathlessly about what their little Fifi will or will not eat and I didn’t like that at all.

  So what the hell was I doing walking back from the garage at six thirty in the morning with a tin of Whiskas for Arthur’s breakfast?

  Thermal and Tigger had shared a coley fillet, microwaved to perfection in two minutes flat. But Arthur didn’t like fish, and so here I was, out in a thin drizzle at the crack of dawn, with a tin of beef and kidney in my hand.

  When Arthur had first limped down to the cellar he had eaten everything I put before him and then had a go at the pattern on the saucer. But a soft bed and a full stomach turns the gobbler into a gourmet and any day now he would be complaining because I hadn’t chilled his white wine properly.

  *

  I didn’t really mind, the fresh air was more than welcome. I had just worked right through the night and there were seven freshly printed pages lying on my desk.

  There was a bounce in my step as I turned into the lane and saw my faithful cat Thermal waiting for me. He had wanted to come with me, across the busy main road to the garage.

  ‘No.’

  He had stopped.

  ‘Sit.’

  He sat.

  ‘Wait.’

  He had waited for me.

  ‘Good boy – come on.’

  He came, trotting alongside me, back down the lane like a best of breed at Crufts. He really was a most intelligent cat. I must spend more time training him, he was maturing now and who knows what we could achieve together.

  He jumped up on the wall.

  ‘Come down.’

  He sat and stared at me as I patted my thigh.

  ‘Heel.’

  He glared at me and then turned his attention to the enormous Alsatian who had been following us along the lane, and who was now under the impression that I meant him.

  I turned and wagged my finger at Thermal.

  ‘Stay.’

  He stood up, had a long low stretch and then looked over his shoulder at me as he sauntered off along the wall.

  ‘Prat.’

  The Alsatian was now sitting on my left foot and eagerly awaiting my next command.

  ‘Go home.’

  He didn’t know that one.

  ‘Push off.’

  He didn’t know that one either, but my tone seemed to offend him and he growled.

  ‘Nice doggy.’

  He wasn’t going anywhere – he had his eye on the tin of cat food. He growled again, this time in a lower register, a bit like A1 Pacino, and fastened his jaws around the tin.

  My fingers were also around the tin, so I let him have it and he padded off back down the lane – I had been mugged within a hundred yards of my own house.

  I would have followed him, wrestled him to the floor and torn the tin from between his slavering jaws, but I had a bit of a headache coming on – and then my attention was diverted by the sight of a large van reversing off the waste ground.

  It stopped for a moment outside my back gate, so that the driver could kick the cold engine back to life and sort out one of his forward gears.

  Thermal seemed to have been waiting for it. He stepped off the wall and sat down on the roof of the cab with all the savoir-faire of a kitten who has been commuting for years. If he’d had his briefcase with him he would have been sorting through his papers by the time the van moved off, very slowly, coughing and spitting down the lane.

  I reacted instantaneously. In a flash my mouth fell wide open and I slipped swiftly into a catatonic trance.

  The van bounced round the end of the lane with Thermal still glued to the cab roof like Lester Piggott, hanging on with his claws clamped fast and his bum clenched tight.

  It was heading for Park Drive – if it turned left it would be lost for ever, if it turned right it would come up past the front of the house.

  I leapt into action. My lithe body hurling itself through the gate and down the steps. Powerful legs took me sailing across the courtyard and down the path. Tigger stepped out of the bushes. ‘Arthur says he hasn’t had …’

  ‘In a minute.’

  I hurtled past her and on towards the front garden. Arthur hurtled past me, his arthritis forgotten for the moment.

  ‘I haven’t had my …’

  ‘For God’s sake – not now.’

  The van had turned right and was poddling up the road towards the house. At first I thought Thermal must have fallen off, I couldn’t see him on the roof.

  But then his head popped up and for a brief moment he rested his chin on a sign that read, ‘Fresh Fruit Daily’, before ducking back down again, content that the driver was following his instructions to the letter.

  I had just nipped down the steps and was about to open the gate when I pulled the muscle in my thigh. My body wasn’t used to being lithe and my legs were only powerful over a measured distance of three yards.

  God it hurt. Arthur knew how I felt – he seemed to have pulled his entire body and was lying semi-conscious under the hedge.

  I had to stop the van. I limped out to the road, but Thermal’s second-in-command had already brought it to a halt opposite the park and was now striding across the road towards the houses.

  It took some of the urgency out of the situation, and I hobbled gingerly along the pavement so that I would be there when he came out again.

  Then I stopped and watched as Thermal stood up and walked to the rear of the van like a captain on the bridge. He had a quick sniff at an interesting rivet and then, with the casual confidence of a kitten who could have done this in his sleep, he hopped a couple of feet up in the air and landed safely on the overhanging branch of the unclimbable tree.

  Tigger was waiting for me as I pushed open the gate. Whatever the pantomime going on around her she always remained calm and dignified. She never broke into a sweat like the rest of us.

  ‘I was trying to tell you …’

  ‘Yes I know – Arthur hasn’t had his breakfast.’

  ‘He’s weak from hunger and his legs have gone.’

  I scooped him up from under the hedge and carried him. It was the first time he had ever let me touch him – the first time he hadn’t been able to hide behind the central-heating boiler in the cellar until Tigger told him that dinner was served and it was safe to come out now.

  He lay in my arms, so stiff with terror and arthritis that he would have cracked if I had dropped him.

  ‘Come on Arthur. I think there’s a pork chop you might fancy – then you can give me a hand with the ladder.’

  I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to rescue Thermal. I thought I’d let him stew up there on his branch for a while, until the novelty wore off and the cold and damp told him that there must be a better way of spending the morning.

  Arthur enjoyed his pork chop, sucking it into submission and only bringing his tooth into play for the crackly bits. I could hear him dragging it round the kitchen floor as I sat in my office and tried to work.

  But my mind wasn’t on the job. I worried that Thermal might fall off his branch or step down on to the roof of a passing double-decker and finish up in Holm-firth.

  I could only take about half an hour of it and then I hauled the ladder up from the cellar once more, donned my suit of shining armour, and went out to rescue a small cat who would by now be paralysed with fear.

  He was having a ball. Joggers were waving to him from the park and pointing him out to the pensioners resting their weary bones on the benches. Lorry drivers, having a late breakfast, put aside their Daily Mirrors and tried to tempt him down with bacon butties and beefburgers.

  He was showing off something rotten. For their benefit he put on an astonishing display of aerobics and acrobatics, twig twirling and leaping up for leaves. Then he capped it off with a demonstration of branch balancing that had them with their
hearts in their mouths.

  I wondered if Thermal could do one of those backflips that always leave me wondering why that twelve-year-old gymnast on the beam didn’t break her back when she was seven years old and only practising.

  He got a loud cheer as I grabbed him and carried him down the ladder and another round of applause as I carted him across to the house. He leaned over my shoulder and acknowledged the tribute.

  ‘I’ll be back – same time tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh no you won’t.’

  That evening I kept an eye open for the fruit van and sure enough, around six o’clock, it chugged back up the lane and came to a halt alongside the wall.

  I nipped down the steps and out through the gate. The driver was trying to bend it in between a couple of parked cars on the waste ground – it was the sort of van that took some persuading.

  The driver locked the battered door and stood back to admire the view. They looked a pair this man and his van. I half expected him to clip a nosebag on the bonnet and leave it a carrot for afterwards.

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘Course you can.’

  He had an air of resignation about him, a highly developed sense of forbearance which was something else he shared with the van. He was waiting for me to say, ‘You’re not going to park that thing there, are you?’

  I told him about Thermal pinching free rides on his roof and he relaxed.

  ‘Oh we can’t have that, can we. I’ve seen him around – he’s a nice little chap. I’ll keep an eye open for him and send him packing.’

  We talked about the fruit business – apparently it’s not what it was – and then he said, ‘The milkman was asking about you this morning. He wanted to know if you were ill or anything. He said you hadn’t left him a note.’

  I told him that I couldn’t spare the time any more.

  ‘I’m spending as much time writing the notes for the milkman as I am on the book.’

  He understood perfectly, but he thought it was a shame.