More Cats in the Belfry

by Tovey, Doreen

  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.

  ELEVEN

  She was clever. In a neat, precise little feminine way. I could imagine her knitting or organising kittens. But Saphra had moments of real inspiration and constructive reasoning, as when I threw his favourite toy mouse for him and he would pat it under the bureau then lie flat on his stomach peering underneath while I fished it out with an opened-out builder's ruler. That was the most interesting part of it for him – watching the ruler hook out the errant toy. He got round to carrying the mouse in his mouth to the bureau, pawing it deliberately underneath, then bawling for me to come and do the ruler business. This happened so often that I started to leave the ruler ready under the bureau and Saph had another constructive thought. That was what I'd used t
o get the mouse out. He'd never been able to work the water-pistol but he could wiggle the ruler, and wiggle it he did, one paw on the end of it, as he'd seen me use my hand, then rushing round to the front to see whether the mouse had appeared. Sometimes it had, and Saph was overjoyed, tossing it in the air in triumph before pushing it back to do the wiggling bit again. More often than not it hadn't, because he was wiggling the ruler blindly – but he'd reasoned out the connection and worked at it like an engineer manipulating a lever.

  One of the most remarkable instances of this sort I've heard was told me by a breeder who'd sold a kitten to some people who'd never experienced the proclivities of Siamese before and kept ringing her to tell her what he'd been up to. It seemed that they'd been having their house re-wired and the kitten kept going under the floorboards and coming out somewhere else. They did their best to stop him, but given the chance he was underground like a flash, and it took ages of expensive working time to get him out. Then the electrician hit on the idea of tying a length of string to the kitten's collar, putting him under the floorboards, calling him from across the room where they'd taken up another board, and the kitten would nip across underneath, emerge gleefully from the new hole – and the electrician would tie the string to a length of flex which he then pulled through and connected up. 'Saved hours of taking up floorboards,' said the breeder proudly. I would have been scared of the string's getting caught round a joist and their having to take up floorboards even faster than before to get the kitten out, but maybe he was an exception. Maybe he's working even now as an electrician's mate. I never heard the sequel. Only wondered, thinking of Saphra using the carpenter's ruler as an extension of his arm, what one might have made of him with a little encouragement.

  I hear lots of stories about intelligent cats. Not always Siamese. All breeds, including 'ordinaries', have their A-level types. There was the tale I heard from a chemist in a neighbouring village, whose enormous, battle­scarred ginger neuter suddenly took to staying out for hours at a time and then coming home smelling of Chanel No.5, which the chemist recognised because he sold it in his shop. Intrigued, one day he followed the cat, which walked a long way up the road, scorning the lesser houses, and finally turned in at the gateway of the local 'big house', proceeding up the drive as if he owned it. He went to the front door, lifted the low-level letter-box with his nose and let it drop. Within seconds the door opened, a voice said 'There you are darling, come right in' and the cat disappeared inside – to reappear at his home several hours later smelling once more of Chanel No.5. The chemist said a wealthy old lady lived in the big house and was obviously feeding and making a fuss of him, hence the smell of the expensive scent, which the cat apparently didn't mind. 'Yet he looks like a prize-fighter,' he said incredulously.

  The same cat, more in keeping with its appearance, once ate all the fish in the chemist's friend's garden pond. The friend, who also lived a long way up the same road, said he couldn't understand why his fish were vanishing. 'Perhaps a heron's taking them,' suggested the chemist, who had no idea of the truth – until one day he met his cat walking down the middle of the road with the last – and largest – goldfish in its mouth, tail flapping on one side, head wagging on the other. The chemist tried to rescue it, but the cat wouldn't let go, so he had to carry the cat home, fish and all, as fast as he could, before anybody could see them. Next time he met the fish-owner the man said he was re-stocking the pond with small ones. Presumably they were beneath the cat's notice, as he never took any again. 'Can you beat that?' asked the chemist. I had to admit that I couldn't.

  Neither could I beat the story about somebody, living in the country with two cocker spaniels, who in an unguarded moment adopted a black half-Siamese kitten from a friend who lived in town. On arrival the kitten stalked into the kitchen, put the spaniels in their places by slapping them on the nose, and took to country life straight away. The following day his new owner heard puffing and snorting coming from an adjoining field and found the kitten smacking the nose of a cow which was standing over him looking threatening. The cow was likewise put in its place. Later, while his owner watched in horror, the kitten leapt on to the back of a bullock, clung to the curls on its neck, and hung on like a rodeo rider while it careered round the field. Encouraged by his success, he was next found sitting behind a cow batting happily at her tail, which the cow, presumably thinking an outsize fly was after her, was swishing angrily from side to side. On another occasion he stalked a magpie, grabbed a tail­-feather as it took off, and was airborne until the feather came away. Picking himself up, the kitten took the feather indoors and it was a treasure for days until it became too dilapidated to play with or take to bed. And when he wasn't dicing with death, finished his owner, he liked to sit in a holly tree by the front door eating the leaves and removing the prickles from his mouth with his paw. What did I make of that? I could only say, weakly, 'It must be the Siamese in him.'

  Half-Siamese resulting from unplanned matings with domestic cats, typified by their elegant lines, plush coats and foghorn voices, are often black and invariably more catastrophe-prone than ordinary cats. The modern pedigreed Orientals which are the result of deliberate crossings between Siamese and other selected cats also have this reputation, but I find it hard to believe, after my own experience and all the hair-raising tales I've heard, that there is anything to beat a full Siamese for causing trouble. Consider the story I was told by the woman who took her Siamese kitten – the first she'd ever had, and she was captivated by the way it accompanied her everywhere like a dog – to a house a couple of streets away to buy potatoes from an old man who sold vegetables to supplement his pension. Frightened by the traffic, which it hadn't experienced before, as soon as the man opened the door the kitten ran up his leg. 'His bad leg, of course,' said my informant resignedly.

  She peeled the protesting Alfred off the old man's back and took him home, and the next time she went round for potatoes – without Alfred for obvious reasons – she was duly shown the wounds on the door-step. Up went the old man's trouser leg. 'See where 'e got I? Cor, I felt that. Hummin' all night it were,' he informed her. Not that she could see anything. She was too busy praying that nobody spotted the display and reported them for indecent exposure.

  'The number of people who say what a beautiful cat he is and then spoil it by saying they knew he must be mine...' she finished.

  I am continually hearing stories like this, though there are people who insist I make it all up and that no cats could ever behave as I say Siamese do. They are non-Siamese owners, of course, and I can only suggest they try it for themselves – like the woman who rang me one day about her chocolate-point Siamese, the first she'd ever owned, wondering if I could help her.

  I shuddered the moment I heard his name. In my experience, to call a Siamese Ming, as being the epitome of Oriental fragility and perfection, is courting disaster. All the Mings I've ever come across have been outstandingly diabolical as if their one mission in life is to disprove the connotation, and this Ming was no exception.

  His owner, Connie, explained that she had recently retired from teaching science at a girls' boarding school and had moved into a new flat. The garden of her previous flat had opened on to a large field in which it had been safe for Ming to roam while she was away, and there he'd set up his personal dictatorship. He'd fought all the other neighbourhood cats – in particular one called Ginger Bates, whom he'd loathed with deep Oriental loathing. He'd stolen things from the neighbours and brought them home to her as gifts and she'd had to find out whom they belonged to and return them. He'd walked the world like a feline Dick Turpin and now that his owner had brought him to a flat more convenient for her – near the first one but round the corner on the main road, with the garden wired in for his safety and Ginger Bates and his beloved field on the other side of an eight-foot fence – he'd embarked on despotic revolution.

  He'd always been a despot, his owner informed me. He'd originally belonged to her vet who had two other Siame
se whom Ming, as a youngster, had bullied till their lives weren't worth living – and, as she was catless at the time, the vet and his wife, who were friends of hers, had asked her to take him on.

  He'd settled well with Connie. He liked electric fires, and prawns and steak, and being treated as an only cat of special importance. But he disapproved strongly of the new flat when they moved, and particularly of the wired-in garden. They'd been in residence for three weeks, during which time he'd patrolled the bottom of the fence every day, clawing at the wooden supports, yelling because he couldn't get over or under it, and her new neighbours had started to complain. What could she do, short of finding another flat and moving away? she asked. She couldn't part with Ming. He was her friend.

  Get a water-pistol, I advised her, explaining how it had worked with Saphra. I could sense horror coming down the phone wire at the suggestion. What about a flower spray? she asked at last. I understood her predicament. She lived very near the school where she had taught, and still took part in its extra­curricular activities. An ex-senior mistress going round with a water-pistol – or spotted in the local toy shop trying to buy one – would hardly set a good example to the pupils.

  Try the flower spray then, I agreed. But she must persevere, not give up on it. The vet had told her to persevere, too, she admitted dismally. It hadn't worked with him, though, when he'd owned Ming in the beginning.